Page 34 of Reclaiming Home

A middle-aged lady smiled at us. “Did you find everything okay?”

“Yeah, thank you. Unless you have any more nonfiction books about werewolves and pack dynamics…?” I asked, while Carys went to flip some LP records.

“Everything we have right now is shelved but let me see….” She took my pile and picked up one of the three books on wolves I had picked. “This one has a foreword by… yes, Professor Finlay. I think she’s written some papers that would probably be interesting to you.”

“Oh, good to know. Thank you so much!”

“It’s always nice to meet a human who is interested in our culture,” she replied, flashing her eyes the green of a non-beta member of a wolfpack.

“We’ve recently joined a pack and I want to have all the knowledge possible,” I explained needlessly.

“That’s very good of you. I’m happy for your Alpha.”

She made more small talk while she rang us up, and soon enough we were on the road home again.

I chuckled.

“What?” Carys asked as she flipped through a comic book she’d gotten.

“I just thought we were going ‘home’, that’s all.”

She beamed at me. “Yeah, we are. I… that’s kind of awesome.”

“Yeah, it really is.”

When we got back to the house, the yard was filled with dumpsters, or so it seemed. There were three different ones and there was the cleaning crew’s van and a truck with different decals on the doors parked in the yard, too. I very carefully, wincing preemptively, maneuvered Brodie’s new truck into the space left closest to the house.

My sedan was parked behind one of the dumpsters now, which was oddly fitting, if I was honest.

Two guys in protective gear walked out of the house with armfuls of stuff they tossed on top of whatever else they’d dumped before. They didn’t pay attention to us, which seemingly helped Carys relax more.

Brodie emerged from the barn with a couple of other men. He smiled quickly when he noticed us, then shook hands with the men, who went into the truck and drove off.

We got out of our truck and Brodie came to us.

“Did you guys have fun?” he asked, looking at the number of bags we had.

“Oh yeah. We’re well set now for the stuff we could get from around here.” I smiled, again having the urge to touch him for some reason.

“We’ll need to order the new couch today, because the old ones are in that dumpster,” he said, pointing to one of the new ones. “We’re not allowed in the family room at all.”

I wasn’t surprised, and we wouldn’t miss the space for the time being. We still had the kitchen.

“The kitchen is fine, right?” Carys asked as she piled her arms with bags.

“Yeah, it’s good. So is the porch, even though he smoked there. The biggest issue for these guys is the family room, the rest isn’t hazardous.” He grabbed enough stuff to make us appear very human. “Not that the family room is too bad, either. They want to be sure so they’re pulling down what they can so I can resurface the room. The carpeting is going too, obviously.”

Inside, the family room’s side of the house was separated from the rest with plastic sheets that made me think of a serial killer movie. The guys came and went with things they needed to get rid of.

“Why didn’t they open a window? Throw stuff out that way?” I asked, because it registered that the windows had been all closed.

“Mostly because they’re hard to open. The wood is swollen and frankly it might break the panes if we forced them. I wouldn’t mind, but they didn’t want to take the risk since it’s only one room.”

“Oh, okay.”

We put everything away, then handed the iPad to Brodie so he could set it up.

He made sure we’d gotten Carys everything she needed, and she showed her pile of goodies—clothes, haircare, the phone, and a few other things—to him.

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