Page 42 of Mating the Omega
“No. He’s in the other room, going over the notes from today. Laine, however,isgone looking for food.”
“Oh, good.” Darn, actually. I’d been wondering if I could pull a ‘pregnancy cravings’ on him, despite the fact that my real ones had died off about six weeks ago. But I wanted a milkshake, a strawberry one.
“He said he’d be back around six, if you want to have a nap.”
“A nap sounds perfect.” I crawled up to cram one pillow under my head, and another between my knees. “Come nap with me? He hesitated, and I could see he had other things he wanted to do, so I reached out and patted his chin. “No, it’s okay. You need to talk to Garrick and Abel, right?”
Mac took my hand and kissed the knuckles. “I do, but it doesn’t have to be done right now. Roll over so I can scoot up behind you.”
My favorite position to sleep in, at least since Little Mac had made sprawling out on top of Big Mac impossible. I rolled over, fixed my pillows properly so my joints didn’t ache, and sighed as Mac’s solid warmth settled against my back.
“Good?” he murmured.
“Mm-hmm,” I said back, my eyes already closing. His arm went around my waist, and his hand spread out over my belly. I put my hand over his, and then I was gone.
***
I’m not really sure how long I slept, but when I woke, I was alone in the bed and there were voices in the next room. I got up as quietly as I could, and stepped carefully over to the door to eavesdrop.
Laine’s voice was the first one I heard clearly. “I still think this is a bad idea.”
“It’s the only option if they win.” Mac, frustrated about whatever they were talking about.
“They won’t win. And even if they do, I can appeal the case.”
“And in the meantime, how long is he stuck in Montana? How many pups will they force on him? By the time we get him back by legal means, he’ll be broken.” That was Garrick, which surprised me. Then he said something that scared me even more. “I’ve been doing research, and as much as I can piece together from records and the little bit of written history we have, the shifters we call omegas now aren’t really omegas. They’re a step away, which is why they’re more fertile other shifters, and we get possessive about them. But if Jason is a real omega, a True Omega, then we can’t let Orvin have him.”
“Why not?” Laine asked.
There was a pause, and I knew immediately that it was one of those things you didn’t let the humans know. Finally, Garrick said, “He’d break him. True Omegas bond to you and their whole world revolves around you. What would Orvin do with that?”
Clothes rustled, and then Laine said, “The game’s not over yet. We still have tomorrow. Garrick, if you can think of any other cultural things we can use to combat theirs, it would be helpful. The mating thing was good, but it’s hard to combat contracts and paperwork with tradition. Right now, we’re on a knife’s edge, and we need something to tip it over to our side.”
“We’ll talk about it tonight and see what we can come up with.”
Then I heard a door closing, and I figured Laine must have gone home for the night. I was just about to step through the door and see what was going on, when Garrick said, “I think you were right to pack a bug-out bag, Mac. I don’t feel good about this, no matter what Laine says. And Orvin…you know what he’s like. Imagine if he had Jason’s power behind him.”
I stepped out into the room. “What power?”
The whole lot of them looked up at me guiltily. Mac was the first one to come to his senses. He got up from his chair and came over to me, holding out his hands to take mine. “Did you sleep well?”
“I’m fine. What are you talking about?” I let him lead me over to a chair, hastily vacated by Duke. “Is the case going that badly?”
“We can’t tell,” Abel said. “There was some good stuff and some bad stuff. I think Orvin is sticking his nose farther into this case than his lawyer likes, and it means that he’s assuming the judge will understand shifter stuff better than he does, which plays in our favor.”
“And, it doesn’t matter if the alpha was scouting for mates for you,” Garrick said. “Tradition, at least in Mercy Hills, is that the parents are responsible for approving a mate for an omega, and only if they pass that responsibility on to the Alpha can he make any decision about it. Your father says he doesn’t remember it being much different.”
“Where’s Dad?” I looked around without spotting him.
“He’s on the couch. That mess of blankets is actually him. He’s finding this hard,” Mac said in a low voice.
I snorted. “Imagine.” I shook my head. “What were you talking about before Laine left? The only option?”
Mac and Abel exchanged glances, then Mac walked over to the bathroom and picked up a grocery store bag. “This,” he said, putting it down in front of me. “Laine picked it up for us.”
I heard a thunk and the scraping of cardboard. When I opened the bag, I found boxes of hair color—one black, one deep brown. “What’s this for?” I turned my eyes toward Mac, already certain of what he had prepared.
“We run. We head south, across the border, like I said before. We’ll ask for a couple of days to pack up your things, let you have the baby—that’s reasonable, since it’s legally mine and I’ll want to keep it. Then, as soon as we can, we go over the wall like you did and disappear. I’ve got fake documents ready, we just need pictures.” He put his hand on my cheek. “It may not happen. This is a last resort, if everything else doesn’t work.” He ran his thumb over my lips and I could see the pain in his eyes. “I promise, we’ll try everything else first.”
