A Bleacke Wind (Bleacke Shifters Book 3) (43 page)

Dewi dropped her voice. “Do you want me to…” Her voice trailed off.

He turned and slowly arched an eyebrow at her. Keeping his voice low, he said, “I deliberately drove a car off the road. Down a mountain. On
purpose
. Risking death.”

“Uh huh.”

“I took Nami and went on the run through the wilderness, hiding from gun-wielding Mexican drug cartel asshats while armed with nothing but a cell phone and a tire iron.”

She frowned. “Yeah?”

“I somehow kept us alive until Duncan found us. Then, when Duncan sprung the trap, I interrogated and executed the fuckers without hesitation or a hint of remorse.”

She nodded, but didn’t speak.

“I met your
family
,” he said, smiling. “
All
of them. And survived.” He grinned.

“But I know you don’t like flying.”

He took her hand. “Sweetheart, flying is a goddamned cakewalk compared to what I’ve been through the past three weeks. It’ll be like a mini-vacation. One I can sort of actually, you know,
sleep
through and get served drinks upon request.”

Eventually, Dewi returned his smile. “Broadening your horizons?”

“Yeah. You could say that.”

Malyah sat across from them, her hand clutching Joaquin’s as if afraid to let him go for fear he’d disappear. Nami, sitting next to Beck on Ken’s other side, noticed.

“You need to chill out, sugar,” Nami drawled. “That boy’s gonna need both hands.”

Malyah looked down and immediately loosened her grip. “Sorry,” she quietly said.

Joaquin smiled as he wiggled his fingers. “It’s all right, sweetheart.”

Ken leaned close to Dewi, and silently, through their mate bond, said,
“Maybe she’s the one you should be helping out.”

She sighed aloud in response.

* * * *

Ken felt more than relief when they turned off their road and their gate slowly swung open.

He felt like he was
home
. And that was a massive comfort to him after all he’d been through. More than he’d thought it would be.

Duncan had done remarkably well during the journey to Florida from Spokane, despite the drastic technological changes during his absence.

Cell phones fascinated him most of all, that such a little device was far more powerful than any science fiction he could have imagined back them. And he wondered over the fact that, in Florida, it was rare you couldn’t reach someone with your cell phone.

Duncan had never been to Florida, so this would be yet another first for him. Dewi was already planning a trip for the three of them down to Manasota Key, to her favorite beach, to show Duncan around. And Disney, and a ton of other tourist traps that Duncan had never heard of before but which Dewi was now eager to visit.

With her grandfather.

When Beck pulled up in front of Dewi’s house and shut the ignition off, everyone took a moment before getting out.

“Home,” Dewi said. “Man, did I miss it.” Badger wasn’t there to welcome them because he was out with Martin handling a minor shifter family squabble over in St. Pete.

As they unloaded the van, Duncan insisted on carrying his own luggage despite Beck and Joaquin both wanting to help.

“This is where you live, Dewi?” Duncan asked.

“Yep. Gillian went overboard.” She shrugged. “It’s okay. Big house, lots of guests and family can live with me. I don’t need guest houses like Peyton has. Wait’ll you see the pool. And the gun range.”

“Oh, I forgot about
that
,” Beck said. He’d hit the garage door opener and Ken spotted the bike Joaquin had stolen sitting there.

“Yeeaah,” Joaquin. “Guess we’ll need to take that back.”

“We can deal with it this week,” Dewi said, sounding exhausted. “I’m not worrying about it tonight.” Badger and Martin had been busy, without any time to handle it.

Beck insisted Nami use the wheelchair despite her ankle feeling a lot better. They’d left Beck’s truck parked at Dewi’s before they flew out to Idaho. As he got everything transferred over to his truck, Nami hugged everyone good night.

Nami poked Joaquin in the shoulder. “Let me know when we’re gonna start lookin’ at houses.”

“Sis,” Malyah protested. “Come on, lay off him.”

Nami finally smiled. “Come down here and give me a hug.”

Joaquin looked wary, but he leaned in and she hugged him. “This don’t mean you’re off the hook, you hear?”

“Yes, sis,” Joaquin teased.

Ken spotted Nami’s pleased smile. He was glad to see Beck’s hint to Joaquin to suck up to her as a big sister was already paying off.

It wouldn’t be very long before they could all relax and be sure that Nami wouldn’t try to castrate Joaquin when others weren’t looking.

After a fantastic night’s sleep, Ken awoke to find himself alone in bed. Pulling on a robe, he found Dewi, Duncan, and Badger talking downstairs in the kitchen.

“Hey. Morning.”

Dewi hurried over to give him a good-morning kiss and get him a cup of coffee. “Sorry, I didn’t want to wake you.”

“That’s okay.” He saw they had something on the counter. “What’s that?”

It turned out to be a large pocket knife.

“Badger kept some things of mine,” Duncan said. “I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it, mister,” Badger said. “Charles and Chelsea, they were distraught, but they knew we were friends.”

Dewi slipped an arm around Ken’s waist. “That reminds me. I need to go shopping for you and get you a good knife to carry.”

Duncan smiled, picked up the knife, took Ken’s hand, and placed it in his palm, closing his fingers around it. “Done.”

“But…this is yours. You just got it back.”

“I never had a son. I was close to Charles, but…” He seemed to get lost in the past for a moment. “Badger kept it safe for me all these years. I want you to have it.”

“Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything, son.” He smiled. “Keep your promise that you’re going to learn how to protect yourself, and your pack. That’s all.”

“I will.”

Dewi positively beamed.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

They’d been back from Idaho for two weeks when Badger walked into the office and plopped down into one of the chairs in front of the desk without first asking Dewi if she was busy.

She sat up from where she’d been working on her laptop. Beck, Duncan, Martin, and Joaquin had taken Ken, Nami, and Malyah out to the shooting range and were working with them. Dewi took comfort in the fact that Ken was eager to not just learn, but master whatever defensive skills he could. He totally got
why
she’d wanted him to learn them.

Although the circumstances around him gaining that eagerness sucked hairy donkey balls.

It could have been worse.
Much
worse.

“What?” she asked when Badger didn’t volunteer the reason for his presence. But the air of smug amusement floating around him couldn’t be missed by anyone, much less another Prime Alpha wolf.

“I been doin’ a little research,” he said.

“What kind of research?”

“Genealogical.”

“Okay. Why? The pack already did that. We know my history.”

“Not yers. Malyah and Nami’s family.”

Now Dewi leaned back in her chair and studied him. “We going to do this the easy way where you just get right to the point, or are you going to force me into some bullshit game of twenty questions for your own sadistic glee?”

“Rotten-brat spoil-sport is what ye are. Malyah and Nami’s mother, Beatrice, had a several times over great-grandfather on her father’s side, who was born in Scotland. Man by the name of Cornith McTavish.” He arched an eyebrow at her. “Ring a bell?”

Her eyes widened. “No. Fucking. Way.”

Cornith McTavish was a Prime Alpha wolf who’d helped fight against the British in several successful battles. Unfortunately, it hadn’t changed the eventual outcome, and that had led several of the packs to emigrate from Scotland and Ireland to Europe and the New World to avoid detection and retribution by the British.

Badger slowly nodded. “Yes, feckin’ way. One of his sons left Scotland for America on a ship and nothing else was ever reported on him again in any of the packs’ lines. No mate, no pups. A lot of people apparently assumed he died on the way over.”

“But he didn’t?”

Badger shook his head. “Tracin’ backward from Nami’s mother is how I found him. He arrived on a ship in Boston and settled in workin’ fer a blacksmith. The time frame is right, and it’s not like it’s a common name. Wife and three pups, all boys. I’m still tracin’ out the other two siblings to see if there’s any remaining kin there. One of the boys ended up fatherin’ three sons with a free-born black woman—again, still tracin’ the lineage out there—and thus leading me eventually to Nami and her siblings.”

“So…they all have traces of wolf blood in them?”

Badger nodded. “Not just wolf blood, but a Prime Alpha. Explains how two sisters in the same family ended up mated to wolves, now, wouldn’t it? And maybe why Malyah was able to throw off what ye did to blank her memories despite Joaquin not being a Prime. Because ye thought she was pure human and ye might not have given it an extra kick, as it were. Then maybe when she mated with Joaquin, she thew it off.”

“Yeah.”

“And why Marcy Stafford was pantin’ after Da’von like a lovesick pup herself, and it explains all of Bebe’s behavior.” He studied his fingers. “That day ye women went to brunch and I watched little Bebe? We were all sittin’ at the table and talkin’, and she laughed and let out a howl herself.”

He finally glanced up and met Dewi’s gaze. “I’m guessin’ when Bebe gets older she likely won’t be a shifter, but we’ll be takin’ her back to Idaho for a Muster to introduce her around. Maybe Gillian and Asia will have to have a sit-down with her and see what tendencies she has.”

The more diluted a family’s line, the less likely they were to produce shifters.

Just as average human families had genetic mutations, so, too, rarely, did shifter families. Every once in a while, a child from a shifter line with one or more humans in their direct lineage would still turn out to be a shifter, if enough recessed genes combined to make a dominant one.

“What about Reggie’s family lines?” she asked.

“He’ll be the next one I do,” Badger assured her. “One trace at a time, but I’m bettin’ there’s a wolf in his background, too. Maybe more than one. Who knows at this point?”

Dewi sat there, stunned, trying to process it. “What are the odds?”

“Oh, lots of people runnin’ around with a little hair of the wolf in their veins,” Badger said. “Ye know that. Still tracin’ Ken’s lineage, but when I saw what was happenin’ I decided it was best to figure Nami’s line out first. Wouldn’t be surprised if Ken has a wolf in his woodpile, so to speak, somewhere along the way.”

The old shifter leaned forward, a smile appearing. “But here’s the real kicker. There’s not just
one
wolf in Malyah and Nami’s mother’s line, there’s
two
. Their great-great-grandfather on her maternal grandmother’s side was also a distant wolf by blood.”

Dewi could tell by his grin that he was dying to lay this punchline on her. “And?”

“Guess where that lineage plays out when it’s traced back and out again?”

“Do I want to know?”

“
That
man’s brother shows up in the line of another wolf.”

She wanted the tl;dr version. “Just freaking tell me, Badger.”

“That man’s brother is a great-great-grandfather of one Aleana Falcone, to use her maiden name.”

“Who?”

His grin widened as he rested his hands on the desk. “You would know her as Aleana Carlomarles. Who, along with her husband, is a distant cousin to your father. Ye just saw them last weekend…at yer weddin’.”

Dewi’s jaw dropped—literally fell open—as she mentally connected the dots. “No!” she gasped, stifling a giggle. “Joaquin’s mother…” Her giggles threatened to turn into howls.

Badger nodded and stood. “There’s more than enough distance and depth to not make it an issue for Malyah being’ mated to Joaquin, of course.” He smiled. “But can I have the honor of tellin’ Beck he’s mated to Joaquin’s distant cousin on Joaquin’s mother’s side, or are ye gonna be wantin’ to do that yerself?”

Dewi covered her mouth with her hand as she stared at Badger. She desperately struggled not to burst out into howls of laughter. “Holy. Shit.”

“I don’t know if ye’d call it irony, or the Goddess havin’ a fun time with us mortals, but it’s a bit of poetic justice, I think. Especially after all these years of Beck hatin’ Joaquin.”

She dropped her hand. “How did no one ever figure that out before?”

“No one had a reason to. We’re talkin’ distant lineage, humans mixed in, all that. Only ones who ever really keep track of their lines are the full or mostly full wolves. Ye know that. People trace back, not out again, usually. If people aren’t connected to a pack by a strong, direct bond, the more intermarrying with humans that happens, the more distant they grow through their lines…” He shrugged. “Pretty soon, ye have people with no idea they even have shifter blood in their veins.”

“If you want to tell him, I’ll let you. Because, honestly? I think I’d rather be filming it to show Peyton and Trent later. This is going to be fucking priceless!”

* * * *

It was three o’clock in the morning. Manuel Segura stood in the shower, letting the hot water beat on his head. It’d been nearly three weeks since the incident in Idaho. He’d taken his time returning, trying to find out some information first and figure out the best way to do damage control, but it was good to be home.

And I came so close to not getting back here at all.

He still wasn’t sure exactly what the hell had happened in Idaho.

And he wasn’t sure how to explain to his other men, to the families of the men he’d lost, what had happened.

No one will believe me. They’ll think that I was somehow behind them all dying.

His wife, Marciella, walked into the bathroom. “Manuel?” She sounded half-asleep. “Why didn’t you wake me and tell me you were home?”

“Because I didn’t want to awaken you. And you can’t tell anyone I’m here.”