A Bleacke Mating (Bleacke Shifters)

Chapter 1

One

Gillian

God this sucks. Why am I doing this again?

Oh, yeah. To prove I can make it on my own. Because apparently I’m a stubborn idiot.

That oppressively hot and sticky Friday evening, Gillian Godwin currently knelt as she picked up broken pieces of the glass sundae cup the bratty human toddler had flung to the floor.

A full sundae cup she’d just brought the kid after he’d wasted five minutes of her time changing his mind between hot chocolate and strawberry toppings.

One of the other waitresses, a clueless human, hurried over with a dustpan and a wad of paper towels.

“Here, let me help, hon,” Lottie said as she knelt next to Gillian.

“Thanks,” Gillian muttered, trying not to shoot a murderous glare at the parents.

At least the father looked slightly mortified. “Can we help you clean that up?” he tentatively asked.

“No, it’s okay,” Gillian tightly said. “We’ve got it.”

“I WANT ANOTHER ONE!” the brat screeched.

“Stop!” the mother hissed at him. It must have been a rare event because the kid looked shocked and shut up. “You are not getting another one! You should not have thrown that one on the floor. In fact, when we get home, you’re going straight to bed. Now apologize!”

Even the father looked wide-eyed with shock.

Okay, maybe they don’t suck as much as I thought.

“Sorry,” the brat mumbled.

“I’m really sorry about this,” the woman said

“It’s okay.” Gillian forced a smile. “Been a long, hot day for everyone.”

It sure had. July in Spokane, and they’d hit a balmy 110 degrees that afternoon, and it was muggy as hell. Several of their customers had been snippy that day, likely cranky due to the unusual heat spell. This time of year they should be in the mid-80s, tops, without all this humidity.

“No, it’s not okay,” the mother said. “And please make sure it’s on our tab.”

Well, maybe this long-assed day was looking up after all.

When Gillian tabbed them out and collected the check presenter after they left, she was pleasantly shocked to find even though the parents had paid the bill with a credit card they left her a $50 tip.

Cash.

Well, that’s more like it.

She pocketed the money and returned to the back to check on another order.

When she passed Lottie, her friend gave her a knowing nod and she wondered if the other waitress had somehow persuaded the couple to pony up a guilt tip.

The older woman had worked at the restaurant for over twenty years and everyone in Spokane seemed to know her.

She was like a mom to the staff and long-time customers.

The rest of the evening petered out earlier than average, and after Gillian helped catch up with a few tasks she went to the owner, Phil.

“Mind if I cut out early? I’ve got a test Monday morning I want to study for.”

“Go ahead. We’ve got it. When’s graduation?”

“Hopefully in two semesters, as long as I don’t flub anything.”

“My nephew graduated from Gonzaga a couple of years ago. Said it was a good school.”

“It is.” Gillian really wanted to leave but the guy had been really nice about giving her flexible hours while she was in law school.

“Well, see you Monday? Evening shift?”

She nodded. “Monday at five.”

“Have a good one, kid.”

Gillian said her good-byes and headed out, taking a moment to savor the cold blast of the AC from the dash vent before driving the short distance home.

To her parents’ dismay she occupied a tiny third-floor efficiency apartment in an older building in one of the dingier sections of Spokane, but she paid her bills without help from her parents or the pack.

That was due in no small part to the academic scholarships she’d earned.

She’d purchased her second-hand car all on her own, too.

And she wouldn’t deny she was proud of those accomplishments.

Her parents had raised Gillian and her siblings in Seattle, and on Satan’s ass-crack days like this she did miss living there.

Not that she’d ever admit that to her mother.

But she really wanted to make it on her own despite knowing all she had to do was hold out a paw to her parents—or the pack—and they’d give her whatever she asked for.

When Gillian locked her front door behind her she paused only long enough to turn the thermostat down to 67 and then headed straight to the bathroom to take a long, cool shower to scrub the restaurant’s smells off her.

Why am I doing this to myself again? Oh, yeah. I’m an idiot.

Yes, there were pack-owned—or packmate-owned—restaurants in the area where she could work. Not need to worry about tips because they paid way more than a living wage to their packmates. Even other businesses she could be working at.

But in the two years since Charles and Chelsea Bleacke were brutally murdered in their own home on the pack compound, a murder that had gone unsolved and unpunished, it horrified her parents that Gillian wouldn’t let them move her home to Seattle and transfer to a law school there.

Gillian felt this was where she needed to be.

Even before tragedy struck their pack, the thought of going to college anywhere but in Spokane had just felt…

wrong, for some reason. Seattle was great, but she’d always felt more at home in this area.

And she managed to drive to the Targhee Pack compound just over the state line in Idaho at least once a month, where she could take long runs without fear of encountering clueless humans.

She’d met Charles and Chelsea Bleacke—their former Pack Alpha and his mate—several times as a kid when they’d visited Seattle to check on packmates.

But since attending college in Spokane she’d grown closer to them, had even attended group dinners with them a few times during visits to the pack compound.

Losing them burned a hole through her soul in ways she knew she didn’t have a monopoly on, because it wasn’t like she was their daughter. Still, it’d hurt. It filled her with regret she didn’t get to spend more time with them.

Gillian knew she wanted to be an attorney from a young age while watching old black and white Perry Mason reruns with her grandfather. Solve murders? Put bad guys away? Absolutely!

As she grew and matured and finally understood what it meant to be a wolf shifter in a world overwhelmingly populated by humans, Gillian’s views…shifted as well.

Being a lawyer wasn’t just about criminal law, but also about doing things to help protect the pack. Be useful to the pack.

When she’d graduated from high school a year early, with honors, and visited the pack compound the next weekend for a graduation party, she remembered how Charles and Chelsea made a point of telling her how proud of her they were, and she remembered her pleasant surprise that they even knew her name, much less her academic standing.

Not that her own parents weren’t supportive, because they were, but Gillian knew if she decided to look for a mate and settle down and pop out pups that her parents would be tickled by that.

Especially her mother.

When she’d told Charles and Chelsea she wanted to be an attorney so she could contribute to the pack, they’d approved of that plan and even offered to pay her tuition. But when she’d informed them she already had scholarships…

Well, they’d positively beamed.

And for the first time in her life, Gillian had honestly felt like an adult in her pack, as stupid as that sounded. When she told the Bleackes that, for now, she preferred to try to work to support herself, they made her promise to reach out to the pack if she ever needed help.

Hell, she’d likely live a lot of years and would one day welcome a pack pension. But she didn’t want to be like two of her older cousins on her father’s side, who were spoiled brats who never tried to work hard at anything because they knew there was a safety net to catch them.

She’d attended Charles and Chelsea’s funeral but she couldn’t bring herself to move any closer than hanging out on the fringes of the crowd, and she didn’t stay long or personally speak with Peyton and Trent, their sons.

There were too many others there who’d known the couple for far longer, were closer to them than Gillian had been, and she hadn’t wanted to monopolize the brothers’ time.

She’d met Trent several times, but he wasn’t their new Pack Alpha.

Peyton, the younger brother and only a year older than her, was a Prime Alpha.

Trent, only an Alpha and four years older than Gillian, had taken a knee to Peyton in front of the pack and ceded authority as Pack Alpha to him, becoming Peyton’s second.

Or so she heard, because she wasn’t there for that. Not many were, because it’d all happened so fast and the brothers were not only devastated by their parents’ murders, but also enraged and wanting justice—and they now shouldered the burden of running the Pack’s extensive business empire.

Plus the two men were now raising their baby sister, Dewi, also severely wounded during the same attack.

Gillian squirted a copious amount of body wash onto her scrubby, scoured her flesh with it, and then stood under the water and let it sluice away the scent of grease and spaghetti and hamburgers and everything else.

That was the downside of working at a restaurant—her lupine nose smelled everything.

Next weekend, after taking her last test of the week, she’d drive to the pack compound Saturday and go for a run.

Park at the Great Hall, shift, and just wear herself out.

She could shower there, drive back to Spokane, and collapse and relax all day Sunday.

She’d traded one of the waitresses the more lucrative Saturday evening shift for the Monday evening one because Gillian knew she needed the run.

Boy, do I.

She was curled up on her sofa going through a textbook and class notes when her cellphone rang.

Without even looking at it, she grabbed it and thumbed it into speaker mode. “I’m not murdered and carved up, Mom.”

“Do you have to answer the phone like that every time I call?”

“When you call this late on a Friday night when I’m studying, yes.” She finally looked up from her book. “Proof of life given. Can I go back to studying now?”

Her mother made that familiar and annoying tsking sound. “You don’t have to do this, you know. Law degrees from Seattle U or UofW are also respectable. You could be living at home and not working at that…place.”

This also annoyed Gillian. “Mom, will there ever come a day you stop trying to get me to suck off the pack’s teat?”

“Well what’s the pack for if not to help out? There’s nothing wrong with that! At least let your father put in a call to Trent Bleacke to—”

“No, Mom.” Gillian felt the urge to growl and somehow choked it back. Gillian was a beta but her mom was an omega. As Gillian grew up she realized it would be far too easy to walk all over her mother and hurt her feelings.

Yet another reason she didn’t want to live with them.

Self-awareness FTW, yo.

“No,” Gillian said again, gentler this time. “Look, I’m almost finished with school. Two more semesters. Then I take the bar and I’ll go talk to him about working for the pack. But I want to be hired on my merits, not have things handed to me because I’m part of the Targhee Pack.”

Her mother sniffled. “The latest newsletter arrived today. Still no leads.”

Ah. Gillian didn’t need to be a Prime Alpha to read her mom’s thoughts over the phone all the way from the other end of the damned state to know the true reason she’d called.

“Mom, whoever killed them is long gone. You know that. The likelihood of me ever crossing paths with them is slim to none.”

“I would feel a lot better if you’d let us at least chip in to get you an apartment in a gated complex.”

Gillian closed her eyes, rubbing her forehead.

“Mom, I’m not moving. I like where I am.

I’m close to school and to work. My neighbors are quiet.

It’s small, so I don’t have a lot of chores, meaning I can focus on my studies.

The A/C system is new, meaning I’m not sweating my boobs off right now.

When the weather’s crappy in winter, I can walk to work and school without worrying about getting in a wreck. ”

“The weather rarely gets like that over here in winter, you know. I saw the weather for Spokane today, and—”

“Mother!” Gillian took another deep breath. “Why do you insist on dragging me into this conversation when it’s going to end the same every damned time?”

“Because I love you.” She sniffled again. “Excuse me if I worry about you.”

“Oh, frak, please don’t pull out the guilt. I already told you when I go to work for the pack I will live in the pack compound.”

Although that wasn’t any guarantee of safety since Charles and Chelsea were murdered in their own home. Peyton and Trent Bleacke had beefed up security since then and the pack compound was now likely safer than Ft. Knox.

Still, the shadow remained, and likely would until the killer was apprehended and faced pack justice.

“That doesn’t help me if you get murdered before then.”

“I love you, Mom. I’m ending this call so I can study. Love to Dad and everyone. Hanging up now.”

“Love you, t—”

Gillian thumbed end and finally let loose with a frustrated groan.

She got it. Part of it was parental worry, but a goodly chunk of it was that her mom was an omega and while it wasn’t a natural default for all omegas…

Yeah. Her mom was a stereotypical omega who would worry about any- and everything.

Thank the Goddess I’m a beta.