Page 51 of Omega's Flight

"I'll put it here, okay?" Cas asked. Every surface in the room was covered in bits and pieces of torn apart computers but one small table only had a few fairly solid looking things on it.

"No, you can't!" Fan lunged to protect the whatever-they-weres. "I had to glue them and it's not done drying." He looked around the room like he was in a panic, then abruptly closed the laptop and moved it onto the stack of blankets on the foot of the bed. The loss of the screen gave rise to a combined howl of vocal dismay in the youngest pups, who didn't want to miss any of Cinderella now that someone else was keeping them from seeing it.

"Teca, get your African animals book." Fan held the computer up and away from the little pups. "No, it can't go on top of the bed. It'll get too hot and melt."

Cas quickly dodged the speeding girl and put the snacks down on the dresser. "When did you start destroying your Pap's computers?" he asked in a sardonic tone.

Fan gave him a look that said he thought Cas was dumb as plainly as if he'd spoken the words. "I'm not destroying them. These are broken ones. Pap said I could take them apart and try to fix them. I asked Midwinter Wolf for a soldering gun for Christmas and Pap says he thinks Midwinter Wolf will probably bring it because it's a good present."

Teca came back with a tall and wide hardcover book and threw it on top of the rumpled bedclothes. "Ann and me are going to play with the ponies," she announced and disappeared back out the door.

Cas watched Fan set the computer carefully on top of the book. "Don't touch it," he warned the littler pups. "Just watch, or I'll have to put it away."

Cas hid a smile behind his hand, waited a moment to make sure that little Henry and Taden and Noah were content to slouch in the pillows with a stack of stuffed animals and watch the cartoon... "Wait. Where's Beatrice?"

Fan looked up and Cas's finely honed legal instincts read the guilt on his face. "Where's your sister, Fan?"

"Don't know," Fan said stubbornly and went back to his Lego.

"Right, I'll just let Dabi know that Beatrice is gone missing."

Fan's eyes widened, and Cas could almost see the wheels turning in his head. "I think she's in her bedroom."

Where the hatch to the attic was. "They're not up there," Cas said casually and leaned against the frame of the door.

"What's not up there?"

"Presents." Aha, caught you, little sneaky-sneak. "Besides, Midwinter Wolf doesn't like pups that go hunting for their gifts before Christmas morning. Wouldn't want to wake up to a pile of sticks." He grinned and left before Fan could come up with any arguments.

Before he was halfway down the stairs, he was rewarded by the sound of puppy feet racing down the hall, and then Fan's voice calling out to Beatrice. Adults one, puppies six hundred and eighty-two. We'll catch up to you one of these days, fuzzballs.

C H A P T E R 3 7

B ax had insisted I eat a couple of cookies and made me a hot chocolate to dip them in. "It's only Christmas once a year," he'd said with a mischievous smile, so I'd said yes. They had a beautiful home, big for being in an enclave and obviously recently built. I felt a moment's envy, but reminded myself that Bax deserved it for everything he'd done, and everything he'd suffered. Maybe, if I worked hard, I could have a house like this someday. In the meantime, I was content with the one I had—it was bigger than what we'd been living in, and in better condition.

And it was mine.

Bax settled into a chair across from me with a cup of coffee and his own cookies in front of him. "Let me know when you get tired. Abel can run get the truck from the gate and drive you home."

"I'll be fine." I stirred the top of my hot chocolate with a piece broken off one of the cookies and lifted it out to stare thoughtfully at it. "Thank you. I know I've been a lot of trouble." I raised my eyes to meet his. "And I know I wasn't always nice to you in Jackson-Jellystone." Bax being Bax, I'd have expected he'd either wave it off or say something that would haunt me for days. He'd been good at that back then.

But he didn't. Instead, he kept his eyes on mine while he sipped his coffee, then said, "We were all different people there. I wasn't any better than the rest of us, but when I came here, I changed. For the better, I like to think, though I doubt Patrick would agree with that." His smile was brief and only a little bitter. "I expect you'll change here. I think you might be already."

I looked away, toward the opening to the living room where I could hear Abel moving things around. "I don't know what I'm doing, to be honest about it all. I just—" I broke off, wondering how much to tell him.

"He hit you."

I shrugged. "Don't they all?" I looked back to him.

"Not here." Bax broke a corner off one of his cookies and crushed it to crumbs. "I saw the bruises."

I shrugged again. What could I say? I couldn't deny it. "Although this was the rocking chair. I fell against it when we were fighting. He didn't cause the miscarriage." Adelaide had said so.

"He didn't help." There was an unfamiliar snap of anger in Bax's voice, and my eyes widened. He snapped another cookie in half, crushing it bit by bit until all that was left was a pile of sweet-smelling golden powder. "Why, when you were sick and pregnant, did he treat you as he did?" He caught my gaze again and his green eyes were unnerving. "Did he look for reasons to be angry with you? Find fault in things that he couldn't have done any better? Complain about things you couldn't have predicted?"

I stared at him—did he really have magic? How could he have seen so closely into my mating if he didn't?

Unless his mating had been the same. "Oh, Bax, I'm sorry. I was an absolute prick, wasn't I?"