Chapter Six
Kye
I put the phone to my ear and held Carys’s hand with the other. As I waited for Dad to answer, I looked at Brodie, wondering why we felt so safe with him. Safe enough to not only have this conversation with him present, but believing that he had to be there for it.
“Kynan?” Dad sounded confused.
“Hey, Dad,” I started. “Do you have a few moments? I need to talk to you about something.”
“Uh, well let me go in the spare room, just a second.” I heard him call out to Theresa, but I couldn’t tell what was being said. Then, I heard a rustling and heard a door close. “Okay, son. What’s up?”
“I’m going to put you on speaker. There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.”
“Okay…?”
I held the phone between us and swiped the speaker on.
“Hi Dad,” Carys said, her voice shaky but strong at the same time.
“What? Carys?” We could hear him choke on a sob, and then a sound of the springs of the old bed that had once been mine creak as he sat down. “W-what? How? I….”
She took in a deep breath, then calmly said, “Long story short, I ran away and I got trafficked. I got saved by Brodie—say hi, Brodie.”
He snorted softly and rolled his eyes. “Hello, Mr. Rossi.”
Dad sputtered a little but waited for Carys to continue.
“I called Kye and he came to us immediately. That’s about it. I’m safe.”
After some sniffling, Dad cleared his throat. “That’s… that’s good to hear. Uh….”
“It’s been rough. I’m gonna need a lot of therapy, I think,” she continued more quietly. The teenager who had gone for shock value with her cavalier attitude about delivering the news only moments ago was simmering down.
“Well if you come—”
“No. Absolutely not. I won’t step my foot into that house as long as Theresa is there.” The emotion in her voice was so firm I felt my eyes widen a bit.
“B-but—”
“I’m an adult now. I don’t want anything to do with Theresa.”
I nodded, even though Dad couldn’t see it. “Me neither. We’re good where we are. We feel safe here.”
“Where are you, exactly?”
“Pennsylvania,” I said, not willing to give him the town name.
Carys gave me an approving look. “I’ve been here for seven months. Before that I was all over the Southwest.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come home?” Dad asked.
“Kye told me you stopped searching for me because Theresa told you to,” Carys answered in a chilly tone. “Frankly, I’d rather stay in this house where I was raped repeatedly for over half a year than stay one night under the same roof with that woman.” Aaand there was the hurt and theatrical teenager again.
Dad didn’t know what to say to that. “Uh… well….”
“We’re going to stay here. We’re joining Brodie’s pack.”
“He’s a… a…”
“I’m an Alpha werewolf, yes,” Brodie said in his deep voice. “It was my uncle who was holding Carys against her will. I dealt with him and happened to… inherit the pack. I’m rebuilding it and I promise that your children are safe here with me.”
The fact that he still wanted to tell our dad that meant a lot. He didn’t need to say it on our account and he knew that, yet he still said it to Dad.
“Well, I suppose that’s….”
“Even if it wasn’t something you agreed on, there’s nothing you can do about it,” Carys pointed out. “We’re adults. This is what we’re choosing.”
Dad started to grasp at straws, then. “Your little sister—”
“I’m sure that by now, Theresa has told her all about how horrible of a girl I was and how not to be anything like me.” She nearly crushed my hand as she squeezed it. “After all, she told me she didn’t want me in the house because I was such a bad influence for Eira.”
Before Dad could comment, I interjected. “We’ll call you at some point when we feel like it. Just know that we’re safe.”
He seemed to understand that saying anything to defend Theresa wasn’t going to fly, so he sighed. “Okay. If you guys need money—”
“I have that covered,” Brodie said immediately.
“I’m pretty sure Theresa wouldn’t want you giving us any money anyway,” I added.
We told him bye and ended the call. Carys and I looked at Brodie.
“I know it wasn’t my place to tell him that, but I take care of my pack. Well, Rian will help, but you know what I mean.”
“It’s fine,” Carys told him. “We don’t want Dad’s money anyway. Not after….” Then she glanced at me. “Right?”
“Right. I’ve been hanging by the skin of my teeth for over a year now, but I’ve still not asked him for a penny. I’d rather starve.” The fierceness of my tone managed to surprise Carys, but Brodie seemed… proud?
She burrowed under my arm and squeezed me hard. “Thank you for looking for me. For never stopping.”
I felt a bit choked up, so I kissed the top of her head and squeezed her.
She pulled from me and turned to hug Brodie. He seemed startled but hugged her back.
“And thank you for saving me and being a good guy,” she murmured against his chest.
He seemed to feel like I did and hugged her back without saying anything. He avoided my gaze but smiled slightly.
The more I spent time around him, the more of the snippets I’d ever learned about wolves came back to me. Like the mark of a good Alpha. I hadn’t just been guessing when I told him he was acing the Alpha thing already.
I needed to do more research, though. That was one thing I was good at, research. I hadn’t enjoyed studying as much as I would’ve wanted when I was still in college, but I’d managed. The idea of how to be the best human pack member Brodie could want? Now that made me want to study.
We sat in silence for a few minutes after the call, then Brodie sighed.
“I think we should sort all the shopping bags.”
Carys pointed toward the hall where we could see part of his haul, and giggled. “That’ll take a while. I still need to put the nonperishables into the pantry, too.”
I got off the couch. “You go do that, we’ll do the bags and the… upstairs stuff.” The bedding.
In short order, we got to work. Brodie took the frankly disgusting mattress pad from upstairs and hauled it outside. I gathered the old pillows and blankets, everything I could grab from the bedroom really, and took it out as well.
He was lifting the new pad from the truck bed and pointed where he’d put the old one. “Just pile them there. I’ll toss it all to the dumpster tomorrow.”
Back inside, I went to put the first load of bedding into the dryer and stuff more into the washing machine. We ended up sorting out the other stuff while we waited for everything to be done. Once everything was about where we wanted it, and we had all the bedding, we went upstairs. The room itself was clean and truth be told, the mattress wasn’t that bad.
When I said so, Brodie hummed. “There is that, at least. I think I still want to get rid of it, though. Might as well.”
“Up to you, Alpha,” I teased, and to my surprise, he kind of flushed a little.
He opened the packaging of the new pad and I dodged out of the way when it sprung open, almost hitting me in the process.
“Oops?” He smirked in a way that told me it hadn’t been completely by accident.
“I see what you did there, Mister,” I grumbled playfully.
He laughed and we continued setting up the bed.
It was a king, so all three of us could definitely fit in there without hassle. By the time we were done, it even felt inviting. Everything was fluffy and clean, and it looked a little bit like a nest.
Brodie went to open a window to let fresh air in, then frowned when the window stuck.
“Need to replace the windows, too?” I asked, knowing it was one of those things to add to the endless list he likely had in his head.
“Seems like it. Some are broken.” He nudged his head toward the door. “Here, come take a look with me.”
We went to the next room, which had clearly been the betas’. Everything was dirty and ransacked, as if they had packed in a hurry when Brodie kicked them out.
One of the window panes was cracked, the carpet was disgusting, the wallpaper was peeling, and well, it was a mess.
“This is the room that’s in the best condition,” Brodie murmured, sounding disgusted.
“It has potential,” I answered, because it did. We could start by making this Carys’ room, or her’s and mine.
Brodie glanced at me. “You’re optimistic.”
Chuckling, I walked out into the hall. “Rarely. But I choose to be about this. The pack needs a solid home.”
All the other bedrooms were in different kinds of ruin. There was water damage, some mold, broken and boarded windows, holes in the roof that had let water in. The floors were nasty, but we hoped that once we removed the carpets, there’d be wood underneath and maybe that could be saved.
“This was my mom’s room,” Brodie opened the last door we hadn’t checked yet.
It was in equal condition, but the window was intact here. I went to peer out. It overlooked the backyard, such as it was. We needed to figure out what to do with it as well.
“Are those rose bushes?” I asked, pointing to the back corner of what had once been a lawn but was now overgrown and sad looking.
Brodie came to the window, peering at the yard. “Yeah. I think grandma planted them when Mom was a girl. Mom took care of them when we came here.”
I realized Brodie was very close to me, then. I felt the warmth of his body and wondered if wolves ran hotter or if it was the bulk of this particular one that felt like a radiator next to me.
I gazed at him, getting stuck to the ink I could see on his neck, the sharp jawline and the plush lips. He was a stunning man, and something in me responded to him in a way I hadn’t experienced before.
It was as if I wanted to please him—which wasn’t new, I’d known I was submissive for years—but also, I wanted him to take care of me in ways outside of kink.
When I lifted my gaze to his, I realized he’d been looking at me, too. My breath hitched, I became hyper aware of him.
“Kye, I—”
“Guys! Do we want the steaks for dinner tonight?” Carys yelled up the stairs.
The moment broke, and my heart restarted. Brodie’s cell phone rang, and he fished it out of his pocket while staring at me in that weird way I couldn’t quite read.
“Yeah! Sounds good!” I called to Carys, my gaze still locked to Brodie.
He lifted the phone to his ear. “What’s up, sweetness?”
His fond tone and the pet name told me enough. There was already someone he loved. I could be pack and nothing more.
I gave him a little smile and gestured toward the door. “I’ll go help her.”
W hile we waited for the steaks to marinate, we went through the downstairs, taking inventory of… well, everything.
“The couches will have to go and we’ll get one of those giant sectionals,” Brodie murmured as he walked across the large family room.
“Do we want all the fireplaces in working order by winter?” Carys asked, frowning at the dust that clung to the innards of the fireplace. “There are what, two here and three upstairs?”
Brodie did quick math. “Sounds about right. The kitchen wood stove is ancient though. Do you think you want to keep it?”
Carys hummed. “I haven’t been using it, obviously, but I think it could be a cool thing to have. But let’s prioritize this one and the ones in the bedrooms we’re going to use.”
“Okay. Rian should be coming to visit sometime before snowfall so we’ll need more usable rooms. He’s a philanthropist and has a bunch of events lined up before that, so he’s going to take care of those and then head on over.”
“Ah, that makes sense,” she said, chuckling. “What’s he like?”
I glanced at Brodie who was beaming. “He’s like this weird emo ray of sunshine. Tends to be moody, but has a super bubbly side. For how long he’s been around, it’s kind of odd he has all those emotions.”
“Right, don’t vampires tend to get sort of… less emotional the older they are?”
Clearly my sister had been looking into the non-human species more than I ever had. Then again, she had always been a romantic, and the amount of romcoms where a dashing vampire came and swept a human off her feet or a werewolf saved a poor human when she gets stranded in her car when a freak snowstorm occurred was a bit ridiculous.
I remembered Carys and her friends giggling at some movies and romance novels in their early teens. Maybe that was where her knowledge came from? I made a mental note to check out some websites online asap, starting after dinner. I was hopeful for the future for the first time in two years.
The others were still chatting about vampires and how the old myths that said vampires couldn’t go into sunlight were bullshit, but my attention went to the rest of the room.
I walked to the side where the door to the old sunroom was. I opened it and peered in, frowning. All the glass panes were shattered, but at least someone had put some tarps over it.
I carefully walked into the room, grimacing at the lack of light. I used my phone’s flashlight to look around and took in the mess.
It was clear the elements had gotten in here, too. Luckily the sunroom was only one half of the backside of the house. The other half was the back porch and the utility room—if I was being gracious about the definition of the latter. The washer and dryer were older than me, but apparently still worked pretty well.
I peered at the table pushed against the outer wall where some tarp was flapping in the breeze, half in and half outside. It seemed like there were old gardening tools there, and my plant-brain perked up. I started toward the table, and had just enough time to register a creak, a crash, and then the ground fell from beneath me.