Beck knew Nami was a strong woman and would be able to deal with this once she processed it. Between her pregnancy hormones and the obviously emotionally fraught issues revolving around the little girls, she was more than allowed to have a meltdown first.
“There’s a plan,” he said. “We’ll homeschool them—Bebe, Dania, and Dania’s little sisters—and if they can’t shift, they can go back to public school. If they can, we’ll keep homeschooling them.”
“You sound like it’s been decided already.” When he didn’t respond right away, her body tensed and she looked up at him. “It alreadyhasbeen decided, hasn’t it?”
He nodded. “I just got off the phone with Dewi. Pack edict straight from Peyton.”
Nami closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. “It’s notfair,” she whispered.
Her distraught tone ripped at his soul. “They’ll besafe. Isn’t that what’s most important?”
“They should be able to be normal little girls, playing and making friends! Not feeling like lepers being isolated from everyone else.”
“No active shooter drills,” he countered. “No metal detectors. No stupid, sanitized lessons passed down by school boards full of racists.”
But he sensed…something else. “Is there something bothering you that you haven’t told me about?”
She hoarsely laughed. “Only that I find out today that piece of shit took my baby sisters to the grocery store so he could shop and spend money on some damned baby momma.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah.” Nami told him about the conversation she’d had with Malyah and Lu’ana earlier that afternoon.
“Oh, crap,” Beck said.
“Yeah, exactly.” She slowly shook her head. “Thank god they didn’t get hurt. And no telling how many other—”
“No, babe, you’re not understanding. If there’s a wolf in Jarome’s family tree, we need to trace his lineage out and locate any other kids he might have floating around out there besides you four to see if they have shifter tendencies.”
Her brow furrowed. “What?”
“Yeah. We need to track down additional children. Because as you’re seeing now, if you put together two people with strong recessive genes—”
“Isn’t that a contradiction?”
“If you get two people with the right combo of genes, they might both be clueless humans but if everything else lines up,bam, shifter.”
“I thought you said it didn’t happen very often?”
“But itcanhappen andhashappened. Case in point, look at you and your siblings.” He stepped around her. “I need to call Dewi back and tell her about this.”
“The last thing I want to do is think about that man,” she said.
“But if they all have mate bonds like Reggie’s folks, and Reggie and his brothers—”
She grabbed his arm before he could step out of the shower. “Excuseme?”
“What?”
“Matebond? No one told me anything about Reggie and Lu’ana having a mate bond!”
Whoops.
Nami glared at him, her grip on his arm growing tighter.
He took a deep breath and decided the phone call to Dewi could wait. “Yeah, we learned a few things today at the cookout. You sure you want to talk about this now?”
Her glare darkened. “Tellme, Beck,” she practically growled.
