Doubly Protected [Werewolves of Hanson Mall 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read Free Page B

enough to fight it off.”
    That seemed like good advice to Hawthorne. After all, running away had worked for her. The problem was, when she’d run away she’d filled her backpack with clean underwear, a pair of boots, a couple pairs of jeans, and a sweater or two. No running clothes, sweat pants, or even shorts. Oh sure she could buy whatever she wanted. She was effectively living in a mall. And since her sister was mated to the managing director of the mall, getting credit was a done deal as well.
    But it just seemed wasteful, somehow, to buy an entire wardrobe of new clothes when she had a closet full of perfectly good clothing at home.
    Apartment 7C had been one of the werewolf pack’s guest apartments for when visitors needed a place to stay. When she and Willow had arrived they’d been placed there with the mall’s nurse to help them and watch over them. But once they’d both settled in Nurse Eilidh had returned to her own apartment and the smaller bedroom that she’d been using had been turned into an office. The walls were covered with pinup boards of family trees. Both Willow and Hawthorne were trained in genetics and they were assembling all the data other teams had collected on werewolf family histories. When shape-shifters married other shape-shifters, after several generations, girls become scarcer, with most babies born being male. But when a shape-shifter mated a human, the birthrate returned to half boys and half girls.
    Hawthorne and Willow were collating data from the family histories to try to determine if this was a new phenomenon, or whether it had always been the case. Hawthorne was still sleeping in the larger bedroom that she’d originally shared with her sister, but now Willow was living with Rhion and Cadfael in Cadfael’s top-floor apartment.
    When Willow arrived to start work the next day, Hawthorne was sitting, thinking, at the small table in the living area.
    “Is something wrong?” Willow asked.
    “No, but we do need to talk.”
    “What’s up?”
    Willow sat beside her and took her hand. Hawthorne smiled. That was so characteristic of her sister. She was always caring for Hawthorne and putting her first.
    “I’m fine, truly. I was just thinking that now that Bailey’s in jail we really ought to take a road trip back home and clean out the house, collect all our possessions, and put the house up for sale. I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to hate every T-shirt I’ve brought with me.”
    “I know how you feel. This is no longer my favorite sweater.” Willow pulled at a loose thread on the cuff of her sweater and Hawthorne laughed.
    “So when can we go? Can we borrow a car? I mean, does the mall even have vehicles? Does Cadfael have a truck or something we could borrow?”
    “I don’t know. It’s not something we’ve ever talked about. But it’s definitely time for you and me to be moving on. I don’t think we need to keep any of the furniture. It might be better to sell the house furnished. It’s not like there are any antiques or things handed down for generations. There’s not even anything I particularly want. What about you?”
    “I’ve been sitting here thinking and nothing there has special meaning for me. I expect we’ll keep the photograph albums, but Dad was such a terrible photographer we’ll likely end up throwing away most of the pictures anyway.”
    “God, yes. There was either two-thirds of the picture showing the sky with you and me cut off at the eyebrows—”
    “Or a hell of a lot of grass and us cut off at the knees. He never ever figured out how to frame a shot properly.” Hawthorne laughed.
    Willow went into their office and came out holding a notepad. “Okay let’s do this properly. If we buy a whole lot of trash bags they’ll do for throwing away the things we don’t want and for holding our clothes and things that won’t fit in the suitcases. There’s what, five, six suitcases at home?”
    “Six. One each for the four of