She nodded but still looked worried.
“Don’t fash yerself, Dew. Duncan’s a strong man but what he went through, no man could have made it to the other side without risking his sanity. I should know. Had he been a human he might have turned to drink or drugs, or given up entirely, but he just…turned. He had a lot of time to come to grips with what happened while he roamed out there in the wild. And now, knowin’ what he does, he’s determined to hold on to life as strongly as he held on to the past.”
She didn’t speak for a few minutes. “How long before I should ask Aaron to come down with Lowri?”
“Whenever ye feel ye should. He’s yer enforcer—he knows the rules. It’s what he signed up for.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well, he formally presented Lowri to Duncan. And he’s on the expanded pack council. Depends on how strict ye want to be about it, given the circumstances.”
“I don’t want to interrupt their grieving.”
“Then leave it up to Aaron. Ask him to keep ye posted. He’s a reasonable sort. Always did like Aaron. Glad he found his mate.” He smiled. “She sounds feisty. I think I’m gonna like her, too.”
“I’d like to have a meeting soon,” Dewi said. “Of everyone stationed in this region. Him, Carl and Mateo, Beck, Joaquin and Martin, Stig and Elliot. Drew and Jonathan. Ed and Floyd.” She played with the pen, almost sending it off the counter but she snatched it back from the edge in time and resumed spinning it. “And you and Da,duh.”
“An ‘on the same page’ kind of meetin’?”
“Yeah.” Another weighty sigh. “Make sure there’s no problems. Manage…expectations. Regarding my own… expecting.” She looked down at her baby bump with a frustrated expression he also knew too damned well.
He finally stopped what he was doing and focused wholly on her. “Dew, ye know they’re behind ye a thousand percent, right? No one thinks yer gonna be slackin’.”
“But I need to meet with everyone before.” She met his gaze. “I also need to have in-person meetings with the others. Group them. Guys in the northeast, and the ones out west and the northwest. Maybe take a few days and fly out. Peyton wants me to visit, right? Make it a work trip. And have a video call with Alvarez and Ramirez. I’d like everything wrapped up down there no later than twelve months. Get them back in the States for good. Besides, people already know them. Having them working up here will go a long way to helping families with their resettlements.”
In essence, the North American continent had been divvied into four quarters decades ago in relation to the enforcers, with Canada falling into the northeast and northwest quarters. The two most populated areas were Florida and its immediate surroundings, and the northwest because of the pack compound. But most of the packmates in the northwest either lived inside of or within 100 miles of the pack compound, and a heavy enforcer presence really wasn’t needed there. Franco handled that end of Canada, Bob Axelrod handled along the coast and inland from Seattle all the way down to northern California, and Dan Cummings, who was in charge of the national forrest next to the pack compound, was also one of Dewi’s enforcers.
Because of Trent being located there, he or even Gillian frequently handled minor disputes that an Enforcer would normally deal with in one of the other territories. Rarely, things progressed a point that Peyton was called in.
Things rarely progressed to that point because no one wanted to be on the Pack Alpha’s radar for something negative.
Although with their pack steadily growing, Badger knew it was in Dewi’s five-year plan to add an additional full-time enforcer to the pack compound.
Just not right now.
Not with everything else going on.
She wouldn’t have added Stig and Elliot had Peyton not mandated it, even though it made sense.
Admittedly, Dewi was gun-shy of trusting strange Prime Alphas in the wake of the Endquist attack and Badger didn’t blame her.
He also tried not to step on her toes too much in terms of challenging her authority. She wasn’t twelve anymore, when she ran nearly every decision she made past him and Beck first because she didn’t trust herself or wasn’t sure what course of action to take.
He tossed her a piece of raw carrot, which she deftly snagged out of the air with a smile and immediately started munching on it.
“Ye could two-birds and all that crap the meeting with Aaron and them,” he said. “Have the crew from the northeast meet ye in Virginia or someplace. Save Aaron a special trip down, and save Floyd and the others having to come all the way to Florida.”
This felt a lot like those early days with her, how she’d sit there in that very spot doing her homework while talking to him or Beck, whoever was home with her at the time, bouncing things off them.
She’s not a little girl anymore, but she’ll always bemylittle girl.
“I like that idea,” she said, sliding off the stool. “I’ll start in the southwest, hit Idaho, then the northeast, then home. Peyton will be happy, I’ll get face time with the other Enforcers, and all before my water breaks. Thanks!”
She detoured around the counter to give him a peck on the cheek, stole another couple of pieces of carrot, and continue on toward the office where he heard the door shut a moment later.
Ah, Tahlia, I miss ye, love. I wish we coulda had a bunch of our own.
Then he shut down that line of thinking, because it always led him to darker thoughts.
