Page 18 of Reclaiming Home

“Yeah, yeah….” He took a few more steps, then called over his shoulder, “Thank you for the breakfast, Kye.”

I wasn’t sure I completely liked the way those simple words made me feel—warm and fuzzy in a way I wasn’t used to—but I still wanted to hear them again. So maybe I was a praise slut. Brodie didn’t need to know that.

An hour or so later, Brodie popped inside the house.

“Hey, could you two come up with a shopping list for food and whatever we need right now and text it to me?”

“Of course,” Carys said easily. “I’ll check and Kye can take notes.”

“Thanks. Holden just left, so I’ll go now, but it’s a bit of a drive into town so you have some time.” Then his dark eyebrows scrunched. “The cleaning crew said they wouldn’t come into the house without me, but you never know, so tell them no if they come asking, okay?”

For a moment, we both squinted at him in confusion, then I got it. “Oh… Okay. We won’t let anyone inside while you’re gone. We can even lock the door if you want?”

The protective as fuck Alpha nodded, looking almost sheepish. “Yeah, that would be good.”

“Okay!” Carys jumped up and followed him to the door.

I heard her turn the ancient key and the click of the lock. Then she came back, eyes wide.

“I guess it’s wild to be a new Alpha?” Her tone suggested the question was rhetorical, so I shrugged.

We made the shopping list after a few minutes of rapid meal planning for a handful of days. Then we sent the list to Brodie, who sent back a message asking about treats.

“I feel weird using his money,” I murmured as my sister frowned.

“Same. But he asked. So let’s ask for ice cream. I’m sure he can get it here before it melts since he said he’d get frozen veggies, too.”

“Okay.”

We got an affirmative from Brodie, he said he’d be back in a couple of hours and to hold the fort.

He’d come in earlier to get coffee for himself and Holden, who’d seemed relaxed when they sat on the porch, chatting about wolfy things, I supposed. I knew wolves were more intuitive, they had keener senses and if Brodie said someone felt like a good fit for the pack, I would take his word for it if I didn’t get a bad vibe from the person.

Holden seemed… lonely. Like he needed us as much as we needed a big, strong, capable beta. He felt right for us from the get go, but I knew not to take that for granted.

Carys took in a deep breath, gave me a sad look, and grabbed the kitchen roll. “Let’s go talk. Then call Dad.”

I chuckled with little humor and followed her to our couch nest. I would’ve preferred having Brodie there, but maybe this was better? I wasn’t sure she would be completely at ease around him, and I could deal. Probably.

For the next hour, she told me everything that had happened to her, but she started from a spot I wasn’t expecting. She glossed over running away and concentrated on the boyfriend none of us had known about, who had dumped her pretty quickly because he got cold feet and didn’t want to run away after all.

There’d been an older guy, and another one, and another one and… the details didn’t matter. She snorted softly when she said “I’m the poster child for every runaway worst case scenario. I didn’t even know what human trafficking really was until I heard Rusty use those words one time. It took me literally nearly two years to understand I’d been trafficked.”

“Why did you run away?” I asked the question that had burned on my mind ever since she vanished.

Carys blew her nose and mopped some tears off her face like I’d just done and gave me a tremulous smile.

“Theresa,” she answered my question.

If I was honest, I had thought that might be the reason, but I still wanted details. I waited until Carys seemed ready to elaborate.

“We know how she treated us, right?” At my nod, she continued, “Well she started to get nasty when I rebelled. The more I came home smelling of cigarettes or booze or God forbid, weed, the worse she got.” Clearing her throat, she shifted in her seat and straightened her legs after having hugged her knees to her chest for the better part of an hour. “A few days before I left, Dad was at work and she was yelling at me for something, I can’t even remember what exactly. And she said she couldn’t wait for me to get old enough that she could kick me out of the house, because I was clearly going down the path our whore of a mother had, and that I was no good and she didn’t want me anywhere near Eira because I was already such a bad influence.”

I gritted my teeth and held out my hand to her. She slipped her hand in mine and we sat there, silently fuming for a while.

Eira had been five years old at that point. She’d been a cheerful, clever little girl and still was for all I knew. I hadn’t really been in touch with the family much in the last couple of years. Not after Theresa told our dad and I that we shouldn’t be bothering the police after the first couple of weeks after Carys’s disappearance, because there were more important things they should reserve their resources for.

“I tried,” I whispered. “Even when the cops stopped, I kept trying to find you.”

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