4
T he hydrangeas and peonies in Dominic’s backyard were starting to bloom, so I was spending more and more time on the deck – drinking tea, reading Nana’s letter, drafting my response, reading the class materials, or just thinking about things.
Our first class trip was coming up, and I had yet to talk to Dominic about it. Today was the day. I could hear him getting ready for work inside, so I carried my empty mug to the sink and poured him a cup of coffee from the percolator.
“Where have you been hiding?” he asked me as he was coming down the stairs.
“I was out on the deck, reading.”
“Huh. I almost never go out there.”
I shrugged. I knew that already. Whenever I’d hear Grace and Elliot coming out to eat or just sit together on theirs, I’d run back into the house so I wouldn’t have to look at them together.
“My first class trip is coming up this weekend.”
Dominic took a sip of his coffee and raised his brows as if to say, “And?”
“Is it alright if I go?”
He frowned and my heart dropped.
“You don’t need to ask my permission to go. But I appreciate being kept in the loop, so just... keep me informed of your plans, if that’s alright?”
“Of course,” I nodded enthusiastically.
This was so great.
“Where are you going first?”
“Concord and Walden Pond.”
“Cool. Why are you so nervous about this whole thing?”
“Is it that obvious?” I asked, exasperated, and Dominic just hid his smile behind his mug. “It's my first time going on a trip like this, and I hate always having to catch up with everyone. I feel like I’m the only one who is unsure of what to do and how to act.”
He seemed to think about this for a moment before saying, “I think everyone feels like that in some area of their life, and I agree with you that it is an awful feeling.”
That made me feel a bit better. If Dominic, who had an iron grip on his feelings and life (from what I had observed so far), could feel insecure about some things, then that definitely gave me hope.
On Saturday, Hank drove me to the Literature Department building, where my whole class was already waiting for the bus that would take us to Concord. I felt like a pup being dropped off by her father, although a much nicer one than I was used to. Luckily, no one said anything about it.
I immediately spotted Charlotte, Anthony, and Lynn, whose hand was being held by a very tall, dark-skinned male. That had to be her mate. He was very handsome.
The traitorous thought made me uncomfortable, but I told myself I was just objectively observing, not lusting after him. When Charlotte noticed me walking towards them, she waved me over enthusiastically.
“Hi, Penelope!” she almost yelled and I was very grateful for it.
There was no doubt about her feelings toward me.
“Hi, everyone,” I greeted in a much more subdued voice.
“Penelope, this is my mate, Rowan,” Lynn said with all the pride of a female in love.
Rowan respectfully nodded and said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Luna.”
“Likewise. Are you in our class as well?”
“No, I took this one last year and now I’m taking history. I just came to see Lynn off.”
“How nice of you,” I said, willing myself not to compare him to anyone.
He was a young college student who probably had a lot of time. Maybe he was on his way to class anyway. Luckily, Anthony interrupted my train of thought with what I was starting to recognize was his characteristic bluntness.
“What’s in the cooler bag?”
Charlotte rolled her eyes and I smiled as I lifted the bag a bit.
“I packed snacks and sandwiches for us. There was no mention of lunch on the itinerary,” I quickly added when I saw a flash of surprise on Anthony’s face.
“Hey, I’m not complaining. So, you’re the mom friend of our group?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you’re the one with snacks, the one who takes care of people.”
I laughed. That didn’t sound bad.
“I guess I am.”
The trip was wonderful. The ride was scenic and relaxed, the company lively and kind, and my wolf was reveling in the feeling of community and togetherness that surrounded us.
In Concord, Professor Bell gave us a short tour through the town, and once I’d managed to ignore being among this many humans and their devices, I started enjoying all the different sensations and views.
We walked by the Colonial Inn, Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, the Wayside home, and ended the tour at the Minute Man Statue.
Mentally, I was still at the house in which Louisa May Alcott wrote and set Little Women . Nana would lose her mind if she were here! I couldn’t wait to tell her about it. I tried absorbing and holding onto as many details about the place and its history, in order to convey everything to her as faithfully as I could.
Little Women was one of the first books Nana had encouraged me to read, and we spent countless hours discussing it. I was never able to believe that Laurie truly loved Amy in the end, not after having pined after her sister first. For me, he would always remain Jo’s castoff. Nana disagreed. Neither of us ever managed to convince the other.
The second half of the day was spent at Walden Pond, where Professor Bell delivered a lecture on Transcendentalism and explained why he believed both Emerson and Thoreau had been shifters.
“Who is Emerson?” Anthony asked in a whisper so quiet that only we could hear it.
“He’s the one who wrote Nature, ” Charlotte responded.
“I thought Thoreau was the one who wrote it,” Anthony admitted.
I had thought the same thing, since only Thoreau had been listed on the syllabus for this month, but I’d never say so. I admired Anthony very much at that moment. It was as if he didn’t care what anyone thought of him, a concept so alien to me that I couldn’t even imagine how that would feel.
“Professor Bell,” Lynn raised her hand, “are we going to talk about Zilpah White?”
“Ah,” Professor Bell smiled, “that is an excellent question, Ms Howard. Prof. Williams and I agreed that she’d cover that portion of the story in her history course since her class will be passing through Concord on their Underground Railroad tour. But I will inform your classmates that Zilpah White was a former enslaved woman who lived in a cabin right here in Walden Woods and who inspired Thoreau to try doing so as well. She made her living spinning flax into linen and she provided for herself at a time when few, if any, other women did so.”
I was in absolute awe while I absorbed information about this woman. My whole body was covered in goosebumps as I thought about her strength and determination. For the second time in one day, I refused to give in to the urge to compare.
But the ugly voice inside my head taunted me that I had been given so much more than Zilpah White and yet had done so much less with it, always depending on someone, always following someone else’s lead, neither independent nor self-sustaining. I suddenly remembered a quote I had underlined while reading Walden , “ Things do not change; we change .”
Nana had decided that she would, in a way, take the class with me. She got all the reading materials from the pack library and had already read Walden. Her favorite quotes, unsurprisingly, were: “ As if you could kill time without injuring eternity ,” and “ Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. ”
Thinking of that made me smile. Nana hated lies and she hated idle hands, and she had said so many times in many different ways over the years. Now she had a fancier way to say, “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” I almost burst out laughing at the memory of one of Nana’s more colorful sayings.
Professor Bell must have sensed the group’s interest was waning because he said:
“One last thing before I let you enjoy a leisurely afternoon at this beautiful reserve. If there is one thing I want you to remember 50 years from now, when you’ll maybe have long forgotten all about a June afternoon spent in Concord, Massachusetts, it is not necessarily this quote but the spirit of it: “ I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” So, live, and suck out all the marrow of life, as Thoreau urges us to do, and be grateful that you have a chance to do so. See you back here in two hours.”
“It is so nice to be here,” Anthony said as he finished taking photos of the beauty surrounding us. “Reminds me of home.”
He then pointed his camera at us and started clicking away.
“I’ve never been to your pack,” I said.
“It’s the best,” he said and quickly added, “Yeah, I know everyone says that, but in my case, it’s true. And it’s the pack members that make it so. Everyone is good and kind and friendly, and encourages each other. I really miss that.”
“That sounds lovely,” I said quietly. Before anyone could ask about my pack or its main attraction, I turned to Charlotte, “What about you? You’re a long way from home. Do you miss it?”
She sighed and looked down at her sandwich as if it could show her the answer to the question.
“I don’t-“ she started saying but then cleared her throat,“there’s nothing to miss there. I lost my parents a long time ago, and I was raised by my grandparents. They were great, but then they passed away as well, and then I shifted, and my mate was nowhere to be found... there was nothing tying me to that place. So I don’t miss it. But what I do miss is this idealized version of a pack and a family and other things I never knew. I guess I’d always hoped to find all of that with my mate, but he’s taking his sweet time coming into my life.”
“I’m sure you’ll meet him soon, you’re only 23,” Lynn said in a patient voice as she gently patted Charlotte’s shoulder.
“It’s easy for you to say, Ms future Luna of Illinois,” Charlotte clearly teased her former roommate.
So Rowan was the Alpha heir of his pack. I felt a jolt of joy at the thought of Lynn forever remaining in my life through our official roles.
“My invitation stands, come home with me the next time I visit,” Anthony said. “You already visited Lynn’s pack and struck out, who’s to say your male isn’t in New Jersey?”
Charlotte seemed to be thinking about this before she closed her eyes and tipped her face to the sky.
“I just hope he’s out there looking for me too, and not living his best single life, having relationships like I don’t exist,” she said, and then whispered, “I hope he’s alive.”
That caused us all to fall silent.
“What about your pack’s mating customs, Charlotte?” Anthony found a way to change the topic, and I think we were all grateful for it.
“We get a small tattoo when we meet our mate, something that reminds us of them or our love story.”
I was stunned by this information.
“How? Doesn’t the body heal itself? I never knew tattoos could stick for our kind?”
“They can, if you mix wolfsbane in with the ink. That prevents the body from healing the spot permanently. It has to be small, though, or it would cause too much of an immune reaction.”
“So it’s not the permanent mark you’re after, since with the bite, we all get that,” Lynn mused, “but you basically weaken your body for them?”
“You make yourself vulnerable, yes,” Charlotte said, “isn’t that what love is about?”
I looked away from how sad her eyes were and said, “See, you learn something new every day. I know about the mating customs in Georgia because of my Nana, but what about Illinois, Lynn?”
Despite her light brown skin, I could see Lynn blush.
“A lot of it involves the body and the bedroom,” she said, uncharacteristically shy, and I heard Anthony choke on his water.
She turned to him, “What about New Jersey?”
Anthony still needed a minute to recover.
“You’re killing me, Lynn. I’ll have to ask Rowan about those bedroom customs they have over there. New Jersey isn’t naughty like that,” he winked at us. “Starting from the age of 13, both males and females have one day a month they choose to go on a “date” with their future mate.“
We females looked at each other, but he held up his palm to us.
“Hold on, before you judge, listen. So, for instance, this Saturday, I went to the movies and I had a nice dinner. All the while I was thinking about what my mate was doing right now, what she’d think of the movie, what she’d order, what she’d like, what she’s like, and so on. And then, after I meet her, this tradition is to be continued.
At least once a month, you have a date day, but now with each other, for real – you can plan new things, but you can also revisit dates and things you did before meeting them, talk about how that differed from being together, you can compare the things you’d imagined to the reality of the person...” he trailed off.
“That’s genius,” I said. “That sounds like a really fun way to spend quality time together, even after mating.”
“Tell us about Utah, Penelope,” Charlotte urged.
“Well, the females make a trousseau with all the things their future home might need – bed linens, tablecloths, rugs. From an early age, we are taught to sew, weave, embroider, and do all kinds of things to be able to do just that. And the males design and make a jewelry set for their mate – earrings, necklace, bracelets, rings, as many pieces as they want, as intricate as they can.”
Nana had told me all about the hundreds of hours Father spent on the beautiful set he’d made for my mother as a young male. I’d inherited the earrings, which I never took off. They were delicate and intricate, a true labor of love. The rest of the set was being kept for Evie. I’d never thought about whether Father had ever given Eden a mating present, but I was thinking about it now.
“That’s interesting,” Lynn remarked, “I’d like to see your trousseau someday.”
“Sure, maybe next time Dominic goes on a work trip, we can plan a nice day at my house.”
“Oh, a sleepover!” Charlotte clapped her hands and Anthony rolled his eyes.
“Are you inviting yourself to a sleepover at someone’s house, Charlotte?”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“You’re just jealous because we’re gonna have an amazing sleepover, and there is no way in hell an Alpha would let an unmated male spend the night at his house.”
Anthony just scowled.
“That’s a great idea, Charlotte,” I said, not bothering to hide my enthusiasm because I could see it reciprocated by both females. “Once I know the date of his next absence, I’ll let you know and we can spend an entire weekend at my house.”
“Don’t worry, Tony,” Charlotte patted his hand patronizingly, “you can go on a date that weekend and tell your mate all about your mean friends.”
We all burst out laughing at that.
I could barely contain my excitement on the car ride back from the Department. I’d already told Hank all about the trip and couldn’t wait to tell Dominic too, this time including my sleepover plans with my friends.
It was after 8 pm when I got home, and all the lights in the house were off. Was Dominic still at work? I thanked Hank, went into the house, fixed myself dinner, did a load of laundry, got ready for bed, and he was still not back.
It was almost midnight. My heart started racing. What if something had happened to him? Luckily, tomorrow was Sunday, and Isaac was coming to visit, so he’d be able to help me. I started to feel faint and sick.
Oh Lord, I was all alone and didn’t know what to do. I was trying to catch my breath when I felt a tickling sensation in my head.
“Penelope?” Dominic was mindlinking me for the first time ever.
“Dominic? Where are you? Is everything alright?”
“Yes, there was an emergency and I got called away. I’ll be back in a few days. Are you alright?”
“What kind of emergency?”
“Is everything alright there? Are you hurt?”
“What? No! Why are you asking me that?”
“I just – I need to know you’re okay.”
I felt my stomach sink. I wanted to say many things to him, starting with yelling of course I’m not okay, you just abandoned me without so much as a word. If you truly cared about whether I was okay, you’d have left a note.
“Dominic, I – you told me you’d appreciate being kept in the loop about my comings and goings. I’d appreciate it if you’d extend me the same courtesy. I was worried something had happened to you. Something bad.”
Silence. Then:
“It was an emergency. It wasn’t a planned trip.”
“You could have written a note for me to find once I got home. Or mindlinked me before leaving.”
“I didn’t want to disturb your trip. And I didn’t think of leaving a note. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Me too. You were... How was your trip?”
“It was good.”
“Good.”
Neither of us said anything into the mindlink for a while.
“Good night, Penelope.”
“Good night. See you in a few days.”
After a night of fitful sleep, I woke up just two hours before Isaac was scheduled to arrive. I’d missed my brother so much. I’d sometimes find myself sniffing the container of bay leaf because he smelled of laurel.
I was making his favorite lunch, scalloped potatoes and breaded chicken cutlets. I’d also started making cupcake batter, so I could pack up some for him to take back to his dorm. I knew they had a cafeteria at school, but I wondered whether the cook was more of a Mary or a Lillian.
My musings were interrupted by a knock on the door and I ran to open it. I don’t know who grabbed who first, but me and my twin were suddenly one again.
“I missed you so much, Pen,” he breathed into my hair. Just the simple hug had me sobbing.
“Oh, Isaac,” I couldn’t say anything more. I just cried as he held me. I felt at home again. I felt like me .
“I got a letter from Father,” Isaac said as we were setting the table.
“Really? I got one from Nana,” I smiled.
“He wants to come visit us next week, do you think you and Dominic can make it into town for lunch on Thursday?”
“Oh, you mean he’s visiting you, and you are inviting the two of us?” I asked without any bite to my words.
It wasn’t Isaac’s fault Father cared more about one twin.
“Can you make it or not?” he sighed.
“I don’t know when Dominic will be back. I definitely can, since I have a class that day anyway.”
“Good, I’ll see you at my dorm at noon, then. Or I can pick you up after class and meet your friends?”
I looked away guiltily.
“What?”
“I haven’t told any of them that I’m a Blessed Hansen,” I grimaced and Isaac mirrored it, hating the name as much as I did. “They know I’m from Uinta, they will know you’re an Alpha, and I’m afraid they will put it all together.”
“Would that really be so bad?” he asked softly.
What he meant was, “Is being part of our family really so horrible for you?”
“I just want to be just Penelope for a while. I don’t want them to ask questions about Mother, about Evangeline, I don’t want to be looked at like I work at the circus, okay? Just for a while. They will all know eventually, right? I just want to push that timeline a bit into the future.”
“I understand. I’ll meet them some other time. Now, let me enjoy this amazing food,” he said and we ate in silence for a while, with him occasionally letting out hums of approval. He made it seem like he hadn’t eaten in a week.
“This is nice,” I remarked between bites.
“What is?” Isaac said once he managed to take a break from stuffing his face, and he said it with his mouth full.
“Having someone to eat with,” I said without thinking and saw his brows furrow in anger.
“What?” he barked. “Why doesn’t your mate eat with you?”
I took a sip of water to buy myself some time.
“Dominic works a lot, you know how it is.”
“I don’t know how it is, Penelope, are you trying to tell me he works so hard he can’t eat dinner with his mate?”
“Look, Isaac, forget it. Forget I said anything,” I said and got up to rinse my plate.
With my back to him, I looked up to the ceiling and took a few deep breaths. Stupid. I was so stupid. Why did I have to run my mouth? He was going to hate my mate now.
“Penelope,” my brother said in what I knew was the gentle voice he used with pups and his sisters. “Is everything okay with your mate?”
That was a tricky question. I knew my brother very well, and I knew his nose, too. He’d be able to smell my lie even without seeing my face, so I had to tell him just the right amount of truth to appease him.
“Look, Isaac,” I said calmly, and I took a deep breath through my nose. “It has all been so much. Moving to a new pack which is so different from ours. Becoming Luna. Being mated. He works a lot, yes, and he travels for work often. But I couldn’t tell you one bad thing he has done to me, not one. He’s just... more like Father than he is like you, that’s all. And that’s fine, because I’m used to that.”
It was true. Dominic wasn’t a bad male. He just... wasn’t there a lot. Didn’t talk a lot. Didn’t take my feelings into consideration when he did things. None of those were offenses, not where I came from.
Isaac’s jaw ticked. He turned me around and his eyes were searching my face. He then hugged me tightly.
“But you’ll tell me if you have any problems?” he asked and something inside me raised its battered head a little bit.
“Of course I will. I love you Zac.”
“I love you too, Pen.”
“Now, will you tell me why you brought your suitcase for an afternoon visit?”
He gave me a sheepish grin.
“You have to help me do laundry.”
“Oh. My. God.” I said as I burst out a disbelieving laugh.
◆◆◆
“Are you sure you don’t want to read along with us? We could have taken the class together!”
“Absolutely not, Pen. I will put off taking both of those classes for as long as I can. I will hold onto hope that they will stop being mandatory until I’m in my last year.”
“You’re a future Alpha, how can you not care about history at least?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, sis, I just don’t. Give me accounting and business and math classes every day, force me to train until I drop from exhaustion, I’m good. But start talking about stuff someone did 300 years ago? I just... can’t get myself to care. But I’m happy for you and Nana,” he grinned.
“It’s so great to have this experience with her even though we’re apart. And the class is great. Next, we’re reading Walt Whitman.”
“I don’t know who that is. Make sure you keep your notes so you can give them to me when they force me to take that class.”
“This is like art class all over again.”
“See? You and I are also sharing experiences even though we’re apart, how great is that?” Isaac asked as he held me in a hug that resembled a choke hold, another sibling memory that we shared, and I just rolled my eyes at him.
Two days later I was lounging on the deck, reading Leaves of Grass, thinking about the word “untranslatable”, when Grace came out onto her deck with a mug. She waved and smiled at me, and I smiled back.
“I see we’re both bored and alone,” she said.
This was obviously uncommon for her. Elliot must have gone away with Dominic, I realized.
“How are you doing?” I asked in order to test out my theory.
“Oh, you know how it is. I miss Elliot. But he’s also driving me crazy. Every time he’s on one of these work trips, he takes full advantage of the bond and lets me feel every ounce of boredom, annoyance, impatience, and hunger he feels,” she lamented as she checked the potted plants on her deck.
I couldn’t have been more grateful that she wasn’t looking at my face at the moment.
He lets her feel his feelings.
He. Lets. Her.
I fixed my face as best as I could before asking, so calmly that I managed to surprise myself, “He lets you feel his hunger, huh?”
She smiled, somewhat self-consciously, “Yeah, I mean, I know most people block these types of emotions, and he does as well when he’s home, but he says this makes him feel close to me, so I do the same and it does help a bit. Don’t knock it till you try it!”
I laughed, but there wasn't an ounce of joy in my heart. “Maybe I will. Can you imagine?”
“I’d pay good money to see our Alpha doubled over with hunger while he’s giving an important speech,” she laughed.
I needed her to stop saying things, and I needed to stop thinking about things.
“Next time Dominic is on a trip, I’m having a sleepover with some friends from class. Why don’t you join us?”
“Oh, I would love that! Can I bring Margaret with me? She was just complaining to me about not having a lot of friends in the pack yet.”
“Are you kidding? I would love to host her as well. I’ll let you know as soon as I have the dates.”
“Great. Thanks. I miss my females from my old pack,” she said wistfully.
“Well, I hope this will be your new group,” I smiled as I got up. “I’ll see you later.”
I calmly went into the house, closed the door, climbed the stairs, went into our bedroom, entered my walk-in closet, and slid down the wall to sit on the floor with my knees pressed to my chest.
As I stared at the wall, I kept thinking.
My mate was blocking his feelings from me. All of them. All the time.
Why? Why didn’t he want to share that part of himself with me? I didn’t even know how he did that.
Meanwhile, he could probably feel everything I was feeling and thinking. I was mortified. And I felt naked and vulnerable.
It was unfair. Nothing about this whole mess was fair. But like Nana always said, fair is a place where they judge pigs.