Page 21 of Reclaiming Home

“Hey, so I think we’re pretty much done for the day. We’re airing it out until tomorrow, hopefully getting rid of most of the residue that’s bound to be hanging around, but if you can get a demo crew in later this week, it should be as safe as it’s gonna get.” He had pulled his mask down and looked sweaty under his protective gear.

“You’re coming back tomorrow to start on the house?” They’d been around several hours today and while they could’ve gone to the house today, I understood that they didn’t want to start the job if they weren’t able to finish anything inside where we were living.

“Yeah, we’ll be here around nine in the morning and work full day. We’ll also bring a couple of Dumpsters for whatever we need to trash.”

“You rent those too, right?” When he nodded, I squinted at the house. “Can you bring two extra? I’m going to start doing reno as soon as you guys are done with your job and I feel like it’s gonna be a lot.”

“Sure. I’ll bill the two separately if you want?”

“Yeah, that works.” I wasn’t worried about the money, not with Rian in my corner, but it would still be nice to know how much of his money I had to spend for the cleanup versus renovations.

“It’s a great house,” he said, peering up at the hulking form. “Some sort of Victorian influences, definitely.”

“What gave that away? The round part?” I grinned, then got serious. “It was gorgeous once. When I was a kid. I’ll do whatever I can to renovate it.”

“If you need extra hands, I’d ask if the Kellers have anyone free. They’re—”

“I know. They were doing construction stuff when I was little. I didn’t even think they’d still be around.” Which was stupid. I hadn’t been gonethatlong, and families with that sort of presence in such a small town were likely to stay there.

His colleagues came out of the barn and made sure the doors were propped open. He glanced behind and nodded. “All right. That’s us. We’ll come back in the morning and I’ll have those Dumpsters delivered tomorrow as well.”

“Awesome, thank you.” We didn’t shake hands, because he still had his gear on, so I turned to grab some of the bags off the truck bed.

Carys met me at the door. “Let me take those.”

I handed them over and went to get yet another load. There were two more, and by the time we had everything on thehallway floor—well, except groceries of course—it looked as if I’d emptied a small shop.

“Uh….” Carys stared at all the bags. “So, you went shopping?”

I suddenly felt awkward and rubbed the back of my neck, not quite able to make eye contact with her or Kye who peered in from the kitchen.

“From where I’m standing, you’re acing this Alpha thing,” Kye said almost off-handedly, grabbed a pack of bottled water from the pile and went into the kitchen.

My wolf went a bit nuts at the statement. An excited whine tried to escape my lips but I bit it back, barely.

“Did you put the food away?” I called toward the kitchen.

“Yeah, that’s done. Why?”

I gestured for Carys to follow me and we went into the kitchen. Suddenly it felt mandatory to have the hard conversation I was fearing right then.

“Let’s have a chat,” I told them, then remembered the coffee machine. “Wait, I got us something.” I turned back and went to fetch the machine and the bag with the pods. “Here. Let’s figure this out, eh?”

The excitement was palpable. Figuring out how to use the machine and what pods we wanted to use and how it all came together was fun. Carys and Kye were clearly siblings, their bickering reminding me of myself and Bella once upon a time.

It took us a while to get our coffees, but eventually we sat at the table, with the Rossis looking at me expectantly from the other side of the table.

“So….” I took a sip of my espresso and tried to put my thoughts into words. Part of me was terrified that they were going to leave, and my wolf wasn’t happy about that possibility. “I’m just going to tell you what I’m about to do, okay?” At their nods, I took a deep breath. “The cleaning crew will come in tomorrow morning and we’ll figure out what needs to be done inside the house.Once they’ve done their thing, what I want to do is start fixing up the house. That’ll take all my time and I’m lucky to have the skills to do a bunch of the stuff myself.

“As for the pack… eventually I’d love for my cousins to be able to live here again if they choose to do so, but I need the rooms upstairs fixed first. I’m likely going to send them to rehab on my best friend’s money, too. They get to be in the pack if they’re sober, which they say, currently, they mostly are. But ‘mostly’ isn’t good enough for me.

“What I would like is to ask Sheriff Drumm to join the pack too, eventually, and any other suitable people we might encounter. Of course, it’s different for non-wolves, but my mom used to say that all the best packs always had humans in them, too. Vampires are rarer, but it happens sometimes.”

Before I had time to say anything more, Carys blurted out, “Rusty hated humans. He thought we were like a… a lower species?”

I grunted with disgust. “I know. He was always like that. The wolves I tend to spend my full moons with these days have plenty of humans in their pack. I think humans make a pack safer.”

Kye frowned. “How do you figure that?”

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