Page 185 of Omega's Heart

As with Montana Border, there could be no question that they’d been fair.

Mitchel’s secretary set a tray containing a pot of tea and a plate of sugar cookies on the edge of the desk. She poured without being asked, silently added milk and sugar to the Alpha’s cup, then turned to ask Kaden in a voice barely above a whisper what he would like in his tea.

Kaden let her fix it the way she’d done the Alpha’s, imitation being an old trick he’d gotten good mileage out of in the Army when he wanted someone to be positively disposed toward him.

The Alpha grunted and took a cookie, but waited until she’d closed the door behind her to start speaking. “I had to admit I was surprised when I heard that you’d gone over to the humans. Your brother couldn’t find work for you in the pack?”

Snide bastard. “Too much work. But we couldn’t really pass up the opportunity.” He sipped at his tea to buy time to think his way through the start of this labyrinth.

Mitchel grunted again. “Is that what you call it? Opportunity?”

“Are you saying you wouldn’t grab at the chance to have someone from the pack working in local government?”

“What good would it do us?”

Kaden shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe none. At the very least, it’s human money brought into the pack. Next best, I’m getting paid to teach humans that we aren’t monsters. Best case scenario? This leads to the Segregation Laws being struck down at some point.”

Mitchel froze, then put down the cookie he’d just put in his mouth, unbitten. “I didn’t believe Miriam when she told me why you wanted this meeting, but it’s true, isn’t it? You actually think they might do that.” He snorted and reached for his cookie again. “That’s nonsense. There’s nothing in it for them.”

“Maybe not. But there would be something in it for the senator I work for. He’s agreed to table legislation to have the laws struck if we can bring the packs together and convince them to vote for him when he runs for president.”

“So that part is true too, huh?” Mitchel frowned and sipped at his tea. “And once he’s in, what then? We don’t have any way to keep him honest. And the humans won’t care if he screws us over after he’s gotten what he wants.”

Truthfully, it was something that Kaden still occasionally worried about, though not so much now. He didn’t doubt that the senator intended at this very moment to keep his word, but he’d already seen in his short time in the senator’s office how quickly the necessities of politics derailed the best of intentions. And while there was some altruism in the senator’s proposal, most of his campaign was based on sharply calculated odds and the deep conviction that he could do the job better than everyone else out there. “I don’t expect we’ll get everyone in the packs to come out and vote him in. I do expect, if he screws us over, we can get everyone to vote him out.” Kaden smiled and drank another mouthful of tea. “We are, after all, pack.”

“There’s a bit more of your mother in you than I thought,” Mitchel said in approval. “That sounded very like her.”

“Thank you.” A mixed compliment, maybe, but it had been very much something his mother would have said, so he accepted it with good grace. Maybe Felix was right and he needed to reach out to her again. They could talk about it tonight maybe. Or perhaps it would be better to wait until they were back in Mercy Hills and the stress of all this traveling was done.

With an effort, Kaden dragged his mind away from his mate and focused it back on the topic at hand. “I’m not expecting it to happen fast, which is probably a good thing since I expect that big a change will be hard on our people. Not that easy for the humans, either, but I don’t give much of a fuck about that. Except that they can still come back and hurt us, so due consideration will be necessary.” He watched the Alpha carefully, planning his next words to either follow the path he’d started down or make a quick detour if he hadn’t guessed correctly at Mitchel’s relationship with the humans around him. No, there, that gleam of appreciation in the Alpha’s eyes. Thought so. Damn, but this was tiring. “There’s going to be a lot of talk before it happens, figuring out how to transition the packs outside walls. I’ve already started dropping hints about support programs and easing restrictions early so that when the gates are finally open for good, it’s not such a big shock.”

“What kinds of programs?”

Kaden shrugged. “Don’t know, yet, really. Just wanted to get my paw on that path before anyone else got there. Probably training in industries the humans have trouble finding workers in. Learning to drive. Just getting them out of the enclave and more used to human mannerisms and reactions. When we do finally step outside these walls, we can’t be afraid. If we show fear, they’ll attack, we know that. It’s in their nature. So we have to prepare the packs.” He didn’t really believe that, but he could see the flame of doubt in Mitchel’s eyes slowly dying as Kaden’s words took hold.

Would now be a good time to introduce the lure of the trusts? Maybe. The start of that path had already been cleared with the mention of jobs outside the enclave for all packmembers. How far could he get him to walk down the path with the scent of money somewhere ahead? “And with the Mutch trusts to help, we’ll be in much better shape when it happens.”

“Yes, when is that money coming, anyway? You folks in Mercy Hills have been rolling around in it for two years now. Time to share.”

The hair on the back of Kaden’s neck rose at the demanding tone, but he kept his words civil. “It’s a graduated process. They’ll be choosing the next pack to get the funding this spring, I think. If that goes well, we might be able to convince them to let us do two the next time, or only wait a year in between. It’s their money, after all.”

“It’s our money!” It came out half a growl as the Alpha slammed his cup down on the desk. “What right do they have to it?”

“The right of the ones that invested wisely over the past century,” Kaden answered in as calm a voice as he could muster. He had to remember that the other shifter was the Alpha, even if he lacked the solid weight of power that Quin and even Abel had. Barrens, even he was more alpha than this packleader.

Besides--the Mutch trusts, if he understood the history properly, had come from the lands given up by the Mercy Hills shifters. Some of their ancestors, anyway. Buffalo Gap really had no historical claim on it at all. None of the other packs did.

But he was here to be a politician, to ease Buffalo Gap in the direction he needed him to go, so all that had to stay firmly hidden inside him. Kaden felt a sudden sympathy for the senator, with the constant bargaining and tit for tat that went on in his office.

It sounded easier when the human was doing it.

“Money stolen from our people,” Mitchel gritted out, his tea now forgotten on the desk in front of him.

Kaden let his complaint slip by. “It’s hugely important that the next pack use the funds as well as we did. Or better, preferably. We fucked some stuff up, but we’re all still figuring it out. Hopefully, the next pack can learn from our problems.” Throw the Alpha a bone to gnaw on and get him thinking again about how that money could help the pack. Maybe give him a moment to feel like he was getting one over on Mercy Hills.

Mitchel nodded thoughtfully and leaned back in his chair, fingers running repeatedly over a worn section of the desk—obviously not the first time that wood had been stroked in thought. “Money always creates as many problems as it solves,” he said. “What would you have done differently if you’d known?”

It was a good question, and luckily one that Kaden was prepared to answer. It also gave him a bit of insight into how Mitchel had become Alpha—physically he was no better than he should be, but his brain seemed as nimble as a pup, at least when it came to pack problems. And he wasn’t afraid to change direction on a pebble.