Page 1 of Legally Mated
Chapter1
Iwalkedinto the office I was sharing with Cas, took one look at the explosion of paper covering his table, my table, and the spare one jammed in the corner of the room, and stopped dead in mytracks.
"Really?" I muttered, and turned sideways to squeeze between the two tables. I was supposed to be going into the city tomorrow, and I had work here I needed to get done or I’d feel guilty the whole time I was away. But Cas was like fog and he tended to spread out to fill the entire area if you didn’t put some limitsonhim.
Once I got around the end of my table, I could put my briefcase down in the corner and try to salvage some space to finish working on the discrimination claim one of the other packmembers had asked me to file for him. I was pretty proud of him, proud of the whole pack really. Since Abel and then Quin had taken over, it seemed we were bellying up for less and less of the discrimination and micro-aggressions that were a daily part of life for ashifter.
I'd taken the paperwork home with me yesterday to fill out while I watched a movie in my tiny apartment, rather than sit in my cramped office to work on them while Cas cursed and talked to himself in the other corner like a mad wolf. It was a bachelor style, just one large room and a bathroom, but even that was a lot to have as a single shifter. We'd been so crowded here for so long—I'd never known Mercy Hills when it wasn't crowded. But I'd been lucky when I moved back to the enclave after I graduated law school--I should have been put in bachelor's quarters, but at that point, I was older than everyone else living on those floors and housing had pulled some strings and let me jump the line to an apartment recently vacated by a couple with anewbaby.
Which had been a massive relief--unlike most of the pack, I got twitchy at just the thought of taking my clothes off in front of other people. The only person who'd never elicited that response from me wasLaine.
I skirted the end of the table without knocking any of Cas's stacks of receipts and notes onto the floor, only to realize he'd also covered the seat of my chair with... it looked like part of the pack's yearly tax return. I could very easily have moved it, but remembering the mood Cas was in yesterday slowed down my instinct to just dump everything on the floor and reclaim my territory. That, and I knew what kind of rage I could end up in if someone disturbed my carefully organized piles ofpaperwork.
It would be a shitty thing to do, so I sighed and turned back toward the door. I could do most of what I needed to do from the library, and what I couldn't, I could probably borrow Bax's officeupstairsfor.
I met Cas in the tiny green space between our offices and the main pack building. "Hey, sorry about all the paperwork. I was looking at a bunch of penalties that have been getting applied against the pack and I'm trying to get a few years reassessed," he said cheerfully. "See if I can't save the pack some money and earn my keep. What are you up totoday?"
"Discrimination claim," I said, and wiggled my briefcase. "Then I'm looking over the contract with the new meatsupplier."
"Are we replacing thebigguys?"
I shook my head. "Abel's been in Quin's ears about Bax's venison and Bax found a place that wholesales game--rabbit, deer, buffalo. It's feels like the Chicken Case again," I told him, referencing a relatively famous civil case that boiled down to the definition of what a chickenactuallywas.
Cas laughed. "Make sure you know what a buffalo is before you start negotiating,'" he said. "You coming to Full Moontonight?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not ferociously social like some lawyersIknow."
"It'll be fun. Alexandra has a cousin visiting from Honisloonz, I hear she likes 'emnerdy."
I laughed awkwardly, "Thanks, but I can find my owndates."
"You are so damn self-sufficient." He shook his head at me, but he knew better than to press the issue. I wasn't into big parties, or the kind of social sex that most of the pack enjoyed. Not that I didn't enjoy sex, but it wasn't a part of me that I could share with the pack. Not as thingsstoodnow.
A boxy deep red station wagon pulled around the corner, heading in our direction. "Do you recognizethatcar?"
Cas turned around to look and his eyes went wide. He grabbed me and pulled me into the dubious concealment of a ragged shrub at the side of the path. "I don't know the car, but I know who'sinit."
“Who?” And why did they make Cas, sarcastic, no-fucks-given Cas, want to hide in the bushes like anaughtypup?
“It’s my mother,” he said in a tone of immense disgust. “She’s been threatening to move here for a while and—holyshit!”
We watched through the leaves as bag after bag was evicted from the back of the stationwagon.
“Damn.” Cas pulled out his phone and called someone. “She’s here.” He paused to listen to the other person, then said, “Our mother.” Another pause, and then Cas said, “You owe me for this.” He turned off the phone and shoved it into his pocket again. “We who are about to die salute you,” he muttered, I thought facetiously, then he stood up and strode out into the open to meet the woman just stepping out of the car. “Good morning, Mom.” He kissed her cheek, but moved casually to stand between her and the door. “What are youdoinghere?”
“That’s a fine way to speak to your mother,” she said. Her accent was more pronounced than his, more Mercy Hills than Cas’s modulated lawyer’s tones. “Where are yourbrothers?”
“Probably working, since they didn’t know you were coming,” he said dryly. His eyes flicked about the Park, looking, I guessed for either a distraction, or for QuinorAbel.
“A fine thing it would be if I had to make an appointment to see my boys.” She directed the shifter with her to carry her bags into the building. “This is a very tall building. Was it a wise use of resources to build somethinglikethis?”
“I don’t know,” Cas gritted out. “You’ll have to ask Abel. I’m sure he considered all hisoptions.”
My jaw fell open and I gaped at them, desperately trying not to laugh. It was all sobizarre.
Movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. Holland and Seosamh, talking animatedly about something as they walked back from dropping the older pups off at school. The new baby hung against his chest in some sort of wrap or sling, like the one I’d seen Bax using over the years. Holland made a laughing comment about something to do with photographers that went right over my head, and then he noticed the car and the two shifters standing in front of thebuilding.
I could almost see the wordshitbeing repeated over and over again inCas’shead.
