Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Gillian
Now off the phone, she lay alone in bed and stared up at the ceiling, swearing at her mate.
Goddammit, Peyton.
In retrospect, maybe getting pregnant again right now wasn’t the wisest decision.
She laid her hand on her belly and closed her eyes. Goddess, you know I’m not much into prayer, but please let this little one grow up with her daddy with us, safe and sound.
She would wait to tell her mother she was pregnant again. The last thing she wanted was her mother’s clinging love suffocating her. Especially right now.
Also, kind of hard for her to suddenly show up pregnant with most of the pack still thinking Peyton was missing.
She still felt guilty that Peyton had given her mom a gentle “nudge” with his Prime during Gillian’s first pregnancy for her to back off a little. Yes, Gillian had asked him to do it, but still.
Right now, she couldn’t deal with her mother, help run the pack, and raise her daughters. Not without Peyton at her side. The emotional bandwidth just was not there.
And she didn’t know what the next few months would bring. She might be helping Dewi run the pack, and that meant her mother smothering her would not emotionally end well for anyone.
Mate of mine, I hope you know what you’re doing.
She still simmered with anger that she’d be heading to Florida with everyone. Peyton tried to convince her to look at it as a vacation, except she knew damned well it was anything but.
He wanted her and the baby safely out of the way for whatever they ended up doing to Ray Dorland.
Gillian had strongly lobbied against instigating a full emergency evacuation if Dorland actually made it into the compound. It wouldn’t be necessary if Primes had already taken control of him and his men. But Peyton, Trent, and Trevor were still formulating a plan.
Not that they knew if they could even get Ray Dorland to board a plane and come to the US, much less to their territory.
She found it difficult to pull her thoughts into a semblance of rational cohesion the way she usually could. Obviously, part of it was new-mommy brain, now coupled with pregnancy brain, all on top of the excessive stress of the past several weeks.
How’d we go from the happiest day of our lives to… this?
She thought it unlikely that they’d find anyone alive at the lab. Not anyone captured years ago, at least. There’s no way they’d keep shifters alive that long.
Would they?
On the other hand, if they found shifters alive there…
She shivered, glad that fate had not befallen Peyton or Jake. She finally sat up and grabbed her phone to start a packing list in her notes app. Not just for her, but for the baby, too. And she’d need her work laptop, as well as make sure she had backup files of the projects she was working on.
In no daydreams did she ever envision the first few weeks of motherhood looking anything like this bullshit.
And if he does this to me for the second one, he’d better hope he gets abducted again and doesn’t come back, because I’ll kill him.
Peyton
“Is she upset?” Trevor asked.
Peyton grumbled. “Yeah. Understandably. I’m not exactly happy myself.” He set his phone on the table. “But like hell do I want Gillian in Idaho when we get Ray Dorland there. If we get him there.”
“Understandable.”
“Why is that fucker the way he is, anyway?” Peyton asked. “Do we know?”
Trevor scowled. “Who, Ray Dorland?”
“Yeah. Any insight?”
Trevor sat back in his chair. “Well, late in his life, Father once told me a story I believe explains why Ray Dorland hates me so much,” Trevor said. “Not sure why he’s such a cunt to everyone else, though.”
“Well, share it with the class,” Peyton snarked.
“Ray Dorland’s grandfather, Paul, was an Alpha. Not a Prime, though. He wasn’t in the Staffordshire Pack, but he wanted to mate with my Aunt Margarite, Father’s younger sister. Fortunately, at the time when their paths crossed, she was with several others, and they ran the man off.”
“Your father was Reginald?” Peyton asked.
“Yes.”
“I take it she didn’t feel the same way about Paul?”
“Hardly. Paul wasn’t taking no for an answer, either. Trying to negotiate with their Pack Alpha would’ve been impossible because he was out of the country at the time.
“Father’s father, Lance Clarke—who led the Staffordshire Pack—ordered Father to take care of the problem by any means required.
He wanted it done quietly, without anyone in either pack knowing, because he didn’t want to start a war.
Lance Clarke hated Paul Dorland’s father for some reason that’s been lost to time, so there were already rocky shoals to navigate.
Father didn’t want to take a life if he didn’t have to.
He even tried reasoning with the man, but Paul Dorland would have none of it. ”
“Did he feel a mate bond for her?” Peyton asked.
“He claimed he did, yet he didn’t take her immediately when he crossed paths with her, despite her being with others.
They literally told him to fuck off, and off he fucked.
I can’t imagine just walking away had he really felt a true bond.
Back then, that was what usually happened in those cases—people were claimed.
But my aunt wanted nothing to do with him.
Therein lay the problem. Paul Dorland warned my father he’d take her whenever he wanted, and that he’d kill anyone who tried to stop him.
So Father resorted to a less-than-ethical but extremely effective means to eliminate the problem. ”
“Don’t leave me hanging. What happened?”
“In the middle of the night, Father moved ten pigs into one of Paul Dorland’s pens. In the morning, Grandfather’s men alerted him to the missing pigs. One of their overnight guests happened to be a clueless human constable, and when they followed the tracks…” Trevor shrugged.
“They led to Paul Dorland’s pens,” Peyton said.
“Exactly. And their ears were distinctly notched, so it was easy to tell whose pigs they were. It wasn’t an offense worthy of the death penalty, but Father convinced Grandfather to ask that Paul be shipped to a penal colony in Australia rather than imprisoned.
Father rationalized that, as a shifter, the man could easily escape and seek revenge.
But shipped to Australia? Well, in 1801, that wasn’t exactly a weekend jaunt, even for a shifter.
“Father said Grandfather was very cross Father didn’t kill the man outright, but he agreed to the punishment. Paul Dorland had been known to steal livestock in the past and had previously been jailed, so it wasn’t out-of-character behavior for the man.”
“I guess that would put a chip on someone’s shoulder,” Peyton said. “Being framed for a crime he didn’t commit despite his past track record. But I thought you told me you had an amicable working relationship with Ray Dorland’s father.”
“I did. Samuel Dorland. Pleasant man. His wife, Hazel Finnian, was a lovely woman. She was a distant cousin of mine, as a matter of fact. Paul Dorland didn’t give up control of his pack willingly.
As far as we know, he was the first non-native shifter there.
When other shifters arrived, he let them know he was in charge.
He was only 20 when he was shipped out, and nearly 100 when he finally claimed a female shifter mate, the daughter of one of the other shifter men who’d ended up there.
Four years later, they had Ray’s father, Samuel, who was a Prime Alpha. ”
“So your dad PG-rated Sweeney Todded Paul Dorland?” Peyton asked.
“I mean, okay, I get why that would upset the man, but Ray is the third generation out. Why does he have a perennial bug up his ass? I would understand it if his father were the one who was pissed off. But Ray’s an asshole to everyone. ”
“Paul Dorland didn’t relinquish his position as Pack Alpha willingly.
When Samuel turned eighteen, he challenged his father to be Pack Alpha.
Publicly. Asked him to gracefully step aside as the elder statesman and let the new generation take over.
Or get his throat ripped out. That was a PR disaster for Paul, because very few people liked him.
Knowing all of that, he took a knee to save his hide.
Due to his age and his son being a Prime Alpha, Samuel could have easily kicked his arse. So life went on.
“Ray was born first, but he wasn’t a Prime. From what I’ve been told, Paul Dorland clung to young Ray from when he was born and groomed him as if he were the anointed one to take over the pack from Samuel.”
“The power behind the throne?” Peyton asked.
“I suppose you could call it that. But then Ray’s brother Harvey was born five years later. A Prime Alpha. Samuel made it widely known he was grooming Harvey to become the next Pack Alpha.”
“Uh-oh,” Peyton said. “I see where this is going.”
“When Harvey was eighteen, he died under mysterious circumstances,” Trevor continued. “But both Ray and Paul had solid alibis, and it was declared an accident.”
“Why didn’t people suspect Ray?”
“Supposedly, he claimed he was fine with Harvey taking over as Pack Alpha. Claimed he didn’t want it, anyway. And everyone believed him.”
“And then oops, Ray’s parents were killed, and suddenly Ray’s stepping up as Pack Alpha,” Peyton said.
“Exactly,” Trevor said. “Five years after Harvey died.”
“Throw in a red wedding, and you have a cable channel mini-series,” Ken snarked.
Trevor smiled. “Quite.”
“Well, that settles it. I definitely want Gillian in Florida for the duration, even though she’ll chew me a new one when she sees me again.”
Trevor’s smile faded. “If you get to see her again,” he said.
Peyton blew out a long breath. “Yeah, there is that. I can’t not lead the lab raid. I hate like hell we have to drag Jake back over here after what he endured, but we need his linguistic skills. We have so few people who speak fluent Russian.”
They needed someone as fluent in Russian as Jake to work with the Primes as they carefully set up their dominoes to neutralize the security personnel and lab staff ahead of the raid.
“Do you think Tamsin and Aisling will have a chance to be together before the raid?” Trevor asked.
“Maybe, if I can get them in the same house for at least a few days.” Peyton ran a hand through his hair. “As much as we really need Aisling there, I’d be willing to let her off.”
Trevor grimly smiled. “I would agree with you, but I suspect if you offer her that option she will refuse. She already feels too strongly about Faegan escaping us.”
“We are a pack full of self-sacrificing doofuses, you realize that, right?” Peyton snarked. “You sure you want to keep the Staffordshire Pack hitched to the Targhee Pack’s wagon?”
Trevor laughed, and it was the first genuine laugh Peyton had heard the man make.
“Of all the decisions I’ve ever questioned in my life, not only is that one not on the list, it was never in my thoughts.
” His smile faded. “You are correct that the future is rapidly changing, and if we do not band together, they will kill us off. The only way to do that is together.”
“Let’s just hope we all survive the lab raid to bring those plans to fruition,” Peyton said.