Page 83 of Her Second-Hand Mate

Even as I am writing this, I know that it’s unfair to you to be mated to me. As much as I know you'll eventually come to consider me cold and cruel, I cannot find it in me to be too kind or too close to you right now. I still cannot believe this. Why would you be paired with me?

Let’s get through whatever this dreary pack will have haphazardly put together by tomorrow. Though I must confess, anything will be better than an elaborate show put on solely to impress others or something that takes weeks of planning during which all the female does is make her mate feel inadequate and unimportant. When I mark you, I will know for sure what kind of she-wolf you are.

???

May 2021

Penelope,

I’m in Kansas, and I can’t sleep. Nothing new for me. Ever since that first night we spent in bed together, I stay awake for most of the night.

It started out as part shock, part hunger. I couldn’t sleep after marking you, so I held you and sniffed you and let myself feel all kinds of tender things for you. I know who you are now. It’s a wondrous thing to have a front-row seat to how Penelope Hedge feels life.

Would she still see me the same if she knew the depths of my weakness and inadequacy? Who could love a weak, broken male?

I was sorry to feel your discomfort when you entered the house I used to share with another. But you don’t understand that Iforcedmyself to stay in it, even after smashing the bedroom to bits and replacing every item in there. I forced myself to stay and to unravel what had happened and where I had gone wrong.

I’m such a mess. I wanted so badly to tell you at that awful dinner with my mother that I was writing these letters for you, but I couldn’t. Not when they will most likely be full of pain and mistrust, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to give them to you.

Even as I feel guilty for hiding myself from you, I continue to do it. What if you see something that drives you away? Something abhorrent or impossible to love? I have no other explanation for what happened to me or why I keep getting hit.

When you talked about the trousseau you’d made, I was floored by the number of hours and the amount of effort you’d put into it and how you must have thought about your future mate thewhole time. Although you’re not disappointed with me now, you eventually will be, I’m sure of it.

When I lost myself in you t?h?e? f?i?r?s?t? t?i?m?e? w?e? when we slept together for the first time, I was worried you’d think less of me as a male. Maybe you’d consider me a subpar lover, Lord knows I have my doubts in that area.

But you were so sated and satisfied, so happy and hungry for me. Being in you and with you was a revelation – a combination of physical and emotional sensations that were mindblowing, and every time is better than the last. And feeling you feel the same? Feeling you want and desire me, feeling you crave me like you do?

I can barely get any work done. I fantasize about re-marking you constantly, reinforcing my ownership of you, strengthening the bond that holds you to me, and making it so that you never have a thought in your head that doesn’t include me.

And your thoughts about me keep driving me insane. I spend half the time at work in my bathroom, touching myself. I stay at work for as long as I can because I keep telling myself you’re inexperienced and young and you need time to recover between nights, otherwise I’d be p?o?u?n?d?i?n?g? making you sore until you started hating my nearness. Or maybeyouwouldn’t.

I don’t know what to think anymore. I miss being near you.

???

May 2021

Dear Penelope,

I came to see you off, you know. For your first-ever class trip. You were so adorably nervous that morning, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I battled myself over whether to come or not. I didn’t want my presence to cause your friends to think of you as their Luna, I figured maybe that would put a wall between you and them. But in the end, my wolf won, and we got to campus just in time to see you eyeing Rowan-fucking-Howard.

I’ve known Rowan for years. I recently even worked closely with him and his father on finding new packs for refugee wolves from Palestine. He’s a great male – but in that moment I wanted to peel his skin off and eat his eyeballs just because you briefly mentally acknowledged he was visually pleasing.

But I didn’t, because I think what gutted me most was the guilt you immediately felt over such a simple thing as noticing that someone was handsome. The memories and implications that came with it just launched an avalanche of self-doubt and self-loathing and anger so huge that it threatened to bury all the progress I’d made in the last almost two years.

Forgive me, but I had to leave immediately. I mind-linked Elliot to join me and just started driving. At some point, I decided our destination would be Colorado. Why not go back to where it all started? Interview some more wolves, go through some more hotel receipts and guest lists in the hopes of finding something that would finally fix things.

I tried getting the CCTV footage from the Royal Palace from my friend David, but he told me I was insane. He said I was living in the past, and to let things go. But he doesn’t understand. No one does.

Lately, I’ve been thinking that I’m deluding myself. Nothing I could find would make things better. Solving the puzzle would probably not be satisfying, but it’s become a compulsion at this point. I can’t stop.

And when I felt your panic when you came home, fuck, my heart nearly stopped. My first thought was,this is it, she’s dying, she’s being attacked and I’m not there with her.When I realized you panicked because I wasn’t at home and you had no idea I’d left, I felt even worse. I’ve made a mess of things, Penelope. Shit. I’m sorry. I just ruin everything.

???

August 2021

My dear mate,

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