Page 72 of Her Second-Hand Mate

“How far has it gone?” she asked, but her voice came out all guttural and weird.

“We’ve been going out. Dinner, walks, coffee. Stuff like that. He kissed me a few times,” she admitted while nervously playingwith her fork. “But now he keeps inviting me to his place to hang out, and he’s really intense about it, and I don’t know,” she finally looked up at us, her gaze begging for someone to tell her what to do.

“Can we go to my place for a bit?” Margaret asked. “It’s nearby, and what I want to talk about isn’t for curious ears. We’ll ask them to just pack the entrees for takeaway.”

Margaret’s place was everything she was – elegant, sophisticated, and a bit cold.

“I love your home,” Mira said as we all made ourselves comfortable on the couch.

“Thanks. I can’t believe I never thought to host you before,” Margaret frowned. “We’ve all just been going to Penelope’s. We should think of a better rotation system.”

My heart soared. I had been wondering what to do about our sleepovers now that Dominic wouldn’t be traveling so much. Not that Gabriel was anywhere near ready to spend the night without me, but we’d figure something out in the next few months.

We ate in silence, and then Margaret brought us coffee and tea and sat down cross-legged on the floor on the other side of the coffee table in front of us.

“I have to tell you all something,” she said in a very serious tone. We exchanged glances and then looked back at her.

“I wanted to tell you this when the whole situation with Olivia happened, the female whose mate murdered her. Do you remember?”

“How could we forget,” Grace said, and I agreed.

I thought about her often.

“Well, I wanted to tell you my story then, but I was too emotional and too ashamed. I still am, but if I can help Charlotte, then it will be worth it, no matter what happens with our friendship afterward. So please just let me get it out, okay?”

All five of us nodded.

“For starters, my name hasn’t always been Margaret Cranch,” she started telling us, her gaze fixed on the wall but her mind a million miles away.

“I was born Tammy Lou Walker in the Black Balsam pack,in North Carolina. My family were dirt-poor Omegas and lived in shacks on the outskirts of the pack, next to the family of one Jackson King.”

Her lips spread into a smile as she said his name, and she seemed to be savoring its taste in her mouth as if it was a rare indulgence for her to say it out loud. A hitherto nonexistent drawl made its way into the name like she could erase her accent when pronouncing all the other words in the English language except for those two.

“Jackson was my very best friend when we were pups, and we’d spend our days playing, fishing, getting into brawls with pups from the other side of the pack, and at night, when our parents slept, we’d camp outside, look at the stars, and talk. We knew our position in the pack, but it didn’t bother us, we had a great childhood.”

“The pack was very old-fashioned and strict. Omegas were the lowest of the low, and females were just a notch above them. The Alpha’s word was law, and violence was the norm. Even when a male found his mate, he’d have to challenge and beat up hermale relatives for the right to mark her. It was insane, but it was all we knew.”

“When we hit puberty, I started noticing Jackson in a different way. His easy grin, his mussed, always-too-long hair, his lean but muscular body... but it was also more than that. I loved his passion and conviction, and I loved his sense of humor.

He was always talking about how he was going to make something out of himself. How he’d leave for his aunt’s pack in Pennsylvania as soon as he shifted, how he’d climb the pack ladder there because in our pack there was no upward mobility. Not that us two hicks knew to call it that back then,” she smiled bitterly.

“As the years passed, the words changed fromI’ll move to my aunt’s pack, toLet’s move to my aunt’s pack together, Tammy Lou.Sweeter words had never been spoken. We were both convinced we’d be mates. We had to be, right? We were inseparable, held similar status in the pack, and we truly loved each other. I can honestly say that in my 28 years on this Earth, I've never loved anyone as much as I’ve loved Jackson King. And I don’t know that I ever will.”

My stomach started churning with dread because I could guess where this story was going.

“We started sleeping together when we were both 16,” she said in a small voice. “It was the best feeling in the world, being one with him. Our parents didn’t really pay attention to us, working themselves to the bone doing the shittiest jobs in the pack, and we had the time and space to be together as much as we wanted to. We had our future planned out, and we were happy.

The summer when I turned 17, I’d notice the Alpha’s son sometimes staring at me in school or when the pack youth went to Lake Logan, but I figured it was because of my new body and didn’t really pay attention to it. But I should have.”

“I was the first one of us to turn 18 the following July. I shifted right outside of our shack that night, with Jackson by my side, talking me through it. My wolf almost took his arm off when he tried touching her,” she recounted sadly.

“It was more than clear that he was not my mate. Another wolf came from the shadows, and mine happily ran to him. They nuzzled and greeted each other, and her heart was going to burst from her chest, whereas I wanted to die from shock and dread.”

“It was the Alpha’s son,” Lynn gasped, and Margaret nodded sadly.

“It’s like I can smell him now, all juniper and North Carolina sunshine,” she closed her eyes. “We shifted back, and he growled at Jackson to close his eyes until I got dressed. Told me to pack my stuff and that he’d be by in the morning to move me to his house.

I was scared. I knew what his father was like and what his mother’s life was like with that asshole. I didn’t want that for myself. I was an Omega, who would take me seriously as their Luna?” she looked around the room at each and every one of our faces before giving us the full truth.

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