Page 15 of Legally Mated
"Garrick, I wanted to ask you about this bit of case law." Cas got up and thrust a fistful of papers into my hand. I glanced down at them--random receipts and scrap paper, it looked like. Before I could turn my gaze back to him, he continued, "I'm thinking of it innon dominoandab utraque parte, which means when we talk to them, we can usecontra factum non valetargumentum."
He took another breath, but before he could fill the air with more random babbling in Latin, his mother threw her hands up intheair.
"Well, if you boys are just going to talk work in that incomprehensible gobbledegook, I'm going to go find my baby. Cas, you need to learn how to talk like everyone else if you ever plan to mate. You'll never find a good one the way you talk past people all the time." She leaned in and planted a kiss on his cheek, then let herself out of theoffice.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Cas pulled his phone out of his desk drawer and shot off a couple of quick texts. "Giving Bax and Holland some warning," he muttered, then tossed it back in the drawer before sitting down with his head in his hands. "She won't rest until she's a proper matriarch of her own sub-pack." He sat up and glared in my direction when I grinned at him. "Ugh. Anyway, you guys are leaving tomorrow, right?" I nodded. "Can I give you a list of legislation that needs to be clarified? Or, maybe, blown up and then the piecesstompedon?"
"You mean, other than the original amendment of 1895?" I asked dryly. "Sure, I'll add it to the pile. Though, to be honest, I don't think we're going to be talking too much in specifics tomorrow. It's more about setting goals and putting out the immediatefires."
"That's okay. But if you get the chance, take it. Did you know, we're paying just over six percent more in income tax because of the way they force us to dovetail the packmember businesses in underneath the packstructure?"
"Uh, sure?" I met his eyes, and then we laughed. "Yeah, I didn't have a clue. I thought it was the other wayaround."
"I think it used to be." The lightheartedness in Cas's voice disappeared, and a hint of a growl crept into his words. "There's been a steady erosion of the rights that were negotiated for us in the past century--an amendment here, a rider there." He bent back to his paperwork again. "Pricks."
Chapter11
At five minutes to ten,I grabbed my notes and a fresh legal pad and headed around the corner to the entrance to the pack building. I met Cale walking along the front of thebuilding.
"Hey, Gar, how were the bright lights, big city?" He slung an arm over my shoulder and we walked into the building together. Just barely eighteen, he was reveling in his new adulthood, though Quin had insisted he stay in the little apartment on the Alpha's floor for reasons ofsecurity.
I raised my eyebrows at him, which only made him grin. "It was fine," I told him severely. "I don't go there toparty."
"Shame. Seems awaste."
"Don't let your brother hear you say that." We stopped in front of theelevator.
Cale let his arm fall and leaned around me to punch the elevator button. "I think I'm safe." He blew out a breath, making his bangs fly. "Garrick?"
"Yeah?"
"Make this work, okay? I've been kind of thinking that I'd like to go to college when I'm doneschool."
He certainly could--once he'd gotten going, I'd heard he'd caught up to the rest of the students in record time, and then proceeded to blow right past them. "How many courses do youhaveleft?"
"Just chemistry and biology, but there's an on-line course for psychology that I might take too, justforfun."
I glanced at him as we got in and raised myeyebrows.
He grinned. “I don’t think you can throw any stones here.” He pushed the button for the twelfth floor and stood back with his hands clasped demurely in frontofhim.
That made me laugh. “No,probablynot.”
We got out on the twelfth floor. I left Cale at his doorway and walked down to the far end of the hall, where a small meeting room had been tucked into the corner that hadn’t been filled up with a mass of what Abel had described as ‘very important computer stuff. Don’t touch’. The door stood open, and I heard Quin and Holland, but also the pups talking about whatever it was that pups found interesting. I knocked on the door frame andwaited.
“Garrick, come in,” Quin said with a glance in my direction, then he turned his attention back to what he’d been doing when I arrived. Dorian sat in his lap, the two of them coloring a page torn from a coloring book. Quin’s shading stayed neatly between the lines, but Dorian’s was a wild and exuberant mash of color that took no prisoners. Holland sat beside them, braiding Agatha’s hair while the little girl discussed the merits of the several hair thingies she had spread out on the table beside them. He looked up, then quickly finished off the braid with the sparkly bit of cloth and fluff that Agatha held out to him, andstood.
“Time to go hang out with Cale,” he said and held out a hand to Dorian. “I’ll be back in a minute.” And they disappeared outthedoor.
It seemed Iwassafe.
“Let me get this cleared away,” Quin said and scooped all the loose crayons into an empty ice cream container and set it aside. “Shit.” He rubbed at the table and, from my angle, I could just see the dull streak of wax on the dark wood. “You want anything to drink? I can call Seosamh and have him bring something.OrBax.”
“No, I’m fine.” I laid out my legal pad and my notes, lined my favorite pens up beside them, and set my bag carefully out of the way. When I turned around, I found Quin smiling slightly at me, not as surprising now as it had been a couple of years ago. “What?” Iaskedhim.
He shook his head. “Nothing. You’re veryprecise.”
I stopped and stared at him. “It’s a part of the job. You can’t afford to misplace anything, you can’t afford to mistake one thing for another. A single word can flip the meaning of a sentenceonend.”
