Page 33 of Reclaiming Home

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.”

As 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.

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