Chapter Eight
Kye
B y the time I woke up, the bed was empty. My head was sore, and for a moment my brain tried to tell me it was a hangover. Then I remembered the events of the previous day and sighed.
I got out of bed and went into the bathroom to do my morning routine. I hated that part of my hair was clumped together with dried blood, but there was very little I could do to it when I couldn’t really see the cut properly. I assumed with Carys’s help, we could maybe get some of the blood combed out, but did I want to risk aggravating the area? Maybe not.
I got dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T, then padded downstairs in my socks, since I’d left my shoes by the stairs last night. They’d been kind of nasty after the fall, so I hadn’t taken them upstairs.
My phone had been on silent all night, and I realized I had picked it up off the dresser and hadn’t even looked at it.
I walked into the kitchen, frowning at the message I’d gotten from Henry.
“You still alive? Should I call in the cavalry? If so, where exactly?”
“What’s wrong?” Carys asked.
She was plating breakfast, and Brodie was nowhere to be seen.
What time was it anyway?
“Uh, it’s my friend Henry. I should call him, I guess.” I’d completely forgotten.
I felt as if I’d been in Luxton for weeks now, but it had only been two nights? How was that possible?
I put the cell on the table, then walked to Carys and hugged her tightly.
She chuckled breathlessly. “Well okay? Good morning to you too?”
“I’m so fucking glad we’re together,” I murmured against her hair.
She used her free hand—the other one was holding a spatula—to squeeze me back. “Me too. I love you, big brother.”
“Love you too, baby sister.”
The front door opened, and I stepped back, grabbing my phone to compose a message while picking a pod for the coffee maker.
“Good morning,” Brodie rumbled.
“Morning,” I said over my shoulder. “Coffee?”
“An espresso, please.” He took two of the plates from Carys, and went to the table.
“Caramel Macchiato for me,” Carys gave her order.
I fixed the coffees while I sent a message to Henry. “I’m good. Going to stay here. My sister is okay, and I feel like staying here is a good call for both of us.”
She came back to grab her and Brodie’s coffees, and I put my phone away to carry mine to the table.
“So the guys should be here in about forty-five minutes or so,” Brodie said, all business while I was barely awake. “I was thinking, maybe you two would like to go do some shopping for us?”
“More shopping?” I grinned.
“Well clothes for Carys, but I thought you might want to get more things for yourself. Plus groceries are a never-ending need. Oh, and I think we should get an iPad for the pack for communal use. I think having one in the kitchen for taking notes and making lists instead of everyone making them on their own gadgets might be for the best. The TV is good and Rian will send a bunch of my stuff from my apartment in Seattle so I don’t have to go back, but we’re still building this place from the ground up.”
Why did he have to be so reasonable?
“I might want to go to a bookstore,” I said thoughtfully. “Any thoughts on how far the closest one is?”
“I have no idea. Probably in Warren? That’s where the Walmart Supercenter is where I went.”
I handed my phone to Carys. “You check it out.”
“We need to get you a phone, too,” Brodie said. “Add it to the list.”
Carys grumbled about it but started to make a list on my notes app anyway.
We all agreed that it would be easiest for us to be out of the house when the cleaning crew came back to assess and work on the house.
“We need to fix his hair though,” Carys mumbled as she added something else to the list.
“Oh, yeah.” I chuckled. “I better not go into town looking like this.”
Brodie snorted. “Agreed. Do you have a beanie?”
I shook my head. “I had one but I’ve lost it since.”
“I have one you can borrow. I’ll get it for you.”
“Awesome, thanks.”
It didn’t cross my mind then that it would be a beanie he’d been using and thus smelled like him. The fact that I’d barely held to my wits last night and mostly managed because of a head injury told me a lot of my attraction to our Alpha.
W e managed to get my hair sorted to a point where I could hide the rest with Brodie’s beanie.
Once we were ready to go, I realized Carys was uneasy about leaving the house.
“Wait, when’s the last time you went outside?” I asked her as she seemed to procrastinate by the door.
A strange little grimace-twitch expression flitted past her features. “Months?” She gnawed on her bottom lip for a few seconds, then said, “I tried to run.”
Brodie had gone onto the porch to wait for the crew to arrive, and he opened the door, clearly having heard her.
“What do you need?” he asked immediately.
The feeling of fondness that burst into life in my chest at that moment took my breath away.
“I… I think it’ll be okay, I’ll get used to it in the truck.” Her words sounded like a hopeful question more than a statement.
“We can turn back at any moment,” I promised. “We don’t have to even go today if that’s easier.”
She seemed to steel herself. “None of the things I’ve experienced since I was brought here has been easy. This isn’t hard.” Then she walked out past Brodie and stopped as soon as she got to the middle of the yard.
“She’s so strong, but…,” Brodie murmured to me. “I think we need to find her a therapist.”
“Yeah, I don’t think this will last.” It had all gone too easily, as if she maybe had pushed the bad stuff to the back of her mind or something.
Brodie checked the time off his phone. “You two should get going so you can get off the driveway before they get there.”
Right, with the dumpster deliveries and the crew coming in, there wasn’t room to go past anyone on the narrow dirt road.
Brodie looked worried for a moment as he glanced at Carys, but then he turned back to me. “Call me if you need anything. Come back home as soon as you need to.”
Home.
I smiled. “I’ll keep an eye on how she’s doing. Don’t worry, Alpha.” I squeezed his arm and barely kept myself from swaying closer to kiss his cheek.
Carys was happy to get into the car, and I didn’t ask why she visibly tensed at a certain part of the driveway. She’d tell me if she wanted to.
Instead, I handed her my phone and told her to pick some driving music. It wasn’t that we were going that far, but it would give her something to do and think.
She picked a rock band that sang in… Italian?
“Don’t worry, most of their stuff is in English now,” she said preemptively, as if reading my mind a little.
“Hey, I can still understand a word here and there!” I protested.
Our dad’s side of the family was Italian American and his parents, our Nonna and Nonno, had taught us some Italian over the years. They passed away when we were younger, but some things stuck with you.
“I’m so glad they both passed away before I ran away,” she said after a while, her thoughts going to where mine had. “It would’ve broken them.”
I reached over to take her hand and squeezed it. “I don’t like that they’re gone, but I agree with you. Or hey, maybe you would’ve run to them instead.”
She shrugged and smiled a little. “Maybe I would’ve.”
A s soon as we got back to civilization, so to speak, Carys tensed a little more. We decided to go to the Walmart first, so we could get her the clothing and whatever else we needed more urgently.
I parked as close to the doors as I could, and then waited for her to be ready to get out of the car.
“I saw a lot of parking lots like this. I was moved from one car to another a few times at nighttime in similar places,” she said quietly, fiddling with the hem of her hoodie that was actually one of mine. It was too big on her, but not enough to not make it plausible as a fashion choice.
I turned off the music, opened our shopping list and kept waiting.
“We need to do our nails soon,” she said suddenly. “Maybe we should buy more polish while we’re here?”
“I’ll add it to the list. We can go crazy. Who’s gonna see?”
She giggled like she had as a kid. “Oh, I wonder if they have those nail art stickers?”
“Should we go check?” I asked, not at all smoothly.
She smiled, knowing well what I was doing, but nodded anyway. “Sure. Let’s try this.”
Armed with Brodie’s credit card—not Rian’s, because that was one step too far for us—we got everything we needed and then some.
We pointedly ignored the total and hauled our loot to the truck.
“Well, there’s the iPad and the phone and all,” Carys murmured as she picked up the beanie she’d gotten for herself and took the tags off while we were at the truck. “That should make Brodie happy.”
“Yeah. I think making sure we have everything is his way of taking care of us.”
“I think that’s a good guy thing, not just an Alpha thing.” She put the tags back into the bag and pulled the beanie on. “How do I look?”
Her dark hair was thick like mine, only much longer. “Gorgeous as always. It’s the genes.”
She snorted and pointed across the vast parking lot. “Let’s go to Lowe’s. I think I saw a Dollar Tree on the way there.”
That was a hint and a half. We’d loved Dollar Tree as kids. Our Dad might’ve had money, but we still lived frugally, and we learned early that we could stretch our allowances much further at a Dollar Tree.
It took us about four hours to get through Walmart, Dollar Tree, Lowe’s, and Walmart again for the groceries. We hadn’t wanted to leave the groceries in the truck for too long, but since we knew what we were getting, we got out of there pretty fast on the second run.
We were having so much fun, and we weren’t even spending that much money.
After grabbing lunch at the nearby Taco Bell, we drove off to find the bookstore.
“So what do you want to find there?” Carys asked, sticking the last bit of her chocolate bar into her mouth.
“Some books on wolves, mostly. I want to learn more. I’m gonna check online too, see what resources I can find, but….” I shrugged. “I want to be the best I can for the pack and for that I need to know what a pack needs, right?”
She grinned. “Could always just ask Brodie?”
“Well obviously, but he’s new to this. Besides, I don’t think Rusty’s pack was one where he would’ve learned healthy ways of doing everything, you know?” I listened to the GPS and turned left, slightly anxious about getting onto more crowded streets in a truck this big.
“I guess so.” She put the chocolate bar wrapper into the bag we were using for trash and pointed forward. “I think I can see the bookstore.”
Luckily, we found a parking spot down the block from the store. Again, before we left the truck, Carys looked around for a bit, taking in the amount of people around us.
“Okay, I’m good,” she finally stated, and on we went.
The shop wasn’t very big, but I found a few interesting books, while Carys wandered around to see if anything caught her eye. Once we were done with our search, we took everything to the front desk.
A middle-aged lady smiled at us. “Did you find everything okay?”
“Yeah, thank you. Unless you have any more nonfiction books about werewolves and pack dynamics…?” I asked, while Carys went to flip some LP records.
“Everything we have right now is shelved but let me see….” She took my pile and picked up one of the three books on wolves I had picked. “This one has a foreword by… yes, Professor Finlay. I think she’s written some papers that would probably be interesting to you.”
“Oh, good to know. Thank you so much!”
“It’s always nice to meet a human who is interested in our culture,” she replied, flashing her eyes the green of a non-beta member of a wolfpack.
“We’ve recently joined a pack and I want to have all the knowledge possible,” I explained needlessly.
“That’s very good of you. I’m happy for your Alpha.”
She made more small talk while she rang us up, and soon enough we were on the road home again.
I chuckled.
“What?” Carys asked as she flipped through a comic book she’d gotten.
“I just thought we were going ‘home’, that’s all.”
She beamed at me. “Yeah, we are. I… that’s kind of awesome.”
“Yeah, it really is.”
W hen we got back to the house, the yard was filled with dumpsters, or so it seemed. There were three different ones and there was the cleaning crew’s van and a truck with different decals on the doors parked in the yard, too. I very carefully, wincing preemptively, maneuvered Brodie’s new truck into the space left closest to the house.
My sedan was parked behind one of the dumpsters now, which was oddly fitting, if I was honest.
Two guys in protective gear walked out of the house with armfuls of stuff they tossed on top of whatever else they’d dumped before. They didn’t pay attention to us, which seemingly helped Carys relax more.
Brodie emerged from the barn with a couple of other men. He smiled quickly when he noticed us, then shook hands with the men, who went into the truck and drove off.
We got out of our truck and Brodie came to us.
“Did you guys have fun?” he asked, looking at the number of bags we had.
“Oh yeah. We’re well set now for the stuff we could get from around here.” I smiled, again having the urge to touch him for some reason.
“We’ll need to order the new couch today, because the old ones are in that dumpster,” he said, pointing to one of the new ones. “We’re not allowed in the family room at all.”
I wasn’t surprised, and we wouldn’t miss the space for the time being. We still had the kitchen.
“The kitchen is fine, right?” Carys asked as she piled her arms with bags.
“Yeah, it’s good. So is the porch, even though he smoked there. The biggest issue for these guys is the family room, the rest isn’t hazardous.” He grabbed enough stuff to make us appear very human. “Not that the family room is too bad, either. They want to be sure so they’re pulling down what they can so I can resurface the room. The carpeting is going too, obviously.”
Inside, the family room’s side of the house was separated from the rest with plastic sheets that made me think of a serial killer movie. The guys came and went with things they needed to get rid of.
“Why didn’t they open a window? Throw stuff out that way?” I asked, because it registered that the windows had been all closed.
“Mostly because they’re hard to open. The wood is swollen and frankly it might break the panes if we forced them. I wouldn’t mind, but they didn’t want to take the risk since it’s only one room.”
“Oh, okay.”
We put everything away, then handed the iPad to Brodie so he could set it up.
He made sure we’d gotten Carys everything she needed, and she showed her pile of goodies—clothes, haircare, the phone, and a few other things—to him.
Brodie was happy with her purchases, and she went to take them upstairs.
“And what did you get for yourself?” he asked, looking at me seriously.
I felt as if I was being tested, like it would disappoint him if I hadn’t gotten anything good for myself.
“The rest of the books are mine.” I nodded at the pile Carys had left behind.
He went to it and lifted the top one, then leafed it through. He didn’t say anything. He checked the second and third ones, too, still too silent for me to know what he was feeling.
“Did I fuck up?” I asked, coming to stand by him.
Brodie stared at me, his expression almost stunned. “What?”
“Should I not have…?” I gestured at the books.
“No, no it’s not that,” he quickly answered, then smiled. “It’s just so… thoughtful , Kye. That you’d want to do this.”
“What? Want to know what I’ve gotten myself and my sister into?” I attempted a jokey tone, which he clearly understood.
“Yes. That.” He chuckled, then pulled me into a hug and squeezed the life out of me. “Thank you.”
“Hey, thank you, Alpha,” I murmured and hugged him back. “This is home now.”
He let go of me and looked at me like I was something special. “Yeah. Yeah it is.”