“Where is she?” Mak demanded, scanning for Bell.
“Hiding right behind them,” Takoda answered between clenched teeth.
“Stand aside, old bears,” that former-gang-leader-fuck Hawk growled.
“Like fuck we will,” I shot back.
“If you hadn’t been so quick to rush down here, we would have told you that Bell needs a little more time,” Zion said calmly.
Ravik just glared them all down.
“There're six of us and three of you,” Leif pointed out. “Move aside so our mates can see their mother.”
“Or we’ll make you,” Hawk growled.
“I’d like to see you try, Temu Wolverine,” I snarled back. “You think we’re scared of you?”
Before he could answer, the wail of a baby’s cry rose up from behind their wall.
“Mom? Mom?” two feminine voices called out. “Are you here?”
To our surprise, Bell’s voice popped up behind our wall. “Holly? Noelle? Is that you?”
Suddenly, Bell was slapping at our backs. “Move! Move, please!”
And her daughters must have done the same to their Wall of Maul.
Because when we moved to let Bell through, they were parting like the Red Sea to reveal two dark-skinned Black women, both taller and curvier than Bell. One was heavily pregnant, and the other had two light-brown babies wrapped to her chest in a double sling.
“Oh my god, Mom! Mom!” Noelle, the one with two babies, cried out, extending her arms.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” Holly, the pregnant one, said.
“Noelle! Holly! My babies!” Bell cried, running to them.
And the next thing the nine of us knew, our three females were hugging all over each other with tears streaming down their faces.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Bell babbled.
“Mom, no,we’reso sorry,” Noelle said, shaking her head.
“You must be so pissed at us for just leaving you down there with him,” Holly added. “I’ll never forgive myself for abandoning you when you needed me the most.”
Noelle choked on a sob. “I should never have believed you’d go back to him.”
“It’s not your fault!” Bell insisted, her voice going fierce. “It’s all Dennis’s. It’s all his. And onlyhis.”
Bell seemed to be realizing that herself as she told Holly and Noelle.
“And thanks to your first mauls sending Boone to check on me, I was saved. Thank you, my gorgeous, brilliant, wonderful daughters. Thank you!”
Truth be told, with Bell bursting into tears when I’d tried to take her to see them in Bear Mountain, I’d been wondering about her dynamic with her daughters. But when she pressed motherly kisses onto both their cheeks, putting aside her own stuff to comfort and absolve them, I knew that this wasn’t all mental—not just avoidance.
She’d truly needed the time to heal so she could be the mom she wanted to be to them.
Then, like any good mom, they got maybe five minutes of talking in before Bell turned all her attention to her grandbabies.
“They’re so beautiful!” Bell gushed, stroking the little girl’s brownish-red curls. “Can I…?”
