Austin had been trying to study but the hammering was driving him absolutely crazy. After a while he just shut his book and headed downstairs to cross the back yard to where Joshua was just inside the woods. "What are you doing out here? You are making an awful lot of noise."

Joshua looked up, hammer poised in the air for another swing. He could feel dominance and power radiating off of the other wolf and his breath caught in his throat a little. He was very sensitive to such things because he himself put so much importance on being top dog. It was clear that he had alpha qualities, even though he was still quite new to the shifting thing. His back straightened a little, though he stayed kneeling. "I'm building a treehouse. And you must be Hunter's brother."

"I am." Austin had his glasses on still, and with them on he looked even more like Hunter than without them. He had gotten a little bigger over the last year, having grown another inch or two and filled out. He'd matured too, in ways that he hadn't thought was possible until it happened. "Have you drawn out any sort of plan for this are you going about it willy nilly? Hammering boards together with no real idea."

He chewed on the inside of his cheek, disliking the implication that he wouldn't go about this task properly. "I've never built anything willy nilly in my life," he said with a fair amount of petulence. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his makeshift blueprint. It was quite detailed, with sketched in measurements. He offered it up to Austin. "I'm Joshua, by the way."

"Austin." He took the drawing and he moved to sit down on the edge of the tarp. Austin opened the blueprint up and he chewed on his bottom lip as he looked over all the measurements. He was good with math and he liked building things, so this was right up his alley. "This looks pretty good, did you sketch it yourself?"

Defensive little Joshua had been expecting some snide remark and he frowned briefly when he was caught off guard when Austin looked satisfied with it. "Oh--um--" he hated stammering and he gathered his resolve to look sharp. "Yes, I did that. I like architecture and design and construction."

"Me too." Austin laid the plans out on the tarp and he looked around the wood that was spread out. "Where did you get all of this?" he picked up one of the two by fours, turning it over in his hand to study the integrity of the wood.

As soon as he saw the way Austin handled the materials, Joshua's eyes brightened. That was definitely the way a fellow builder acted. Immediately, his demeanor shifted from defiant brat to eager child. He'd never had someone who appreciated this hobby as much as he did, and certainly not someone like Austin. "At Lumberman's in town. I asked Andrew to take me. I promised Julian and Jeremiah a treehouse a long time ago, but I wasn't ever able to get it finished."

"This is really good wood. You know once you get it built I have a pretty good sander. You can sand everything down and stain it, something darker with some sealant so that when it rains it won't warp the wood." Austin put the wood down and he looked at the plans again. "You want a hand with this?"

"Really?" He blurted excitedly and then tried to gain back some of his composure. "I mean, yeah, that'd be nice." This was a long way from the arguments he used to have with his mother's boyfriend who would offer to help one day and then snarl and yell the next day. He hoped Austin wouldn't turn into that.

"Yeah. Let me go and get my tools." He got up off of the tarp and then looked at what he was wearing. "Let me change into something else and get my tools." he was still dressed up from earlier in the morning when he and Hunter had gone to the nearby University for a meeting with Austin's advisor.

Joshua was a filthy mess compared to Austin. "Why are you dressed up?" He asked before Austin could leave. He was very curious about the man now, finding that he already looked up to him. Given his dearth of rolemodels growing up, Joshua was overly eager to accept them when they showed up.

"I had an appointment with my academic advisor at the school where I go. I do most of my work via correspondance, so when I actually go up there I like to look nice." He smiled a little. "I'll be back in like fifteen minutes."

Nodding, he turned back to his work. He was prebuilding the supports and would climb up in the tree later to secure them to the trunk and supportive branches. He was ridiculously excited for this now, especially since he had someone to help him. Andrew wasn't exactly the builder type and he was nervous to ask Logan to spend time with him.

Austin went inside and changed and he grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge before coming back out of the house. He still had his glasses on, but mostly just because if he was going to be looking at plans he wanted to be able to read them without much trouble.

As soon as Austin got back, Joshua pointed to a section of the drawings. He had no qualms about being directive. "That pile of wood over there is for this part. It needs to be built before we get up there. Once the platforms and supports are secure, we'll be doing most of the building up in the tree. Are you afraid of heights?"

"Nope." Austin didn't mind letting Joshua take the head on this, since it was his project. He passed him one of the bottles of water and then he took out his hammer and got a few of his other tools out.

Joshua stretched his neck and peered over at Austin's tools, wanting to catch a glimpse of them. His own tools were new but they didn't hold any particular special meaning. "Thanks," he said at the water and felt a certain commraderie building already.

All of Austin's tools were old. They were hunter's and Hunter's father's. His own father had bailed on him before he ever got a chance to know the guy, so he always had looked at Hunter like a father, rather than a brother.

"Where did you get those?" He pried curiously. He sat back for a second to watch Austin work, not so much supervising as admiring. It was clear the other knew what he was doing. "They look like they've been broken in perfectly. I think an old set of good tools is so much better than new ones. My mom's boyfriend Rick had a set of tools from his dad, but he never used them. It was a shame."

"These were Hunter's and before him they belonged to his father." He knew that most people assumed he and Hunter had the same dad, but they didn't. "If you want to use my tools you can, but you won't ever break yours in until you use em enough." He smiled a little bit. "besides, these tools were new once upon a time. Maybe by the time Jeremiah and Julian are a little older they will be broken in for them to use."

Joshua hadn't thought of it that way. Maybe he really could be the start of a legacy rather than just feeling as if he came from nothing all the time. Not that he hadn't loved their father, but the man hadn't passed on as much as Joshua had once thought. "I'll use mine then," he smiled and looked down at his own, hammering a few more nails into the planks.

Austin smiled a little bit and he paused. "Here. Why don't you use my hammer, and I'll use yours. We can break your set in together." Because he wanted Joshua to feel like he was part of the pack. Like he was entitled to use the tools that belonged to the pack, and that they could break the new set in as part of the same pack.

"You're very nice," Joshua said honestly. "You're like Hunter. I guess when my dad talked about packs, the alphas were always scary. They went around killing wolves who didn't have a pack. Killing wolves like me and my brothers." But maybe those were just horror stories that had no foundation in reality.

"Some pack leaders are like that." Austin said, his brow furrowing just a little bit. "but we haven't ever been. Not even the alphas before Hunter and certainly none of the ones that are going to be alpha after him. Hunter is already incredibly attached to you and your brothers. You guys are pack now, you're family."

Joshua glanced down at the old hammer now in his hand. He turned it over against his skin. "Who's going to be alpha after him? How do you decide? No one has to kill him, do they?" He quickly caught on that Austin was a great source of knowledge about pack life and he was going to take advantage of that. "And I think that everyone like Julian and Jeremiah. They're easy to love." Joshua was not quite so easy to adore. He was headstrong and needing to prove something most of the time.

"Hopefully me." Austin said with a bit of a laugh. "I think that is sort of the direction everyone thinks that the pack is going to take. And it will really just be when Hunter doesn't want to do it anymoer. Two years ago I would have said he'd die of a heart attack before giving up alpha, but everything that's gone in in the passed two years... I think it could be any time. I think he's probably waiting for me to finish school and then he's just going to be done."

He didn't know what to think about that. Austin's words sent his mind working and as the wheels turned it was clear on his face that he was mulling things over. "Aren't you scared to be responsible for the whole pack? What if you can't do it? What if bad things keep happening?" Joshua had the desire to lead, it was written into his DNA, some wolves were just born like that. But his youth was getting in the way of that code.

"I don't know. I guess I'm a little bit scared, but it's in my blood." Austin could tell that Joshua sort of felt the same way, and he knew that the boy was at an age where he could go one direction or another with the right pushing, and austin thought maybe taking the kid under his wing would be a good idea. If he couldnt' be alpha, he thought Joshua would at the last make a perfect second. "Bad things always happen. It's just part of life. But if I wasn't around it could be a lot worse."

"Do people ever start their own packs?" He tilted his head to the side, wondering about the origins of others, especially the Portland pack who had stolen Jeremiah for awhile. He wished he'd been there to see them die. It was a viscious part of himself that was a little scary, but thrilling as well and he was more than willing to embrace it.

"Sometimes. But usually that only happens when people in the pack disagree so much over something that they split into two. There are packs all over the United States. There is a pack from New Orleans, you might have met some of the members because they moved here. Their alpha is Louisa, the blonde woman. They are really like part of our pack now, but Hunter still allows her to keep control over her pack."

The supports were put together and Joshua stood up to start loading one of them up the tree. He'd screwed in some steps earlier that day so the climbing was going to be easy. "My dad said there were no girl wolves. I was suprised to see three here." He didn't know about Arabella, but he was referring to Louisa, Tes, and Winnie.

"Yeah, we have the monopology on female werewolves." he laughed softly. "My mother was a werewolf too. Hunter and I have the same mom. Her name was Arabella." he put a few nails between his teeth and he shifted some of the wood to where he needed it to be before going to hammer the wood back together again.

"Arabella," he repeated. It humanized Hunter and Austin a little to think about them having a mother. They were personable enough, but both affected Joshua like a king might affect his subjects. He wasn't used to the energy they gave off. Hiking up the ladder, he packed up one of the elbows, adjusting it and nailing it into the tree. "Was she nice?"

"Yes. She died when I was eleven." He was working on finishing another piece that he could hand up to Joshua so that he didn't have to come right back down since he was all the way up there. "But she was incredibly kind and very fair. She was the Alpha before Hunter. And before her it was Hunter's father."

"Then it must be in your blood," he said and sounded just a little disappointed. His father had definitely not been like Hunter or Austin, so perhaps Joshua wasn't cut out to lead. "I think that I'll be going back to Seattle with Andrew pretty soon. I think the boys will be okay without me here all the time now that they have a pack."

That made him frown a little bit. "Do you really think that is such a good idea?" Andrew's relationship with Joshua bothered him a little bit but he didn't want to make a big deal out of it with Joshua. "I think that they need you here, and you are part of this pack too, you know?"

"I'll visit them a lot. And Andrew says that maybe we can take them for weekends. I think they'll like his house--our house." He'd heard Andrew call it 'our' house and it'd made Joshua feel good. He wasn't sure he felt like part of the pack just yet, but he was getting there and Austin was certainly helping to make that happen.

"He bought you." Austin said softly as he looked up at Joshua. "Doesn't that bother you?" He didn't want to make Joshua uncomfortable or anything like that. "If you don't want to go back there you can stay here, you know? You have a lot of potential, you could be a very strong member of this pack if that was what you wanted."

The word 'bought' felt like a slap and he tried not to flinch. Even though Austin's tone was careful, the whole business behind the way he and Andrew had met still bothered Joshua a little. "He's not holding me hostage or anything," he said a little defensively. "It just--I'm glad I met him."

Austin reached up and he touched Joshua's foot, just curling his fingers around the outside of his show a little bit to get a connection with him, and to really get his attention. "If you want to be with him, then that's fine. Be with him. But if you are only doing it because you don't think you have any other choice, just know that there are always choices. We're a choice. You can live here, stay here with your brothers."

Staring down at Austin, Joshua marinated in what the other was saying. "I want to be with Jules and Miah all the time, but I really like Seattle too. I know they need to be raised here; it's what's best for them. Everyone here is so stable and amazing. But I want to live with Andrew and I think that makes me selfish."

"I don't think that makes you selfish." Austin said, not letting go of his foot as he looked up at Joshua. "Do you think that maybe Andrew would be willing to get a house in Cold Water? I know that Seattle is only thirty minutes or so away but sometimes that can feel like a life time. I don't think your brothers will want you to go." Especially not Jeremiah. He was barely functioning.

There was a part of him that was running away from responsibility and that part of himself he hated. Having never had the chance to be a kid, he had an underlying urge to just think about himself. But he couldn't abandon his brothers. "I could ask him," he said thoughtfully, uncertain the man would like the idea. Looking a little disappointed, Joshua turned back to fastening the supports to the tree, taking one of the pieces Austin had built and securing it with efficiency.

Austin let go of his foot and he moved so that he could finish putting together the supports that he told Joshua he would build. He worked in silence for a little while, just enjoying the manual labor that he didn't get very often.

Not allowing the silence to continue for too long, Joshua let his hip rest against the tree as he watched Austin finish up. "What are you studying in school?" He'd always wanted to go to school, but he'd never believed he'd have the chance. He was pretty sure he'd be able to now though.

"I am studying Math. Hunter wanted me to study languages and history like he did, but to me that is boring." He looked over his shoulder and up at Joshua. "Did you Hunter speaks thirteen languages?" None that he never used around the house or in front of anyone.

"I didn't even know thirteen languages existed," he said with reverence. "I'm positive I don't have the patience to study something like history or languages. I like hands on stuff. I keep asking Andrew to teach me magic or something about what he does, but he won't."

"I don't think that magic like that is really something that you can just learn. I think you have to be born with it." he sat back on his heels and looked up at him. "but there is wolf magic. It's not the same as anything else. It's just sort of our own thing."

"I'm convinced that he could at least teach me something. Maybe no one's tried, and if anyone can do it, I can." He spoke with all the foolish confidence of a fifteen year old. But when Austin mentioned wolf magic, his ears perked. "Really? More than just the whole smell a pie from a hundred miles away thing?"

"That's just Hunter magic." he laughed a little bit. "I'm pretty sure that he could track down pie anywhere inthe world." He turned back to what he was doing to keep on hammering. "There is very minor wolf magic. You should talk to the coyotes. They have a lot more magic than we do. But there is a myth about the wolf magic being lost because we lost the artifact that gave us our magic."

Hopping down from the tree, he landed cleanly on his feet. The prospect of some magical artifact was absolutely fascinating to Josh and appealed to his sense of adventure. "Coyotes? There are coyotes who can talk here?" He was showing his lack of knowledge about the way the supernatural world worked.

That made Austin smile a little bit and he glanced over at him. "Warner and Jonas." Because he didn't seem to have a real grasp on all of it and he thought it would be interesting for him to find out. "And Haben? Is a lion. He has a friend here named Noah, I haven't met him yet though. He's around but not all the time."

Joshua opened and closed his mouth in surprise, like a gaping fish for a moment before he stopped himself. "I'll bet even Jeremiah and Julian know more about this stuff than I do." He wrinkled his nose with frustration before picking up one of the planks and lugging it up the ladder. "I met a demon though, the one that works with Logan at the tattoo shop. She does Andrew's hair."

"What was her name?" he wasn't sure he knew which he was talking about, but he had met a pair of demons. Asshole demons. "There are demons here too, not on pack lands though. Mabel is one. Her brother is a demon. There are vampires too, but I am not very fond of any of them."

"Julia. She has pink hair. I think I'd like pink hair." She was Mabel and Foster's sister, though that fact was as of yet undiscovered. Mabel had no idea her sister was actually so close and Joshua hadn't caught the last name to make the connection. "Vampires?" He didn't like the sound of that, and since Austin wasn't fond of them, Joshua decided that he wasn't ond of them either.

"They think they are so entitled, when really a little well placed sunlighta nd they would be dust." he looked over his shoulder at Joshua. "I try not to dislike them, I really do. I am sure there are one or two of them worth keeping around, but as a whole, they are miserable creatures. Manipulative and mean, and dangerous."

Joshua listened like he was taking notes, logging away everything Austin said. He was rapidly fashioning an idol out of him. "Dangerous? Why doesn't Hunter get rid of them?" Joshua figured that the alpha had the right to exterminate something that was dangerous to his or her pack.

"Because they haven't always been, and sometimes they can be a valuable asset." He finished part of the frame he was working on and he wiped his hands on his jeans before he stood up and picked it up to walk over to Joshua. "Hunter has a pact with their leader, sort of. They are at least civil to one another."

It seemed there were a lot of politics that went along with the job and Joshua wasn't too sure he liked the sound of that. "I'd probably just end up getting into arguements with everyone and want my own way all the time." He was at least mature enough to realize he had growing up to do.

"That was how I was last year. " but a lot had happened and a lot of things had changed. "I used to be a miserable shit. I still can be sometimes, I have my moments." Austin lifted his head and looked back in the direction of the house. "Hunter is making lunch."

Joshua sniffed the air, frustrated that he hadn't smelled it first and could only barely smell it now. Sigmund said his senses would get better and better as he grew though. "We should go and eat," he said as he hammered in the first plank that would be the foundation of the treehouse. "Oh, and if you run into my brothers, don't tell them about this. I want it to be a surprise, okay?"

"All right, I won't. Though I"m not entirely sure I have to worry about running into them." Julian had been clinging to Wendell and Hunter and Jeremiah hadn't wanted to talk to anyone or be around anyone. He was just sort of keeping to himself.

"Yeah, that's true," he said a little sadly. Both boys had been affected by the kidnapping, but Joshua was worried about Jeremiah the most. He didn't want his brother to always be escaping into himself, that was concerning. Jumping down again from the tree, he gathered up the tools and then folded the tarp over the wood in case it rained.

Austin helped him tuck it down around under the wood and he put all of his tools away to carry them back towards the house. "We can go tomorrow afternoon to find a color of stain that you like for the wood and some of the weather proofing stuff. I think we have paintbrushes here but it wouldn't hurt to get a couple of new ones.'

Joshua grinned, his mouth taking up most of his face under the expression. "That sounds great," he admitted. "And I think that maybe, I'll look for a job so that Andrew doesn't have to pay for everything for me." He liked that sense of independence a job would give him.

"There are a bunch of places that are hiring seasonally right now. and I think Mabel was looking for a bus boy." Austin hadn't ever had a job but sometimes he felt like being who he was was a job all on its own. "I'm sure Andrew likes paying for you though."

Frowning a little at that last statement, Joshua headed toward the house, glancing over his shoulder for Austin to follow. "You kind of think I'm a prostitute, don't you," he said flatly.

"That's not what I meant." He said, giving him a stern look. "When I was dating Sullivan I liked buying him things and that didn't make him a prostitute. and Hunter buys everything for everyone, and that doesn't make us all prostitutes."

"Well, we're not all having sex with Hunter," he noted, but accepted the fact that Austin hadn't meant it that way. He could be sensitive about that, he knew. Instead of saying anything more on it, he walked back to the house for lunch.

"I should hope not." Austin wrinkled his nose and went inside with him. There weren't many people in the main house, but he could hear the tv on in the living room which meant Jeremiah was in there. No one really ever watched it, but since he'd been back Jeremiah tended to veg out more than anything else.