Page 44 of The Wolf's Bullied Mate
“Stop, stop,” she put up her hand again. “I’m not hearing any confessions tonight—not when I’m still sorting through what had happened in the past.”
“You can’t remain in the past, Pauline,” I sighed. “We have to move forward; live in the present and think of the future.”
“I just…” She looked away, suddenly coy, all the bravado evaporating from her. “I don’t understand—how could someone like you like someone like me?”
There she went with the self-deprecation again.
“What do you mean ‘someone like you’? You’re the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met,” I frowned.
She said nothing, biting her lip. She clearly looked uncomfortable with the question.
Anger rose in my heart. Through gritted teeth, I asked her, “Who hurt you, Pauline?”
She opened her mouth, but I shook my head before she could hide behind talking about me and our classmates again.
“Besides me and the people from our high school,” I said.
“Why do you assume there were others?” She raised her eyebrows. Yet her hands fidgeted with the hem of her shirt, a sure sign that she was uncomfortable.
“Just years of reading people as a beta,” I said. “Who was it?”
Pauline gave me a pained look. She opened her mouth, then closed it. She said nothing.
I wanted to pull her into my arms and hug her, but I needed to get the uncomfortable truth out of her first. I needed to cause her some pain by having her face her trauma so that we could figure out how to heal her heart together, how I could pull Pauline from the past into my arms in the present, and how to build a future where we supported each other.
She needed to heal, and I would help her through the suffering.
“Who was it?” I repeated.
Tears welled up in Pauline’s eyes, but even so, she said nothing.
“Whom do I need to kill?”
“Nobody,” she said, but there was an edge to her voice like she almost wanted to tell me I should kill to protect her.
I wanted to cause the ones who had hurt her pain. Their deaths wouldn’t be quick. I would make them suffer as I dismembered them bit by bit.
“Was it Ray’s father?” I started with the most obvious culprit.
If Ray’s father had loved Pauline, he would have mated with her. If he had realized how much of an amazing woman she was, he would never have let her go. He had clearly failed in bothareas, which was why she was raising their child on her own. What exactly had he done to her? I would find out.
Once again, Pauline opened her mouth then closed it. I waited patiently for her to speak. Finally, she sighed and spoke up. “Yes.”
The simple word settled between us, and the truth revealed. Yet I suspected there was even more truth to be shared.
“Who else?”
Pauline sighed once more. When she spoke again, it was like a dam had opened. Her words flowed out, telling me of the enormity of her pain. “Many others. When Jeffrey abandoned me after I got pregnant, people branded me a weak wolf. He was an enforcer, and if he didn’t want me then I clearly must be defective. The whole community turned on me—some ignored me entirely, some only spoke to me to call me names. Some even went after Ray. But what hurt the most was the abuse I got from my parents. After Jeffrey, a friend of my father's, left me, my parents took almost all of my wages in exchange for letting me stay at their house, though I wasn’t allowed to do much more than sleep there. Mother and Father belittled me every day.”
I listened to her speak. When she finally went silent, sobs shook her frame. I got up from my seat and picked her up gently. When I sat down again, I placed Pauline on my lap and hugged her closely.
She buried her head in my chest and just cried for a while.
When she calmed down a bit, she continued speaking. “I believed them, Oliver. I fully believed I was weak, I was broken, I was a nobody. I had one single friend—Cherry. When Ray was mistreated at the kindergarten because of me, she told me I really needed to get away. But I had no money to move out of my parents’ house, and even if I had moved I still would have been living in a pack that hated me.”
“Then you found out about Twin Tails?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes, Cherry told me about them. There was no application fee for women. I got matched with you immediately. I’m sorry I used you, Oliver. I really needed to get out of there, even if it meant being married to you—the person whom I knew was my high school bully. I needed to pick the lesser evil.”
