For a split second I found myself thinking about what it looked like under there, but I quickly smashed that idea to smithereens.
"Aha! Just wait a second," Tai said. He shifted and ran off. A few moments later, he returned with a bundle of clothes in his jaws. He dropped them at my feet.
"We're nomads who like to travel," Ry explained. "Sometimes we end up in human towns, so it's helpful to have spare clothes on us."
I picked up the clothes with a feeling of gratitude. "Thank you. Honestly, I didn't expect a pair of coyote shifters to be so…"
Tai grinned. "Amazing? Cool? Sexy?"
Ry rolled his eyes at his mate. "Helpful?" he supplied.
"Yeah. I truly appreciate it."
After saying our goodbyes to the coyotes, I slipped into the clothes Tai gave me. To nobody's surprise, they were baggy on me, but it was better than nothing.
I noticed Cloud was looking away until I was fully clothed.
"Well? How do I look?" I asked.
He turned to me with a grin. "Like you're drowning in those clothes."
I huffed. "Sorry. I am a mouse shifter, you know."
Cloud pointed to one of my long sleeves. "Can I?"
"Sure."
Careful not to tear the fabric, Cloud rolled up my sleeves so the shirt sat more comfortably on my frame.
"Your pants need to be fixed too," Cloud remarked.
It took me a second to realize why he was giving me the option to do it myself. If he got down on his knees to cuff my pants, it might look a little… inappropriate.
Or maybe my mind was just in the gutter. He was just cuffing my pants, for God's sake. Nothing inappropriate was happening.
"You may as well do it since you're already acting as my tailor," I said with a smirk.
Cloud paused for a second before returning a grin. "If you say so."
He got down on one knee to roll up my pants with the same care that he did my sleeves.
And instantly I realized this might have been a mistake, because I enjoyed the sight of Cloud on his knees in front of me a lot more than I should have.
8
Cloud
It wasn'thard to find the abandoned cabin Tai told us about. Among the trees and wilderness, the man-made building stuck out like a sore thumb. Although I did wonder who had built it, and why.
"This cabin kind of reminds me of the one my cousins live in," I murmured. "Although theirs is better built and not falling apart like this one."
"They live in a cabin?" Meeko asked.
"Yeah. My uncles built it so they'd have somewhere to live together."
Meeko looked surprised. "Okay, now I have to ask. How many uncles and cousins do you have?"
After a second of tallying everyone up, I said, "Ten uncles and six cousins. Then there's my twin brother, River, and my dads, of course. But we live separately from the group in the grove and from the kids’ cabin." I scratched my head. "I can't really call it the kids’ cabin anymore since we're all grown up, and now a lot of my cousins have kids of their own…"
