After he pumped gas, Badger plugged in his phone’s navigation app and they hit the road again. “We got a slight detour now.”
“Where to?”
“Ye get to meet the Pack Alpha tonight. We’re gonna pick Peyton up at the airport before we head to Dewi’s.”
“Why?”
Badger laughed, shrugging. “If I was supposed to know that, he’d a told me. And he didn’t. So I guess we’ll find out at the same time, won’t we?”
CHAPTERFORTY-ONE
DEWI
The next morning,Dewi was having trouble sleeping. She awoke an hour before dawn and realized after lying there for at least thirty minutes that she wasn’t going back to sleep.
That’s when she finally processed that she smelled coffee.
Mmm. Coffee. Badger must be home.
Honestly, she’d collapsed early last night, so exhausted, and they could have re-enacted the Charge of the Light Brigade downstairs and she would have slept through it.
Ken was still sound asleep, so she eased herself out of bed—not gracefully but at least without piddling herself or waking him—and padded into the bathroom. Then she grabbed Ken’s robe, pulled it on over the sleeping shirt she’d worn to bed, quietly let herself out of the bedroom, and headed downstairs. Instead of going to the kitchen, she went into the office first to grab her laptop. She could sit at the breakfast counter and go through e-mails and do some work.
She set the laptop on the counter and walked over to the large coffeemaker. The coffee was hot but the carafe looked like it was missing a couple of servings.
Badger must have already been into it.
Opening the cabinet…
Where’s my damn mug?
She had a large, stainless thermal coffee mug she preferred to use, which held two regular cups of coffee and had a snap-on lid that meant less chances of her spilling it.
She looked in the dishwasher, just in case it was in there, but no.
Shit.Did I leave it in the car?It wasn’t in the office—
That’s when the woman appeared in the dining room doorway, looking down at her phone. In her other hand—
She’s gotmyfucking coffee mug!
Dewi had already taken three angry steps toward the woman when a few delayed thoughts finished processing and dropped into her brain.
Strange woman.
In my house.
No gun on me.
It all processed at the same time she realized there was no way she could make it to the pantry or cabinet where she had hidden guns stashed, or back over to the knife drawer.
Unarmed it is.
“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AND WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN MY HOUSE?” Dewi screamed as she launched herself at the woman. If she got a hand on her she could Prime her and then—
The woman’s head snapped up and, faster than Dewi had counted on, she spun away from Dewi, out of her grasp, the coffee mug flying at Dewi’s head.
Dewi batted it away. “That’smygoddamned coffee mug!” Dewi screamed as it landed somewhere behind her on the floor.
