Page 79 of Knot All Is Lost: Part 1

“Yes and I wasn’t sick, she went through her first heat and that is where I was needed,” he answered quickly. “She was found in one of our shelters. I took her in planning to bring her to the Care Center once I found out her history. One thing led to another and she is the Omega we will be keeping.”

“Is that so…” Frederick mused. “What makes you think we will allow that?”

Marius frowned at them. “Didn’t you hear me say that she just completed her heat? All of my pack participated in managing it, which means that she needs to remain with us for at least a few months regardless to find out if she’s pregnant. If she is with child it’s the law that she remains with us as the mother of our offspring.”

I could see Yoram’s jaw muscle twitch at this news. “Say she isn’t with child, have you marked her?”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Rafael was right, he should have just done it and saved us all the trouble.

“No, because that would have broken the law. My pack has acted within the letter of the law as it is written today,” Marius answered.

Something about what he just said had me curious what obscure law he’d found that was going to be our magic loophole.

“That,” Yoram spat, pointing a finger at Marius. “Is not true and you know it.”

“What part of the law have I broken?” Marius shot back.

Yoram dropped his hand, then folded them both neatly in front of him himself. “A few, one of them being that once discovered, the Omega should have been given to the Care Center. Second, keeping the Omega hidden in your home. Third, an act of treachery against the Council of Four by harboring a fugitive and lying to the government.”

“I have done none of those things,” Marius cut in before anyone could panic. “It is the law that if we find an Omega over the age of seventeen we must first discover who their family is and arrest them for hiding them away. I needed her to gain information to that end. During which time her heat arose. There again it is the law to offer all options to the Omega in heat and allow them to choose which way their heat is to be handled. She specifically requested for my pack to aid her through her heat. Then that brings us to the law of children produced during times of aid. We all know the only way to quell a heat is for an Omega to be knotted and filled with sperm, it’s a biological design for breeding.”

He paused for a moment to let that sink in. “Furthermore, you keep saying I was hiding her, but that was never the case. The guards at the gate have seen her, we even took her shopping for clothes since she had none and all Omegas are to be provided for by their government until such time as they are permanently with a pack. As you keep reminding me we are the government so I felt it was only fitting to provide for her. Now that her heat is finished I am informing the CoF of her existence in my home and a petition along with it for her to remain with us as our Omega.”

Holy fucking shit, how did he have that all prepared? Did he know her heat was coming? Had he done something to induce it? Fuck it, who cares as long as it works to let us keep her.

Yoram steepled his fingers as he watched Marius with a calculating gaze. “That is a blend of laws Marius and not all of them apply anymore.”

“Then you’ll need to show me where a new law making that rule no longer valid is because I’ve gone over them a dozen times to make sure as an Official I was upholding the law I vowed to protect in my acceptance inauguration into this role,” Marius countered.

Frederick shifted in his seat grabbing his glass of water and chugging half of it. He clearly knew that Marius had played the game well, but was it enough?

“While you may have stuck to the letter of the law there is a matter of intention and no one can truly know what that was,” Willem spoke up. “I believe this case will not be as cut and dry as you hoped it would be. We need to think about what is in the best interest of the Omega. Did you find her family?”

Shit, he can’t make us send her back to him. She’s over eighteen.

“In fact we did, but after looking into who he was it was made clear to me her safety was in jeopardy so I didn’t tell the man we had her. When we took her in it was clear she’d been beaten, starved, and mentally abused. There was no way any of you would send her back to that man but I have his information if the government wishes to press charges against him,” Marius explained, handing over a sheet of paper with Cambrie’s father’s picture and information.

Damn, Marius was just so sexy when he got like this. When he made a promise to someone he would do whatever it took to keep it. Made me love him all the more.

Yoram took the sheet and he glanced over it almost as if he wasn’t interested in what it said. How could a man who demanded they give up their children the moment they were found to be an Omega not care that she was hidden away and beaten? That should have caused him to send an army out after him.

“As Willem stated, I believe giving us time to consider all this information before giving you an answer would be wise. We ask that you remain in the building while we do so in case we have more questions,” Yoram announced. “If you wish to gather in your office Marius, that would make it easier for us to find you when we have a decision.”

Everything in me wanted to argue but when he simply nodded and led us out of the meeting hall I followed. Silently lost in our own thoughts we headed to Marius’s office taking the elevator to the third floor. Once inside his space, I flopped into one of the armchairs at a loss of what to do next. Marius closed the door and held up a finger to his lips as he pulled out a small device from his pocket and flipped a switch so a small green light appeared.

“Now it’s safe to talk,” he said, taking a seat in his office chair.

Oscar scowled at the little device and started to sigh furiously. “What’s with that? Are we in some James Bond type shit with these guys? How could you not tell us how bad things really are in general?”

Clearly, Oscar wasn’t going to let this go, but I understood his feelings. If Marius had lied to me about what life was like here and I found out in a situation like this I would be furious. While I got the reasoning behind keeping it quiet from the rest of the pack it should have been handled differently.

“I’m sorry I’ve dropped this all on you now but we can deal with that part of things after we figure out what’s going to happen with Cambrie. This scrambler is just a precaution. I make sure to check my office but since I’ve been gone for two days I didn’t want to take a chance. Alton made sure I had one for situations like this, he was also the one to help me break down all the rules where it concerned Omegas.” Marius paused when the others started to growl at him. “He’s on our side and is doing everything he can to help get Yoram out of power along with helping us keep Cambrie.”

“I don’t like any of this,” Rafael snarled. “If you’d explained things to us I never would have promised Cambrie those things.”

“If I felt we couldn’t figure a way to keep her I would have stopped you,” Marius pointed out. “She needed to know how we truly felt and I already had this argument prepared. The mall was a calculated risk that I feel backfired in some ways and helped in others. I needed to make sure they didn’t think we were outright hiding her but knowing her father might come forward freaked me out. We should have had a pack meeting then and there but I was overconfident.”

“You, overconfident? Never,” Nixon teased, trying to lighten the mood but I scowled at him and shook my head slightly. “Right, so worst case scenario if they tell us no today, then what? Do we have to give her over to a Care Center and try another petition?”

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