Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gillian
Gillian shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand while gently bouncing the baby on her hip. She resented Peyton keeping her and the baby here without giving her more details. The raid was over.
Yes, she was enjoying spending time with Dewi and Badger, and everyone. And also yes, staying out in the pool house meant more privacy than staying in the main house, but that wasn’t the point.
At least the lab raid had gone far better than anyone expected. She and Trent were working in conjunction with Trevor’s people to rapidly build out new identities for all the rescued victims.
But she wanted Peyton home. Dewi and Ken had returned over a week ago with everyone else. It’d been almost two weeks since the lab raid, and she wanted her goddamned husband back.
He insisted he would return soon with a surprise. Peyton had insisted this was a good surprise, but she would withhold judgment until it was revealed.
The last time she was “surprised” by Peyton, she thought he was dead.
“Those three,” she called out to the construction crew who were tagging trees to save on the new property.
They gave her a thumbs-up and began tying neon pink marking ribbons around the trunks.
“You don’t seem happy,” Beck snarked.
“I’m not,” she growled. “Goddamned Peyton and his Prime fucking edicts. And his fucking ‘surprises’.”
“Little pitchers,” he teased, tipping his head toward the baby, who looked up at Gillian.
“Great,” she snarked. “At this rate, my swear jar will fill up faster than Dewi’s.”
He snickered. “Not sure that’s possible, but I also don’t think that should be a ‘challenge accepted’ kind of sitch.
” Beck held a large tablet and was pinching and zooming through aerial photos of the section of the property where they currently stood.
“This should be more than enough area,” he said.
“For the community center, school, clinic, and offices. And there’s plenty of land to spare for commercial growth, if we wanted to add a convenience store like Webb’s in Idaho. ”
“I agree, but I want to make sure we don’t create future problems for ourselves logistically.
We need to be able to build roads through here, if necessary, for construction equipment to access the site without taking down more trees than necessary.
And considering how many people were rescued, I have a feeling we’ll be building some of them homes here.
Many of them don’t have family, and I suspect they’ll want to live either here or in Idaho, surrounded by wolves and protected. ”
“Ah. True.”
“Did Nami select her house plan yet?”
“Yep. She’s going through and picking out the customizations she wants now.
” They’d already laid out the various plots and assigned them: Beck and Nami, Malyah and Joaquin, Carl and Mateo, Martin, and one that they’d quietly set aside for Aisling and Tamsin in hopes they’d be staying, although it was increasingly looking like they might.
Other plots had been laid out in reserve for Enforcers to choose from, if they wanted to move there.
“I mean, it’s all on the pack’s dime anyway,” Gillian said with a smirk. “You’re family. Like hell will we let you pay for that yourself. I mean, unless you want gold bidets or something.”
Beck grimaced. “Hell, no. As it is, I had to insist she could pick granite counters if she wanted, because she kept trying to go for Formica ones to save money.”
Gillian laughed. “God, I love her. Is she still pushing for Da’von and Brianna to stay down here?”
Beck rolled his eyes. “More like I’ll have to peel her off them when they’re ready to move. She’s never lived more than an hour—if traffic’s bad—from any of them.”
“Maybe you should think about a house in Idaho?”
“No,” he said. “I’m fine with staying in one of the cabins with y’all when we visit, as long as you all don’t mind us dropping in. If we have a whole-ass house there, she will want to move.”
“I’m looking forward to coming down here and having a small place of our own to stay instead of being right on top of everyone else,” she said. “Now that we all have growing families, I think we need the privacy.”
“You know Dewil will try to convince y’all to move here, right?”
“I know.” She looked up at Beck. “What about your parents?” she asked.
“They want a small guest cabin out in back of our house, not a full mother-in-law apartment attached to it. Like the large cabins at your place. My sisters can use it, too.”
“I’m thinking each large house for our core group, and the Enforcers, will get at least one cabin or tiny home out back for relatives.”
“Or for getting away from each other so we don’t get on each other’s nerves?” he joked.
Gillian laughed. “There is that. But also, as the kids get older, they may want to move into them instead of moving ‘away’ from the property. Gives them flexibility, too.”
“Hadn’t thought about it like that,” he admitted. He looked up at the ongoing construction. “Things are about to change here in a big way. Funny, I always thought it’d be Idaho growing fast, not here. Never imagined anything like this here.”
“Do you miss Idaho?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I mean, sometimes. Especially when it’s hot-as-balls in the summer. But not in the winter. And it’s a different kind of peaceful here. Plus now, with the way my family’s grown so fast, it feels like home in a way it didn’t used to.”
“Why, Dawson Beckett, I do believe you’ve put down roots,” she teased.
“Crazy, right?” He refocused on the tablet and swiped into something else. “Are you sure about these specs for the community center?”
“Yep. Peyton drew them up himself. He wants it big enough that everyone living here can evac into it in case of a Cat 5 hurricane, and bring in other relatives, if needed, with plenty of room to spare.”
“This is more like a bunker, though.”
“He’s thinking about the Seguras finding us in Idaho,” she said.
“He’s still kicking himself in the ass that he couldn’t just order everyone to the community center there to hide and be safe.
We never thought it’d be necessary. He said once he’s back, he’ll get a construction crew started on hardening and expanding the building. ”
“Okay. It’s the pack’s money.”
“Yep!” She bumped him with her hip. “Enjoy the largesse, Beck. In less than a year, nearly everyone in this area will be living here on this property instead of being spread out all over Tampa. I mean, our core group and the Enforcers. Some of the packmates we offered the opportunity to politely declined due to friends, work, and their kids’ schools.
So far, only four pack families have opted to move here.
And you and Dewi can finally have a clear-cut separation between your work and personal lives, with offices. ”
“Yeah, that will be nice,” he said. “Hey, I have a question, and either give me an honest answer or a ‘Pack Alpha business,’ but don’t lie to me about this.”
She studied him. “Oookay?”
“Peyton isn’t planning to retire soon, is he?”
She scoffed. “No. Why?”
“I just want to make sure all this doesn’t get dropped on Dewi’s head any sooner than necessary.”
“Ah.” She hip-bumped him again. “No, my husband has no plans to retire. He has promised to try for a more balanced work-home life, however. Something we all need to learn. Even me. Dewi won’t be able to do that unless she sees all of us doing it.”
He nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”
“You’re worried about her?” Gillian asked.
He shrugged. “I’m always worried about her.” This smile looked forced. “Have ever since she was a baby, right? Kinda the gig. It just feels like she’s finally getting the hang of being a ‘normal’ person. As normal as any of us can be, that is. And I really don’t want her to lose that progress.”
“I know.” She stared into the distance, where the piney woods closed off views of the outside world. They were far enough from the interstate that, on a day like today, with just a light breeze, they couldn’t even hear it.
“Should I talk to Nami?” she asked.
“About what?”
“I get the feeling she’s still a little upset about you guys not being read in on the situation with Peyton from the start.”
“She gets it now. I’d let it go.”
Gillian nodded. She closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath.
The pines here didn’t smell like the woods around the compound in Idaho.
They were barely aromatic, but she could smell hints of the salty air from the western breeze over the Gulf, even though they were more than twenty-five miles east of the coast here.
She remembered that day so many years ago when she helped purchase the big house for Dewi, standing in these woods and inhaling, wondering if Dewi would be okay growing up here in these strange pines.
While simultaneously hating that she couldn’t be the one raising her.
“What’s the deal with that new property?” he asked.
She’d pettily gone ahead during Peyton’s frequent trips overseas—before his abduction—and put in an above-market bid on yet another property abutting this large parcel they now owned.
She paid more than he would’ve approved—she was fluent in petty—but it wasn’t like it would even come close to breaking the pack.
The land was more cleared, with clusters of cypress wetlands dotting the cattle pastures that the developer had hoped to turn into a housing development.
Okay, so, yes, she’d been on the phone with the guy while Elliot Gelbert, one of their newer Prime Alpha Enforcers, stood in the guy’s office with his hand on the man’s shoulder, and he accepted far less than he would’ve made had he split it up into individual parcels.
But they snagged it before he took it to the zoning board, who would’ve accepted the proposal.
She also did it without telling Dewi first, but that was one of the perks of being the Pack Alpha’s mate. And her older sister-in-law.
Gillian didn’t give a shit what the developer’s business partners might have thought about the deal, but it was legal and closed rapidly, the full cash amount transferred once the title search was completed.
She still hadn’t told Peyton about it. She also made an offer to the guy who pastured his cattle there.
They’d buy them from him and give him a contract to care for them.
Not to ship them to market, though. Just to keep them on the land in perpetuity, and only humanely euthanize them due to natural causes, or injuries that couldn’t be treated, and they were suffering.
That they weren’t for food would mean an argument with Peyton, but again…petty. Hell, she’d give every damned last one of them names, send pictures to Asia’s kids, and then he’d be stuck.
The cattleman would also maintain the fences, feeders, and waterers, and would work with them to set up expense accounts with the appropriate vendors.
It was the perfect cover for having all that land without people asking too many questions.
That deal had already gone through, too.
Gillian smiled. “It’s ours. I had Elliot ‘chat’ with the guy managing the cattle. He knows not to ask questions and to report any issues immediately.
Beck chuckled, shaking his head. “That’s one way to do it, I suppose. The boss know yet?”
“Which boss?”
“Peyton.”
Her smile widened to a grin. “A girl needs to have a few surprises for her mate, right?”
“So why, exactly, cattle? We eating them?”
“Naw. They’re pets and a property tax dodge.
Not to mention a buffer zone against development in the area.
I don’t know if I can buy the next property over or not.
I’ve hired a real estate attorney—a clueless human—and have Elliot working with him about negotiating for it.
But the developer had already started the rezoning process with the county.
So I’m not sure what hurdles we might need to jump to grab it. ”
“If we get it, how much land does that give us?”
“Over three thousand acres.”
He let out a low whistle. “That’s nice. That’ll house a lot of packmates.”
“Exactly. I know we just resettled a bunch of people, but in some areas of the country we have clusters of families who need to relocate soon due to aging out. This is a great solution. Eventually, I’d like to have a compound in the middle of the country so people can cycle through them as needed.”
“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 for us.”
She took a deep breath. “I knew it, intellectually, but it didn’t feel like 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 be safe. 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 who isn’t paranoid 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.”