17 - Dominic
A s soon as I could breathe through Penelope’s pain, I settled us comfortably on our couch – I sat with my legs up on the chaise side, Penelope was curled up on the shorter side with her head in my lap, and Gabriel was safely nestled in my arms.
For a while, I just held her like that, touched her face, or kept my hand on her mark while telling her I was sorry, telling her to let it all out. Telling her I was there for her.
Then, I mind-linked my mother.
“Come to our place as soon as you can.”
“What happened?”
“Penelope’s grandmother died.”
“Oh, no. I’ll be there in ten.”
I then remembered Isaac and mind-linked him as well.
“I’m sorry for your loss. Do you need to travel with us?”
“Thank you. How is she? Thanks, that would be great.”
“Devastated. I’ll send someone to pick you up in an hour.”
“Thanks.”
I looked at Penelope’s face with concern tearing at my heart. Her eyes were screwed shut and she was still sobbing. The shock caused her to drop all the barriers she held between us and I could feel it all. How guilty she felt for not having seen Nana in over a year. How alone and adrift she felt in the world now.
Gabriel had dozed off in my hands, thank God, and I just sat there in silence, stroking her head and back as I mentally planned what needed to be done, and mind-linked those who needed to do it.
“Oh, my dear pup,” Mom cried and fell to her knees next to the couch as she scooped Penelope up in her arms. “I’m so sorry. I know what she meant to you. I’m so sorry.”
I felt my eyes and nose stinging. All of us adults in the room knew loss so intimately and so well. And here was another one. At least this one was to be expected, and not a young life cut in its prime - not that I’d ever say that thought out loud.
“What can I do?”
Mom now looked to me, and I couldn’t help but feel a tiny pang of resentment towards the strength and determination her face showed.
As always, I squashed it and told her, “Can you please pack some stuff for the three of us? Maybe for two or three days?”
She nodded and went upstairs. I finished mind-linking Elliot and my uncle Oliver. Penelope was just staring at the wall now.
“Do you want a glass of water, Penelope?” I asked gently, but it was like talking to myself.
She just stared ahead.
“Can you get her some water, please?” I asked Mom as she came down the stairs.
Together, we managed to maneuver Penelope into a sitting position and get her to drink half a glass before laying her back down on the couch.
“Is she okay?” Mom asked me in a quiet voice.
Although Penelope was right next to us, Mom could have yelled the question – it would have made absolutely no difference.
“She’s in shock, and her wolf is mourning one of her own. But she will be,” I vowed, and I meant it.
This situation didn’t scare me; on the contrary, I knew what to do and how to take care of her. Mom must have realized it, too, because she looked at me like she’d never seen me before.
“You know, I never thanked you. I apologized, and explained, and cried, and talked myself silly on the topic, but I never thanked you for getting me through the worst time of my life.”
“You’re welcome, Mom,” I said but my voice was shaky and hoarse with the emotion choking me.
“You were alone then, but you’re not alone now, okay? Please don’t forget that.”
“I won’t. Thanks, Mom.”
Soon, Theo arrived to take us to the hangar where the pack’s plane was kept. As much as I hated using it, we couldn’t drive to Utah since Gabriel was too young to spend all that time in the car seat. Even the half-hour drive he spent crying and squirming in his contraption as I sat next to him with Penelope slumped in my arms like a lifeless doll. I hated the circumstances, but loved the feeling of her in my arms. My wolf was whining and desperately wanting to comfort his mate, but we were both helpless.
“You’ll be alright, love. It will get better. It doesn’t feel like it right now, but it will.”
I nuzzled her mark with my nose. Biting it was all I wanted to do, but jolting her back into reality like that, while effective, probably wasn’t what she needed at the moment.
So I gently kissed it instead and I could feel her wolf’s gratefulness and love at the gesture. Penelope herself was still lost at the sea of sadness.
“I’m here for you both. Don’t worry about a single thing, Penelope. Take all the time you need.”
Once we were on the plane, Isaac took over with Penelope for a while, and the twins just held each other as they mourned their grandmother, who had probably been more like a mother to them since they'd been seven years old.
Poor Gabriel hated flying; his tiny ears must have been hurting as Mom had warned me they might, although I had repeatedly tried giving him a pacifier, and Penelope let him breastfeed as much as he wanted to.
We were all exhausted by the time a Uinta pack enforcer showed up to pick us up.
“Didn’t they tell you we had a pup with us?” I growled at the male as Penelope sat on one of the suitcases and Isaac glared at the car like that would change anything.
“They did.” he looked at me, confused.
I had Gabriel in the wrap, so I covered the ear that wasn’t pressed to my body before saying, “So where is the fucking car seat?”
“Shit. I didn’t think... No one said... I’m sorry.”
“Just get us a car with a car seat as fast as possible.”
While we waited, I held Penelope’s limp hand in mine and stroked it with my thumb. Gabriel was squirming, probably wanting to nurse again. I mind-linked Alicia.
“Penelope’s grandmother died, and she’s grieving. She isn’t really eating or drinking. Should she be nursing Gabriel on top of everything?”
“While nursing, the mother’s body releases oxytocin and prolactin, which are hormones that soothe anxiety and promote love, contentment, peace, and intimacy. I’d say that, right now, she needs it even more than he does.
But you’ll need to be the one to keep an eye on her food and liquid intake, as well as when the pup has last eaten and which side he needs to latch onto first,” she explained in her no-nonsense way and then added, “My condolences to the Luna.”
“Thank you, Alicia.”
When we finally safely arrived at Alpha Hansen’s house, the pack enforcer was unable to find parking. The place was overrun by visitors who’d come to pay their respects to the Blessed Alpha’s mother. The male himself welcomed us.
“Thank you for bringing Isaac home,” the bastard said. Luckily, Penelope couldn’t care less about his words at the time.
“Let’s not forget your daughter,” Isaac said, but it was like he hadn’t spoken as far as the older male was concerned.
“And is that my grandpup?” he beamed at Gabriel in the car seat egg, and I didn’t exactly feel like putting him into the arms of the male who treated his mother as if she was nothing.
“Yes, this is Gabriel. He finally managed to fall asleep on the car ride from the airport, so I’d rather not move him right now.”
“We have time, don’t worry. Let’s go have some tea in the library, and Penelope can go help in the pack kitchen.”
“Excuse me?”
“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 some reason, 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.”
Once I helped her out of the tub and into a huge towel, she sat on the bed, and I brushed her wet hair before braiding it neatly. The process of combining the long strands into an intricate hair snake was soothing.
“It’s almost back to its original length, finally. I always loved your hair so much. I was devastated when you cut it, but I was also besotted with your defiant expression when you came home from the salon. Never seen anything like it. God, I was absolutely in love with you that day. I still am,” I admitted and kissed her temple after I was done.
“Now, let’s get you dressed.”
◆◆◆
“But what else can we do?” Lynn asked Vera impatiently as they sat in the living room with me, Penelope’s other friends, her brother and his mate, my mom, and her friends. Penelope was upstairs sleeping. Again.
“There’s nothing more you can do,” Vera replied with equal impatience. “I realize you all would like me to present you with a magical solution that would jolt Penelope back into her old self, but that’s not how this works.”
“How does it work?” Isaac asked.
He looked as tired as I felt. He was frustrated by not being able to get through to his twin. I was the only one in the group who seemed unbothered by how slowly Penelope was reintegrating into her life.
Vera looked at Isaac and whatever she must have seen in his face softened her eyes and voice.
“Different wolves need different amounts of time to process a loss. In Penelope’s case, there are several aggravating factors,” she said and used her fingers to count them all for us. “She already suffered a big unprocessed loss as a young pup. Then, in the last year and a half, she moved packs, got mated, had problems with that, and went through almost her entire pregnancy without her mate,” I looked down in shame as she listed my sins, “then she went through the process of birth and was taking care of her newborn pup, barely out of the fourth trimester, when the woman who practically raised her died!”
Vera threw her hands up and took a deep breath before releasing it with a sigh.
“Penelope has been pushed to her limit. Now, in order to survive, she has shut down parts of herself. It happens all the time in nature. Organisms shut down everything but their vital functions in order to survive various ordeals. So, just continue doing what you’re doing.”
She looked around the room.
“From her mate, she needs love and physical closeness. She needs to eat, and so does Gabriel. Her friends – visit her and talk to her like she’s responsive and enthusiastic. She’ll come back to us when she’s ready.”
As I lay on the tiny bed in the nursery that night, spooning my mate to sleep, I kept replaying Vera’s words in my head. I thought about both my and Penelope’s unprocessed losses and was struck by the differences and similarities between us.
During the first loss, I'd swallowed my feelings and focused on caring for my mom. Penelope had probably been agreeable and quiet, desperate to help and be noticed and appreciated for being good and obedient.
As an adult, I'd reacted to my loss by lashing out like a wounded animal. I tried biting those who attempted to free me from my hurt without giving any thought to the pain I was inflicting on them. Penelope had apparently gone back to the quiet, wounded pup she had been, the one who lost a mother and gained a sister on the same day and then got a stepmother soon after.
Nana had probably acted like a dam, keeping the flood of feelings at bay, but the hour of reckoning had come, and it was all too much for my sweet peach.
I was now aware that Penelope and I understood each other better than anyone in the world. My brave, beautiful female. I’d wait for her to be ready to come back to me, no matter how long it took.