A Bleacke Wind (Bleacke Shifters Book 3) (3 page)

Badger had wild, curly red hair liberally threaded with grey, and his stocky, grizzled face was crossed by a scar that started above his missing left eye and descended almost all the way to his chin. His remaining blue eye looked crystal clear and full of energy.

Rodney “Badger” Williams appeared ferocious, and he very well could be when needed. But his love for Dewi, and the way Badger had welcomed Ken into their family after Dewi claimed Ken, had cemented Badger’s place in Ken’s heart as an adopted father.

It was Dewi’s two older brothers, Peyton and Trent, who wanted the wedding far more than Dewi did. Dewi had been their parents’ miracle baby, the precious girl their mom had always dreamed about having and had wanted after being told she’d never have any more kids.

Peyton and Trent were going to make tomboy Dewi have a formal wedding—complete with froufrou dress—whether she liked it or not.

And she most decidedly did
not
like it.

Badger shook the fork in Ken’s direction. “Keep yer mate in line, lad,” he said. “She’ll listen to ye if to no one else.”

“What I am
dying
to know, while we’re on the subject,” Joaquin said, “is how a Prime Alpha wolf ended up mated to a grazer?”

“Long story,” Dewi, Badger, and Ken all said in unison.

* * * *

Ken didn’t need to be a wolf to sense the waves of animosity flowing from Beck toward Joaquin. Nami had already opted to be the friendly, welcoming voice of reason and corralled her stubborn wolf mate into quieting down during the ride to the airport.

She’d also scolded Beck to be nice to Joaquin, since he’d basically done his job despite the outcome. And she reminded Beck that Dewi had saved Malyah’s life by taking the lives of the rapist thugs who would have put Malyah through a similar fate.

Ken could tell Beck wasn’t happy about logic being used against him, but the Alpha wolf proved putty in his mate’s hands and quieted down.

Badger stayed out in the van with Beck and Nami while Dewi and Ken went inside the store with Joaquin. He needed everything from toiletries to a couple of pairs of shoes and miscellaneous clothes. Thirty minutes later, they were back on the road again, with Joaquin’s purchases neatly packed in his new suitcase—including the clothes from his backpack—and ready to check for the flight.

They passed through check-in and security with ease and were sitting at the airside gate nearly an hour before their flight was scheduled to leave.

Ken tried deep, slow breathing to calm his nerves, but the fact that he was about to fly still terrified him.

Dewi gently squeezed his hand. “Ready for Prime juju?”

He shook his head. “Believe it or not, I want to see if I can do this on my own.” He leaned in and kissed her. “But I’ll keep the option open.”

Beck’s dark glare would have killed Joaquin a thousand times over by now had he the power to do so.

Nami poked her mate in the shoulder. “Be. Nice. The boy’s not hurting you, and he’s not making eyes at me or Dewi.”

Joaquin held up his hands. “Oh, I’m no idiot, believe me. The
last
thing I’d do is interfere with someone’s mate.”

Beck huffed. “No, just their little
sister
.”

“She was way over eighteen, Dawson Beckett,” Badger said, keeping his voice low. “And yer about a breath away from getting Primed yerself if ye don’t settle down about it.”

Dewi let out a weighty sigh. “Guys,
please
.”

Ken worried about how weary she sounded. He knew it was due to far more than just the unexpected and too-early wake-up. Dewi’s Prime Alpha status meant she had the stamina and strength to easily outlast them all.

That she appeared so exhausted concerned him.

Ken slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Beck,” he gently said. “Please, let it go for now.”

“You don’t have three little sisters,” Beck shot back.

“An’ they were all well over legal age, too,” Badger reminded Beck. “They ‘re all older than Joaquin, if ye’ll recall.”

“Jacie’s his age,” Dawson said.

Dewi’s whisper cut through their banter. “
Stop
.” Ken looked at her. She’d pulled Prime.

She pointed a finger at Beck. “Until we’re off the plane in Spokane, you will
not
grumble about Joaquin. Got it?”

Beck nodded, still glaring at Joaquin. Beck was forty-nine and Dewi only twenty-five, but her Prime Alpha status meant she could easily overpower him.

Not that she needed the mental powers. Ken had witnessed her fling Beck into a wall as if he weighed nothing, and she’d held her own in a battle against the much older Prime Alpha wolf who’d killed her parents and injured her so many years ago.

“Well,” Badger said, settling back in his seat as he crossed his enormous arms over his chest. “Ye bloody well went and did it. I warned ye.”

* * * *

Fortunately, the flight was open seating. Badger opted to board with Joaquin ahead of the rest of them and sat in back, ensuring they were seated far enough apart from the other four to keep Joaquin out of Beck’s line of sight.

No use in poking the wolf, Dewi thought.

She felt badly about having to Prime Beck, but exhaustion had set in, she felt nervous, she was already stressed to the max by the wedding, and now…
this
.

A pissing contest between two Alpha wolf men, especially two Enforcers under her command, would
not
be tolerated.

As she and Ken settled into their seats, Ken by the window, Dewi laced fingers with him and gave him a smile. “This’ll be okay. If you change your mind and want me to Prime you, let me know.”

He squeezed her hand. “I appreciate it, babe. I want to try it on my own first. Maybe it won’t be as bad as I worried it might.”

Poor Ken. He didn’t fly. He hadn’t driven much, either, when she’d met him a few months earlier, because his stupid step-brother had “borrowed” and wrecked his car. He’d been down to riding a bicycle for transportation.

Ken had gone through a lot of changes since they’d mated. All of them positive, as far as Dewi could tell.

Considering he’d had the strength of will to disobey a direct order she’d given him to not pick up a gun, and then he’d shot and killed another Prime Alpha wolf trying to kill her and him both, and then he’d marked her…

Yeeeaaah.

Dr. Heathcliff McKenzie Ethelbert might look like a harmless geek to someone who didn’t know him, but Dewi knew the truth. So did Badger and Beck. She trusted Ken, knew he bore an inner furnace few would ever see, one that burned bright and strong when need be, even if he didn’t yet feel sure about it himself.

And boy, did she love the hell out of him.

Ken did okay on the takeoff, relaxing once they were out over the Gulf of Mexico. Their flight had a stop in Denver to take on fuel and passengers but they wouldn’t have to deplane.

“See?” she gently said. “Piece of cake.”

Nami reached over the back of Ken’s seat and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re doin’ real good there, hon.”

“I didn’t think you’d flown much before,” he said to Nami.

“I haven’t, but mostly because of economics, not because I was scared to. I’ve flown a couple of times in my life.”

Now that the seatbelt sign had been turned off, Nami wanted to talk Dewi’s ear off about the wedding preparations that still needed to be finalized. Peyton and Trent’s mates had been helping Nami arrange things long-distance on their end, but Nami wanted things just right.

Apparently, Peyton and Trent had instructed their mates to do whatever Nami asked. If it meant they got the wedding they wanted for their little sister, the brothers would make sure it happened regardless of the cost.

Dewi wasn’t happy with it but knew resistance was futile. She didn’t want the additional humiliation of Peyton Priming her, as both her big brother and as the pack’s Alpha, into going along with this.

She had a modicum of dignity remaining.

If left up to her, she and Ken would have been married already by a clerk of the court at the county courthouse.

Peyton had laid down the law to her in no uncertain terms that if she tried to elope like that there
would
be hell to pay.

She supposed the least she could do was appease the two of them.

No, she hadn’t had a normal upbringing, even by wolf standards. Badger, more or less an uncle by pack relations, had done a great job of rearing her, training her, and giving her fatherly love and affection despite there technically not being a blood tie. Beck, too, although when Dewi had turned eighteen she’d finally managed to get Beck to quit resisting her advances.

And then…

Then she’d met Ken. Of all times, while hunting down a wolf who’d sold his own daughter to be a sex slave in exchange for paying off a drug debt. She’d claimed Ken right there in the bathroom of the sports bar, executed her target, and then…

And then.

Life.

Got.

Crazy.

Well, crazi
er
. Even by Dewi’s usually hectic standards.

Maybe things will slow down now.

A wolf could hope.
 

Now they had another Enforcer, Martin Brunhaus, to help them out. He was staying behind in Tampa to keep an eye on things while they were all in Idaho. Peyton had authorized the formation of an expanded pack council in Tampa, comprised of Dewi, Badger, and Beck, to expedite pack business in this part of the country.

Yes, it was a lot of extra work. But now that she had Ken, she no longer resented the time she spent not out in the field. Before, field work had been a way to keep her mind off her crushing loneliness.

She wasn’t lonely anymore. Their little private pack was growing. First Ken, then Nami. Maybe Martin would eventually meet his mate, and then they’d add her to their widening circle.

Pups…

Dewi tried not to think about that right now. Yes, she did want kids. She’d never thought it’d be a reality before, not in any concrete way, until Ken tripped into her life.

Now…

She’d need a sit-down with Peyton. If he thought he would order her out of the field if she got pregnant, he had another think coming. She was damned good at what she did. Lives—literally—depended on her being good at what she did. Yes, Beck and the other Enforcers were good.

They were not, however, Prime Alphas. That huge advantage she and Badger had over the other Enforcers had pulled their asses from the fire more times than she cared to think about.

With her parents’ killer now mulching a wooded portion of land out behind their house, she could finally shift her focus to looking forward, toward the future.

On what she really wanted to do with the rest of her life.

Long overdue healing could begin without the idea of avenging her parents’ deaths always invisibly hovering in the back of her mind.

Their family had been fractured for years even before her parents were murdered. When Dewi’s maternal grandmother had died, killed in a tragic car accident just three months before her parents’ marriage, it had sent her grandfather, Duncan, into a depression.

The generally held theory never spoken aloud amongst their packmates was that Duncan had killed himself a year after Charles and Chelsea’s younger son was born. Prime Alpha Peyton ensured the pack had a Prime Alpha heir to follow in Charles’ footsteps.

Dewi’s father’s parents were already deceased, and her aunts on her mother’s side had moved away. She saw them from time to time at pack Musters, but not very often.

She’d had Badger…and Beck. She loved her sisters-in-law Gillian and Asia, but neither of them were Alphas. Dewi hadn’t exactly needed advice on how to put on makeup or how to style her hair when she was a teenager.

Making stealthy kills, improvised weapons, tracking, fighting techniques—those were the kinds of hands-on training she’d needed, which Badger and Beck had skillfully provided.

Dewi and Nami hadn’t exactly been buddies when Beck first brought Nami home. Mostly because Nami hadn’t understood about wolves and mating bonds. But now…

Now, Dewi loved Nami and knew those feelings were reciprocated. Sure, Dewi had grumbled and fussed during the dress fittings and other wedding planning sessions.

Secretly, it was also nice to have the attention. Normal, average,
human
kind of attention that she’d never received growing up. The kind of attention she couldn’t have had, not when at twelve she was already named the Head Enforcer and going up against fully-gown male wolves to keep the peace in the pack.

Her first kill had been five months after her twelfth birthday while on a mission with Beck. He’d told her to hang behind, and the wolf they’d been pursuing—who’d killed his own mate while in a drunken rage—had doubled back.

Dewi had shot him between the eyes, without hesitation or remorse.

They had a pack edict. The woman’s family had demanded blood, and Peyton had granted it.

Beck had wanted Dewi to talk to someone after the fact but Badger pointed out that there really wasn’t anyone
for
her to talk to. She was unique, a Prime Alpha female, and the Head Enforcer.

She already instilled fear in others, even at that young age.

That wasn’t exactly a quality which encouraged close personal relationships with many other people.

Now, at least, she had Nami.

* * * *

Ken did his best to relax. No, he didn’t like flying, and he could already tell the chances were he probably never would. Knowing that Dewi felt calm and relaxed about their flight went a long way toward relaxing him.

Well, it helped keep him from freaking out, which was nearly as good as “relaxed,” in this case.

He’d take the win.

After they landed in Denver and taxied to the gate, Dewi gently squeezed his hand before carefully prying his fingers from hers.

“How you doing?” she asked. “Still okay?”

He flexed his fingers. “If I survived this long, I guess can make it all the way.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind doing it.”

“No, I need to get used to this. I have a feeling we’ll be doing it a lot over the years, and you might not always be with me when I have to fly.”