Page 24 of Legally Mated
Have they been fighting? Possibly. I knew that, of all of us, Holland probably was the most well-versed in omega lore. I suspected there was more going on—the Omega Pack had become, in truth, a sub-pack of Mercy Hills and that there was some tension between the group and their alphas was starting to become moreobvious.
I wanted nothing to dowithit.
For lack of anything better to do, I got up from my seat and skirted the table to squeeze past Quin and kneel beside the trunk. Even with my back turned, I could feel Holland's eyes on me, his instinct to share knowledge at war with his desire to protect the resource lying so neatly in thistrunk.
"Keep reading," Quin said behind me, and I heard his footsteps pad away, moving to take my place in the seat closest to Holland. Then lower, "You know I want this for you, if you want it. But don't take on anything you're notreadyfor."
The tension in the air shot sky-high, making my hair stand on end. I shifted my stance at the trunk as if trying to get a better look at something and watched them cautiously. This wasn't normalforthem.
Holland raised his eyes to Quin's and they stared at each other for several tense moments. Then, out of the blue, Holland's head snapped around and his gaze fell on me. "Could you give us a fewminutes?"
"Sure," I said, a shiver running down my spine. Casually, I slipped one of the newer journals out of the trunk, made sure I had my notes from earlier, and left the frozen tableau of my Alpha and his Mate behind with a sense of running from athunderstorm.
Back in my room, I put away our notes and decided to try out the sitting room connected to the Queen's bedroom. Yes, there was a comfortable couch in the bedroom itself, but instinct drove me to hide away in a smaller den—whatever was passing between Quin and Holland was more than I wanted todealwith.
The sitting room itself was...very blue. I stopped in the doorway and blinked a couple of times, wondering if I'd wandered into the inside of a blueberry, then bee-lined toward another comfortable looking couch—this president did seem to be all about the comfortable furniture, which was something I definitely appreciated, though I didn't know what it meant for international relations or internal governance. Whatever. I turned on the lamp that stood in the corner and stretched myself outtoread.
I'd definitely grabbed a more recent journal. The dates in this one were from nineteen forty-one, starting in mid-March. Now I wished that I hadn't been summarily dismissed—I would have liked to have listened to the first one, to see what had changed in the forty-five years between them. It was probably better to give those two time to sort out whatever it was that was chewing on their tails,though.
I fell into the story of the journal, turning page after page. It was the end of the war, they were running short of soldiers. This Jesse—they all seemed to be Jesse—was trying to get some sort of amendment done to the draft legislation to keep the shifters out of it. His arguments were laid out plain on the page, and I found it fascinating to watch how he built his case. It was depressing to realize that his best arguments were the ones that used human prejudice as their framework and only fed into the current fears about my people. His real arguments—that we'd been punished enough, that we wouldn't be accepted within the ranks, that our lives were difficult enough as it was without stripping away the males—were all kept in this journal. To stiffen his spine and remind him of the family'sresponsibility.
And that was where I discovered that the Mutch family fortune grew from the seed that was that pack land referenced in Holland's journal. The first Jesse. The one who had—I thought—loved Hazel, a shifter. How the original Jesse had rented out the houses and made his fortune there, then invested it, becoming a wealthy man long before he married a human woman who had her own money. And thus had begun the sprawling interconnected enterprises of the Mutchfamily.
The journal had dipped back into politics again when I heard a faint knock on the hallway door and Quin's voice, "Garrick?"
Well, he's still alive. The fight couldn't have been that bad.I rolled off the couch and onto my feet. "In here," I called, and went tothedoor.
"Holland and I want to apologize," he said. "Holland's..." He paused and appeared to search for words. "Never mind. Do you want to call it a night, or come back and listen to more of the firstjournal?"
I looked him over. He seemed calm, radiating that alpha competence and control that he was so well-known for. "I don't want to bother him." And I could feel the lure of my own journal tugging at my attention, calling me back to the couch to find out more about our past lives, at least as viewed by the humans. "I'll come. If he really wantsmeto."
Quin nodded and rubbed at the back of his neck. "He's tired, and struggling a little right now and I don't know how to help him with this. I'm not sure if these journals are a good thing or a bad one. It's a distraction for sure, but just another thing on hisplate."
I didn't understand much of anything he was referring to, but guessed that maybe Holland wasn't finding this having a baby thing as easy as he presented to the world. “Are we inviting Mutch to visit at theenclave?”
“I think we have to. Those books are ours.” He said the lastfiercely.
I glanced down at the one in my hand. “My advice in this would be to set the date for two weeks out at the earliest, to give us time to read what’s here and talk to each other. And I think we need to involve the Omega Pack. What was it that Holland did backthere?”
Quin’s lips compressed, then his face went stolid again and Isighed.
“You don’t have to hide things from me. In fact, it’s better if I know everything,” I told him, my tone stopping just short of scolding because he was, after all, my Alpha. “I don’t know what the problem is here. This is what you said you wanted, right? A recognition of the value of the omega inthepack?”
His shoulders sagged and he moved farther into my room, collapsing on the couch with his elbows resting on his knees and hands dangling as exhausted. “I worry that they’re trying to move to fast. I’m…” He paused and glanced at me as if trying to read inside my head. Trying to see what I already knew, or hadguessed.
“I know that they’re different from the rest of us,” I said carefully, watching him closely. “I know Holland is capable of doing something that…” I let my voice trail away in open invitation, but still keeping what I’d guessed—which was little enough anyway—to myself. Not so much to protect me, but to protect Holland’s secrets. If he hadn’t told Quin yet, it wasn’t my place, or a good idea, for me to let that secret out intheopen.
It seemed I’d judged correctly. Quin sat up and scrubbed at his face. “I suppose I’ll need to tell you the wholeofit.”
Chapter19
Laine walkedin the door of his house after work. His too quiet house. Too quiet, too empty. It was a school night, so no sleepovers withApril.
And noGarrick.
Not even any texts from him, not since the one he’d gotten just before Garrick got on the airplane. Logically, he knew that the other man was likely busier than he’d ever been and didn’t have time to text, but it pricked his pride to be so easily forgotten. A good night text would havebeennice.
He made dinner in a gray mood, barely tasting the food, and then covered the kitchen table with files from work. He’d taken on two new clients yesterday, and had met with another one today who was supposed to get back to him tomorrow. Maybe that would make Dan happy—one of them at least looked like the billable hours were going to be high. And this one from today—it had an odd feel to it, like it was going to unravel into something huge and sprawling. Simple drugs and assault charge, but the victim was in hospital now and the articles in the newspaper didn’t hold out much hope. Of course, that was the newspaper—the guy could be okay to go home tomorrow and they’d still report he was on death’s door. Laine would send one of the investigators to check out the truth of the matter as soon as the client made adecision.
