Page 57 of Omega's Flight
"I wrapped them. But you can go lay Zane down while I get them out if it makes you feel better."
"I can do that." Quin stood and helped Holland to his feet.
"I'll be right back," Holland promised Cas and disappeared down the hallway with his mate.
Cas moved back to the couch despite having noticed a couple of wrapped boxes with his name on them.
Quin was back first, but only long enough to offer tea to Cas before the quiet footsteps of his mate announced Holland's return.
Holland carried a small stack of wrapped boxes, the top one held in place with his chin. One of them Cas knew the contents of—a tablet that he'd helped Holland pick out during Harvest Moon—but the rest were tiny mysteries that he'd have to wait until tomorrow to solve. Holland slid them in at the back of the tree, tweaked a box with a floppy looking baby doll a little closer to Dorian's side, and moved Zane's fluffy stuffed rabbit on top of a flat box nearby. He looked up as Quin came into the room, carrying mugs for each of them. "Thank you, love," Holland said as he accepted his and breathed in the aromatic steam. "So, Cas. I was going to talk to you after Christmas about it, but maybe this is better."
Quin handed a mug to Cas before getting comfortable on the rug behind his mate. He slung an arm around Holland's waist and patted his hip as if to provide comfort, or encouragement.
Cas set his mug on a little table to cool and, to be honest, he was starting to feel like he might need both hands free for this conversation. "Quin said he'd need me to pick up some legal slack for a while. I'm okay with it." He thought he saw Holland's eyes flick between him and Quin, but it was hard to tell under those long eyelashes. "I get the feeling that this one is kind of special. Am I right?"
Holland sat back and leaned into Quin. "He sets a...precedent, you call it? In a lot of different ways. One of the things we were talking about tonight was money. We have money to spend on a more equal treatment of omegas within the pack. But we don't want the other packs getting the idea that they can squeeze that money out of us in exchange for letting us take in one of their omegas. Or in exchange for allowing the omega to go free of an unwanted mating. Or for letting the omega keep their pups. The trust feels like a lot of money, but when I started pricing things out and adding them up, it got small really fast." He chewed on his lower lip and let out a sigh when Quin put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close.
"Let's sit on the couch," Quin suggested. "This is going to be a long talk. You're still young enough to sit on the floor, but this old man needs padding under his hips."
"Hmph," Holland said, but he got gracefully to his feet and held out his hands to Quin. "Get up then, old man. But I'm going to ask for some evidence of this age later."
Quin took Holland's hands, but Cas noted that he didn't need any help getting up, and in fact, used his grip on his mate to pull Holland off balance enough that he could toss him over his shoulder and carry him to the couch.
"You liar," Holland cried, laughing, then clapped a hand over his mouth. "If the pups wake up, I'm letting you explain it all to them."
"I'll sick them on Uncle Cas. He's the storyteller," Quin replied smartly, and sat on the couch, switching Holland skillfully from his shoulder to a seat on his lap. "Come on, slowpoke," he told Cas. "You'll get your story, then we're going to bed."
Cas perched on the other arm of the couch and leaned on the back. "All right, I'm ready. Hit me."
C H A P T E R 4 2
I ’d never experienced a Christmas Day like the one I had that year. The pups had been ecstatic to discover that Midwinter Wolf had found them all the way over here, and even more so when they noticed the snow.
Pip was the first one to see the pawprints outside their windows and the muddy tracks where Midwinter Wolf had peered in through the windows at them. "Papa, Papa, he was here!" She hung off the windowsill, her eyes as wide as saucers, then scrambled outside in her bare feet and too-short pajamas to stare at the tracks, open-mouthed. Then she'd raced back in and we'd decimated the wrapped presents. The pups were impressed that even I had been given gifts by Midwinter Wolf— we'd never had the money for extras like that before and when Ann ran over with a box for me to open, I'd tried to give it back to her until she'd stomped her little feet and yelled that it was for me.
I wore the sweater it contained to dinner that day, pale green with a pattern of yellow and darker green diamonds that crisscrossed the front.
By the time Christmas was over I was going to owe Bax so, so much and even though he wouldn't let me thank him, the flush of pleasure on his face told me that he was happy with the reception his gift had gotten.
Once we'd all eaten as much as we could hold, and I'd worried both Bax and Abel and—of most concern to me—Cas with how little my stomach could hold, we sent the pups off to play with their new Christmas presents. Abel set up a movie for them to watch and Bax and I laid out all the mats and thin rugs he had. "Easier to put them outside after and let the rain clean them than to wash the floors after," he said and I nodded in agreement.
Then we four adults disappeared into Abel's office with glasses of eggnog Bax said Abel had been trying to perfect for weeks and a couple of tins of sweets that Bax sent Cas to retrieve from the attic. "We let Beatrice figure out it was empty first, of course, before we hid anything up there," Abel said with a grin. He showed me to a comfortable-looking stuffed chair, the arms worn shiny with use and the seat slightly bum-sprung but in just the right way. It was a chair meant for curling up into, and that's just what I did, tucking my feet up underneath me and leaning into the soft back.
Cas settled into the end of the old loveseat that rested against the wall at right angles to my chair. It creaked beneath his weight like my mother's old rocking chair and I had a moment of vicious homesickness before I beat it back with the memories of what Nevada Ashes had truly been like. The tin of squares he held beneath my nose helped, too, and though I wasn't hungry and really, the thought of more food made me slightly sick to my stomach, I picked out two of the squares and set them carefully on my knee for later nibbling.
Bax pulled over an old rocking chair, piled high with quilts to pad the hard wooden slats, and tucked one foot under the other knee, rocking gently back and forth.
Abel closed the office door. "We'll hear anything important," he promised me.
I shrugged and tried on my new, Mercy Hills nonchalance. "As long as the house doesn't land on us, I'm sure anything is fixable. Even if Pip was involved."
Abel grinned and fell onto the other end of the loveseat, stretching his legs out in front of him. Shrieking puppies ran by outside and we all craned our necks to check on them, but they were happy shrieks and the checking, I thought, was more instinct than anything else.
Bax relaxed again in his rocking chair and shook his head. "It's a wonder any of them have a voice left at the end of the day."
"Well," Abel said judiciously. "You know how muscles get stronger when you exercise them."
Bax chuckled and turned to me. "And now that we're not watching over pups, how are you doing?"
