Page 53 of Reclaiming Home

“Rian had a panic attack at an event,” I whispered, unable to be louder in the moment. Kye’s fingers stopped for a split second, then he continued the soothing touches, so I added, “Normally, I would keep him from getting to that point by the scenes we do. I called a friend, though, he’s going to take care of Rian for me.”

Kye nodded slowly, obviously thinking for a while. “Is he going to be okay until the guys get out of rehab?”

What he meant was whether we needed to get Rian here sooner.

“I think we need to play it by the ear, but—” My phone dinged with a message.

“Session with M. at noon tomorrow. Thank you, Sir. I love you.”

I showed it to Kye and he exhaled. “That’s good.”

“I don’t know if I need to reiterate this, but it’s not romantic love he’s talking about there,” I said just in case.

Kye snorted softly. “No, I get that. He addressed you as Sir. You said your playtime is platonic only. I’m not worried.”

“Good.” I squeezed him closer, and we stayed there like that for a while, him petting me while I sat and held onto him.

“Guys? Are we going to play more?” Carys yelled from downstairs.

Kye chuckled and squeezed me back. “Let’s go play one more round, eh?”

“Let’s.”

The next day was our “wedding day” as Carys had dubbed it. She knew we were both a bit nervous about everything and this was her way to diffuse that nervousness as best as she could.

“So this is what we’ll do,” she started that morning while we were having breakfast. “I’ll make a really meat-heavy lunch for you, and a bit less for us, and once we’re done with that, you two go do whatever it is you’re going to do with the bitey thing. I’ll prep more protein rich early dinner stuff, and then you tell me when you feel like you’ll turn soon, and we have dinner before that happens.”

“Oh, Holden will come run with me,” I said quickly, having gotten the message right before we sat down.

Kye smiled. “That’s awesome.”

Carys seemed happy, too. “Let him know he should come expecting dinner.”

I got out my phone and texted the good sheriff. “I’ll tell him to be here by six. The moon rises around seven-ish, if I’m right. That’ll give us time.”

Kye drank a bit of orange juice, then said, “So once you shift, you’re stuck until the morning?”

“Not quite. From the moment the moon starts to rise, it pulls the wolf out whether we’d want that or not. The moon reaches the highest point around one, so the most active our wolves will be is in the five hours around that time. We’ll hang with you guys for a while once he gets here, then go for a run or we’ll see what the wolves decide.”

“What do you mean?” Kye peered at me.

“Well, if they’re playful, a lot of it might be wrestling and tag in the backyard,” I said casually.

“Aww!” they said in unison.

Rolling my eyes, I picked up a piece of bacon. “There might be some posturing, too. The fact Holden has been around a couple of times doesn’t mean our wolves will agree completely at first. He’s not my beta.”

“Yet,” Kye said pointedly.

“Hopefully,” I agreed. “But we’ll go for a run later, and then likely be back to lounge around if we don’t feel like we can shift back. We’re both strong and healthy though, so shifting back should be easy. Sick, weaker wolves can be stuck until the morning. That’s where the belief that all wolves get stuck comes from. We’ll see what happens.”

Carys smirked. “So what you’re saying is that you’ll be frolicking around the backyard with your playdate while we—” Kye slapped his palm over her mouth.

“No. Absolutely not, brat,” he told her firmly. “We do not mock what we don’t have full understanding of.”

They were so fucking cute. “It’s okay. She’ll learn when I come in from a rainy run one day and shake all over her.”

The muffled, outraged objections from Carys made me laugh. I couldn’t remember when I’d laughed as much as I had since coming back here. Who would’ve thought?

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