Page 51 of Sanctuary
"I'll go scout around for a good spot to stay. I won't be long," Patton promised, and accepted a kiss from Ori. He left them curled up in the middle of a thicket, invisible to any casual observer who might pass, though who’d be out in the middle of the trees around an enclave he couldn’t imagine, and headed off in what he hoped was the direction of Mercy Hills.
They'd been closer than they'd realized--he hadn't walked more than ten minutes before the tell-tale twinkle of sunlight on silver danced in the corner of his eye and, moments later, the solid gray of the walls began to rise into view. He broke into a trot, then a run, until he stumbled out of the trees with less than a hundred feet between him and high walls surrounding the enclave.
We found it.
Faintly, he could hear the sounds of a pack going about their daily tasks. Voices, the banging of hammers, the shrieks of pups running loose in play. The smooth gray sides of the walls looked slick and new, and he wondered if this was the part he'd heard about, where Mercy Hills had somehow made enough money to expand their territory. He'd heard it was by selling themselves to the humans--he hoped it wasn't all the things that had been implied. All the dirty, snide comments came flooding back and the pace of his heart picked up a little. He wouldn't let that happen to Ori, and he fiercely ignored the part of him that argued he was a beta and wouldn't be able to stand up to a bunch of alphas.
Especially if the other stories whispered by the young alphas and betas were true about the man who ran Mercy Hills now. About his training in the military, about how many humans he'd killed. About how standing up to him was like trying to stand outside in a thunderstorm, only worse.
Patton shook himself. There was no way the Alpha of Mercy Hills had developed the taste for human flesh that some of the others had given him, or the humans wouldn't have let him out of the military. Instead, they would have just quietly shot him and left him in some country overseas. And really, if they had a True Omega there--would he even let someone abuse another omega? They were supposed to have fearsome powers, equal to or greater than those of an Alpha.
If Tarquin Mercy Hills was as scary as they said, this True Omega must be...something.
He crept along the wall until he found the gate and hid in the scruff of trees that camouflaged the road from the enclave. Here, they'd burned or cut the surrounding woods down for a longer distance, like they put effort into following the rules near the gate, but skimped a little where people were less likely to notice. Humans are a lot like shifters. He stifled a snort of laughter and watched for a little while.
There wasn't much traffic, but it was getting near dark. A large truck, like the bread truck they'd ridden in from Jonesboro down to Memphis, pulled up to the gate from the inside. The man inside--human, Patton thought--handed out his papers for the guards to look over. Two of them, hands on the guns on their hips, went to the rear of the truck and opened the big doors. Probably checking for stowaways trying to sneak out with the delivery truck--the Bureau of Preternatural Creatures took attempts to bypass the regulations controlling shifter travel seriously.
A few minutes later, they closed the truck up and signaled the officer in charge that the truck was okay. He handed back the papers and said something to the driver, though they were too far away for Patton to hear even while borrowing from his wolf, and then the low rumble of the idling engine grew louder and the truck swayed off onto the road.
Patton watched it go past, a thoughtful look on his face, but then he shook his head. They might be able to hitch a ride to the gates, but there was no way they'd be allowed in without papers. If anything, they'd probably be arrested and thrown in a detention center somewhere for traveling without having gotten their pack's and the Bureau's permission to be out on the road. He'd have to try to get a message to someone in Mercy Hills. But how?
There was the telephone. The pack had had a big paper book where you could look up phone numbers for different business and even people and he knew their pack's main phone number was listed in it. He'd bet even money that Mercy Hills was listed too. But where would he find one? And, could he drag Ori all over the countryside again, when Ori looked ready to drop as it was?
No, he had to do this another way.
Patton settled down with his back against a tree trunk and gazed thoughtfully at the enclave gates while he finished the last of the water in the bottle he'd brought with him. Just like home, there was the human guard building outside the walls with...yes, there were four of them in there. Inside the gate, he could just see the corner of another building, very similar to the one occupied by the humans, if not in as good a repair. That would likely be the one where the pack's security team stayed while on duty. Like at home, they probably weren't so much a guard force as they were a group meant to intervene if the humans got nervous or were having a bad day and decided to be assholes.
The pack's guard building was set back a little farther from the wall than the human one. He watched through the gate, trying to spy packmembers walking around on the other side. It looked like they'd planted fruit bushes around the opening--smart use of land that no one would want to live on, being too close to the gateway and the humans just outside it.
The door to the Security building opened and a tall dark shifter came out. A moment later, a slighter red-headed young man walked up to him, trailing two dark gray pups behind him and carrying another, still wearing human skin, but obviously a toddler.
They exchanged a quick kiss, not much more than a peck, and then wandered off along the inside of the wall.
In Patton's direction.
The gate stuck out a little from the main walls, which curved slightly away from it. He couldn’t run out and shout to get their attention, but he could hear the pups and he thought they were walking along the inside of the wall. A romantic tryst? Likely not, with the pups in tow. But maybe a family outing while the dark shifter was on a break.
And it was getting dark.
He emptied his water bottle and filled the bottom with dirt from around the roots of the tree to give it weight, then wrote a note on a page torn from a notebook he'd picked up at the last food pantry he'd visited. He told their story, from childhood to now, and begged at the end that, even if they didn't want him, if they could take Ori and the child, he'd be fine. He rolled it up and stuffed it in the bottle, like an old pirate's message, and put the cap back on as tight as he could.
Then he jogged through the trees until he was sure the humans couldn't see him from the gate, prayed they didn't have cameras, and threw the bottle with all his might. If he was right, and the couple and their pups were still walking this way, they should hear it fall and go to investigate it.
It made a tall graceful arc in the deep blue of the twilight, the lights from the gate winking off its curves, and then it was gone, falling down behind the gray concrete that stood between them and safety. He waited a moment, listening intently until he heard the distinctive soft thud of it hitting the ground and the welcome yip of an excited pup, and then he took off in the direction of the grove he'd left Ori resting in.
C H A P T E R F O R T Y - F I V E
O ri was deeply asleep when he got back and it took a few moments to wake him. He sat up, staring blearily around him as if he'd forgotten where they were, before his eyes slowly focused on Patton again. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, but I want to get closer to the walls." Patton started to move around the copse, gathering up their bags and checking to make sure they had everything they'd brought with them.
"Did you talk to them?" Ori got to his feet and staggered a little, his body slower to wake up than his brain had been. "Will they take us in?"
Patton shook his head. "But I got a message in over the walls, and I'm pretty sure it was found. I want to be nearby in case there's a chance to talk to someone as they leave or come back." He took a last look around, then nodded to Ori. "Come on." For the first time in a month, his heart was light, and he whistled as they walked, an old pack tune, bright and lively.
Patton's mood seemed to infect Ori with the same optimism and he hummed along with Patton's whistling, taking the occasional dancing step in between his normal strides as they went. "Going to find you a home, Willie Rose," he sang. "With a nice bed, and warm clothes, and friends to play with when you're older." He leaned into Patton's arm and flashed him a hopeful grin.
They got back to Patton's tree—as he'd started to think of it—and scouted around until they found a small patch of low brush within sight of the walls. "I don't know how long it'll take them to find a way outside walls," he warned Ori as he set up their camp. Or if they’d even come out.
