Page 163 of Omega's Heart

Kaden greeted him politely, then turned back to Mike with curiosity.

“The senator thought you should all meet Kaden. In certain regions, this might not be as critical, but in the South and in the Midwest in particular, we’re asking you keep Kaden in the loop on anything you hear so he can get ahead of issues before they come back to bite us.” Mike grinned in Kaden’s direction, the joke deliberate, and Kaden just shook his head at the joke and smiled.

Mike continued. “We’re going to keep sending Kaden around to all the different shifter enclaves over the next six months to get a feel for the different populations, what they want, what it would take to get them to give us what we want. Once we’ve officially declared our candidate for the race and we’re past the primaries, then things are really going to heat up.”

Cliff leaned forward. “You really think you can bring the shifters into our camp?”

Kaden turned his right-hand palm up. “I can’t promise anything. There’s not a lot of trust inside the enclaves for humans. We’ve been jerked around a lot and every step forward we’ve managed in one area has almost always been followed by losses somewhere else. It would help if we could make some headway somewhere and not have to pay for it elsewhere for once, so I have something I can bring with me to the Alphas.” One of the advantages of working in the senator’s office the past couple of months had been the ability to poke around in legislation. He’d had to lean on Cas pretty hard in the beginning—legal double-speak was practically a foreign language. But he had noticed a pattern of gains and losses.

“That’s often how politics works,” Cliff said. “Gains in one area have to be paid for somehow.”

His tone was dismissive, like Kaden was an ignorant pup who needed a lecture by his elders to understand how the world actually worked.

The human’s words raised the hackles on the back of Kaden’s neck. “It would be nice if the baseline wasn’t so low in the first place,” Kaden pointed out.

“Any other minority group could say the same—” he began, but Kaden interrupted him.

“No other single minority group has to ask permission of their overlords just to leave their neighborhood.”

Cliff jerked, startled.

Sophia narrowed her eyes at Cliff, then turned to Kaden. “Is that how you see us?”

Kaden shrugged and fingered the tabs on his collar, violently yellow against the sage green of his shirt. He used his left hand this time, a reminder of what he’d lost in the interest of the country.

“It certainly does seem like an unevenly weighted system,” Alan agreed.

“So what would you be looking for as a step forward?” Mike asked.

Kaden shrugged again. “What could we get fairly quickly that could stay in place long enough for me to make the point? And it can’t be something insignificant. It has to have a positive impact on the entire population, not just a few of us.”

Mike nodded. “So, the first order of this war council is to figure out what the shifters need that we can give them, that can’t be easily taken away.”

Kaden stared for a moment at his maimed hand, tapped the finger against his thigh and considered the things that worried Quin the most. “Medicine.”

“What? You mean like drugs?” Liam asked.

“No.” What was Quin most worried about? “Doctors. Nurses. Technicians. We have the potential with these Mutch trusts to put up the buildings, but we need people to staff them.”

“So, educational incentives?”

“That’s pretty long term,” Sophia mused. “I’m going to assume that this is a pressing need?”

“There are two actual doctors, with the degree, for the entire shifter population. Mercy Hills itself doesn’t have a doctor, we have a nurse practitioner. About half the packs have a nurse, most of them have someone with some level of medical training. A lot of our medicine is granny medicine—for anything that goes beyond home remedies, we have to request to go outside walls and find a doctor or clinic that will treat us. Not all of them will.” He paused to let that sink in, and to scramble for anything else that might make his point. “We’ve had shifters die because they were shunted from hospital to hospital, each one claiming they didn’t have the facilities to treat a shifter.” He fidgeted uncomfortably, suddenly worried. What if Felix needed to go to a hospital? Suddenly, the distance between Washington and Mercy Hills loomed even larger and infinitely more frightening.

He glanced around the room, catching the eye of each of the occupants in turn. “I suppose this isn’t really the time for the announcement, but I think it might make my own concerns clear. My mate and I are expecting, sometime in May. And it terrifies me that I could lose them both if something goes wrong. We’re an hour outside of Memphis, and five hours from the nearest obstetrician that will treat him.” He raised his hand, touched the scars that edged his face and took the place of most of his left ear. “I know from personal experience how quick a person can bleed out without help. If I could get the kind of help I needed in the middle of a battlefield overseas, there’s something seriously wrong with our own system when I have to consider the possibility of becoming a widower in May, simply because the local doctors would rather play hot potato with us than actually treat a patient.”

The room fell silent, then Sophia broke the silence. “That’s…a tall order.”

Mike made a note on a pad of paper. “Would the packs be able to help out with that?”

“Help out how?” Kaden demanded. “Do we look like we’re rolling in money? I’m going into debt just paying for hotels while I’m here in Washington, and I’ve got a military pension and my salary.”

“You don’t need to stay in a hotel,” Cliff said gruffly.

“Where should I stay? Are you offering me your guest room?” Kaden asked, leaning back in his chair. “Segregation Laws, Section 3, Subsection 1.1. All beings which exhibit any of the above-named abilities must remain within the authorized areas at all times, except under authorization of the Ministry of Paranormal Creatures. In cases where the above-named being has been granted permission to be outside the authorized area, the standard curfew of ten post meridian local time until six ante-meridian local time in each day is applicable. During the hours in which the curfew is in effect, the being must remain inside an enclosure with adequate security, as per the requirements of Appendix B. Do you know what the Bureau actually considers adequate security?”

They looked dumbfounded. Kaden pressed his attack.