Chapter 35 #2
“Not asking you to. I’m going to get my ass chewed out, and I deserve it. I’d really hoped for it to not come out to him, but that’s my fuck-up, too, and I own it. I did this; I have to be the one to clean it up.”
He finally lifted his head. “If he asks me to fire you--”
“He won’t.” She stared out the windshield.
“Because as much as all this sucks, and as much as we all hate it, he damned well knows I’m right.
And there’s no ass-chewing you can give me that outweighs the guilt I feel over having dragged him into this life in the first place instead of just doing my job and leaving that night, even knowing it would have completely broken my heart. ”
She met his gaze. “And don’t think that doesn’t eat at me every bit as much as you appointing me as Head Enforcer eats at you.”
When Peyton pulled up in front of the house, Dewi moved to get out but Peyton laid a hand on her arm.
“I love you, kiddo.”
“I know. I love you, too.”
He stared at the house. “And yes. You’re right. If you were a guy, we’d probably be having a beer right now.”
“I know.”
He studied her for a long moment. “Please make this right with him. And please don’t ever do anything like this again.”
“Hopefully it won’t be necessary.”
“I mean the verbal gymnastics. Just tell him. And…” He blew out a frustrated breath. “If it’s a legit work thing, I’ll overrule him as Pack Alpha.”
“No. I won’t put you in the middle of my marriage.” She smirked. “Because if I’m not mistaken, you promised him whatever he wanted, all he had to do was ask.”
“Shit. Well, I can break a promise to him.”
“No, you can’t. I don’t want you to, either.” She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Please tell Gillian I’m sorry I interrupted your vacay.”
He finally smiled. “I think she was getting ready to strangle me anyway. We don’t usually get this much uninterrupted time together. I think she needed a few hours without me.”
She got out, grabbed her bags, and headed inside.
Ken rushed up as she was closing the front door behind her.
Okay. We’re doing this.
“What happened, Dewi?” Ken yelled.
She refused to look at him, stepping around him to head toward the stairs. “I’m under orders from Peyton to keep it between him and me.”
He followed her up the stairs and into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. “I want to know what the fuck happened. Don’t make me call him and demand he make you tell me.”
She dropped her bags and sank onto the end of the bed. “If I tell you, I’m ordered to Prime you, and the only person you can talk to about it besides me is Peyton. Frankly, I’d rather not tell you.”
“Was it another lab?”
“No. It wasn’t dangerous—I told you that. But I needed to make sure we don’t have to take down another lab in the future.”
“Then fucking Prime me.” He held out his hand and, somehow, that made it worse for her.
Knowing there was no way around this, she touched his hand and silently commanded him to remain silent on the issue
“Now tell me,” he demanded.
She did, which made it even worse for her.
He looked like he’d been gut-punched.
“Measures had to be taken,” she said. “To protect the pack.”
“What about you telling me you were cutting back on field work, huh? You lied to me!”
“I didn’t lie to you,” she said. “Did I mislead you? Yes. Did I enjoy it? No. And I promise that I will never do that again. I also promised Peyton that if there’s ever a future time where I need to do something and you overrule me, I’ll bring him in for a ruling.”
He stared at her, his jaw dropped. “What the fuck, Dewi? You could have taken Duncan or Badger or any of the other Primes down there with you! That, I would’ve understood and agreed with. But you went alone?”
“I wasn’t alone. Alvarez was there the whole time.”
“You know what I fucking mean!” he yelled. “You didn’t have to be the only Prime there!”
“Yes, I did! A Prime needed to do this, and since I’m the only female Prime, I’m the only one who could get close to her without raising suspicion. And I needed to keep this operation as small as possible.”
He stared at her. “Doesn’t she count as his mate? You told me mates are sacrosanct!”
“So are our kids, Ken.” She glared at him.
“And she wasn’t the mate to a shifter—she was a human actively complicit in the potential destruction of our pack.
Our children matter, okay? Our mates matter.
Our pack matters. We have too much to worry about already.
We don’t need to worry about them being scooped up for vivisection by some fucking military or mafia doctor and taken to a lab deep inside a mountain, or spend the rest of their lives locked in a cage and being studied.
Or, even worse, forcibly bred and their children studied.
One life is more than worth it if it means protecting thousands of people, including children. Our children.”
“And that justified killing her?”
“I didn’t kill her! She killed herself. I gave her a choice, that she could either keep her silence and protect our secret or kill herself.
She made that choice.” She jabbed a finger at him.
“You were the one who, back in Idaho, right after you returned from the UK, said ‘whatever it takes.’ You and Peyton have both said those exact words.
“Well, just like I told him, this is whatever it took. Sometimes those ‘whatevers’ that keep the pack safe are freaking ugly. Sometimes they’re taking down a horror of a lab, and sometimes they’re eliminating one person.
My job is to be the one who deals with it so the rest of the pack doesn’t have to.
And if you think this is the worst thing I’ve ever done to protect this pack, think again.
And I’d do it again, in a heartbeat, without hesitation, if it means protecting us and ours. ”
His jaw gaped again as she sensed him mentally scrabbling for a response. “Couldn’t you have ordered her to stay silent!”
“I gave her a pretty easy choice to do just that. Obviously, she didn’t want to keep it a secret.”
“There had to be another way.”
“This isn’t any different than Peyton, Alvarez, and Jake going on their little ‘fishing expedition’ to talk to Miranda Segura.”
His jaw dropped. “Seriously? You don’t see the difference? Let’s start with, oh, there were three of them, and also they didn’t Prime her to fucking kill herself!”
“You think I like this? I don’t. I don’t enjoy taking lives, Ken. I fucking hate it! I hate that I’m the one who is in this position, but I have to protect this pack, and our kids, and that’s what I’m damned well going to do!”
“She was a human.”
“She was a liability. Forcing someone not to choose being evil doesn’t wipe away their evil, it wipes away their free will.
Their heart is still evil. It will still come out in other ways, and that was a chance I was willing to take with her because she was pregnant.
At least any evil she chose in the future hopefully would never have made its way back to us.
I didn’t want to kill her. I gave her an easy damned out to live a long life. ”
He stared at her. “Does that mean I might be on the chopping block one day? Because I’m a human?”
“What? No! Of course not! You’re pack, and my mate, and the father of my babies and, hello, I love you!”
“Why is my life worth more than hers?”
“Because you are worth infinitely more to me. She was an evil, conniving, scheming woman married to an evil man, and she was determined to expose us to the world. I take lives to protect this pack, and only as a last resort. She was willing to take lives for money, and she didn’t give a fuck whose lives they were. Including children.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “Wait a minute. You knew she couldn’t keep it quiet. You knew she was a Catholic and—”
“I assumed she’d go to confession, yeah.
And my orders to her were to keep the secret, or kill herself instead of spilling the secret.
I was explicitly clear about what would happen.
She had a choice. She could’ve even let the decision ride; she could’ve kept her mouth shut and done no further research and still resided in that limbo.
I didn’t take her free will. I gave her inescapable consequences for not choosing the way that would protect us and her baby.
Despite what I saw, I had hoped that her being a staunch Catholic meant she’d choose her life and the life of her unborn child over her plans and prejudices. ”
“But you could have ordered her to forget the knowledge, like Peyton did with me and Aisling with all the Pack Alpha stuff.”
She slowly shook her head. “I couldn’t take the chance.
What if she had a stash of data somewhere we didn’t know about, and she or someone else stumbled across it?
What if that then jogged her memory? What if there are still assholes out there, maybe even rogue Primes, with the ability to peel that information out of her brain?
What if she kept poking around and triggered those other Russian assholes, huh?
You think they won’t hesitate to use a chainsaw on you or me?
Think again. And, hello, they now have our address in Idaho.
They were also pretty damned clear what would happen if they kept getting dragged into this.
You want to actually watch that video this time instead of listening to it?
No, there were too many variables, so I boiled it down to the basics—she had a choice. And she chose.”
“Jesusfuckinghell.” Ken slowly sank onto the bed. “And now Manuel’s uncle will come gunning for us.”
“Doubtful.”
“He knows Manuel went to the Idaho compound,” Ken said. “And he knew Manuel was on our trail here in Florida.”