Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“Put that on.”
I’m already buttoning it. It smells like Nuala, an elder who trades me for Bailey’s Irish Cream. It’s tight, but it covers my ass cheeks. Just barely, but it does.
Killian got himself a pair of athletic shorts, but he didn’t bother with a top. He’s got his arms crossed, glaring again, his pecs and abs and the V dipping into his shorts all carved with precision. There’s a fine dusting of fair hair down the valley of his six pack, disappearing into his waistband. It looks soft. The muscles look rock hard.
My fingers twitch. I quickly cross my arms, tucking my hands tight against my chest.
“We’re not mates,” he spits, finally breaking the silence. It sounds like an accusation.
It cuts, but no worse than a splinter or a bee sting.
“I know,” I say.
His jaw tenses into a sharp line. His expression is now beyond forbidding-it’s menacing. “This is the second time you’ve been the cause of disruption in the pack.”
How’s that?
I don’t actually reply. Pack protocol is so ingrained.
“I could have killed Gael.”
He’s putting that on me? No way.
He’s gearing himself up for something, pacing short steps, left and right, glowering at me in contempt.
Shit. Is he going to exile me?
“I will not tolerate this, this-disorder. You cannot-“
I panic. “Bullshit.” It flies from my lips.
He freezes mid-step, eyebrows slowly raising. I interrupted him. Oh, crap. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.
I hug my arms tighter. “You can’t blame me because you can’t control your wolf.”
“I can’t control my wolf?”
“Or your males.” If I’m getting exiled, I’m laying it all out. “Lochlan tripped me on purpose. Are you okay with that? ‘Cause I remember having to sit through a bunch of lectures about how only pussies hit females and pups.”
It was early on, when Killian had just secured alpha rank, fending off three challenges in a row, including Eamon. Declan Kelly had passed a few months earlier. The power vacuum had made bad wolves worse, and all the males were posturing and jockeying for status. A lot of females and young were taking beatings from mates asserting dominance.
Killian was nineteen or twenty, and not anywhere near as articulate as he’s become, and he mostly grunts and curses now. Someone would slip back to the old ways, and he’d call everyone out to the grassy lawn in the middle of the commons, and spend an hour or two ripping the pack up for being a bunch of “limp dick bitches who can’t fight someone their own size.”
Then, he’d tell the females to go home and get back to work, and run the males along the pack land perimeter until they were too exhausted to mess with anyone.
At the time, I thought maybe things would change. Killian would be a new type of alpha. He stopped the beatings and got the males focused on the circuit, but that was it. Females still had to stay home and ask a male for anything they wanted. I was disappointed, but I was younger then, too. Na?ve. I thought a wolf could rise above his nature.
Eamon’s right about one thing. In a pack, at the end of the day, strength rules.
I’m so lost in my head, that it takes a second for me to realize that Killian has closed the space between us. The scent of blood and fury fill my nose.
Instinctive fear saps my strength. I let the wall hold me up, and I fight the terror. I don’t want to be afraid. I’m mad. Pissed, actually. I’m not the one in the wrong this time.
Killian’s lips peel back. His fangs have descended, but he shows no other signs of becoming the wolf. Flip-shifter weirdness.
“I control my males,” he hisses, threat lacing each word.
I need to shut up. Nod. Make this be over. But now my mouth has its own mind, too. “Was it your idea for them to trip the female with the bad leg, then?”
He snarls. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Gael dealt with it. You were busy with your dinner and a show.” I know when you’re in a hole, you’re supposed to stop digging, but I can’t stop myself from adding, “Playing Haisley Byrne’s chair.”
He slams a palm into the wall beside my head. There’s no give. The lodge is made of solid pine logs. Still, I’m thrown, but not by the display of aggression. From the heat emanating off his body and his breath on my cheek.
He smells even more like toffee. Hot toffee. Drizzling, thick, delicious toffee.
“Be careful, female. I don’t think that little wolf of yours can back up that big mouth.”
He sneers. My “little wolf” perks up. Her ears prick, and she has prancing feet. Whatever this is, she’s here for it.
I don’t know what possesses me. I swear I don’t have a death wish. Maybe Abertha took my filter when she yanked out the mate bond.
“I don’t need my little wolf,” I say. “I have your big one.”
He growls.
“Your wolf likes me.” I lick my dry lips, and plunge ahead, right over the cliff. “He saw someone touch me, and he did something about it. You’re mad because you were asleep at the wheel, and he went after the wrong guy. I own going after Haisley the other night. That was on me. But this was you.”
“You’re gonna tell me how to lead my pack?” He gets right in my face, his gaze skewering me, challenging me, daring me.
I’ve seen him do this with his males a hundred times. He forces them to look him in the eye, and then he eye-fucks them until they can’t help but lower their heads. It’s a dominance move.
I should be squirming, itching to bend my neck. But way back, I sense his wolf, calm now, attentive, and pleased as shit that I claimed him.
Killian narrows his eyes, and for all that he’s a massive dick, they’re the softest faded blue and the rings around his pupils shine like liquid gold. Someone so awful shouldn’t have such pretty eyes.
I have no urge to drop my gaze. None. The opposite. I want to keep looking.
My stomach flutters.
What did he ask me? Oh, it was meant as a rhetorical question. About telling him how to lead his pack.
But yeah, I have thoughts.
“Somebody should. You need to reign in the assholes. Unless you want to be the alpha of a pack so pathetic the males have to trip a female with a bad leg to make sure she knows her place. ‘Cause I’m such a threat to the natural order. With my killer wolf and all.”
I tense-you don’t talk to a higher-ranking wolf like this, never-but at some point, Killian’s expression has lost the aggression. He’s still pinning me with his gaze, but it’s more measuring. Considering.
He edges forward, pressing his broad chest to my folded arms. There’s nowhere to go. My back is to the wall.
But I’m not panicking. I’m-curious? My wolf is very interested. She’s right up against the border between us. Peering through the fence slats.
There’s a prod at my belly. What is that?
Oh, shit.
I know what that is. It’s his cock. He’s hard. I’m making him hard.
What’s happening?
I don’t look down. My face would literally burst into flames. I’m not-unfamiliar-with dicks. I’m not a virgin. There was a human male who used to sell glass pipes at the farmer’s market. He was friendly, and he lived in an RV. He invited me to check out his personal collection. Afterwards, I went to the lake to wash off his scent, and it was a wonderful afternoon-alone and alive and self-determined and free.
He’s in the Pacific northwest now. He has kids and a job with computers. We’re friends on social media.
And there was a visiting male from North Border who stayed with us for training. I thought I’d miss him, but I didn’t. Turns out, it was the sneaking off to the woods that was exciting, not him.
So, anyway, I know about cocks. But not cocks this size. Alpha cocks.
I gulp. My cheeks burn.
Thankfully, he shifts back a hair so I can’t feel it anymore.
“You’re wrong,” he finally says, low and intent. “You’re a threat.”