Her mother reached across the table to take her hand. "Honey, he paid your last year's room and board. He was saving to take you on a trip you'd remember for all of your life, knowing how you dreamed of seeing faraway places. When money ran short, he gave it to me. 'One dream at a time, El.' he said. 'We'll give her this one and I'll start saving for the next."
Olivia never knew about that or the honeymoon. She didn't know how much money he was making now, but back then, it wasn't much. After she went to college, things were different. He had no time for her. He was always working. All he talked about was his new truck and how long it would be before he could buy another. He never once spoke of travel or tuition.
"You should have told me, Mama."
Her mother shook her head. "I thought that time and again, but Brad made me promise. I gave him my word, honey. He didn't want you to know. He said he wanted you to come to him with no obligation or regrets. That's what every wolver wants in a mate; love freely given."
It was another bite, though it wasn't her mother's teeth that bit her. Not every wolver believed in love freely given. It was a lesson she'd learned too late. Terrence had made it clear how much she owed him for guiding her to upward mobility. She hadn't known then how much of it was in cash.
"What else," Olivia demanded miserably.
"The rest of the pack paid what your folks and Brad couldn't," Donna told her with none of the anger she'd spoken with before. She reached out to touch Olivia's hand. "With no obligation or regrets for them, neither."
"But why? Why would they do that when there's not a one of them who couldn't use the money for themselves?"
"They had dreams, too, and they thought their dreams were the same as yours," her mother said gently. She didn't elaborate, but when Donna looked like she might, Ellie made the sacrifice and changed the subject to one she knew her sister couldn't resist.
"Enough about my cubs, Donna. Why don't you tell Livvy about Joey? She asked about him just this morning, but things got so hectic, I didn't get a chance to tell."
"That cub don't have the sense God gave a goose. You'd think he'd know better than be lured away by the flick of a fluffy tail. Let me tell you..."
And for the next hour, Donna did.
Chapter 7
The normal cold of December disappeared overnight. A weather front dipped down from the north bringing a bitter wind and freezing temperatures with it. The day dawned clear and bright, but the sunshine carried no warmth. Dressed appropriately, it was the perfect day for a run. After a few days of running a circuitous route through the village, her body was finally responding to her morning and evening run with the speed and agility it had lost in the city. She'd be in great shape for the Winter Moon.
With an Alpha as strong as Doc, everyone who wanted to could go over the moon, and the younger members didn't tiptoe politely beneath the trees. The females of Gilead didn't have to wait for the Hunter's Moon as they did in other packs. They ran alongside the males with all the joy of a well fed wolf pack.
Olivia was looking forward to it, although her enthusiasm waned after she'd passed a few neighbors. Bundled up against the cold, they waved, but only after she waved first and their smiles were half-hearted as if they didn't want to risk the whole. They were the same kind of greetings she'd received on each of her runs. Was it any wonder? After what she'd learned from her aunt and in spite of her mother's assurances, Olivia was sure there had to be regrets among those who'd donated. That conversation had given Olivia plenty of food for thought and the meat of it was tough and hard to swallow.
Hearing her name called, Olivia stopped and turned toward the sound, saw the Mate waving from her back porch, and reluctantly made her way out of the trees and across the overgrown field. She knew she'd have to see Jazz sooner or later, but was hoping to avoid the meeting until her thoughts were more settled and her feelings under control. Since the Mate saw and felt things others couldn't, she would be more difficult to fool.
"I was just about to take a walk over to say hello," Jazz greeted with just a hint of rebuke, "And there you were, broadcasting guilt, confusion, and all kinds of crap across my backyard. I hardly recognized you. You'd better come in."
So much for hiding her feelings. Olivia climbed the steps and followed Jazz into the house. They stopped in the tiny kitchen made even smaller with the addition of a wooden high chair. The chair wasn't large, or fancy, or new. It was probably a hand-me-down from some other family in the pack. Olivia traced the faded teddy bear painted on the seat back. How many Gilead pups had used that chair before it made its way here? How many would use it in the future?
"Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate?" Jazz asked.
Drawn away from the thought that one of those future pups would never be hers, Olivia was jarred back to the present. "Oh, um, I don't want to be any trouble."
"People who say that are usually more trouble than most. They put the burden of choice on everybody else and then aren't happy with the result."
"Hot chocolate, then. I don't really like coffee or tea." She never had, but she'd gotten used to drinking coffee because everyone she knew drank it, usually laced with sweeteners, artificial flavorings, and cream that did little to disguise the taste.
"Good day for it." Jazz mixed milk and chocolate in a pan and turned the burner on beneath it. Once the flame was adjusted, she pushed the button at the base of the coffeemaker on the counter of the tiny kitchen. "There, that wasn't so hard was it?" She got out mugs, set them on the table, and keeping her eye on the warming milk, asked casually, "So what's all the guilt and confusion about?"
"I had a talk with Mama and Aunt Donna."
The Mate offered a wry smile and nodded sagely. "Those two are a pair, aren't they? One bites your head off and the other clucks with sympathy while she stitches you back together. Grab that plate of cookies, will ya?"
"Oh, um, I've already had cookies, too many, in fact. It started out with Mama's new recipe..."
"I heard all about it at the cookie exchange. Macadamia nuts, right?" Jazz laughed at Olivia's incredulous look. "Griz gave me the exact same look when I told him I was going. Hard to imagine, isn't it."
The kitchen door opened as she was speaking and the Alpha came through, empty coffee mug in hand. "What's hard to imagine? Hey, Liv." He gave her a nod and Olivia bowed her head in respect.
"Alpha."
"Me, playing Susie Homemaker at a cookie exchange," Jazz told him with a chuckle. "Fresh coffee coming right up."
The Alpha snorted and grumbled to Olivia, "She only went to advance her plot to get more females on my Council. She's always conniving to get her way, the cunning bitch. If she didn't keep me supplied with coffee, I'd send her packing." He leaned down for a kiss from his mate.
"Someone's got to push this pack into the twenty-first century," Jazz laughed, and then added with a sexy but bantering purr, "And you'd miss a lot more than my coffee."
"That I would," he agreed as he grabbed a handful of cookies, "But my life would be a lot easier if you kept your snout out of pack business."
"It would be dull and boring, you mean, and I haven't heard you complain about all the cookies I brought home. Now go away and leave us in peace." The Mate returned her attention to her guest's hot chocolate. "Why I went doesn't matter. I had a good time and was glad they invited me."
When he was gone, the Mate settled in with her own coffee and cookies and smiled encouragingly. "Now that I've checked off the box next to small talk, let's get down to business. Why the guilt?"
"Why the question when you already know the answer? My college expenses." There was no use denying it. Olivia repeated everything she'd learned before concluding, "I should have known. Why didn't I ask? Why didn't I figure it out?"
It shouldn't have been a surprise. She knew how little her mother charged for her services. It would have been easy enough to add it up week after week, year after year, but Olivia never had. She'd never questioned her tuition either, never even looked at the bi
ll. She had scholarship money for that, but never thought once about the fees for books and room and board. She knew that the state college she attended was cheaper than most, but that was as far as it went. Sure, no one had told her, but that was no excuse.
"You were a cub," Jazz answered. "A cub can't see much beyond her own nose."
"In the beginning, maybe, but what about later? I arrived at adulthood quite some time ago."
"You thought so, didn't you, but from where I'm sitting it looks like you arrived there pretty recently. First sign of it is when you start thinking about someone beyond yourself."
"Slow learner, huh?"
"I was a lot slower than you. Some folks are faster, and some never learn at all, so you're running in the middle of the pack on that one."
"That doesn't make me feel any better," Olivia told her.
"I'm the Mate, not a happy pill." Jazz reached across the table to grasp her hand. "I can't make your troubles go away, sweetie, but I can make them easier to bear, once you've figured out what they are."
"I know what they are. I told you."
"No, you told me about owing money. I don't have much sympathy for that. Everybody I know owes money to somebody somewhere. Welcome to adulthood. You'll find a job sometime and you'll pay it off, though nobody expects you to and won't hold it against you if you don't. It's a point in your favor that the debt bothers you, though. What else?"
"Nothing else. That's it."
"Is it? Because I have a hard time putting that car and trailer together with the high life I've been hearing about. What happened to Terrence? When Ellie told me you'd be coming for a visit, I half expected an announcement of your mating."
"You can stop expecting. It didn't work out." Olivia thought to leave it at that, but the Mate thought otherwise.
"You weren't good enough, were you? Who broke the news - his Alpha, his parents, or him? Or was it a combo deal?"
"How... how did you know?" Did the Mate think she wasn't good enough, too?
"Griz used to belong to a pack like that. He recognized the type."
That felt like another betrayal. Olivia felt her eyes begin to water and she blinked back the tears. She'd already shed too many. "Why didn't you tell me?"
That earned a derisive and unladylike snort from the Mate. "Would you have listened if I had?"
She didn't have to think too long. "I would have said it was another ploy to keep me tied to Gilead."
The Mate nodded. "Some things we have to learn for ourselves and the lesson can be a heavy burden to carry. You should share it with someone."
"Who?" Olivia asked.
She was too ashamed to tell her parents. The friends she'd met through Terrence had turned on her the minute he began his campaign to punish her. She had no close friends in Gilead to console her. She'd broken those bonds. And her best friend, the one she'd always trusted to hold the secrets of her heart... well, she couldn't very well call Brad, now could she? It was embarrassing enough that she'd bellyached about losing the magic. He was probably wiping the relief from his forehead that he'd escaped being tied to a whiny wolf.
"I have no friends left. I've burned all those bridges." Too many now to blink away, her tears began to overflow and fall.
The Mate's hand still covered hers, and that was where the feeling began. A calm reassurance crept through Olivia and when Jazz began to speak, her voice carried with it the sound and feeling of compassion.
"That's better. Now we're getting somewhere. Cry it out, Livvy. Cry it out and let it be gone. You've been away too long, that's all. This is Gilead, remember? It takes a whole lot more than a couple of matches to burn our bridges. You've committed no crime. You're pack and you'll stay that way until you ask your Alpha to grant a release."
The pressure inside her to open her heart increased until Olivia could no longer bear it. She sobbed into the wad of tissues the Mate pressed into her hand.
"That's it, sweetheart, let it go," the Mate said gently. "If you have no one else, then share your burden with me. I'll carry it with you. I'll keep your secrets just like the old Mate kept mine."
She wrapped her arms around Olivia until the story poured out along with her shame and her tears. The Mate heard everything from Olivia's first meeting with Terrence to the humiliating end.
"He took me home to meet his parents. I never met their Alpha, thank God, though I don't think he could have made it any worse."
It happened on the second night of their visit. Olivia stood on the bottom stair and listened to Terrence and his parents argue in the room around the corner. She didn't mean to eavesdrop. She'd only stopped to save Terrence the embarrassment of her witnessing a family argument. She hadn't known they were arguing about her, but it only took a moment to figure it out.
"Really, Terrence, I know I'm repeating myself, but I cannot believe you brought her here. What were you thinking? You should know better than to bring someone like that into our home."
Used to her aunt, who thought no one was good enough for Joey, Olivia wasn't surprised with the mother's objection. But where Uncle Harvey thought Joey's new girl was cute as a button and sweeter than candy, Terrence's father agreed with his mate.
"The cub made a mistake, Claudia," he said as if his son was fifteen instead of thirty. "No one need know. It isn't as if we were entertaining this weekend, for which you, Terrence, should be grateful. The Alpha has his eye on you as a match for his niece. She's a charming girl with an excellent pedigree and she's apparently enamored by your charm. You don't want to ruin your chances with nasty gossip about how you don't have sense enough to keep your toys in the playroom."
Olivia thought Terrence would defend her, but she was wrong about that, too.
"Davina's only eighteen, Father, not nearly old enough to be mated. What would you have me do in the meantime, play the monk? Because I won't do it. I have every intention of enjoying my freedom while I still have it and how I enjoy it is up to me." Terrence's voice was more petulant than angry. "I don't see what all the fuss is about. I've already told you this is nothing more than a game, a social experiment if you will."
He went on to use words like gullible, ingenuous, and naive, adding that Olivia being a 'pretty little package' once she was properly groomed made the game all the more enjoyable.
"And you must admit, Mother, she might have passed muster if she hadn't gone on and on about that abysmal little pack she comes from."
"It only proves my point, Terrence. She may be clever and cute, and amusing in her ignorance, but wolvers of her ilk are incapable of real change. Your father and I have worked very hard to maintain this family's standing with the pack and I won't have you jeopardizing it by bringing your little packages home no matter how pretty they are."
When he found Olivia packing her bag, Terrence tried to cover his behavior with a dozen excuses, but her eyes had been opened and she recognized them as lies. His arguments persisted until she began to sense that he was more upset by the fact that his parents had won the argument than he was about hurting her.
His anger toward her didn't come until a week later when Olivia still refused to see 'reason'. Unsurprisingly, his fury had more to do with his reputation among his friends than it did with his feelings for her.
"You can't do this to me," he'd fumed. "You owe me."
"I don't owe you a thing."
And that was when she'd found out that she did in fact owe him. Unbeknownst to her, he'd paid half her sizeable rent, and since she was fired from her job and couldn't find another at even half the pay, she had to move.
As one interviewer explained, "Your previous employer had some problems with your work ethic and reliability. I'm afraid we can't help you."
Terrence called her every day to ask if she'd come to her senses. Her problems would be over if she just saw reason. Her new friends abandoned her. Only one answered her call.
"I am sorry, Olivia. I really do like you, but I can't afford to get involved. I have my own rear end to watch
out for. Terrence has always been a bit of a chump when he doesn't get his way, but I've never seen him go this far before. The best advice I can offer is that you ride it out. He'll eventually lose interest and move on. He always does."
Olivia didn't have the time or means to ride it out. She couldn't pay her rent and couldn't find another without a job or reference, but she wouldn't give in. She sold off what she could and watched her savings dwindle.
"Why didn't you come home?" Jazz asked as she passed her another tissue.
"I was too ashamed."
"But not heartbroken?"
At first, she thought she was. She cried each time she hung up the phone after one of his calls. She spent her days sending out resumes and her nights thinking about all the things she'd be doing if she hadn't heard that awful conversation. It finally dawned on her that it was those things she missed – the restaurants, the theater, the shopping, the parties - and not Terrence. She didn't miss him at all.
"No, not heartbroken," Olivia admitted, "and that makes me more ashamed." She was no better than Terrence.
She didn't deserve sympathy, but this was the Mate, and she assumed she'd get it. She was surprised when she didn't.
"I'm glad to hear it. You should be ashamed." Jazz didn't sound angry, but she didn't sound all that compassionate, either. "What?" she asked with a laugh, "Did you expect me to lie?" She rose to pour more coffee for herself and the last of the chocolate into Olivia's mug. She collected the drizzle from the edge of the pot with her finger and then sucked the digit clean with a smack of her lips. "Did you expect sympathy? Sorry, but I save that for wolvers who need it. You don't. You aren't heartbroken. You didn't follow your wolf down the wrong path and into the arms of a wolver who didn't deserve your love. I doubt you listened to your wolf at all. Your actions were entirely human. You were selfish. You got greedy. You allowed those wolvers to belittle your pack and you did nothing."
Shifter's Magic (The Wolvers Book 8) Page 7
