Chapter 13
Zephyr
Bearlovedher.There was no other explanation for the way he followed her on her tour, right behind her, sniffing her legs, giving her little licks, and wagging his tail giving her looks with his hopeful brown eyes that made her stop and give him head rubs. She was in love with him already.
Baron, on the other hand, couldn’t care less. He plopped down on what she understood was his perch on a windowsill and simply watched the view outside, completely unbothered by her or anyone else. Bandit was nowhere to be seen.
Leah started her tour right from the main door. “There are a total of four bedrooms in the house, beside the master. They’re all en-suites. This is just a living area but the dogs spend more time here than Alpha, mostly because they enjoy the view and the sun. The entire house is designed around this interior garden.”
Zephyr took in the garden in question, genuinely awed at the design. An amazing indoor garden surrounded a sunken living area. Comfortable-looking beige couches took up half the living space in a three-sided rectangle, a center table in the shape of a chopped wooden log seated upon an oriental rug. A large flat screen was mounted on the wall in front of the couch, the area semi-private due to the garden that surrounded it. Glass took up the wall on the left of the main door, and a set of wide, wooden, unconnected stairs went up to another level on the far right. Immediately in front of the door, two low steps led to the raised open kitchen and a wooden, rustic-looking dining table with six seats. Behind that, sliding doors opened onto another decked area, the pool from the front of the house wrapping around to the back. It was extraordinary.
“Wow,” she breathed, taking everything in, and heard Leah laugh.
“Yes, it takes some getting used to. But it is beautiful, no?”
“Oh yes,” she mumbled, rotating in her spot to not miss a single detail. “Were you here when this was built?”
“No,” Leah replied, leading her through the kitchen to the back deck. Surprisingly, there was another smaller structure at the back. A wooden bridge went from the upper half of the mansion to the upper half of the outhouse. On the ground, stone steps connected the back deck to the door.
“That is a guest house,” Leah informed her. “Usually, Alpha makes the guests stay at the hotel in the city, but sometimes important people want to visit here, and Alpha does not like strangers in his house. He blames it on the dogs.” The older woman gave her a grin. “Says they bite strangers. They go in that house happily then.”
Zephyr laughed. She could see him doing that to keep his space his own, threatening to sic his dogs on them.
The sound of running water was louder on the back deck. “Is there flowing water here?”
The other woman pointed to the side of the compound. “A little bit away, there’s a waterfall. You can see it from the master bedroom.”
Zephyr’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yes, come I’ll show you.”
The woman took her on a tour of the kitchen first, showing her where everything was kept, explaining the routines as she went. The cook came early in the mornings, cooked for the day, and stored everything for whenever Alpha wanted to eat. He didn’t have any fixed meal time since he mostly worked and came home late, and everyone left the house in the evening since they knew he liked his quiet.
Leah took care of the house and fed the dogs on time. Alpha took them for a run in the morning, and if he was out of town, Leah's husband took them.
There was a bedroom off the living room that Leah showed her. Alpha had turned it into a study. Another bedroom, smaller than the first, was next to it, clean but completely empty.
Zephyr wondered what it was like for him, having all this space and being alone with his dogs, coming home after a day to a solitary house. Maybe he liked that, but Zephyr couldn't imagine what it must be like. She'd always come home to someone, her parents or Zen, and she hoped now to come home to him and the dogs.
Leah kept telling her everything as they went up the stairs. “This level has only two rooms. This is the master.” She opened a heavy, rustic wooden door to reveal a room big enough to fit her parent’s house.
The largest bed she’d ever seen dominated the left of the room, with a large carved headboard. It was a four-poster bed, pushed up against a plain white wall, netting folded back on top of its wooden frame. That bed could’ve fit four Alphas and still had space. She would drown in that bed. There was nothing much in the room though, which she found odd. The walls were barren, the space aside from the bed empty. It looked too clean.
Removing her eyes from it, she went to the sliding glass doors that opened into a covered balcony, a hammock hanging from the iron frame of the covering. From this side of the house, she could see a small waterfall in the distance between the thick green. It was absolutely magical.
“Your suite is through here,” Leah brought her back to the present, indicating a single connecting door opposite the bed. Zephyr went through and saw a much smaller room without a balcony, but a large window facing the waterfall view. Four of her boxes were already in place, and Bandit was sniffing around one of them.
“Thank you.” She gave the older housekeeper a smile as she left.
Dropping down on the small but comfortable bed, Zephyr let the entire house sink inside, realizing that though beautiful, there was absolutely nothing personal in his home. No pictures, no objects of his interest, nothing that screamed it was his. It almost looked like he'd had the compound made and forgotten what to do with his own house. And though beautiful, it was kind of tragic. Did he simply not know that there was more involved in making it a home, or did he not know how to make it one? Did he feel at home in this beautiful paradise he'd made or did he sleep restlessly? There were questions in her mind and sadness in her heart as she unpacked.
She spent the next few hours setting things, emptying her boxes and bags as they kept arriving, carried by two young men and Victor. Hector had probably gone with Alpha wherever they had gone.
Bear ran from door to box each time someone came in, excited about all the new stuff while Bandit sniffed everything she took out, his particular interest not in her socks but her underwear. She’d caught him trying to sneak off with her yellow lacy bra and tugged it back just in time, even though he kept his eyes fixated on that one.
The cook came around dusk and introduced herself as Nala, telling Zephyr she’d cook them a special dinner since it was her first night in their house, and left for the kitchen. By the time Zephyr was done unpacking and putting everything away, it was eight in the evening and she was both hungry and exhausted. She hadn’t been able to sleep properly since the courthouse wedding, and she could feel it catching up to her.
Bear sat in a corner of her room, napping, her one solid companion throughout the day.