Page 27 of Reclaiming Home

“Stay back,” I told her, then inched forward until I could see how deep the hole was. The edges were jagged, rotten wood and whatever else they’d used to build the floor back in the day.

I could hear Kye, then.

“Aw, fuck,” he grunted in a pained tone. “Don’t you two fall in, too.”

“You okay?” Carys asked, and I realized her human senses didn’t tell her that her brother was bleeding heavily.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Be careful.” I managed to get close enough to see him. The gash somewhere inside his long hair had turned it and any skin it touched blood red. “Ouch, that looks nasty. Did you hurt anything else?”

“What did he hurt?” Carys asked immediately.

“My head. It’s fine.”

It probably was, but he was bleeding too much to not make my wolf anxious at the scent. I’d always been good in a crisis, levelheaded and able to calm others down, and I tried to cling to that instead of letting the wolf control the situation.

Kye got to his feet, wincing as he glanced around. “I think I’m in a crawlspace. It’s a bit deeper than I’d expect, but there’s some old furniture here. Let me just….”

Please be careful. Please don’t get more hurt.“Okay.”

I needed to trust him to be able to take care of himself, especially in a situation where I was too fucking heavy to go close enough to pull him out.

Actually… “Carys? Can you come here and maybe we can human chain? I’m too heavy, but you’re not.”

“Yeah, of course.”

I held the flashlight with one hand and guided her into place with the other. She gasped when she saw all the blood but didn’t say anything. I squeezed her hand.

Kye pulled what seemed like an old desk right to the edge of the hole and clambered on top of it. Then he looked at us, his head poking out of the hole.

“Oh hi,” he said brightly, while blood ran down the side of his face. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Jesus fucking Christ, my mate would be the death of me one day.

“Stay put,” I ordered them, and backed away to grab one of the rugs from the family room. As I lifted one, I saw that Carys had used it to hide a weird stain in the thin, barely there carpet underneath.

I went back and maneuvered the long rug in front of her, then placed about half of it over the edge of the hole.

“Let’s step on this end so it stays put,” I told her, and we placed our feet carefully on top of the rug and hopefully not too close to the edge. “Okay, I’ll hold onto your arm and you reach down to grab Kye.”

She nodded and we did exactly that. Kye, appearing gruesome as hell, grabbed her wrist and she his.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Now you guys hold on while Kye jumps and I yank you back.” They nodded, and I counted down. “Three, two, one, jump!”

It was tricky to be gentle enough while using my strength to pull them both. I couldn’t hurt her, and they still needed to be able to hold onto each other.

My wolf wanted to go all in, and I knew I was leaving behind bruises over the healing ones on her arm—I hated that so much.

I pulled hard, stepping back to give them space, and watched as Carys and Kye were tugged out of the danger zone. We ended up in a haphazard heap on the floor that was still creaking.

They were laughing breathlessly, relieved, but I urged them to move.

“Come on, we need to get out of here.” I held out a hand for Kye and pulled him up. He reached for Carys, and we quickly backed into the family room.

“Holy shit, Kye!” Carys lifted her hands as if to touch her brother, but then didn’t know where it was safe to do so.

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