Abel led me over to a large room full of older pups just the right age for Fan and Teca. There were seven of them, three boys and four girls. Two of them wrestled in wolf form on a rug in the corner. In the opposite corner, a young male shifter was helping one of the boys get dressed in a cowboy’s costume. Behind them, I could see bits and pieces of other costumes hanging over the edge of a large bin. Next to that was a plastic tool bench covered in plastic tools, and then a tiny wooden kitchen with perfectly miniature wooden frying pans and utensils. One of the girls was running around the room with a pot on her head and a spoon in her hand, but it very obviously wasn’t a spoon in her mind, because she was attacking the stuffed dragon in the corner with it.
Fan would be in heaven.
Abel looked contentedly around the room. “We have a rotating shift of people who look after the pups, starting at seven in the morning and running until curfew.”
“Why curfew?” Did it apply inside Mercy Hills as well as outside?
He shrugged. “They decided amongst themselves. Since everyone has to be inside walls by curfew, it seemed like a good time to close up.” He caught my wondering look and added, “They have shifts. Everyone in the pack contributes in some way to the pack—we can’t afford anyone staying home to look after their children. My predecessor had this idea about thirty years ago and it’s made things a lot easier.”
Imagine having the ability to do work without worrying about your pups. I wondered how much more I could have done if I hadn’t spent more than half my time chasing after my babies. Not that I regretted the time I’d spent with them, but this…this luxury of unfettered time was unheard of back in Jackson-Jellystone. And Buffalo Gap.
Abel pointed at the young adult. “That’s Bram, in the corner. Mac’s cousin. He’s omega as well. He spends a lot of time here when he’s not in school.”
School? “Do you keep omegas in school here after they can read and write?”
He looked surprised. “Of course. Why wouldn’t we? They’re going to contribute to the pack once they’re adults too. Why?”
I didn’t realize I’d started to cry until he ran a thumb over my cheekbone. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, his brow creased in a worry that made the tears come even harder.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m beginning to wish I’d been born here.”
“You didn’t get to go to school?”
I shook my head. “We had the same education as the others until we were eleven, and then we were shuffled into our own classes. Omegas don’t need to be able to do anything more than read a recipe or add up how many apples they need for a pie.” I sniffed and blinked back the rest of my tears. “Not that I let that stop me, but I had to sneak in reading time in between childcare lessons and memorizing the major categories of stains and how to get them out of clothing. I still think I could have done the math they let the alphas do.”
He barked a laugh. “I have no doubt at all.” He crooked a finger at Bram, who sent the little cowboy off with a plastic gun and a horse’s head on stick, and dodged his way over to us. “Hi, Abel.”
I controlled my face, but I still found it shocking that they all called the Alpha by his first name. Mercy Hills was a strange place. And yet, in my mind, he was Abel too.
Even more to think about.
“How are your numbers here now?” Abel asked him.
Bram frowned. “Are there more pups coming? Is it long term?”
“Yes, long term.” Abel shushed me. “Four. How old are they, Bax?”
I swallowed and looked at Bram, who was eyeing me suspiciously. This close, I could smell the omega on him, but he seemed to be puzzled by my scent. “Fan was three in the spring, Teca was two, Beatrice was one, and Noah was born this year.”
His expression brightened. “Oh, if it’s only two in this room and one in each of the others, it shouldn’t be a problem. Lydia was in asking if she could do her community hours here now that the gardens are pretty much done, but we didn’t really need her. I’ll let Becca know we’ll want her for the baby room.”
I turned to Abel. “I feel like I’m making a lot of trouble for you.”
He shook his head. “If you’ll clear up that paperwork for me and let me get to other things I need to finish, it will be absolutely worth it.” He turned back to Bram. “Can they start this evening?”
“I’ll need to check with Becca, but I’m sure for you it wouldn’t be any trouble.”
“I don’t want anyone losing their place for me. We can move Bax tomorrow or Monday. Where is Becca?”
“Maybe in the office? If not, she’s probably in with the babies.” A wail rose over the noise of happy pups, and Bram jumped and spun. “Sasha, knights only attack dragons. They don’t attack cowboys. For crying out loud, they’re not even in the same era.” And he disappeared into the roil of pups again.
Abel took my elbow and tugged me toward the door. “We’ll check the office first and you can fill out the forms.”
I took a last glance over my shoulder as we left. “They don’t keep them inside all the time, do they?” As soon as I said it, I cursed myself for a stupid omega. Hadn’t I just seen pups outside? I peered up at Abel from underneath my eyelashes, but couldn’t find any trace of impatience or scorn in his expression.
He shook his head. “No, but I don’t know much about their schedule. You can ask Becca.”
That was good. My babies were used to being outside as much as possible. Obediently, I followed Abel along the hallway. We passed a room full of toddlers, with two female shifters inside, and then another full of babies Noah’s age crawling about on blankets and some kind of thin foam. At the end of the hall, Abel knocked on a door and someone called, “Come in.”
The office was small, but the woman behind the desk was tiny enough that it wouldn’t matter. I was no bruiser myself, and compared to Abel I looked like a twig, but she looked like a splinter. Her eyes were the same dark brown as Abel’s, but her hair was lighter. She looked up from her computer screen and smiled. “So the rumors are true?”
“What rumors, Becca?” There was a hint of a growl in Abel’s voice, and I stiffened instinctively.
Becca gave me a once over. “Don’t let him intimidate you, dear. We’re cousins. It breeds a certain familiarity.” She pulled open a drawer in her desk. “Here, have a candy.” She held out two tiny, paper-wrapped squares. “That should sweeten you up, you old crank.”
“Quit it, Bec. You’ll give him a bad impression and I want him to like me.”
“Then don’t pretend I couldn’t still dump you in the pond.”
“Ha. I’d like to see you try.” But he grinned and scooped the candies out of her palm. “Which do you want, Bax? Red or yellow?”
“Oh, I don’t—” But I could tell from Abel’s expression he really wanted me to choose. “Red, please.”
He handed it over, then turned back to Becca. “Bax needs forms for his pups.”
“How many?”
She was already digging into another drawer before I could answer, “Four.”
Becca paused in her rummaging and gave me another once over, this one sharper than before. I knew she was guessing my age, and how young I’d been when Fan was born, and wondering what my story was. Did she think I’d mated indiscriminately the first time, overcome by hormones? I felt heat burning into my cheeks and I looked down and paid close attention to the paper I was peeling off the candy.
Abel spoke up and saved me. “His mate died, and he’s looking to move here. Fan is three, Teca is two, Beatrice is one, and Noah is six months.”
I forgot the candy to stare at Abel. It wasn’t even a certainty that Patrick could have rattled off the pups’ ages like that, and Abel had only heard them once. To say I was impressed—and touched—was an understatement.
“I’ll need more staff,” Becca said.
“Bram told me Lydia was here looking for hours.”
“She’s young. The two older rooms should be fine with th
e staff we have, but with another six month old, I’ll need someone for the baby room, and Lydia’s only thirteen.”
“Why not move Bram there?”
She threw him a sarcastic look. “And have him mooning over babies again? I’ve been down that road once with him already. No, he’s perfectly fine in the older room.” She sighed. “Do you need day hours or evening hours?”
Oh. I looked helplessly at Abel. We hadn’t even talked about that.
“Probably day. He’s going to be working in the office, looking for project funding for us. But if you could fit them in tonight, I’d appreciate it. He’s staying with Jason right now, but it’s too many wolves in too small a space. Mac’s afraid for his ankles.”
She snorted. “This evening shouldn’t be a problem. Our numbers are lower on Saturday nights. Do you need childcare tomorrow?” she asked me.
Again, I looked to Abel.
He stepped smoothly into the breach. “No. He doesn’t start until Monday.”
“Well, then, that’s fine.” She handed me a small sheaf of papers and a pen, and pointed me to a chair and the corner of her desk. “Take a moment and fill those in. I’ll talk to Personnel over the weekend and see who’s available.”
I took the seat she indicated and started filling out the forms. They were simple, just name, age, medical history, favorite foods, favorite stories. I liked the last two—it told me they thought about my babies the way I thought about them. While I wrote, she and Abel chatted in what seemed to me to be a random fashion, until the topic of money and Jason came up.
“I think you should tell Montana Border to shove it where the sun doesn’t shine,” Becca said.
“I don’t think I can. If I renege, they’ll just go through the human court system again. It did them well last time. I don’t know if they cared about Jason as much as the money they could wring out of us.”
She flipped her pen over and over in her hand, tapping it against the desk with each revolution. “Where people get the idea we have bags of cash floating around, I have no idea.”
I looked up at that. It was tempting to break into the conversation and tell them exactly why people thought they were rich, but uppity omegas didn’t tend to fare well, so I kept my mouth closed and listened closely.
Abel snorted and crossed his arms, leaning casually against the wall. He looked good like that, and I bent my head to my papers again to hide the color in my cheeks.
“They don’t know what we give up. But it bothers me that they were willing to risk killing him to get him back.”
I raised my head again at that. This part of the story was news to me.
Abel noticed me watching him. “On the way home, they rammed our car and tried to kidnap him. The police investigated, but nothing’s come of it yet.”
Strange. What would be so important about an omega that a pack would try to kidnap one? I turned back to the last of my paperwork, but my brain wouldn’t leave the problem alone. Maybe it was bad blood between Mercy Hills and Jason’s birth pack? Had Jason or his family done something before they ran? The mystery created a line of unease in my thoughts, and I vowed to watch everything more carefully from now on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Abel walked Bax back to Jason and the pups. Teca came running up to them and jumped into Bax’s arms. He hugged her with a joy so transparent it made Abel happy just to watch it. If he hadn’t already decided to help Bax before, this little scene, so innocent on the surface, would have done it.
Bax swung Teca around and set her down, then went to check on the other pups.
“Dabi, look!” Fan held up a tiny bucket and shovel, and proceeded to use them to make a small mountain of sand in the corner of the sand box. “See? It’s home. And this is Central. And this is Evan’s house,” he said, pointing to the different piles of sand around him.
“They’re wonderful,” Bax told him. “Look, here’s some rocks. You can make doors and windows.”
Fan took the offered pebbles with the most serious expression Abel had ever seen and began shoving them into the piles of sand according to a plan that only seemed to exist to him. He watched the little family with a tinge of wistfulness and checked his phone to see if he could pry a few more minutes out of his day. Maybe… But he had the government’s monthly report to go over in case of errors. Hmm, maybe Bax could look at those too? No, they needed to go on Monday, so the Department could send them back to him and bitch about the mistakes he made. And then he planned to be head down in Alpha Hunt for the rest of the weekend—except that they needed to move Bax tonight.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He touched Bax’s shoulder. “I have to go. More of that paperwork I’m hoping you can take off my shoulders on Monday.”
Bax stood up immediately, Beatrice on his hip. “Should I start today?” he asked in a low voice, obviously intended just for Abel.
“No. Take the day and rest. Spend time with the pups and get used to the place. I’ll come by this evening with your keys and we’ll get you set up.” He wanted to say something else to the young omega with the huge apprehensive eyes, but he couldn’t think what. So, rather than make a bigger deal out of it than it needed to be, he smiled at Bax, and waved a quick good-bye to Jason.
Back in his office, he checked his messages. It was Saturday, so nothing from the government, but there were other issues that probably didn’t need to be handled at his level and still ended up in front of him because of simple lack of manpower. When did ‘just another half an hour’ turn into sixteen hour days? And with the money owed to Montana Border, plus whatever the lawyer’s bill would be when it arrived, he couldn’t afford to take anyone off any of the jobs necessary to keeping them fed and housed and non-pack income coming in just to shorten up his day.
He found a phone number he didn’t recognize, and checked it on the internet to see where it had come from.
Edwards, Montague, and Hess. Attorneys-at-Law.
Laine.
He hit the button to return the call. It rang through, then went to voicemail. Gritting his teeth, he left his name and number and hung up. Not thirty seconds later, his phone rang again from the same number.
“Good morning, Laine.”
“Good morning, Alpha. How are things at Mercy Hills?”
“Same as ever. A bit more food—Jason really does have a touch with the gardens. Can I help you with something?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, you can. And I may be able to help you as well. I’d like to propose a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“I would like to borrow Mr. Garrick Mercy Hills, to help me prepare for a trial. There are some contract law involvements in this case, and he seems to have a better grasp of contract law than my current junior associate. In return, I would like to help you prosecute your case against Montana Border.”
“We don’t have a case against Montana Border.”
“No? Did you decide not to press charges? That seems a strange thing to do. I would push to have the last judgment overturned, simply because they obviously are not a particularly civilized group. Or perhaps you’ve already paid them? I hadn’t heard, but it wouldn’t exactly come across my desk either.”
“No, we haven’t paid. Which reminds me—your bill. When can I expect it?”
He could almost see Laine leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head and his vulpine grin spreading across his face. “Oh, don’t worry about that. Let’s call it a pro bono case. Really, it was entirely too fascinating. I never realized there could be anything more complicated than criminal law.”
Pro bono. Abel put his head down on the desk for a second, phone still pressed to his ear. It seemed too good to be true. “Are you certain?”
“Of course. It was my pleasure. But perhaps I could borrow Mr. Garrick for some other cases? He has a fine, detailed legal mind, and it’s a criminal waste that he isn’t permitted to practice.” Once again, Abel sensed the predator lurking inside the human, mask
ed behind the human’s subtle humor. The line was silent for a moment, and Laine’s chair creaked in the background. “You should know, Judge Wilson called to find out what I knew about the accident.”
“And?”
“That’s it. But you should press charges.”
“I didn’t think that was an option—isn’t that up to the police?”
“They might need to be pushed. You are, after all, shifters.”
True. But he wasn’t sure he had the energy left to deal with human intransigence. “I was going to try the Council and see what they could do.” Another thing he needed to shoehorn into his schedule, put together his complaint for that.
Laine drew in a long breath. “He’s an older Alpha, and your pack is rich, as packs are ranked. It can’t be that different from human society. How do you think that will go?”
And Abel wasn’t exactly the most popular Alpha in the country, though Laine didn’t know that. Abel grunted, because really, what else could he say? He didn’t think that Laine expected him to have anything, either.
“Call the police, Abel,” Laine said. “Ask them to press charges. And if I can borrow Garrick to keep me from making some stupid first year mistake, I’ll put together a case for the civil courts and see if we can get that judgment overturned.”
Abel blew out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “That would be great. Last night, we had another omega show up at our gates, begging for sanctuary.”
There was a pause on the line, then Laine came back on, his tone intense. “Don’t do anything that will set people’s backs up. Maybe I should take a drive down tomorrow, we can talk about this more easily in person.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I don’t have enough information.”
Abel could tell that was something that really stuck in Laine’s craw.
Laine continued. “Not only that, but there’s the difference between human and shifter culture. I don’t know your culture, your unspoken rules, the idioms in your speech even. Your history and your mythology. Trying to help you with pack matters is like me trying to go to Greece and practice—I’d stink on ice, because even if I knew the laws, I don’t know how to spin things within the culture. If I come down tomorrow, I could take Garrick back with me too, and save your driver a trip.”
Abel's Omega(Gay Paranomal MM Mpreg Romance) (Mercy Hills Pack Book 2) Page 10