Page 58 of Omega's Flight
I opened my mouth to let the usual polite, "Oh, I'm fine," slip out, but he was watching me too intently and I realized he was asking out of true concern and not politeness. It occurred to me that it had been a long time since anyone had asked after my well-being with the obvious intention of fixing things that were wrong, and some invisible constriction on my heart evaporated. "I'm still a little in shock, I think."
"It's hard, what you've been through." Bax's toes pushed against the floor and the old rocking chair creaked as if in agreement. "I thought what I did was hard, I struggled with it then and after for a while. If I didn't have Abel," he shot a smile over at his mate. "Well, I don't think it would have turned out all as well as it has."
"You would have made it work. I've never seen anyone who reminded more of the old stories than you that night at the gate." Abel smiled back, but there was something in it—admiration, maybe? More than that, something like the deep red coals that burned at the center of a full moon bonfire, a kind of heat that seemed aimed only at Bax.
I made myself not look at Cas, because I was afraid of what I would see there, and what he would see in me.
Bax looked down at his mug, but his lips had curved in a fond smile. "Well, that's in the past and it happened the way it did and I'm glad for it." He looked up at me. "For you, you've got a few days to rest up—we had to tell Roland you were here and we were looking after you. I might have lied a bit," he finished pensively.
"And a beautiful job you did of it too," Abel told him with a grin.
Bax raised a single slim eyebrow at him, then turned back to me. "We told him you were ill when you arrived and that you couldn't be moved."
Oh. "Did you tell him about..." I gestured quickly at my belly then clenched my hand into a fist of frustration and anger.
"No. Not my story to tell. I do think he should be told, but it should be you that tells him unless you don't feel strong enough to. If that’s the case, I’ll do it, or Holland will. And," Bax added in a judicious tone, "It would probably be to your advantage to give him the impression that Degan was the direct cause. It doesn't have to be an outright lie, but—"
"No, I know what you mean." I did, because we'd all lived that kind of life, manipulating with half-lies and implications in our desperate scratching for one little extra crumb of status. Omegas were the worst for it, because everything we wanted or needed, we had to convince someone else to give it to us.
But not here. I realize with sudden shock what the real difference between home and Mercy Hills was —anyone who wanted something asked for it and the pack would provide. Even the omegas. My gaze met Bax's and now I understood the change in him. It made you a different person, to be a person. To be seen and heard and respected, to ask or do or say and have things change, instead of the semi-invisibility I'd lived all my life.
"You're going to have a couple of nice, quiet days to rest and think about how you want to move ahead with your life," Bax told me firmly. "We can deal with Jackson-Jellystone then."
That sounded about right, though knowing that the confrontation with Roland and Degan was still to come left an unsettled feeling in my stomach.
C H A P T E R 4 3
F our days after Christmas, Cas joined Raleigh, Quin, and Holland in the small boardroom, down the hall from Abel's software company. His head pounded—since Christmas, the time he hadn't spent helping Quin prepare for this negotiation had been spent going back through all his notes since he'd started law school.
Not his notes from class. Notes he'd made dealing with the different packs. He'd done a lot of work settling disputes between the different packs, in between his readings and his projects and trying to stay caught up with all the extracurricular things that looked good on a resume and on an application to the bar, despite his near-certain conviction that he'd never get the chance to take that exam. But he had a summary of every single case where he'd brokered an agreement about pups; none of them had had to do with omegas, but all the ones he'd brought with him had gone against conventional pack practices.
He hoped it would be enough.
Quin was there as Alpha, Holland as his Mate but also as one of the omegas of the pack. Cas as the legal counsel, Raleigh as the person with the most to lose. They'd meant to make this call an hour ago, but between one thing and another, they'd only managed to get all four of them in the room together now. And they'd needed all four, knowing that there would likely be questions come up that the others couldn't answer. This needed to be a smooth agreement, amicable—best to have the information at their fingertips. If the call ran over, Cas could finish it, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that. He was still firmly convinced that this agreement, which flew in the face of a century of tradition, was best brokered by the Alphas if it was going to have any chance of sticking. And, oddly, he really wanted it to.
"Ready?" Quin asked, his fingers hovering over the number pad of the room's phone.
Cas nodded, then Holland and then, finally, after a long pause, so did Raleigh. Holland reached out to squeeze the other omega's hand and then the sound of a dial tone filled the air.
Roland's voice grumbled out of the speaker. "Jackson-Jellystone."
"Roland, it's Mercy Hills."
"Going to send my shifters home finally?"
"Not planning on it. We need to talk about why he came here?"
"I know why he went there. He was trying to get away from his responsibilities to his pups and his mate. Not unexpected, given his birth pack. Degan's found a buyer for the house and he's agreed to tear up the contract if you're wanting to keep him. Though I don't know why you would, unless he's got some talents—"
Quin broke into the other Alpha's monologue. "He's sitting right beside me, Roland. Along with my Mate and my lawyer."
There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and then Roland said in a quieter voice, "My apologies, Alpha. I was out of line."
"It's not me you owe the apology to. And I've met many a good shifter from Nevada Ashes, as much as most of the packs like to look down their noses at them. The same ones who look down their noses at you, generally."
"We don't sell ourselves to the humans." To Cas's ears, the words had been ground out between clenched teeth and he nodded to Quin to continue in this vein.
"Is that what you think I did?" Quin asked in a quiet, dangerous voice that raised the hairs on the back of Cas's neck. "Sold myself to the humans? For what? A chance to come home in a box?" Cas saw Holland put a hand up on the back of Quin's neck, fingers rubbing soothingly over the cropped hair at the back of his head, at the same time as the tight suffocating ebb and flow of Quin as Alpha pushed out into the room. He had no doubt that if Roland had been physically present he would have bellied up to Quin.
