When Fox returned outside, he dug out the broken door handle and gave his best attempt at assembling it back in the door. Obviously the handle wouldn’t work properly anymore, but it wouldn’t be blatant that someone broke it and stashed it. It would merely be broken, and the Alphas could speculate that Anodyne had broken it from inside.

When Fox finished and he took a moment to look over his handiwork, a brief surge of anxiety and fear seized his lungs. Fox didn’t know how often the Alphas came here to keep the naga fed. He hoped that enough time would pass between now and the next feeding that his scent would fade, and they wouldn’t detect him as the culprit for breaking and entering. 

Fox wondered if the Alphas would be angry with him for discovering the naga, if he was even allowed to know, or if Anodyne was a strict secret. He was afraid to ask. It occurred to him that he would need to wash off the naga’s scent in order to keep everyone none the wiser of where he’d been.

He walked at a more brisk pace down the tiny path and down the unoccupied dirt road. He wasted no time in heading back up the road that led to the Alphas’ houses. When he reached Leyra’s house, he tried the front door and found it locked. Of course.

Fox didn’t want to risk knocking and running into either Sunshine or Leyra, and the first alternate course his mind thought of was climbing the side of the house and trying his window.

Fox was more worried about getting caught with Anodyne’s scent on him than he was about getting caught sneaking in through his window. He stepped back and studied the house’s structure. He mapped out a path, and then began to climb. He was lucky that his window sat right above a small bit of roof that hung over the front patio. 

He climbed on top of the patio railing, then reached up and gripped the roof, and used that to haul himself up over the edge. He propped his feet against one of the wood planks that supported the roof and used that as leverage to pull himself up the rest of the way. Safely crouched on top, he crawled up to his window. He scanned the frame and couldn’t quite tell if it was locked. He gave it a small tug, then another, and it slid open.

Relief elated Fox. He exhaled the tense breath he’d been holding and crawled inside the spare room. He shut the window immediately, as silently as he could, and tiptoed over to his door.

He cracked it open and quickly scanned the hall. Empty. He listened intently, but couldn’t hear anyone inside the house. Maybe Leyra wasn’t back yet, or she and her mate were out somewhere else. Fox took his chance and grabbed his bag from his closet, then rushed to the bathroom and locked himself in. 

Fox had made sure to grab his new clothes from where he’d dropped them in the conservatory, and had tucked them in the hem of his pants when he climbed the house. He set those off to the side and stripped his current outfit, and hurried to get the shower going.  

Amidst the warm water, Fox scrubbed himself as well as he could, twice. When he figured he smelled well enough like soap and not like giant snake, he shut the water off and stepped out. His anxiety diminished somewhat now that he’d had a shower, but he knew he wasn’t out of the woods yet. 

After drying himself off and putting on a new pair of clothes, he took his brand new set, his snake-scented clothes, and his ripped shirt from his momentary brawl with Seb, and went in search of the laundry room. 

Leyra had stated that he was expected to do his own laundry, but he wasn’t sure if that meant he had permission to use their laundry room. His safest bet would be to use a laundromat, if the pack had one. Fox dug out his map of the pack’s town and scanned the building labels for one. He only saw a small store for professional dry cleaning, which meant he’d have to hand his clothes over to other people, and they would smell the snake on his clothes. They might not even take his clothes, since he was a lone wolf. 

Fox sighed. Maybe he could use a quick wash setting on Leyra’s washing machine, and by the time his clothes were washed and dried the two werewolves wouldn’t be back yet. It was wishful thinking, and it made him all the more stressed, but going in search of a place to wash his clothes would take too long, and it risked running into other werewolves who would question him.

Fox knew he wouldn’t be able to go on forever without messing up or irking the Alphas. He hoped something like borrowing Leyra’s laundry room wouldn’t be enough of a misstep that he’d get in serious trouble for it. 

He searched through the closed doors along the upstairs hallway. Right across from the spare room was an office. The door besides that one was a mere storage closet. The door beside that one opened up to a small room with a washing machine and a dryer. Fox exhaled in relief.

He quickly shoved his clothes inside the washing machine and figured out the controls. He found some detergent along the shelf above the two machines and poured the barest amount needed onto his clothes. He turned the quick wash on. The timer told him it would take thirty minutes. 

Fox sat down on the floor beside the machine. As it ran its course, Fox laid out his ripped shirt over his lap and dug out a small sewing kit from his bag. The holes Seb’s claws and teeth had made weren’t too big. Sewing them shut wouldn’t be too much of a hassle. 

He went to work. Giving himself something to focus on helped keep his stress levels down enough that he didn’t become a nervous wreck, but the anxiety simmered along his spine, an uncomfortable companion. He kept an ear out for any signs that the werewolves had returned.

The cycle had managed to get halfway through, and Fox eagerly awaited the last fifteen minutes to finish up, when he heard the back door downstairs open. He froze, his senses instantly on high alert. 

He listened intently as he heard someone shuffle around downstairs. The fridge door opened and closed. A moment later, the kitchen sink ran for a few seconds before shutting off. Then, quiet. Fox fidgeted with the shirt in his lap, needle poised to continue its task. 

He heard one of the stairs creak as someone walked up them. Fox’s shoulders tensed. Sunshine’s scent reached his nose first, and a few seconds later, she appeared in the doorway.

“Oh, it’s you. I thought Leyra came home early. How did you get in?” Sunshine asked.

Fox stared at her, wide eyed and his heart racing. He couldn’t come up with a good believable lie right off the top of his head, so he opted for the next best thing: silence. Sunshine’s eyes narrowed, but she kept her smile. After a moment with no answer from Fox, she tucked her skirt close to her legs and sat down, leaning her back against the door frame.

“How about this; if you answer my questions, I won’t tell Leyra you snuck in. Deal?” she proposed. Fox felt the faintest sense of deja vu, from when Leyra offered him food in exchange for answers in the prison hole. He figured the two of them made a good pair.

Fox struggled to find his voice, but he managed. “What… kind of questions?” he asked tensely.

“Have you thought about my offer for therapy?” Sunshine asked. Fox drew his eyebrows together and looked down at his lap. 

“I… I still don’t know yet,” he mumbled. 

“How about we have a pilot session. A normal conversation to see if we are a good fit for each other, as doctor and patient,” she responded.

Fox figured a regular conversation in exchange for not getting into trouble with Leyra was a trade he couldn’t pass up. As much as he didn’t want to talk about himself, he didn’t want to get punished, and that want outweighed the other.