ChapterSeven
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,andraise her daughters.Not without Peyton at her side.The emotional bandwidth just wasnotthere.
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.Ifwe get him there.”
“Understandable.”
“Why is that fucker the way he is, anyway?”Peyton asked.“Do we know?”
Trevor scowled.“Who, Ray Dorland?”
