Page 43 of Her Second-Hand Mate

“Do you think we have enough pies?”

Lilian just heaved an exasperated sigh.

“Luna, you know I love you,” she said, clearly holding on to the last of her patience, “but we calculated, and checked, and compared the number of pies to the number of RSVPs, and we still made ten more than necessary, so I think we’re good.”

“Okay,” I took a deep breath. “I’ll go help with the decorations now.”

Almost all of my friends came early to help the younger pack members decorate the huge communal dining room at the main pack house. Mira and Margaret would be joining us later.

The one I missed the most was Isaac, who had gone back to Uinta to celebrate with the pack he’d one day lead. I’d packed my holiday presents for friends and family in Utah, as well as my latest letter for Nana, in the trunk of his car to avoid paying the shipping fees.

Anthony was busy taking photos of the groups working and closeups of the decorations and would continue working throughout the evening.

Even Dominic was here, currently frowning at a pumpkin which had, judging by the face he was making, offended him greatly. We had one more hour before the party, and almost everything was done, but I couldn’t relax.

The door suddenly busted open; whoever pushed it had used all their strength and clearly damaged the wall it hit. It was Margaret, and she was in tears. All of us females ran over to her, but Dominic got there before us and stretched out his arms to stop us from approaching.

“What happened?” he growled at her in his deepest Alpha voice. “Is someone chasing you?”

She shook her head and just sobbed harder.

“Dominic, let us talk to her,” I pleaded, but he shook his head.

I could see the fur covering his hands as his wolf was pushing him to shift. Margaret wordlessly held out a letter to him. When he finished reading it, he turned to us, his face revealing nothing.

“You can talk to her now,” he said and handed me the letter.

“Read it,” Margaret rasped between sobs.

Dear Ms. Cranch,

my mate and I are not readers of your magazine, but I recently found a copy of it in my daughter’s belongings, and I quickly deduced which question in that month's column was hers.

Our Olivia was the female who'd asked for advice regarding her mate, who had been in a long-term relationship with a widowed she-wolf and had fathered a pup with her.

You asked her to let you know what she had decided.

Our beautiful, strong, determined, proud daughter decided she’d come back home with us, so she was going to ask the King to command her mate to stay away from her.

That worthless piece of garbage somehow learned of her plans - he must have been watching her - because the very night she told us her decision, he ingested wolfsbane and set the house where she was staying with her cousin on fire. My Olivia is gone forever.

My niece barely made it out alive, but in a way she was lucky, because her mate immediately felt her pain and rushed over to help her. She’s currently in a coma, hospitalized at our home pack, and her mate is in Royal prison awaiting trial for killing our daughter’s mate at the scene of the arson.

The trial will, I’m sure, be just a formality, but I don’t know if my niece will take her mate back (if she ever wakes up). There is perhaps too much bad blood between them now.

My Olivia is in the ground and my wolf has lost the will to live. So have I. Why is it that she was the one to pay for the mistakes of a couple who should have known better? Now she is dead, and the pup is fatherless, and me and my mate are pupless. Everyone lost.

Please tell me it gets better somehow.

A lost father

Someone took the letter from my hands, and the tears wouldn’t even let me know who. Lilian and Dominic herded all of us into a back room, where we spent the next hours just holding each other, crying, and talking about life. Margaret was inconsolable. She kept trying to get words out, but she couldn’t.

In the end, Doctor Vera came and took her away. I had no idea who had called her. None of us ate or left the room for the rest of the night.

In the following days, everyone from the pack who saw me stopped and said it had been the best Thanksgiving feast Greylock had ever seen. I didn’t know what to tell them.

???

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