Page 166 of Omega's Heart
Adam mirrored his posture. “So you took this job, thinking that you were probably going to be screwed over? Why would you?”
Kaden took a sip of his coffee and watched Adam closely. “It seemed worth the risk. It wasn’t going to make things any worse than they are now. And it was human money added to the pack’s economy, for as long as it lasted. Plus, if it worked, well…” He made a what would you do gesture with his right hand. “We see things a bit different than humans do.”
Adam frowned in thought, his gaze drifting away over the other diners in the hotel’s restaurant. Kaden sipped at his coffee and sent a casual text to Felix asking what he was wearing. Felix sent him back a smiley, which told him everything and nothing and damned if he didn’t feel like just getting up from the table and catching a flight back home again.
Finally, Adam sent off a text and then leaned forward again, clasping his hands together on the table in front of him. “This is why we need you. Stuff like that, we can’t see it. If we can’t see it, we can’t prepare for it. I can tell you, if we get in, we’re not going to leave you behind.”
“What, is the senator going to give me his old job?” Kaden asked humorlessly.
Adam’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “No. But we’re still figuring out where you might fit in on the White House staff roster.”
This time, Kaden couldn’t control his jerk of surprise. “You’re seriously considering hiring a shifter to work at the White House.” He’d decided they were blowing smoke.
“If we get in.” Adam sat back again. “We don’t yet know what capacity, but it’s all still very preliminary at the moment. We’ll make more precise plans once we get closer to the date.”
Kaden picked up his coffee and sipped at it, watching Adam over the rim of the cup while he considered this new information. It could be bullshit—so much when dealing with humans was. But when he thought back over his interactions with this small group of humans, very little of what had passed between him and them had been. Oh, there was a hidden alpha inside all of them, and a ruthless one to boot, but anything they’d told him they’d do, they’d done it. And even some other things he hadn’t asked for.
“You swear you will have these laws that make us criminals in our own land done away with?” he asked finally.
“You know as well as I do that we can’t guarantee it. We will do our best. You need to do your part too.”
Kaden waved that off, setting his cup down on its saucer with an overloud clink. “Yes, I know, I need to bring the shifters in behind you in the elections—”
“Not that.” Adam made a casual gesture, as if the votes were the least of his concerns. “You need to be an ambassador for your people. Friendly, useful, and most of all—visible.”
Visible. Kaden stilled an impulse to shrug the tension out of his shoulders. He’d gotten along as well as he had by not being visible—that was a skill he’d honed for years. Taking this job had meant giving up some of that safety, but he’d been careful about how and when he gave it up. The White House… That was going to be difficult, at the very least.
But Quin had done it. In fact, he’d done very well for himself by being visible to the humans.
Gonna have to talk to the Old Wolf when I get home again.
Adam had been watching him. “It’s a subtle thing, influencing a population. We don’t want to be obvious. A slow change is more likely to stick. Really, we should have started a couple of years ago, but we didn’t have you. And like the president said, you have a weight to you that no one else can bring to bear, except maybe your brothers, and you can’t spare them.”
“So you want me to be visible how?”
Adam gestured at the room around them. “First of all, work here in Washington, get to know some of the people. Develop relationships, do some favors. If the Bureau agrees to suspend your curfew, or even if they don’t, we’ll get you out at some social things. The injured war hero, the married man. Married gay man will help us with certain demographics. Dedicated family man will help us with others.”
“You know it’s not a gay thing with us. If you want to educate the world about shifters, you can’t tell them that,” Kaden corrected automatically, his brain spinning. It sounded like they wanted Felix to be…visible…too. He wasn’t sure he liked that idea.
Adam shrugged with the human’s typical disinterest. “That’s not how our audience will see it. Think of it as an opportunity to educate us at a level that might actually filter down.”
He hadn’t considered that possibility. But Felix… “I’m not sure. It sounds like you want my mate to be here too, which I’m not against. I am against putting him in the line of fire.” And how would the humans respond to a male shifter able to carry pups? Some areas of the country were still coming to terms with the idea of matings between two men or two women.
“You don’t think he might like a bit of time in the big city? Take him to the theater, shopping, museums. Treat him.”
He’d like to. But Felix had never been out of the enclaves, except for those shopping trips with Holland and the drive back to White River. And now that Felix was pregnant… “I’ll have to think about it.” He caught the expression on Adam’s face. “What? It’s not the same for us. And I will freely admit I worry about Washington being his first experience of actually living outside walls, instead of just visiting.”
“Memphis is better?”
“Memphis is close to Mercy Hills. We have a house in the city. And packmembers who stay there all year round.”
“You’ll be here. As will our staff. You won’t live in the house by yourselves.”
“We have a dog,” Kaden said, more potential problems crowding in to take the place of ones that had been solved. “Our adopted pup.”
Adam gave him a sharp look. “Your people don’t keep pets. Particularly dogs.”
So he knew that much, at least. “We were doing a favor for a friend of Quin’s, an old Marine buddy. Felix is…very caring.”
