“The lad needs it.”Badger sat at the table and sipped his coffee.“Ye like that ham more than me now, ye wee fuzzball?”
“Sowwy, Badda.”Dewi leaned in to give him a ham-flavored kiss on his grizzled cheek.“Mo-nin.”
He chuckled.“Good mornin’ yerself.”
Thiswas Peyton’s reality—the pack, and her.Dewi.
And his friend, and his brother.
Thosehadto be his priorities.And despite what he now suspected, he couldn’t get ahead of himself.
“Friday, huh?”Peyton muttered to Badger.
He chuckled into his coffee mug.“Aye.Ye figured it out,hmm?”
“You could say that.”
“Besides, it’ll give ye a chance to clean up that shipwreck ye been callin’ a house.”He lifted his good eyebrow at Peyton.“Because if I were ye, I wouldn’t wantanyoneto see the way ye been livin’.Talk about a barbarian.”
“It’s notthatbad.”
Actually, it was.He was never a neat freak but at least he’d kept up with everything.
Before.
He’d had more pressing matters than housekeeping to deal with over the past two years.
“Lad, call Lucille Parker.Today.Give her, oh, at least two hunnert, an’ let her have a go at it.She’ll have it sparklin’ by tomorrow an’ ye won’t have to lift a paw except to keep up wi’ it.I’ll even call her fer ye.”
The Alpha wolf woman and her human husband lived in the pack compound.She was over a hundred, if Peyton remembered correctly.When she aged out of her previous job the couple moved back to the compound.Now she was semi-retired but helped out at the pack school, babysitting, giving an extra hand to new parents, things like that to feel useful and do her part.
“Fine,” Peyton said.“Tell her four hundred if she doesn’t give me a hard time and does the laundry, too.”
Badger chuckled.“I’ll tell her to come pick up the key from the office when she can do it.”
Once Dewi finished her ham and cereal, and Peyton cleaned her up and dressed her in tiny jeans and boots and a shirt, brushed her teeth and her hair and redid her pigtails, the three of them headed to the office in Peyton’s truck with three of the Enforcers trailing along in their vehicles.One would stay behind at the house.
They always had one stay behind at the house now, just in case.
Always.
With Dewi happily coloring in the small play area in the corner of Peyton’s office, he tried to focus on work and…
Couldn’t.
Now that he had a chance to sit down, his mind wanted to wander.
But he also knew there was no way he could compel Badger to reveal the woman’s identity before he said he would.Peyton was a strong Prime Alpha in his own right, but not nearly as strong as Badger.
And Badger was, what, ten times older than him?
There was no contest.
Peyton also tried not to think in terms of “when” but “maybe.”Because there wasn’t a guarantee the woman would evenwantto be his.
And one of the rules his father had heavily impressed on him was that you didn’t force someone.Ever.
Even if it meant forcing yourself to walk away from them.
