Page 46 of Legally Mated
“The better to stay out of troublewithyou.”
The gate came into sight, the long low car crouched in the opening like a dog at a race, waiting for the bell. One of the younger security crew, Val, leaned in the doorway of our little shed and watched it and the human guards outside the walls with casualinterest.
As our van pulled up in front of it, the driver’s door opened and a man in a dark gray uniform got out. He ignored us and went straight for the back door, holding it open to let the car’s occupants step out onto the patchygrass.
Eva was the first one out, one long leg following the other, the navy of her skirt riding high on her thigh. I saw Val give her a once-over, and hid a grin. Eva would eat him alive, but I was pretty sure he’d enjoy it while it was going on. Just made me miss Laine more, though I wasn’t in any shape to take advantage of him. I would have enjoyed listening to his commentary as Eva looked Val up and down like a piece of meat and then dismissed him. Somehow, she managed to get across the idea that it wasn’t his shifter genes that were the problem, but that he just wasn’t up to her level. Which, having spent a couple of afternoons with her, I knew he totallywasn’t.
She stepped to one side and watched the car as Mutch climbed out, his head swiveling as he took in hissurroundings.
Wewaited.
Mutch’s eyes landed on us and I got the impression that he expected us to come to him, but when I glanced up at Quin, he was standing still as an oak, deep rooted in place.Waiting.
Eventually, after being prompted by Eva, Mutch started walking toward us. “Alpha Mercy Hills,” he said as he reached us, and leaned in for that Alpha greeting again. Quin allowed it, and now that I’d heard his misgivings, I could see the reluctance in his movements. Reluctance, but also the strength and willingness of an Alpha who put his pack above everything. We needed what Mutch was offering—it would carve fifty years off the time needed to bring Quin’s and Abel’s plan for the packs to fruition. But I knew he was afraid the price would be our autonomy, our identity, our ability to choose our own path into the future. If I was torn, how much harder was this decisionforhim?
But that was why Iwashere.
Chapter38
The van bumpedover the path toward town. “It’s greener than I expected,” Mutch said as he looked around. He’d left his car at the gate, and Mac had stayed with the driver, coaxing him into a game of cards in the little building and promising him food that would make him wish he could howl at the moon, it was so good. I assumed that he’d talked Jason into cooking something and bringingitdown.
Mercy Hills had a lot of sneaky alphas, itseemed.
“Nature is important to us,” Holland said. “We keep trees around because it gives us the illusion of having space to run. But a lot of them are fruit trees—the far end of the enclave is all apples, pears, plums, cherries, with a few evergreensthrownin.”
“But these are mostly evergreen here,” Mutch commented as we drove past the tiny clumps of trees that dotted the narrow spaces between thehouses.
“No fights about who owns the food,” Holland said, his tone as dry as a desert. “We learned our lessons early and hard. Everything belongs to the pack, and the pack shares in everything equally. It’s how wesurvive.”
“Ah.”
I sat beside him and watched as he took in the ragged rows of houses. Some of these were empty right now, waiting for a young couple who needed a territory of their own once all the new places had been filled. Most of them were full already with the newly mated—I’d worked with the housing committee for a while over the winter as we sorted out who to put where. As his gaze roamed over the buildings and the yards, I began to see it as he must have seen it. Rough, small, tiny yards. Paint faded or peeling in this section of the town, with all the pack money gone into building the newhouses.
It looked like shit. Like poverty, like the best thing we could do right now would be to put a match to the whole row of them. Up until this moment, I’d understood the pack’s desire to keep these houses, the first ones built when Mercy Hills was still new and not much more than a mudball with walls. Now, I questioned the effort we’d made to hold on to the rotten remains ofourpast.
Mutch was surprisingly quiet during the drive, only a word here or there to show how busy the mind behind those eyes was. He made his approval known when we pulled up in front of the main building, and even more so when Holland explained how resources were parted out to thepackmembers.
“It sounds complex,” he said as we stood in front of the packbuilding.
“There’s a lot of accounting to it, but it keeps things fair. Makes sure all pack members have what they need, rewards ambition that serves the pack.” Quin put the van’s keys in his pocket. “We should go upstairs.” He gestured towardthedoor.
Mutch nodded and began to follow him. Eva looped her arm through mine, in much the same way as I’d noticed the omegas new to Mercy Hills did when walking withalphas.
“It’s very kind of you all to let him look around. The entire family—at least the main line—are a little obsessed with theenclaves.”
I slowed my pace so we dropped behind the others by a bit, enough to keep a low voice from carrying. “If we want the money he’s promising, that was part ofthedeal.”
Her lips twisted and she glance ahead and sighed lightly. “He’d give you the money anyway. It’s part of the family trust.” She saw my lack of comprehension and squeezed my arm. “I’ll explain it to you as we go.” We were at the elevator though, and Eva fellsilent.
Mutch tried to make small talk as we rode up the elevator to the floor I’d been living on. The someday-hospital floor, with its half-finished ceiling and missing walls and collection of junk stored there once again after the last of the Green Moon shifters had been moved out of it. His chatter fell flat, and eventually lapsed into silence as the doors slid open to expose the damage done by too many shifters, old and young, crammed into too small aspace.
“What happened here?” he asked in ahushedtone.
“We took in a third of the Green Moon shifters after the fire,” Quin said grimly. He always sounded grim when he spoke about Green Moon. “There weren’t enough places to live, so we housed some of them up here. The young adults, mostly. Which is why it looks like this. I’ve had other things to pourmoneyinto.”
“Ah,” Mutch replied, but he said no more as we led him down the hall, past my temporary home and around the corner to Adelaide’s small meeting room. There, we slid ourselves in around the table, the chairs banging against the walls as we crammed ourselves into them. It wasn’t meant to hold more than a couple of people, but Quin wanted me close to my bed in case the discussion was too wearing, and Adelaide would be stopping by with her breakfast in between her morning rounds and morning clinic hours, because part of what was luring us into this position was the promise of money for a realhospital.
“Well, you certainly designed it efficient,” Mutch commented. He glanced around him and awkwardly adjusted hischair.
