“Oh.Nice!”
“And to be safe places to retreat to, if needed.”
“Ah.”He slowly nodded.“Fortified compounds.”
“Fuckin’ A.”She nodded toward the construction workers, who were almost finished for the day.“They have no idea how easy they have it.Humans, I mean.Not to say they don’t have problems,duh, because they do.But at least most of them don’t have to worry about ending up carved into pieces while still alive on some fucker’s exam table.”
“That’s true.”
She faced him.“I used to approach the world not just as a wolf, but as an attorney.Obviously, I knew what happened to Charles and Chelsea, but I never before fully… appreciated how dangerous the world is forus.”
She took a deep breath.“I knew it,intellectually, but it didn’tfeellike a real threat, you know?Not until the Seguras.And then… Peyton.”
“And now you know,” he quietly said.
“Boy, do I.I’ll likely be the gung-ho one for a while instead of Peyton.I want our people to besafe.I have some hints about the bigger picture, what’s going on around the world on a larger scale, and I agree with it.We need protection.Our babies need to grow up in a world that’s safer for them.”
“I agree.Just don’t let it eat away at you and turn you paranoid.”
She snorted.“I think anyone in our immediate orbit whoisn’tparanoid at this point is a fucking idiot and needs their goddamned head examined.”
He laughed and pointed at the baby, who smiled up at her.
She sighed.“Yep.Gonna need a bigger swear jar.”
ChapterThirty
Gillian
Beck droveher and the baby back to Dewi’s.He’d just left when Dewi appeared in the hallway.
“Hey.How’d it go?”Dewi asked.
“The boring stuff is underway, kiddo,” Gillian said.“By this time next year, your house will no longer be a multi-tasker, and you will completely have your privacy.”
But Dewi frowned.“I don’t want Badger and Duncan to move out.Frankly, I feel better with them here.”
“No worries,” Gillian said.“They aren’t, as far as I know.I meant no more needing to take meetings here, or having people show up here who don’t need to be inside your home.Your office will be only a five-minute drive away.We’ll put in a road with a gate between the properties so people don’t accidentally wander over here.”
“I appreciate that.”Dewi took Adair out of her carrier and held her.“I don’t mind letting people hold runs here, as long as I’m notified and sign off on it first, but it really will be nice to have that level of privacy.”
It was one of the things Gillian both loved and hated about their house in Idaho—that it was so close to other houses.Not right on top of them, but within easy shouting distance.
But it also meant Charles and Chelsea were found sooner.Not that the proximity offered them any safety.
“Oh, by the way, something arrived for you while you were gone,” Dewi said.
Gillian scowled.“What?I didn’t order anything.”
“It’s out in the pool house.”She bounced Adair on her hip.“Want me to watch her for you for a little while?Let you get a shower and rest?”
“Thank you, Aunt Dewi.She should be due for a bottle and a change soon.”She kissed Dewi on the cheek and headed out through the sliders leading to the pool lanai.
Then she hesitated at the door to the pool house.Something was…
Odd.
She reached for the doorknob when she realized she was scenting something.
