Page 78 of Her Second-Hand Mate

“Let’s go to the library to rest a bit before dinner.”

“I heard you. I was wondering what that bit about Penelope and the kitchen was.”

“Oh. The females of the pack are preparing a communal meal for all the visitors – you can see for yourself how many have traveled to pay their respects to our family,” he indicated all the cars in the courtyard smugly. “Her sister and stepmother are already there.”

I thought of my sweet Penelope and what she would want and came to the conclusion that me punching her father in his smug face wasn’t it.

“Of course, your other daughter and your Luna are free to do as they please. My mate will stay with me and Gabriel and take her time to grieve the female who was basically her mother for the last fifteen years!”

John’s jaw clenched, and his eyes flashed with anger, but he knew better than to cause a scene in front of all his precious visitors.

“Very well, Hedge. If that’s what you want. Come on, Isaac.”

Isaac shot me a grateful look, squeezed Penelope’s hand, and followed his father inside.

I spent the day leading up to the funeral with my family in the suite we were assigned, mostly trying to get Penelope to eat something and figuring out Gabriel’s eating schedule. Luna Eden and Penelope’s cousin Theresa were extremely gentle and helpful in caring for them both. Evangeline, not so much.

“Ugh, what’s wrong with her?” she asked, scrunching her nose as if she encountered an unpleasant smell.

“She is grieving. You know how close she was to Myrtle,” Eden explained, more patiently than I would have.

“But Nana has been sick for a while; we all saw it coming,” the annoying little... female continued.

“Maybe Penelope didn’t. But even if she did, that doesn’t always lessen the pain of loss.”

“I just feel like Penelope always has to make things about herself...”

Before she even finished, I was dragging her out the door by her sleeve.

“Shut up, pup,” I told her with all the patience I could muster. “My mate is in there mourning, and you’re running your mouth, making it about yourself and your shitty little opinions.”

She gasped at the inappropriate word, proving herself to be Penelope’s sister despite all evidence to the contrary. “This is my first time interacting with you, and yet you’ve managed to annoy me beyond belief. I suggest taking a good, hard look at yourself, Blessed Princess, because with that attitude, you’re gonna have a hard time in life. No one likes wolves like that.”

She seemed stunned. It was very likely the first time anyone had ever talked to her like that.

Before closing the door in her face, I added, “Don’t come back in here until you’re ready to be a good and supportive sister to Penelope.”

I couldn’t get my anger under control for a while. This whole shitty family was weird. Ever since Penelope moved away from this place, not a single one of them came to see her. Isaac lived on campus, but that had always been the plan.

I vaguely remembered Penelope’s father visiting him once and Penelope meeting up with them, but that was it. We saw them at the trial, and Nana wrote to her, but that was it. Shit. What a bunch of assholes.You’re just like them,my conscience whispered, and fuck if it wasn’t true.

But like Vera had told me repeatedly – I could only work on what I would be doing from now on. I’d never be able to change what I had done before. So, I needed to focus on the present and the future.

“What do you think of coming to stay with us for a while, Theresa?”

???

Our house was eerily quiet now. I no longer entered into rooms where Penelope was having her adorable conversations with Gabriel. Instead, she’d be holding him close, nuzzling him, looking into his eyes, even smiling at his babbling, but she mostly stayed quiet.

Ever since we’d come back from the funeral, she was like that. Theo had hovered around us annoyingly that whole day for somereason, and all of her friends came over and brought food and even offered to spend the night at our place, but Penelope just gave them a tight smile and said she needed to lie down. That was three weeks ago.

Since then, she existed on autopilot. She’d get up, take care of our pup, and even spend time with the wolves who came to see her, but she wasn’t really with us. She was somewhere else, and no one could reach her.

My mother was with Gabriel now, and Penelope was sitting in the tub while I washed her hair. I could feel how both she and her wolf enjoyed the grooming, and I liked it, too.

“I bet you never thought your mate would be so good at scalp massages or braiding hair,” I said without expecting an answer, but unable to take her resigned silence any longer.

“I’ve had a lot of practice with my mom. You know, she’d stay in bed for days after my dad died. She wasn’t eating; she wasn’t taking care of herself at all. Her hair got so matted that I had to remove some of the knots with scissors. After that, I started regularly brushing and washing it, I even figured out how to braid it. And I liked it. I guess it’s in our DNA to take care of our family members like that, to groom their fur in a way.”

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