Page 76 of Abel's Omega

She whined and braced her legs on his bag, panting happily.

“Crazy pups,” I muttered under my breath.

The reporter sat beside me. “They seem to like him.”

“He’s a good father,” I answered coolly.

The reporter snorted. “You don’t like me much, do you?”

I kept my eyes on the group doing their push-ups, with Fan counting each one. “I don’t know what you want.”

He made a tch noise. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted either, when Laine talked me into this. Really, I only came because I figured I owed him. He’s put me on to some pretty big stories before—I couldn’t just say no. But I think thereisa story here.”

I turned to stare at him. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Look at you. Look at this place. It’s like a family with thousands of members.”

“You’re not so far off,” I said wryly. “It wasn’t that long ago that the packs were running into bloodline problems.” I scratched behind Noah’s ears. “There’s still a lot of relatives here. Mac and Abel are cousins, and Duke is a cousin of Abel’s, but not of Mac’s, but Stephanie—the redhead, is a first cousin to both Mac and Abel, and a second or third cousin to Duke.”

The reporter whistled. “That makes things complicated.”

“Yes, it does. But it’s what happens in a closed system.” Jason was working on chemistry now, and I’d picked that phrase up from him. It seemed a perfect description for the way the packs had been isolated for the first fifty years after the Enclosure.

“I think that’s why Laine asked me to come out and meet you. This certainly isn’t what I’d expected.”

“What did you expect?”

He shrugged. “Disorder, chaos, violence. I mean, I can feel that you’re shifters. There’s just something in the air here. But you’re far more…civilized than I’d thought I’d find.”

I snorted and turned back Abel. He was doing one handed push-ups now, with Fan on his back too. His eyes were on me and, without thinking, I whistled at him. He grinned and switched arms and I blushed again. So much for civilized.

The reporter spoke again. “You two are a real love story, aren’t you?”

I cocked my head to the side and studied him. “Did you think we weren’t?”

“I thought Laine was embroidering the truth a little. He does enjoy stirring the pot, and he’s got no compunction about involving other people in his schemes.”

“Scheme.” I didn’t really care for the idea of being used.

“Yeah. That’s what I call them. He calls them causes. I think some of the big cases he takes are only about publicity and making money enough that he can afford to do free stuff for worthy causes. All he needs is the armor and the fancy horse, and we’ll have to start calling him Sir.”

I tucked that away to think about it. “What do you think he’s getting out of this?”

The reporter shrugged. “Equality for all? He’s got a strong streak of fairness that really should have been beaten out of him in law school.”

That made me laugh, and I decided that maybe I should be a little less suspicious. “Okay, so how can we scratch this itch of Laine’s, then?”

He frowned and watched Abel flop on the ground with the kids still on his back. “Family pictures. At least one romantic one. And I’ll want to hear more about how you met.”

“Fine. I think we can manage that.” I set Noah on the ground to wobble over to Abel. “Might as well start now.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

I was neck deep in planning for my mating ceremony when the reporter called again.

“Hey, who do you have doing pictures for the ceremony?” he asked.

“Pictures?” More pictures? He’d done two stories on us so far—I had copies of the magazines they’d appeared in. What did we need with more?