“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 shedidmiss living there.
Notthat she’d ever admit that to her mother.
But shereallywanted 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 feltthiswas 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 athomein 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 whitePerry Masonreruns 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…shiftedas 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 smelledeverything.
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.
