Page 147 of Omega's Heart

I hoped anyway. Kaden wasn’t nearly as concerned about it as I was, and I was pinning my hopes on his understanding of humans.

With a muffled growl of discontent, I rolled myself out of bed and went to fetch Kaden’s leg while he worked his way across the mattress. Hunter opened one eye and glared at us. I glared back, then smiled and ruffled his fur before handing Kaden’s leg across the bed to him.

“I’ll go put coffee on,” I said. “Hunter, are you getting up?”

He immediately closed his eye.

“Guess not,” Kaden said, amused. He stood up and stamped his leg securely into the cup of the leg, then rounded the end of the bed to kiss me good morning and give my rear a friendly squeeze. “Are you serving breakfast like that?” He quirked an eyebrow at my lack of clothing.

“Are you eating it like that?” I replied, looking down at his equally naked body.

“Tempting.” He scrubbed his hand over his hair. “But then I might not get to work on time.”

“Can’t have that, Mr. Politician.” I dropped a quick kiss on his mouth and pushed him toward the bathroom. “Go clean up, I’ll get breakfast started.”

Twenty minutes later we were both dressed and finishing our breakfasts. Hunter had finally been coaxed out of bed by the smell of eggs and bacon, but his appetite wasn’t any better than ours. Eventually, I gathered up the plates and put the leftovers back into the refrigerator, then we followed Kaden downstairs to the garage to get his car.

He paused before getting in and pulled me close. “I’m coming right home after work. In the meantime, don’t agree to anything where Hunter is concerned, okay? Not until we have a chance to talk.”

“He was theirs first—” I began, but Kaden pressed a finger to my lips, stopping me.

“He’s ours now. Don’t borrow trouble, you hear me, mate?” He replaced his finger with a kiss, then dropped into the driver’s seat of the car. “Promise me,” he said out the window. He stretched to give Hunter one last scratch, his eyes never straying from me. “It’s just bad timing that Harris is out of the country right now, but we’ll talk to Saffron today.”

I nodded and called Hunter to me. “Have a good day at work.”

“Don’t you spend the day worrying.”

“I won’t.” Actually, I was spending the day with the Housing crew setting up the apartment for Saffron and her grandmother. If I did have to give him up, I wanted to be sure he would be comfortable.

Hunter and I waved Kaden off to work, then we went for a walk around the enclave while I got my thoughts in order, played a little stick and little tug of war, and when ten o’clock rolled around, we walked down to the Housing warehouse near the gate.

It was a rough-looking building, with windows of all shapes and sizes pocking the walls. We didn’t have anything like this at home, so I couldn’t really judge. Holland had needed to explain their whole system to me when he’d first mentioned it over dinner one night. In White River, a family bought their own furniture, either used or from someone in the pack who made furniture or if it was something that couldn’t be produced inside walls, they ordered it when the pack placed their monthly supply order.

I knocked on the door and moments later, someone yelled for me come in.

Inside was a warren of pathways between piles of furniture, all wrapped up in sheets and jammed into every bit of available floor space. The place smelled of dust and shifter and my nose was almost immediately overwhelmed by the scents of all the different shifters who had once used the objects filling the building. “Hello?” I called. My voice echoed back from the ceiling.

“Hi!” A young man—a delta wolf, I guessed, though it was hard to get a proper scent. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to help pick out furniture for the Green Moon transfer?”

“Yes,” the young delta exclaimed, as if he’d just made the connection. “I got the email yesterday.

I’m Andrei.”

“Felix. And Hunter.” We nodded to each other and hesitated. I know I was wondering whether I needed to offer scent; I suspected he was too. He was also keeping a wary eye on Hunter—pretty normal for a first meeting.

After a moment he shrugged and said, “Come on, I’ll show you around. Do you have an idea of what you want?”

“They’re coming with pretty much nothing for now, so everything?”

Andrei nodded. “You want to start with the bedrooms and move out from there?”

“Sure.”

He led me through the warehouse and we started picking out furniture. I decided to go with the most solid pieces, reasoning that I could refinish them as long as they were sturdy enough. Then we moved on to the living room—Lysoonka, so many stains on everything, but I could put together a cover to make everything match and look new, and the tables we picked out could be refinished too. I found a small kitchen table, just big enough for three, and some chairs that would look okay with a fresh coat of paint. Pots and pans, plates, bowls—everything a tiny shifter family needed to settle into their new home. As a last thought, I asked about making the bathroom safer for Saffron’s grandmother, going by the memories of things that the family had set up for Gram.

Andrei frowned and made a note on the paperwork. “I’ll check the inventory to see if we have anything on hand right now. You’ll have to talk to the Housing office and see if they can fit an installation in. Kind of short notice—they’re here today, right?”