Page 23 of Legally Mated
"That our family would guard your past and, when it was safe, to return it to you. When the signs were right." He reached inside his collar and pulled out a long chain of heavy square links, an ornate key dangling from the end of it. "I believe the time has come, or begun." He pulled the chain off over his head and passed it, not to Quin, who had held his hand out to receive it in automatic assumption, but to Holland, slack-jawed and frozen instartlement.
"What are you doing?" I blurted. "Quin'sAlpha."
Quin raised a finger to silence me, and looked at the human. "I'm sure he has areason."
Mutch nodded slowly, and continued to hold the key out to Holland. "I can only read these books, the journals kept by the men entrusted with the care of all the trunks--these are the only ones written in English. But he made it clear that when the day arrived, the trunks were to be turned over to the head of the omega council and no other. The omegas were the record-keepers, the law bringers, the guardians of balance. This trunk holds all the books which were written in English, including the original Jesse's journal, and the journals of every Jesse that followed, except mine. The books in the other trunks are the records and histories of Pack Dolnakol from before the Enclosure. Passed down from Cosimo Dolnakol to my ancestor, in safekeeping for this moment. They aren't English though, so I don't know if you'll be able to read them." He stared at Holland until Holland slowly extended a shaking hand toward him, and then Mutch let the key fall gently into the center of Holland’s palm, the chain pooling on top of it like sunshine. "My family has been watching for more than a century for the right moment, and I believe thisisit."
"Why us?" Holland asked, his hand still outstretched, the dangling loops of chain shimmering in thelamplight.
"Why you in particular, or why MercyHills?"
Holland raised his eyes to Mutch's, and they stared at each other for the briefest of moments. His fingers closed suddenly around thekey. "Both."
Mutch nodded and glanced between myself and Quin. "Because I see you treating your omegas the way the original Jesse's pack treated them, or trying to. You give them status, let them take power if they want it. You accept their judgment. You accept their power and their rightful place. You have one now who plans to go into health care, which was always the purview of the omega in the pack. Your own mate leaves you to go out into the world and use his skills and his appearance to bring home money for the pack. I’ve heard other stories too, and I see the balance it gives you, even more so now that I'm here in the same room with you." He turned back to Holland. "Omega Mercy Hills, this trunk is only thebeginning."
"How many more are there?" Holland's voice held the slightest of quavers, a hint of the overwhelming emotion he must have been feeling. I could only guess at it, but given the roaring tumult inside me, he must have been nearoverwhelmed.
"Three more. Some of the books look like ledgers--I've only seen them the once, when they were given into my keeping, but those stuck out in my memory. The rest, I couldn't say, and neither could their guardians before me. You see, in each generation there's been a Jesse to look after the trunks and watch for the moment to come, to be ready to turn them over to their rightful owners. And to discuss how the Mutches can help you in your quest for equality. Because a part of the bequest was also to help you regain some portion of what was lost, when the right moment for that came as well." He glanced down at his hands, wrapped around the sharp bend of his knees. "But before I give you the rest of them, I'd like to see the enclave with myowneyes."
Holland stared up at him, with dark, burningeyes. "Why?"
I stared too, because I also wanted to know why he insisted on seeing our home for himself, him in his expensive suit with his manicured hands and his money made off the suffering of ourancestors.
He sighed and looked down at those hands that stuck out so harshly to me. "It's...difficult to explain." He frowned for a moment, then glanced around at the three of us. "I'm a businessman, not a public speaker, so I'll ask you to forgive me if I don't explain myself well." He reached out with one hand to brush the top of the trunk. "And maybe it'll make more sense once you've read these. If you want to, read themthatis."
We watched him, all three of us silent as hunting. And maybe we were--I could tell from the other two that they didn't understand this sudden generosity, that they wanted to believe it but history and memory and plain old self-preservation made them look for the taint in the meat. Me too. I understood Laine's strange generosity, coupled as it was with a certain possessiveness and the conviction that he was always right, because I understood that he wanted me, for no reason that I'd ever been able to figure. But at least I could see what it was that drove him. This... this smelled like sweet fresh meat on full moon, the kind that our people only knew in our dreams now. Which made it doubly dangerous, I thought, to acceptthegift.
But even as I thought that, I looked at Holland and saw the longing in his expression. And then I looked across at Mutch and for a moment, my eyes played tricks on me and I saw the ghost of an old alpha wolf, his muzzle gone white with age, superimposed on him. It only lasted that flickering moment, but instinct propelled me across the distance between us so I could drive my nose into the soft vulnerability of his throat to scent him. And there, underneath the smell of soap and some subtle moss and musk cologne, I smelled it--guilt. But even stronger, longing, and something that smelled likehonor.
I leaned back and looked around at my startled companions. "It's okay," I told them. "He means well." Then I turned back to Mutch. "But understand, that we will accept these as a gift, and if you try to attach strings, I'll make sure you understand just how good a shifter has to be to pass lawschool."
Mutch's eyes widened, and then he grinned, his first real expression of the evening. "I think I'm going to like you. Tell me, are you like this in acourtroomtoo?"
Chapter18
After Mutch left,we gathered in the sitting room attached to the Lincoln Bedroom. Quin and I carried the trunk--heavier than it appeared--and set it on the floor as far from the entry as possible. We didn't even have to talk about it, and it felt to me that the weight of the trunk had some relation to the weight of history it heldinsideit.
And the weight of the choices we were going to have to makeafter.
Holland stripped off his shirt to nurse little Zane before claiming one of the comfortable-looking chairs, not so coincidentally right next to the trunk. "Open it," he said brusquely, handing the key over to Quin. "I want to see what he was talkingabout."
The locked snapped open with a noise so loud I thought for a moment we'd broken it, but the key came out of the hole without issue, and the lid tilted back in absolute silence. It had obviously been cared for, despiteitsage.
Quin passed the key back to Holland, and his mate slung the chain carelessly around his neck before picking the baby up off his knee and setting his mouth to one breast. "What does itlooklike?"
"Books," Quin said dryly, and reached inside. "Looks organized." His hand came back with one, a heavy leather cover stained black and crazed with cracks and fault-lines like often happened to old leather. "This looks like the oldest--the ones under it are newer looking." He held it out to Holland. "Read ittous?"
Holland took the book from Quin, the two of them exchanging a look of mixed uncertainty and eagerness, then he slipped a finger inside the cover, supporting it on his knees, and opened it to the first page of sprawling handwriting. The ink had faded, the edges of the text blurring into the browning paper it had been scratched onto, but it was still clear, still easy enough to read that I could have read it myself from my place perched on the end of the couch besideHolland.
The first page read: "I'm sitting in the Alpha's house writing this, in part because I have no one else I can talk to about it all. Hazel is gone. They're all gone. This place is a ghost town, and I suppose that means that I am the chief ghost. I'm not sure why I'm even writing in this journal. I expect it was Cosimo's doing. He always loved to write down his thoughts, record the events of the day. I hope he's doing well. The baby will be here in two months and I know he and Aaron were looking forward to becoming parents. But this was not how I was supposed to welcome my furskin cousin to theworld."
I could see where the handwriting shook on those last words, and the blotch where he must have held the pen to paper for too long. In those days, he might still have been using an ink well to diphispen.
Quin put a hand on Holland's forearm and stroked. "It’s okay." He leaned his head against Holland’s and it was then that I noticed the welling of tears in his eyes. “Maybe it would be better if I read it and filled you in. You must be tiredbynow.”
"I need to know," Holland said in a too-calm voice, unblurred by the tears still fighting to escape. "This is what we were supposed to be, us omegas." He pressed his lips in a tight line, his expression set hard, then it softened and he sighed and closed his eyes. "Iloveyou."
I didn't quite understand what that was about, until Quin let out a sharp breath and leaned close to his mate. "Thank you," hewhispered.
