Page 39 of Legally Mated
“Well, you’re looking better.” A woman, a different nurse from earlier in the day, stopped by the side of the bed to read numbers off the machines beside me and check how full the bag hanging on the I.V. stand and another hanging off the side of the bed were. I blushed a little, realizing that the bag attached to the bed was half full of urine, but she didn’t seem bothered at all, instead peppering me with questions about my pain and if my stomach had made any noises yet like it washungry.
“No, not yet,” I said in a politelypuzzledtone.
“Maybe tomorrow then. If you decide you’re hungry and want something to eat, just let me know.” She smiled and fluffed my pillow behind my head. “Do you want the curtains open so you can see, or closed so you can have a bit ofprivacy?”
Oh. They’d never closed off the end of the bed for me before. “Closed, please, maybe?” She seemed much less nervous than the day nurse—I wouldn’t have known what to say to that one. “I might try to sleep alittlemore.”
“All right, honey. You just call if you need anything.” She twitched the curtains closed and I was alone, or as alone as you could be in a room with a dozen beds in it. And it was wonderful, at leastfornow.
I let my head fall back and shut my eyes, but I’d been asleep for most of the past couple of days and while I was physically tired, my brain wasn’t quite ready to give up on consciousness for the moment. My hand fell on the journal that Holland had given me and despite my complete distaste for what the pack would call my rightful place if they ever found out, I picked it up and opened it to thefirstpage.
By the time Bram arrived, I’d read a quarter of the journal, had a nap, and was flipping through the book again with the attention span of one of Bax’s toddlers, scanning for what, Iwasn’tsure.
Bram dropped a bag on the floor beside the bed. “Brought you your law journals and a novel Bax recommends.” He pulled them out and stacked them neatly on the table beside the head of the bed. “Oh, Holland gave you Cosimo’sjournal?”
“He did.” I waited to see if Bram would say anything more, wondering if everyone knew now whatIwas.
“What do you think?” he asked as he slumped in the chair. “Are we going to get a lot of pushback from you guys if we start trying to go back to thoseoldways?”
“Us guys?” I asked, with wild hope filling up my chest like butterflies. “What doyoumean?”
He shrugged, making the chair scrape over the floor. “The alphas, betas, gammas, deltas. I mean, I know my life’s been different from omegas in other packs, but I was always the one person in the pack that everyone could look down on, you know? ‘At least you’re not an omega.’” He leered as he said the last sentence in obvious imitation of someone, and smiled ruefully at my grimace in response. “Yeah,” he added. “Sucked big time, but I didn’t know any different.” His forehead wrinkled and he shoved a hand through his hair, so that I could see his eyes clearly for the first time since he’d arrived. “Should get Holland to cut this before he goes back,” he muttered. I thought it was to himself, then he refocused on me. “How much of that haveyouread?”
“Up to here,” I said and showed him where I’d stuck a scrap of paper in between the pages. “I’m skimming the rest, but my brain keepswandering.”
“No surprise there,” he said. “Surgery itself is an injury to the body, even though it’s meant to do good. You’ve had an ass-kicking the last couple of days. You look a lot better today,” he finished on a cheerful note. “Holland says you’re here for a couple more days, then you’re going back home and he’s going to put you in a room on one of the floors they reserved for the hospital.” His expression brightened. “Did you hear? We’re going to get to actually finish it! Holland said they met with someone while you guys were at the White House and he’s offered money. And I can order stuff for my clinic too.” He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, rocking slightly on the the chair like an over excited pup. His eyes had lit up at the mention of the pack hospital, still sitting unused with just a few lights to show you where not to put your feet. It was collecting junk now, things that could be salvaged for later building or forrepairs.
But looking at Bram, I could picture it set up the way it should be, with beds like the one I was lying in, and machines that beeped, carts full of sharp things and bandages hanging around in every corner. Lysoonka, I wanted to go home. “So Holland and Quin have agreed to it?” Nothing had been set in stone when we left Washington. In fact, I still hadn’t heard if Holland had given in on Mutch’s visit to the enclave, but from Bram’s excited chatter, hemusthave.
I was never so glad to not be Alpha or Alpha’s Mate. I did not want to have to make those kinds ofdecisions.
Wanting to change the subject, I asked Bram, “So, how’sschool?”
“Summer courses are killer,” he began, and then he was off and talking, and I didn’t need to do any more than insert an occasional, “Really?” or “Wow,” to keep himgoing.
Chapter32
After he’d gottena few hours sleep and billed a few more for the firm, Laine had a cab drop him off a block from the pack house, just in case. It was a nice evening for a walk anyway. The sun was warm, the air not nearly as humid as it had been the day before. He took off his jacket and hung it over his shoulder so he could remove his tie and roll up his shirt sleeves. The briefcase hanging over his shoulder bumped against his hip in near perfect imitation of the way Garrick would sometimes bump his hip against Laine’s when they were alone in his houseandsafe.
Not sosafenow.
His mind went back over the interview with Dan again and again, looking for loopholes, prodding for ways to twist the words and force a different meaning from them. Force Dan to back down on his pronouncement, find some sort of way to plea-bargain this into something livable. He could only keep sneaking Garrick into the building on a technicality for so long. Which was stupid, because Garrick was in hospital and facing a long recovery. The thing with Dan was kindofmoot.
Fornow.
The walls of the pack house crept into sight, the sun glittering off the silver tracery on the top like Christmas tinsel forgotten into summer. It wasn’t nearly so innocuous, though—Garrick had once scared the shit out of Laine by picking up a silver ring of Laine’s and holding it until his palm started to swell beneath it. Laine had spent most of that night awake in terror, checking the puffiness in Garrick’s hand to make sure it was going down, because the stubborn shifter wouldn’t go to the doctor for it, and the only antihistamine that worked in shifters needed a prescription. The next morning, Garrick had laughed at him, but Laine could never look at those walls, whether here or at the enclave, without his skincrawling.
He turned in through the gate and was immediately greeted by the sound of laughing children and the spicy-sweet smell of the flowers someone had planted along the front of the house. He wondered whose idea that had been, then realized it had to be Bram who, for all his ambition, still carried a good deal of the homemakerinhim.
Laine walked down the side of the house, the smell of the flowers disappearing under the luxurious scent of whatever was being prepared for their dinner. The window to the kitchen was open, smells of curry and peppers drifting out of it like a slow-motion waterfall of temptation. Was it Holland cooking this, whatever it was? His stomach rumbled inanticipation.
Three children played in the back yard, a small, smooth expanse of grass ringed with half-mature maples and tulip poplars for shade and, he suspected, privacy. Two of them were toddlers, a boy and a girl building some ragtag structure with what looked like scraps of boards. The famous twins. The other one was smaller, younger, rolling around on a blanket in the shade of one of the maples, a stuffed duck squeaking in his hands and mouth. He didn’t see any adults—he would have expected to see Duke, since Bram was supposed to be sitting withGarrick.
God, how he wanted to go spend the evening with Garrick, talk over this new twist in theirsituation.
Banging noises sounded from up in the trees somewhere, a sound suspiciously like that of a hammer hitting a nail. Then Duke saying, “Make sure it’s straight. That’s it. Okay, hold it right there while I tack it into place.” A few quick bangs and the sound of an excited child babbling rang throughtheair.
Holland’s voice came from behind him. “Duke’s building a treehouse. Agatha and Dorian arehelping.”
