“Oh, Laura’s one of my favorite people,” I tell her, shaking her hand briefly. “Laura’s upstairs, if you’re looking for her—”
“She’ll find me if she wants. I live in town, and I see her maybe twice a year as it is,” Jenny laughs, dropping that tidbitand moving on without a second thought. “How long have you been with the family, dear?”
Jeez, does anyone have a good relationship with their mom?
“Four years,” I answer without really thinking. It was the sort of question I got a lot earlier in my career when I was a private chef. “This is my first wedding, though.”
Jenny pauses, closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, then raises her brows. “You sure smell like one of the family.”
I . . . don’t know how to feel about that.
She links her arm through mine, and I lead her towards the back doors.
“You’re in for a treat. It’s delightfully pagan, the excessive drinking, seeing the couple disappear into the woods, the chase, the mating bite...god, it reminds me of my youth,” she tells me, with drama in her voice that is plenty reminiscent of the way Laura tells stories.
She pauses to lift the edge of her sleeve, revealing a smattering of scarring near her elbow.
It takes me a moment to realize what I’m seeing is a pattern of teeth.
“Oh, wow,” is all I can think to say. What am I supposed to do here, hike up my skirt to show her my knee and say,I got this one falling out of a tree at seven?Or do I ooh and ahh over her bite mark like it’s got fourteen-karats?
The patio doors close behind us as she boasts, “I had a true mate, rare as it is. Unlike my brother and Deanna. I always knew they were wrong for each other, but it was hard to explain. I think it might have been easier if he’d known what it was like.”
“How did you know?” I ask before I can stop myself, and she gives me a smile that feels, honestly, a little patronizing, as if there was no way I could know what she was talking about either.
Still, the urge to impart her wisdom wins out.
“I felt my mate’s presence linger with me, that we were linked together even beyond this Earth. I dreamed his wolf was stalking me, marking his territory,” she says wistfully, and I feel there’s a real beauty to what she’s talking about.
A little girl with a fluffy tulle dress bounces to Aunt Jenny’s side and grabs her hand, scrunching her nose. “Uncle Rob peed on you in your dreams?”
Aunt Jenny lets loose a rather canine-sounding growl and the little girl runs off before I can get her name. It’s ferocious enough that it makes the hair on my arms stand straight up, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from running off too.
“Children,” Jenny scoffs, “do their parents teach them no respect?”
I chew on my lower lip, and I suspect I’m not going to learn the answer to that hit-and-run style question. Which is really too bad because I am now dying to know as well. I haven’t had anyone mark their territory in my dreams but...I swallow, and my cheeks heat a little at the memories.
I have come to know a side of Shawn I didn’t before. I just didn’t recognize him at first because he hadn’t shared all of himself with me.
Jenny glances over her shoulder then asks me in an undertone, “Have you met the Carringtons, yet?”
“No, but I’m excited to see the bride. I’m sure she’s gorgeous.”
Aunt Jenny scoffs. “Sanctimonious bunch. But it’s about time someone restored a bit of decorum to the Hayes family name.”
She says it with so much venom, I can’t imagine she means anyone but Shawn, how he took on being disowned for me. I feel my insides pinch a little. I had no idea they were like this. “I think Deanna’s sons have plenty to be proud of. They’re all great.”
“No, her sister. Went feral in the woods. I can’t imagine doing that. So incredibly selfish. And then Dea had the nerve to beg Father Martin to allow her to be buried in the family plot,” Jenny says with a derisive noise, waving me off as if this is something I should have known.
I blink, because what am I supposed to reply to that? “Square up, Aunt Jenny?”
“If someone else in this family goes feral, it’ll ruin the Carringtons as well, to be connected to us,” she continues on, and it makes a few more things make sense about Shawn’s family, if all werewolves are weird and puritanical like this.
That’s such a bummer, too. Werewolves exist and they kinda suck.
“I mean, there’s always divorce,” I say, because it feels kind of obvious. It’s weird to demand people to stay in a relationship just because.
Aunt Jenny’s demeanor shifts rapidly away from warm and inviting, and she gives me a withering look. “This generation, I swear. We don’t divorce.”
