Jennie POV
My husband was dead. I'd cried when they first told me. How could HyunSuk be dead? He was a mountain given life. He'd never been kind, or loving, or tender, but he'd always been present, and he'd provided for my children and I for over ten years. What was I going to do without him? They'd left me to my tears, and I'd retired to my bedroom, laying at the foot of the bed where he'd made me lay for the last four years.
I cried, and cried, and cried and then I began to laugh. I'd laughed until I began to cry, but I'd also felt a surge of relief.He'd been a monster. He'd ruined me, and he'd hurt my babies . . . his babies, though they'd never felt like his. Just because his dick had planted the seed didn't mean they belonged to him. They were mine, and I'd protected them. I'd protected them as well as I could. Two had died in my womb, three had been lost to HyunSuk' abuse. I'd lost five out of twelve of them.
Perhaps I wasn't such a great mother at all.I remembered each of them he'd killed. Lilya, he'd broken her neck and tossed her aside for trying to sit on his lap. After that I'd moved the kids out of the house. He'd caught Keevo painting with dye's he'd made himself from berries, and he'd beat the boy unconscious. Kee had never woken up. Joss he'd killed when he pushed me down the stairs while I was carrying him when he was just a baby. Lilya, Keevo, and Joss. They'd never even really known life.
The other two little ones never even had names. HyunSuk burned their bodies in our fireplace before I even knew what gender they were. He'd been furious at me. The beating that had followed had left me unable to walk for a month.This had been my life. I'd forgotten I even had a sister, and then she'd come to me and told me that she was the Alpha, and that she'd arranged for me to be remarried. I was devastated. I didn't want another man in my life. I just wanted to raise my little ones in safety. Of course, I also knew that now I was at the bottom of the pack pecking order.
That would make my kids targets as well, but they were almost safer that way than they had been when HyunSuk still lived. Lisa. I still didn't know what to think of her. She seemed so kind, but my instincts told me women or men couldn't be kind. I'd certainly not seen kindness in them in a long time. My father had been kind, or at least I thought I remembered him being kind. Things before HyunSuk were fuzzy. In a single day Lisa had shown me more kindness than anyone had in ten years, and she'd treated the children so well. I'd been ready to give her my body in payment for her kindness.
If she'd taken me and hadn't hurt me I would have been glad to pay her in such a way, but she hadn't done that either. She'd said it would happen only if I really wanted it, but what did that mean? I'd never actually wanted a man nor women. I didn't want or like sex. It was something I did to make HyunSuk not take his frustrations out on the children. It was something I'd sometimes done because it was the only time I felt at all connected to my husband. I didn't love him, and I never even attempted to fool myself into thinking he cared about me, but when he was fucking me I was important to him. It made me feel like I had some worth.
That had stopped after Flint was born, just after he'd pushed me down the stairs and killed Flint's twin. After that I wasn't allowed in the bed anymore. He brought in other females, younger ones. I was old, ugly, not worth his time. That was easy enough to accept. I'd always been worthless, so this was just another example of that.Then I was, making guest beds up for my children. They weren't guest beds anymore. They were beds for the little ones, and this was what Lisa wanted.
She wanted my children to come inside, and she wanted to have meals with them, and to read to them. I was still caught between disbelief and a strange haze like I was living in some kind of dream. I put a pillow on the last bed in this room and walked next door to see how Lisa was doing. She's insisted on helping setup the rooms.I was in my werewolf form in the house, which was something that had never been allowed before, and I still felt nervous, afraid, like Lisa would turn around and berate me and then start hitting me.
I gave a small whine to get her attention. "Do you need any help in here?"she smiled at me. "Nope, I think this looks alright, do you think so? You're their mother." She said. It was a room for two of the boys and she'd moved a large bear rug into the room, I was sure for their amusement. She looked to me with questions about the children's care. She was good with them, but seemed somewhat inexperienced, and she trusted me to know better than herself when it came to them.
"I think they'll love it. Honestly, I think they'll just be happy to not be bedding down in scratchy hay for a change. They've never slept in a bed before." I felt guilty as I said those last words. My children had barely had any kind of life. I'd have to make that up to them now. "Thanks for the help, Lisa. I could have done this myself. You didn't have to do so much." I felt a strange wave of affection for the human man.
He was easy to like, easy to trust, and that kind of scared me. She shrugged. "I like helping, changing things. Is it alright if I ask Rosie and Jisoo to come to dinner with us tonight? I'm going to go hunting, and then I thought I'd stop by my sister's and ask them over if you were alright with that." She went to look out the window of the room. When she pushed back the curtain the natural light flooded over her dark curly hair and muscular frame. She was built for endurance, distance, not the brute force HyunSuk had been.
It was a leaner look. She was also tall for a human, as tall as some of the shorter kin.I was nervous at the idea of having guests. HyunSuk' guests had generally been mean spirited and violent men. HyunSuk had been too possessive of me to allow them to rape me, but he'd certainly let them touch me and occasionally hurt me. Violence had aroused him."I can cook for extra people." I told her, nodding. I was afraid of my sister. I didn't know her, and unknown males made me very nervous. I would do it for Lisa though.
She was kind, and I wanted to believe she wouldn't let anyone hurt me. Also, it had been Jisoo who sent Lisa to me, so maybe that meant that she wasn't cruel either. I liked to think that my twin sister wasn't like HyunSuk. I hadn't had the time to miss her growing up, but now a part of me was curious as to what had become of her."Is there anything special you'd like me to prepare?" I asked Lisa, bowing my head as I talked to her, keeping my eyes low. It was a habit I couldn't quite break.
Lisa laughed. "Nope! I'm sure Rosie will just be happy not to have to cook, and Jisoo will just be happy to not have to eat something she made!" She came over and picked up my head gently by my chin, locking her dancing blue.eyes with mine for a moment before releasing my chin and stepping out into the hall. "We should talk to Oldest about her name, and when do you want to show the children the bedrooms?" She seemed excited about moving them in, excited to do something for them.I smiled in the way wolves to, though it wasn't an expression I was accustomed to making.
"We can do it now if you'd like. We can go talk to Oldest, and then we can gather the kids and let them into the house." I thought for a minute and then I swallowed hard and decided to ask the question I had floating around inside my head. "Is it alright if they have free run of the house too? I'll keep them locked in their rooms if that's what you want, that or outside, but I'd like them to actually feel at home."Sometimes Lisa seemed surprised at the things I thought to ask about, this was one of those times.
"Of course they can run about the house, it's their home now too, and children should play. Everywhere. And just a little louder than any grown up would like." She said in very serious tones, though her eyes were shining with amusement, as was so often the case. "Let's go talk to Oldest and then the rest of them then." She said with a grin and offered me her arm.I took it hesitantly at first, and then a bit more firmly as I realized how comfortably it fit into my own, and how nice it was to have someone touch me in a kind way. It was like last night when she'd held me all night long. That had been amazing.
I'd woken up happy and refreshed, and I wasn't even sure how to express the feelings I had.We found Oldest in the front yard with Flint, which was where she often was. She had bonded closely with her youngest sibling. She looked up as we approached, and she smiled as we drew near, even waving shyly at Lisa."Oldest, Lisa and I would like to talk to you about your name." I told her softly."My name?" She asked, a little confused. Lisa nodded and crouched near her. "Do you remember that you once had another name? Your father renamed you when you were young. We can use any name you'd like us to, but we wanted to know which you'd prefer."
"Holly, like the plant." She said with a smile, but then her smile faltered a little. "Daddy hit me if I talked about that.""Well, no one is going to hit you anymore, sweety. If you want your old name back you can have it." I told her, feeling awash in guilt again. So much abuse. they didn't even know another way.She looked up at Lisa. "You won't get mad if I want to be Holly again?"
"Nope! I like you no matter what you're name is." She assured her with a smile.The girl wagged her tail. "Then I think I'd like to be Holly again. Everyone else has a real name, and I want one to."I leaned down and nuzzled against her face. "Alright, Holly. From now on that's what we'll call you. It'll probably take a little while for your brothers and sisters to get used to calling you that, but it'll happen."Holly returned to Flint. "I have a real name again. I'm Holly." She told him proudly.Flint looked up at his sister from where he was playing with a beaten stuffed toy and smiled.
"Holly. That's a good name. Can I get a new name too?"Holly shook her head. "You already have a good name."Flint looked a bit crestfallen. "But I want to be Blood Biter!"Lisa looked to be a bit lost. "When you're all grown up Flint, I suppose you could pick a new name, but not right now. Holly only got a choice because she had a real name first, and then someone changed it on her." She told Flint, and then looked to me with a worried, eager smile as though she were asking if she'd handled that alright.
I smiled. "If after you grow up and find a mate you still want to be named Blood Biter you can change your name if you'd like."Flint pouted. "But that'll take forever.""I know, we're so cruel." I told him. "Come on you two. We're going to get the others and then I'm going to show you your new rooms. In the house.""We get to go in the house again?" Flint looked surprised. "We're not in trouble are we?""No, the new dad says we get to live in the house now." Holly told him. "She's a lot nicer than the old dad.""I don't like the old dad." Flint said.I thought that was kind of sad.
HyunSuk was gone, and all the children had of him was their hate for the man that had made them live in fear every day of their young lives. Sad, perhaps, but just as well. I didn't really want them to have fond memories of him. I didn't."That's alright. Your old dad wasn't an easy person to like." I told him. "The new one is much nicer." I turned and smiled at Lisa. I took Lisa's hand and pulled her towards the backyard, the kids running off in front of us.
"You're good with the children. I think you're going to make them much happier than they have been." I told her quietly, feeling a bit hopeful for a moment. Lisa nodded, her jovial face looking just a little muddled. "I'm the second to youngest of 5, kids seem to like me, but I don't have much experience with them." She admitted."Well, you're very good." I said, and I felt like nuzzling her, licking her face, trying to convey the sense of pleasure I felt inside, but then it occurred to me that this was all just a temporary situation.
"I know you won't be here forever." I said softly. "But the kids can learn a lot from you while you are. It'll be good for them to have a positive male personality in their life.""Well gee Jennie, I won't just abandon them." She smiled at me. "Even if I'm not always living in the same house, I'll stick around in the pack anyway." She squeezed my hand tightly. "They're really great kids Jennie, and I know that's all your influence."
"It's not all my influence. I didn't get to spend as much time with them as I would have liked. They had to raise themselves a lot. Holly did a lot of work. They really didn't get to be kids." I told her, and then I smiled. "They do now, though, and I think it's early enough that they'll all get to have some fun before they have to be adults."We reached the backyard then, and the kids were running around and playing like kids will do when left to their own devices. "Come on kids." I called them together. "It's time to go see your new rooms."