Page 16 of Legally Mated
He nodded, and then Holland came through the door and closed it behind him. “They’re happily hidden away in Cale’s apartment, and they’ve all been warned not to open the door to anyonebutus.”
Quin snorted with laughter. “Just tell her to back off. I can’t be around to play meat shield for you allthetime.”
“I’m trying to be a good mate,” Holland said back firmly, and with a bit of snap. His expression killed that line of discussion the way I killed flies in the office—quick and unrecoverable. He nodded to me and sat down beside his mate. “I think we should just throw out ideas first, then we can refine them later and figure out what ones we want to make apriority.”
“There’s probably ways we can combine goals to make bigger priorities serve smaller ones,” I said. “You want to start out working on the whiteboard?”
“Sure.” Holland got up to rummage in a drawer and came back with three markers—black, blue, and red. He stuck two of them in the pocket of his faded jean shirt, and stood by the white board. “So,startingwith?”
“Walls,” Quin and I said together, then I added, “That’s going to be a multi-step process, Ithink.”
“Sub-categories,” Holland muttered, and wrote Walls on the board in capital letters. “Tabs, paperwork.” He frowned and put the word Tabs underneath Walls, but put Paperwork at the head of its own column. "I guess, do we want the walls taken down completely? Like,knockeddown?"
"Should we be asking for compensation for the cost of them?" Quinasked.
"That'll be the class action lawsuit later," I told him, and leaned back in my chair so I could see the board better. "Curfew. Does that go under walls or byitself?"
Holland cocked his head to the side. "Probably walls." He wrote it in underneath. "Policing,security."
"An apology," Quin added, and Holland dutifully wroteitdown.
"I'd like to see precedent-setting decisions struck where humans used fear of attack as adefense."
Holland paused and cast me a troubled glance, but added it in under the heading "Equality", He stared at the words for another moment, then wrote in underneath it, in strong, hard capitals--rank caps in militaryservice.
"Holland..." Quin began, but Holland silenced him with a look and a stern, "No," and Quin settled back in hischair.
"It doesn't affect that manyofus."
"It affects enough." Even I caught the undercurrent ofIt affected youin Holland'swords.
The room went silent for a while, as we racked our brains to figure out what we needed to have pulled together before we met with thePresident.
"Money," Quin finally said. "Until we recover from this isolation, we need money, and the right to spend it as needed without running it past a bunch of people with only one form and nounderstanding."
I nodded. "So, gap funding to cover what? We need to be specific and have a plan at leaststarted."
"Education," Holland said as he wrote on theboard.
"Health. We have two floors here ready to make a hospital." Quin picked up one of the crayons and began doodling on the paper again, as if his body needed to be moving for the thoughts totakeform.
Holland frowned at him, though it didn't look to me like an angry frown. "What about an actual hospital? And we can put those floors to use as offices, or extra housing, or maybe for the elders who can't look after themselvesalonenow."
"We could do that. Would there beenoughroom?"
Holland chewed the corner of his lower lip. "Probably not. I wonder where the plans for thebuildingare?"
"You're thinking of anaddition?"
"Why not? We're right in the middle of the enclave here, the original part anyway. We could move Adelaide in upstairs for her clinic, add in a few more as we get people trained. We could use adentist."
I watched the two of them plan the enclave's future for a moment, then stood up and gently took the marker from Holland's hand to start writing it all down, setting them free to bounce ideas off each other. By the end of an hour, we'd covered the white board with reams of ideas, some big, most small, but since most of the aggressions we suffered were of the smaller, less noticeable type, it made sense at the end. I sat down at the desk and began organizing our ideas onto the pages of thelegalpad.
A knock on the door interrupted us. "Someone's hungry," came the voice of Quin's mother from the doorway. An expression of anxiety flicked over Holland's face, so quickly I questioned whether I'd really seen it, but then he was across the room like someone had lit his tail on fire to take the baby from hispackmother.
"We had a wonderful time, didn't we, sweetie?" she crooned, hovering over the fussing baby to the point where Holland bumped into a chair trying to get past her to somewhere hecouldsit.
“Mom, get out of the way,” Quin said, with the snap of an Alpha in his voice. He stood up and gave Holland his chair, then put himself in between her and his mate. I expected her to back down, but shedidn’t.
