Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Dewi
When Dewi awakened the next morning, she was surprised to find Ken wasn’t in bed.
She was even more surprised to realize he wasn’t even in the cabin, although the baby was still sound asleep in the crib. Not just because he was gone, but that he’d managed to leave without awakening her.
What the heck? I must be more exhausted than I thought.
After using the bathroom, she walked to the front door and looked across the backyard, where she spotted him through the kitchen window in Peyton and Gillian’s house.
Question answered. She assumed he was working on preparing breakfast for everyone.
Which was sweet, but…
Would’ve been nice to wake up and have morning snuggles.
Except the baby chose that moment to wake up and fuss.
Then again…
It would have been frustrating as heck to have a baby interruptus snuggle sitch.
With a wistful sigh, she turned and headed back to take care of the baby.
It was only after she’d changed Lyssa and sat down to nurse her that Dewi once again wondered how Ken managed to slip out of bed without even disturb—
“Ow!” Dewi looked down and ran a finger over the baby’s gums just to find the sharp edge of a front tooth peeking through.
Holy cow.
Asia had warned her it wasn’t uncommon for babies of Alphas to develop even faster than regular wolf shifter babies.
But this is ridiculous.
At this rate she’d be weaning Lyssa onto a bottle in a few weeks or sooner.
Asia advised Dewi not to feel ashamed to switch to pumping and bottle feeding, or to even wean her completely to formula, because there was nothing noble about suffering wolf-baby bites on her boobs just for some imaginary badge of “motherhood.”
The better part of an hour later, after Dewi finished nursing the baby and Lyssa was once again asleep, Dewi took her shower and then headed over to the main house with the baby.
She was a little surprised to find Trent with Ken in the kitchen. But what pulled her up short was the way they stopped talking and turned as soon as she opened the door.
And they didn’t resume talking immediately.
Her hackles prickled. “Umm, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” they quickly said in unison, which ruffled her hackles even more.
She walked over to the end of the counter, set Lyssa’s carrier on it, and turned, crossing her arms over her chest. “That’s not a ‘nothing’ tone from either of you. Spill it.”
Ken glanced at Trent, who apparently decided to be the one to fall on the sword. “I dropped Peyton at the Spokane airport a few hours ago,” Trent said.
“What? Why?”
“He’s flying over to meet with Trevor.”
“Why wasn’t I looped in?”
“We’re looping you in now, Dewster,” Trent said. “There was no reason for you to know ahead of time. It all came together at the last minute.”
“Did they find that bastard?” But Trent’s grim look told her before he even answered.
“Not yet. There’s a new lead. And Peyton needs to meet with some others.”
She leaned against the counter, looking from Trent to Ken and back again. “What the fu-rack, Trent? Can someone please tell me what you’re not telling me? Because it’s pis-ticking me off.” She glanced at the sleeping baby.
Man, I really need to learn to watch my mouth.
“Pack Alpha business,” Trent said. “I’m under orders not to tell you anything else.
I don’t even know most of the details. Peyton’s keeping siloes, you know that.
He’ll tell us when he tells us. But my orders are to keep on keeping on, and you and Tamsin are to remain here in Idaho until he returns. ”
She scowled, fixing her gaze on Ken, who now stared at the floor. “Why? How long will he be gone?”
“A few days, at least,” Trent said. “He’ll keep us posted. He’ll likely be out of contact for some of that time.”
“Is that fucker Faegan making his way to the US?”
“Dewi,” Trent said, “I don’t kn—”
“Why the sudden secrecy?”
She felt a familiar wave of brotherly irritation from him. “I. Don’t. Know.”
“Why am I not being read into this situation?”
“Because none of us are,” he said. “He wants you and Tamsin here with Gillian. He feels like shit that he had to leave.”
“He should,” Dewi muttered. “The rat bast-fink.”
She spotted Ken’s amused smile struggling to break through.
Okay, so maybe that last one had been deliberate on her part, to see if she could get a reaction from Ken. Because if he could smile right now, things couldn’t be horribly bad.
Right?
“Oh, and don’t bother trying to Prime either of us for info,” Trent added, arching an eyebrow at her. “Peyton swears he’ll fill us in as soon as he can. So please don’t badger us, huh?”
Ken
Yeah, good luck with that.
Ken got it. Dewi didn’t like being left out of the loop any more than Ken enjoyed being dragged into it.
He felt her frustration, her irritation, and her resignation.
Didn’t mean she’d roll over and show her neck in submission, though, and Ken damned well knew it.
“Until then,” Trent added, “we need to be patient and trust Peyton.”
“He doesn’t trust us, apparently,” she groused as she headed for the coffeemaker.
“Dewi, you know that’s not true,” Trent said.
She wheeled on him. “No, I don’t know that. I don’t know anything! Because all of a sudden, all these secrets are being kept without a good explanation to me as to why.”
Even Ken heard Trent’s mental grumbles. “You know why—the same reason Peyton keeps any secret. Because we don’t need to know right now, for whatever reason.
Pack. Alpha. Business. We don’t have to like or agree with it—we just have to do it.
That’s kind of the whole gig, and you know that as well as I do. ”
Scowling, she finally turned back to the coffeemaker. Ken silently let out a relieved breath when Trent glanced his way, catching his eye.
Ken hated keeping secrets from Dewi, and especially these kinds of secrets.
But he got it—knowing Dewi the way he did, Ken understood Peyton was absolutely right that if Dewi knew everything going on, she’d want to meet it head-on, in person, and then their world would be consumed with trying to keep Dewi in check instead of actually fighting whatever or whoever it was they needed to be focused on.
There was no “fight, flight, freeze, or fawn” response built into Dewi’s nervous system—it was “fight, or fight harder.” Especially where her loved ones and the pack were concerned.
The only true leverage he had against her right now was guilting her that they had a young baby still being nursed, and playing the “happy mate” card.
Neither of which he liked using, but he would if forced to.
Ken turned back to the vegetables he was chopping for omelets and hoped Dewi would drop the subject.
Thankfully, Trent threw himself onto the sibling grenade.
“Look, we have a bunch of work to do today, kiddo. A lot of meetings with people who came for the recognition ceremony and need to talk pack business with us. And most of those are meetings you need to sit in on. Believe me, whatever Peyton’s handling, he’ll let us know if or when we need to know. When has that not ever been the case?”
“When have we ever had a murderous fuc—gging corgi shifter and some unknown assh—sinine people coming after us?”
Ken spotted Trent’s smirk.
“Yeah,” Trent said. “You really need to pay attention to the swearing. I think Asia’s still a little irritated that Chelsea’s first word after spending an hour with you as a baby was ‘F-U-C-K’.”
He literally spelled it out.
Ken snorted. “Seriously?”
But now Dewi grinned. “Yeah, I didn’t mean to swear in front of her, but she was asleep on my shoulder and I was on the phone with Beck about an Enforcer thing and it just kinda…slipped out. A few times. Because I sorta forgot I was holding her.”
Trent laughed. “Yeah, well, that’s one of the few times Asia actually asked Peyton to use his Prime to do something on one of our kids.”
“What were the others?” Ken asked.
Trent grinned. “Well, one was back when they were little, just toddlers. She asked him to make Charles, Kent, and Arthur stop running around naked in human form in public when they weren’t going to be shifting into wolf form immediately.
She was worried that if she took them out of the pack compound somewhere, she’d be dealing with a streaking toddler that became a wolf in front of clueless humans. ”
Ken nodded. “I can see that happening.”
Unfortunately, while an amusing mental image, it added one more previously unthought-of worry to Ken’s already overflowing mental plate.
Greeeeaaat.
Dewi
Of course Dewi knew her place in the pack. And logically, she understood Peyton had valid reasons for siloing info.
She didn’t have to like it, though.
And she most definitely did not like it. She would give Peyton a damned earful when he returned.
It was difficult to choke back the additional thought if he returned, but she managed to strangle that toxic little motherfucking word into submission and banished it from her brain.
Of course he would return. He was Peyton, for fuck’s sake. Her big brother.
He had to return.
When Dewi heard noises in the hall, she poked her head around the corner and spotted a weary-looking Gillian emerge from the guest room with Adair in her arms.
Dewi walked over. “Hey,” she softly said, aware that Tamsin might still be asleep. “Want me to take her for you?”
Gillian’s green eyes looked red and puffy. “Yes, please. Thank you. I just nursed her. She’s probably due for a change.”
Dewi didn’t avoid contact with Gillian as she took the baby. Her sister-in-law’s wave of exhausted anger drilled deep into Dewi’s soul.
“He’ll be okay,” Dewi whispered. “I’m sure he feels awful about this. He didn’t tell me, either. I just found out from Trent.”
Gillian reached out and touched Dewi’s arm and met her gaze. “I know I shouldn’t be angry with him, because it’s Pack Alpha business, but… I am.”
Dewi completely got why Gillian wanted to say that silently.
Because Tamsin had finally come out of her shell, and they didn’t want her to shoulder guilt for her father’s actions when it was not her burden to bear.
“I know,” Dewi told her. “Me, too. It’s supposed to be our time to enjoy our babies and our family, and we can’t focus on them and simply…be.”
Gillian nodded and withdrew her hand. “Exactly,” she whispered. She gave Dewi a brief, one-armed hug. “I’ll grab my shower and be out soon.”
“Take your time.”
Gillian headed into her room while Dewi aimed for the nursery and…yup. The little miss definitely needed a new diaper, because she was in the process of dumping a load into it.
As she held the old diaper in place and waited while Adair finished her business, Dewi stared down at her niece and thought about her own mother, perhaps standing in this very room when Dewi was a baby and changing her the way she now changed Adair.
She bore no tangible memories of her parents. Just…whispers. Remembering feeling loved, protected.
Safe.
A dark cloud surrounded the events of that night, and then her next clear memories were as a toddler, growing up on the pack compound with Badger raising her.
As she put a new diaper on the baby, she sniffled back an unexpected wave of melancholy threatening to bring tears to her eyes.
I wish you were here, Mom.
Despite Dewi’s aunts, Gillian, and Asia all doing their best to try to step into a motherly role with Dewi, she’d always felt an emotional disconnect. One she hadn’t really recognized until Nami entered their life and then…
Yeah.
She definitely viewed Nami like a mom instead of a sister. Nami had automatically stepped into that role with her the way Badger had stepped into the role as her adopted father.
She froze as a whisper of air brushed the nape of her neck.
Love you, too, baby…
Dewi whirled around, but she was alone in the room with Adair. Nearly every hair on her body stood straight out, yet she wasn’t afraid.
Tears unexpectedly filled her eyes. “Mom?” she whispered.
But the voice, which definitely reminded Dewi of the one she’d heard on the family videos she’d watched countless times while growing up, didn’t return.
Okay, maybe I really do need to take time off.
With another shiver, she quickly finished dressing Adair and hurried out with her in her arms to rejoin everyone in the kitchen.