Asia and Gillian exchanged a glance, bursting into laughter. “Now we know Dewi’s rubbing off on you,” Gillian said. “And I mean that as a good thing.” She felt her phone buzz with a text, and her heart raced until she realized it was from Ken about work. “Darn. Hey, can you get by without me for a while? Ken needs to talk shop.”
Asia waved her out. “We got this, don’t worry. Seriously. I’ve already told the kids that they’ll be helping with cooking and KP duty tonight. We’ll take care of arranging everything.”
“Thanks.”
“Why don’t you leave the little one?” Tamsin suggested. “We can call you if she needs you.”
Gillian thought about it, something instinctive telling her to accept the offer. “I just nursed her an hour ago, so she should be okay for a while.”
“We’ve got plenty of diapers,” Asia assured her. “Take all the time you need. You’re just right next door, girl. Hell, grab yourself a nap, if you want.”
Asia was two years younger than her, and a gamma wolf, but Gillian had always silently envied the way her sister-in-law seemed to effortlessly run her home and life and everything else, while before Gillian had Adair, she sometimes felt like she was drowning just juggling being a wife with working.
“Thanks, hon.” With her phone in her hand, Gillian headed out the back door as low-key dread nagged her. She glanced down at her phone and thought about calling Peyton, but something told her if she did, it’d only go to voicemail.
When she walked into the kitchen, she started to call out for Ken, but pulled up short when she realized Badger, Duncan, and Trent stood in the dining room flanking him.
She looked from Badger to Duncan to Trent. “What’s going on?”
Then she really took a good look at Ken’s grim expression, and something inside her threatened to shatter. “What happened to Peyton?” she asked.
Badger held up his hands. “We need ye to stay calm, lass,” he gently said.
She instinctively stepped back, jerking her hands away as Badger stepped forward, reaching for her. “No!” she yelled. “Don’t you dare fucking Prime me. What the hell’s going on?”
Ken stepped around Badger, putting himself between her and the old shifter, and gently cupped her hands in his. “Peyton’s missing. Something happened in Bodø. It was a set-up, and he was ambushed and abducted.”
The breath whooshed from her, a virtual gut-punch. “Who?”
Ken shook his head. “We don’t know. We don’t know who’s behind it, or where he is.”
“When did they take him?”
“About six hours ago.” Ken related the information to her, but she couldn’t process it.
The last voicemail Peyton had left for her played in her head.
A call she’d sent to voicemail because she felt angry and petty, and even though she knew Peyton was right that the Pack Alpha had to handle this, it didn’t mean she had to like it.
A call she now desperately wished she’d answered. “What is Trevor doing to find him? What are we doing to find him?”
Badger stepped close again and she didn’t miss how Ken turned them slightly, keeping her focus on him and still putting himself between her and Badger. “We’re working with government contacts over there,” Ken said. “Trevor has INTERPOL and military sources trying to track the helicopter’s flight path.”
She felt shaky and suddenly found herself sitting in a chair Duncan had quickly whisked into place beneath her. “We…we have to go over there. We have to?—”
“No,” Ken said, shaking his head. “We’re not.”
“I’m his mate! I have to go look for him!”
“And look where, Gillian?”
She’d never heard Ken sound so…strong before. She briefly wondered if this was how he’d sounded when he took charge while he and Nami were lost in the woods.
He continued. “I’m only telling you because I wanted you to know before Dewi. I’ll need Duncan and Badger both to help me keep Dewi here. You just gave birth, and the baby makes you more vulnerable. Whoever took Peyton would likely pay big money to get their hands on Dewi. Neither of you can go over there. All we’d do if we went would be to get in Trevor’s way and potentially give whoever did this more targets, meaning diverting more resources to protecting you and Dewi. And the babies, because you can’t just leave them behind at their age.”
She blinked. “More targets?”
“They abducted a shifter. We don’t know if they targeted Peyton specifically or were aiming for whoever responded to the bait. What do you think they’d do if they captured the wife and baby of their captive? Or his little sister, who’s even more powerful, and her baby? What kind of leverage does that give them over Peyton, huh? We have no idea who they are, where they are, or what their goals are. We have a lot of rumors, conjecture, and circumstantial evidence, and three dead bodies, but we don’t have answers.”
