Chapter 17

W hen Alistair woke up Sunday morning, in his home in the elephants' private living area with his beautiful soulmate in his arms, he couldn't have been happier. The last week had been a wild ride from start to finish, and he never expected it to take the turns that it did. He still couldn't believe that he was lucky enough to have won Maggie's heart.

She had every right to be wary of males since she'd been so badly hurt and betrayed in the past. He was thankful she'd taken a chance on him with her heart. He was not going to let her down.

There were still things to talk about and figure out, like living arrangements and what they would tell her family, and he wanted to reach out to Auden and Jess about Maggie possibly joining them in the aviary to run classes. Plus, there was a school in the park for the shifter kids, although there weren't many young right now.

There was also the thought that they'd been having sex for the last day without protection. He definitely would love to have a child with her, but only when she was ready and the time was right for both of them.

When she woke a little while later with a hum that turned into a yawn, he smiled at the cute way she squeaked as she stretched, her toes curling as she straightened her legs.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning." She rolled over to face him with a big smile. "I really like it down here."

"Yeah?" He rubbed his hand up and down her bare back.

"It's quiet. And even though the other houses are close, it still feels really private. I liked the apartment too, though. But this house is really awesome."

"I'm glad you like it."

The three-bedroom home was in the center of a U-shaped layout of houses in the large room that had sand-colored flooring and walls painted like the savannah. The other shifter groups had their own private living areas decorated to match the natural surroundings their beasts enjoyed. Savannah for the lions, forest for the bears and wolves, and jungle for the gorillas.

The other homes in their area were similar, with two or three bedrooms and a family room, kitchen, plus two bathrooms. There were six homes, which meant that two were empty in case they had more elephants join the memory.

The guys were building a playground in one section of the open space for Rhapsody and Kelley's little boy, Khap. Cael's mate, Novi, was pregnant. Alistair hoped that someday the living area would be filled with children's laughter and the memory would expand with more members. It was the smallest of the shifter groups that called the park home.

"We got distracted from our chat last night," he said as he kissed her forehead and inhaled her sweet scent.

"You're the one that kissed me first," she said.

"I didn't hear you complain," he said, arching a brow.

"I will never complain about that, I promise. I don't even remember what we were talking about when you started taking off my clothes."

"You were taking too long." He chuckled. "We were talking about your job."

"Oh, right. I should check my messages." She sat up and lifted her phone from the side table where she'd left it charging last night. "Nope, no available jobs for me or messages from the school district." She put the phone back on the table and snuggled back into his arms with a happy sigh. "Let's talk about jobs."

He pulled her closer and closed his eyes for a moment, his elephant blasting out a happy call in his mind. "Well, you know that I'm a vet tech here and help with the animals. Along with feeding them and cleaning the paddocks, I order food and supplies for the norms and also the petting zoo. The aviary and bird hospital handle their own supplies."

"Norms?"

"Non-shifters."

"Which ones are those?" She tilted her face to look at him.

"We have one paddock of norms—the last paddock, where Tank lives, plus deer, antelope, and moose. There used to be rhinos, but one of them passed away of natural causes and we moved the other to a zoo with a rhino sanctuary so he could be with his own kind. There were giraffes as well, but we had them transferred to another zoo."

"Tank is the only one that has a name?"

"Yep. It just happened because he was so cantankerous when we first brought him to the park. He attacked everyone for a long time and we worried he was never going to settle down, but then he did. He doesn't like predator shifters, except for Rhapsody, and we think it's because she's mated to Kelley and smells like him."

"That's sweet. Are the petting zoo animals the same way? They don't like predators?"

"We used to have a petting zoo years ago that was run by some wolves, and it didn't do well for that reason. But now, Mercer and Rhomi are working with Cael and Novi to run it, with Luna helping out after school. We think because Mercer and Rhomi are mates, they don't mind that he's a lion."

"When Jess mentioned I could run educational programs for the aviary, was she just being nice or is that something that's really being offered?"

"It's a real offer," he said. "They get called away to rescue birds all the time, and sometimes they have to cancel shows because there's no one to run them. And also, sometimes there are sick or very injured birds that need round-the-clock care, so they can't both be out with the public. If you wanted to work with them, you'd have to be trained to handle the birds and have a good grasp of knowledge to answer questions the public might have. It would be a teaching gig, but not quite like you're used to."

"Sounds like a lot of researching and learning," she said with a hum.

"Definitely. You'd have to spend time on your own learning about the birds in the aviary and hang out with Jess and Auden to learn about the day-to-day with them. They could use the help, but since we only let mates work at the park who aren't shifters, they don't have a lot of options for workers."

"That makes sense," she said. "What about working with you?"

"You could do that too. I'd love to have you help me out. Cael, Indio, and Kelley would appreciate the extra hands too." They were planning to redo the entire paddock for the norms over the next few months—painting the interior fence, digging out the pond, and planting trees and native grasses.

They got up and headed into the master bathroom to shower and get ready for the day, which was going to involve taking care of the norms and handling the petting zoo so that Mercer and Rhomi could enjoy their day off.

He turned on the shower and waited for it to heat up. "There's also a school."

"Where?"

"In the marketplace. I'll show you when we get breakfast. There's a general store run by two wolves, a nail salon run by two human soulmates, and a makeup store run by a human soulmate. The park offices are down here as well, plus a big conference room for our monthly alpha meetings."

"Yeah, speaking of alpha stuff, when are we going to do the ceremony?"

"I was thinking next weekend if you'd like."

"Novi said she wanted to have dinner tonight for the memory," Maggie said as she stepped under the spray once it was hot enough. She wet her skin and then moved aside to let him do the same.

He grimaced. "I was going to take you to dinner last night and we got distracted."

"It was a good distraction," she said, wiggling her brows. "I was glad to spend the whole day and night down here with you."

She gave him a curious look. "How long did you live in the apartment?"

"I moved in the day we met."

Her brows went high. "Really?"

"Yep. I didn't know when I'd bring you home, but I wanted to be prepared and I wanted it to look like I had lived there for a while."

"Is anyone else living there?"

"No. We had a guest for a little while, Ginny, a jackal shifter. But she's soulmates with August, one of the gorillas, so they live in their private living area with the rest of the band."

She ran a washcloth full of lather over her skin and said, "I'm going to guess that a band is a group of gorillas?"

He nodded. After washing his hair and cleaning his skin, he switched places and watched his beautiful mate under the water as the droplets soaked her skin and rinsed off the suds.

"Fuck, you're gorgeous," he said.

She batted away his hands as he reached for her. "You said we need to feed the animals and work at the petting zoo, and I want to actually have breakfast before we do that, so keep your wicked hands to yourself."

"Spoilsport."

She smoothed the water from her hair and grinned. "We can take lunch together, though, right?"

"Most definitely."

They dried off and got dressed, Maggie putting on one of his T-shirts with a park logo on the sleeve he lent her, and then they headed out to grab breakfast in the marketplace.

They ended up having great timing because he got to introduce her to the other alphas, as well as the people who ran the shops in the market and Jeanie, Joss's mate, who ran the cafeteria along with several bears.

Maggie sat next to Alistair at a table with Atticus and Lori, plus Joss, Marcus, and Caesar. Jeanie joined them after grabbing a cup of coffee, sitting next to Joss.

"It's so nice to finally meet you," Jeanie said.

Maggie smiled. "It's really great to put faces to names. And this blueberry French toast is amazing."

"Thanks! We've got blueberries in the greenhouse that are finally ready, so these are fresh picked this morning."

"Everything's great," Alistair said.

"So let me ask you something," Maggie said as she looked at Jeanie.

"Anything."

"What do you tell your family about living at the park?"

"Well, I don't have any family left," Jeanie said.

"Me either," Lori said. "But the ones who do have family tell them that they're given an apartment as part of their salary."

"I'm sorry," Maggie said. "I didn't realize."

"No worries, the pack is my family now," Jeanie said.

"And the gorillas are mine," Lori said with a smile.

"The ones with families," Joss said, "can use an apartment if their family wants to come for a visit. If that happens to you, Alistair can make arrangements to prep one of the apartments to appear to be lived-in. If you need mail forwarded from your current place, we have a PO box that you can use."

"That's great," Maggie said. "I didn't even think about my apartment or my mail."

"Have you thought about what you'd like to do for work here?" Marcus asked. He cut into a steak that he'd paired with eggs and home fries.

"You can still work outside of the park if you want," Alistair pointed out. "It's just that normally mates stick close to each other."

She gave him a sweet smile. "I'd like to talk to Jess and Auden about the aviary, but I also want to help with the norms and petting zoo, and be available for helping in the school too."

"I think you could do all of that," Caesar said. "They could all be done on a rotating basis to start, and you could decide what you'd like to do as you get to know the park and people better."

"That sounds like a great idea," she said.

Alistair agreed. "We'll figure it out. There's no rush on choosing a path in the park."

She bumped his arm with a smile.

Conversation flowed around the table as they discussed the day ahead and the various tasks, getting ready for the summer when the number of patrons coming into the park would increase significantly, and the VIP tours.

When they were finished with breakfast and made their way up to the norms' paddock to take care of them, Maggie said, "So the VIP tours were meant to bring in single men and women in the hopes that they'd be soulmates?"

"Yes."

"How successful has it been?"

"Not very. There have been a few soulmates who have come on the tour, but most of the time, the coupon-holders aren't a match for anyone. It doesn't matter," he said as he opened the door in the floor of the norms' maintenance building, "because even just one soulmate brought here with a coupon is worth it. We keep trying to find new ways to send out the coupons, change up designs, and try other things to bring in unmated males and females, but all we can really do is hope for the best."

"I think it's a pretty neat idea."

"Did you ever get a coupon in the mail?" He prepped the food for the norms, adding vitamins to the mix. He pointed to the bag of carrots that one of the others had placed on the table earlier that morning, and Maggie picked it up, extracting the bunch of carrots and tossing the bag in the trash.

"I don't think so. But I might have thought it was some kind of scam or junk mail depending on what it looked like."

"We've heard that before," he said with a chuckle.

Opening the door to the paddock, he said, "We've got dinner with the memory tonight. Tomorrow, I can run you to your apartment so you can pack some things to bring here."

"That would be great." She looked at him curiously. "Were you not allowed to stay at my apartment overnight or something? You always said you had early mornings, but when I stayed with you, we didn't get up that early."

"It's a rule that no one can stay outside of the park overnight." He told her how Win had accidentally shifted into his gorilla overnight while he was sleeping with his soulmate, Lexy—before she knew shifters were real.

"Holy crap, I would shit a brick if I woke up next to you and you were an elephant!"

He let out a loud laugh. "I kind of doubt anyone could sleep through that."

She giggled. "I'm just picturing you ruining the bed in the process. Wow, Lexy must have been so scared."

"She was, but it all worked out in the end and they're very happy together." He pulled her close and kissed her. "I can't get enough of you, Maggie. You're addictive in the very best way."

A dimple formed in her cheek as she smiled. "I feel the very same way." He released her slowly, reluctantly, and smoothed her shirt. "I just have one question."

"What's that, sweetheart?"

"When's lunch?"