Then again, back then Peyton was young and busy with college and had his head stuck up his ass with typical youthful arrogance. He honestly hadn’t paid much attention to how their father had finessed the finer points of not pissing off his mate while balancing his duties as father and as Pack Alpha.
He didn’t think he’d need to pay attention to that kind of stuff for a while. For years, even.
I wish I’d paid more attention. To a lot of things.
He felt torn about agreeing to a baby now. Obviously, he loved their daughter and would do anything for her. But had he realized they’d be the better part of a year on and still trying to find that goddamned corgi asshole—and now dealing with all the other known and potential issues—he would have asked Gillian to delay getting pregnant.
Again.
He definitely would put his foot down about having another baby right now, even though Gillian was already talking about when, not if, they’d have a second.
Then again, she might want to divorce me, mate or not, when I get home. If she doesn’t rip out my throat.
Or rip off my balls.
He hated feeling like their pack was vulnerable. He couldn’t send Dewi in his place because she was a new mom, for starters. Secondly, because he worried about Dewi having an even larger target painted on her by people whose identities they still didn’t know, because she was the only known female Prime Alpha.
To be honest, he didn’t want to send Duncan or Badger because if something ever happened to him, he knew the two of them, with Dewi and Trent and Gillian, could run the pack without dropping any balls. He didn’t want to send any of their other Primes for this task because of the sensitive nature of the issue. He didn’t feel comfortable reading them into the full complexities of the situation or the identities of the other pack leaders involved. Keeping that knowledge siloed for now was for everyone’s protection.
Peyton understood that, in this situation, he was—ironically—the expendable one.
Despite being Pack Alpha for twenty-six years, it sometimes felt like he didn’t know anything. Like he looked around in an attempt to find an adult and realized with growing horror that he was the adult.
And the only adultier adults he could turn to, like Badger, didn’t want the job.
He’d dealt with plenty of issues as Pack Alpha, sure. Serious issues. Dangerous people and situations that kept him up at night or awakened him in a cold sweat from nightmares for fear of fucking up and destroying the pack.
But nothing like this. Not existential threats of this nature and scope. He’d heard plenty of war stories about how Badger, their father, and others—and Duncan before him—had dealt with those kinds of problems.
In Peyton’s world, up until now he’d rarely met a problem he couldn’t throw money or an indebted government official at for a quick resolution.
Or throw Dewi and her Enforcers at it.
Trevor Clarke had seen a lot in his life, too, and had over a hundred years on Peyton. That Trevor and other pack officials around the world felt so shook about the problem meant it was absolutely dire.
Another reason Peyton needed his paws on the ground was the increasing number of Pack Alphas in Europe and elsewhere approaching him, wanting to merge with the Targhee Pack for protection, the way the Staffordshire Pack had. As word spread, it triggered a cascade effect.
Including packs of shifters from non-canine races. Which…
Before now, that was practically unheard of unless there’d been an intermarrying of members from the two packs. Canines of various species and wolves? That was fairly common.
But canines and non-canines, many of whom were prey species shifters, and even other predatory shifter species?
That rarely occurred in the past.
That growing level of responsibility—no shit—terrified the fuck out of him. Unlike the crazy asshole in Australia—and Faegan Lewis—Peyton never had dreams of world domination. Keeping their pack healthy and growing and financially secure? Absolutely.
But not…this.
So far, he’d heard from bears and lions who’d reached out seeking more than merely a peaceful working alliance with the Targhee wolves. And he’d been passed messages via intermediaries from several prey-race shifters wanting to join with them, too.
There were deeper levels to this Peyton didn’t want to reveal to Gillian for fear of her accidentally letting information spill to someone like Dewi, Badger, or Duncan.
He also didn’t want her to worry, meaning he couldn’t reveal any of that to her when he was apologizing for leaving right now.
Trevor Clarke would meet him in London. The next morning, the two of them, along with three of Trevor’s people, would fly to Trondheim, Norway. From there, they would take a train all the way north to Bodø to investigate leads they’d received.
While on the train, numerous representatives from other shifter packs and groups would meet with Peyton and Trevor. A little old-fashioned subterfuge to throw anyone off the scent who might be watching them, enabling them to talk in privacy. They could have flown to their final destination, but they wanted the extra time to see if anyone was following them, so they could take care of them instead of leading them directly to their destination. Upon arrival in Bodø, as long as no complications arose during the journey, they would quickly cover ground in the vast wilderness.
