Page 106 of Omega's Flight

Ori followed me to the door, walking me out like a good host did. "Thank you," he said. Willie Rose took that opportunity to burp and we both laughed. "Rose says thank you, too," he added. "And if I can help you out at all, I'm glad to."

I waved his offer away. "Get settled first, then we can talk about trading labor. Or pupsitting." I patted him on the arm and turned to head back to my own pups. Things were looking up. And as I walked, I began planning my next night on Cas's arms. Hopefully one that involved more than sleeping.

C H A P T E R 7 6

W e certainly had made a mess in the park last night—it wasn't as bad as a Full Moon, but it had been a lot fewer packmembers too. Worth every second of the clean-up, though. I smiled a little as I thought about Wynn's face as he'd gazed up into his alpha's eyes, a handsome dark-eyed young man who was related to Quin on his father's side.

As other shifters headed off to their own tasks about the enclave, most of them waved as they walked by and said thank you to me. I waved back and shouted you're welcome to them, even though I didn't know them. But it gave me a warm feeling, this evidence that I was a true part of the pack here, and I turned back to my work of breaking down tables and gathering up chairs to be collected and returned to their owners with that happy feeling surrounding me.

Which made it all the worse when I looked up and saw Holland standing at the edge of the park, his eyes fixed intently on me.

Something’s wrong. My first thought was that something had happened to one of the pups and I dropped the chair I was carrying and hurried over to Holland. "What's wrong? Is it the pups?"

He took my arm and began to lead me out of the park, toward the main building. "Not them. Or, not specifically them." He sighed. "Degan's still pushing to talk to you."

"Why?" He'd never been that interested in my thoughts and opinions before.

"I don't know. Quin and I are considering the possibility that Roland wants you to decide to come back and he's pushing Degan to..." Holland paused and made a face. "...seduce you back to Jackson-Jellystone.

The words jumped out of my mouth before I could think about them. "Thanks, no," I said bluntly.

Holland laughed, that sudden half-hysterical laughter of someone who was so keyed up and worried that any attempt at humor was hilarious. "Well, that clears that up," he said, and wiped the tears from his eyes. His laughter died then, though I thought he seemed easier about whatever was bothering him. "With that decided, we have to figure out what we want to do here. Quin's already had a call warning him that if he doesn't come to an agreement with Jackson-Jellystone about the pups, there'll have to be an alpha's council called."

"What could they do?"

Holland shrugged. "We're small islands of shifters adrift in an ocean of humanity. One of the ways we survive is by helping each other out. Imagine a pack entirely cut off from other packs. No mixing of family lines, no exchange of training or labor. If they cut us off, we'd probably survive because we have the Mutch money, but how long before we're mating within cousins again?" He shook his head. "We want Cas, too. We might be looking at moving outside the pack structure and trying through the human courts. I don't want to do that—they spend enough time telling us what to do."

A chill of fear ran down my spine. "He's probably asleep right now."

Holland glanced over his shoulder as if he could see through the trees that edged that section of the park. "Might as well clear this up as soon as possible." He glanced around the clearing and beckoned to one of the other shifters whose job it was roam the enclave reporting on things that needed to be fixed and cleaning up small messes. "I need to take Raleigh, can you let Bell know to charge his missing hours today to my account? I'll sit down with him later and get everything balanced." He let the other shifter go then took my arm and turned me toward the trees. "I might end up spending some time cleaning up around the park at the rate I've been going lately," he joked. Then, "You okay?"

I jerked my head up, startled. "Yes, why?"

"You're very quiet. And there's this," he said, touching the skin between my eyebrows with the tip of one finger. "You're frowning."

"I'm thinking," I confessed. The germ of an idea was poking up through the mess of worry and hope and fear in my mind. Would it work?

"We won't let them take you back. Quin's far from finished digging into his bag of tricks," Holland promised me.

I waved a hand. "No, I believe you." I paused to think of how to explain myself.

"Or the pups," Holland put in quickly.

"No, I know." I stumbled over a tree root, but Holland's hand on my arm kept me upright. I had a weird thought that it was very like an Alpha's Mate, but this one in particular, to just be there when someone needed him and quietly set things to rights. "I know I'm not Mercy Hills yet—"

"You are in my eyes, if you want to be," Holland said promptly. "Don't let that worry you."

"Thank you." I squinted up at him, then looked back down at the ground.

“I wanted to ask you something,” Holland said.

“Oh?” I replied politely. With the talk of Degan, I thought I knew what it was, but he was my Alpha’s Mate. Or I wanted him to be, anyway.

Holland nodded and his steps slowed to a stop. “You know I will fight for you and for your pups, for as long as I need to, right? So if you truly can’t face this, I understand and we will find a way. But if I could promise you that there would be no threat from Degan, would you reconsider having him come for the summer, maybe the fall? We’d put him up in one of the other old houses, at the far end of the street, so he wasn’t right on top of you.”

“I don’t really want him here.” I winced even as I said the words, because I didn’t mean to be ungrateful, but the thought of him made me so anxious that I couldn’t think about anything else.

When I looked up again, Holland was frowning, but more like a man with a problem to chew on than an angry Mate.