A Handful of Daffodils (Forgotten Series, #7)

Chapter Fifty-Nine

I was... I was... settling. I doubted if Duffy would have let me do anything but that. She was a very vocal and almost pushy female. I figured it had a lot to do with her age, older shifters were rumoured to be tenacious and stubborn and Duffy seemed to embody it. Except now it was aimed at me. After I told her what had happened, minus the deal with Mene, through quite a bit of tears as I shook hard. I didn't like thinking about it at all but she had pushed me until I told her and then she had made it her personal mission that I not wallow. Or as she put it, 'grieve for fuckers who aren't worth half of one of your chewed fingernails'.

I liked her, I did, but I couldn't help but grieve. I wasn't home. I had gone back to the pack but it was like my home was no longer there, I had no safety or security, even now. I was with Duffy and she made sure I was safe and taken care of but I still didn't feel like I was home. I missed Brochan, I missed little Maeve, I missed Mike and Dana and the kids, I missed Simon. I couldn't just stop those feelings.

I knew she told me, time and time again, to forget about Brochan, that he was a useless, good for nothing male that deserved hell on earth but I understood his feelings. I knew where he was coming from. Which she would constantly tell me I didn't understand, that I was simply saying that, convincing myself of it, because the devastation I would feel otherwise would be too much to bear. Which I didn't understand at all. I had no right to be devastated by anything. I was a female who had little worth, things that happened to me were deserved because of my station.

I let out a small sigh. That was something I stopped trying to tell Duffy because that usually ended up in a massive lecture on how males did not determine my worth, that I was born with automatic worth that meant I could say what I wanted, do as I wanted, and I didn't have to bow down to any male I didn't want to. She would continue to lecture me that my body was my own, that no one could just own me, that I was my own person who was allowed to have thoughts and feelings that were contrary to what males wanted me to think or feel.

I understood what she was trying to say but she couldn't possibly understand what it was like. I grew up with that, it was simply how the world worked for me. Which I also never said to her because I knew that would inevitably prolong the lecture I was receiving so I never risked it. She just couldn't understand what it was like. I was born who I was and who I was had little worth. It was that simple. I had poor blood, I had poor colouring, I had a poor circumstance of birth, I had poor everything. That didn't just go away because she said I had worth because I didn't. My father made that very clear.

"Stop moping." Duffy's voice was sharp and I pinched my lips together and shifted on the spot I had on the sofa Duffy had dictated was mine.

"I didn't say anything." I glanced at her over my book and she gave me a shrewd look.

"I'm too old to be fooled by that. You're moping because I gave you a well-deserved lecture." The female gave an almost vicious loop of her yarn as her knitting needles clicked together.

At that I nearly scowled, "You wanted to tell Mike to tell Brochan that he was a pathetic excuse for a male who needed to go play tag with a cement truck on a freeway. That was rude." I kept my voice even and low as I looked at her. She didn't look unrepentant, in fact she seemed to double down. It was what made talking to her so agitating sometimes.

"It was well deserved." She sniffed, her mouth twitching upwards as if she were proud of herself. "Besides it is no less than what he allowed to happen to you." The look she gave me had me swallowing hard. I didn't like to think about what happened. I didn't like remembering it. A small part of me, a tiny tugging in my chest, that seemed to be growing as if it were feeding off of Duffy's influence, said that what had happened was wrong, that I hadn't deserved that. I struggled hard to shove that down because regardless of what had happened, Brochan had been without Maeve for two months. I had made my choices and the punishment was the consequences of those choices.