Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
You’re perfect.
I do. It is. I am. My wolf and I agree. Everything is finally in its place. I snuggle against him, lost in space, as the knot recedes and hot, sticky fluids drip down my thighs.
And just before my eyes drift shut, a thought pops into my head.
We forgot the condom.
As I think the words, my stomach clenches in panic, and I jerk. Where Cadoc’s mouth lingers, there’s a pricking at my neck, no more painful than a splinter, and before I can register what it is, I’m flying across the bed. My shoulder hits the wall, not very hard, but I bounce when I land on the mattress, jarred awake and aware, scrambling to sit.
Cadoc leaps out of our nest and stares at me, chest heaving, horror and disgust parading across his face, making him look fully alive for the first time I’ve ever seen.
His fangs are descended, his lips pulled back in a grimace. My fingers fly to my neck. There’s no puncture wound, only a red scratch. He didn’t bite me. He didn’t break the skin.
He almost did, but he stopped himself and flung me away. Like a viper. Like trash.
I grab a blanket and clutch it to my front.
He runs a shaking hand through his hair. “I didn’t—I—” As he stumbles over his words, choking on his dismay, he darts forward and somehow he snags his jeans from the mess of blankets and yanks them on. “I shouldn’t have done that. I got carried away. I stopped in time.”
I rub my shoulder where I hit the wall. It stings.
He finds his hoodie too, unerringly, in all the clothes and quilts and sheets. Now he’s dressed, and I’m cowering naked in the corner of a drafty, musty Airstream, naked except for my dirty-bottomed socks.
Oh Fate, I’m still wearing my socks. There’s cum dribbling down my inner thighs, and I’m hiding behind a polyester comforter with hot air balloons on it. It used to be mine when I was a pup.
The wind whines through gaps in the trailer’s rusted seams.
Cadoc straightens, bracing himself, his cold, empty gaze leveled at the wall above my head.
“It’s done now,” he says.
He clears his throat, and for a second, I think that’s not all, he’ll say something to make this less awful. Maybe he’ll fish out my sweater from the messy pile.
But he presses his lips together, turns, and walks away, in full control of himself, as if a dismissal bell had rung, and he needed to make his way to his next assignment.
I’ve been checked off a list.
The door clatters shut. I hear him murmur something, and Derwyn responds.
My stomach heaves. I race for the tiny bathroom, shove open the partition, and crank the knob in the shower as I hop on one foot and then the other, peeling off my socks. A weak stream of cold water falls from the rusty showerhead, and I jump under it, propping my foot against the plastic wall, cupping my palms to gather a handful and then splashing between my legs.
I’m a fool.
I hate him.
I’m so stupid, and I’m so screwed.
I want to shift and chase him down, swat him into an oak tree with the flick of a paw like he flung me across the bed.
I want to break his spine.
I want to watch the understanding dawn in his soulless gray eyes that I am not insignificant—I’m not a hole to fuck or a womb to seed or an itch to scratch or whatever he thinks I am—I want to see him realize what Ireally am the instant before I bite his head off and crunch his skull between my teeth like a soft-boiled egg in its shell.
I want to stampede through the nobs’ picture-perfect boutiques and restaurants and luxury office space until it’s rubble.
I could do it. I could tear the whole place down, but I never would, so the tears flow faster down my cheeks, and I wipe them off as quick as they come, and scrub my pussy until it’s even more raw, and I can’t stand it anymore.
I need to stop.
I need to breathe.
I force myself to stop and stand for a moment in the shower stall with both feet flat on the plastic floor, the cold water dripping down my back.
My wolf is reclining on her side, calm except for an occasional ear twitch, as if she’s waiting for me to calm down. Why isn’t she raging?
She blinks her frosted silver eyes at me.
Doesn’t she understand? Our mate left us. He took what he wanted and bailed.
And knowing it was coming doesn’t make it hurt any less, not at all.
My wolf tilts her head. For a second, my anger blazes, sizzling and sputtering high into the air, bright red and orange, and somehow, as it flares, it burns itself out. My back teeth begin to chatter, and my arms pucker with goosebumps.
My wolf snuffle-snorts as if to say, “Yeah, aren’t you being silly?”
I did know this was going to happen. What basis did I have to hope otherwise? A few yanks of the leash? A rock?
Cadoc Collins is a nob, fully infected with their bullshit. You don’t get mad because a rabid dog foams at the mouth. You get away.
I take another deep, steadying breath, and I balance myself against the wall to pull my socks back on, one by one.
The heat is gone, and my head is clearing. If I’m lucky, there won’t be any consequences. Everything can go back to normal, and I’ll have time to figure things out before heat strikes again in a few months.
But if worse comes to worst—if a poor little pup comes out of this debacle—I’m not letting him get chewed up and spit out by the bastards on the other side of the lake. No fucking way. If I didn’t know before, I do now.
My wolf might not be into violent revenge, but I know she’s with me on this.
I force myself to fold all the blankets that Nia gathered for me, shoving the most soiled at the bottom of the trash bag. I’ll leave it here and take the stuff to the laundromat and wash them in the morning.
I put on my sweater and jeans, but I can’t bear the feel of panties between my legs. The denim doesn’t feel so great either, but if I walk a certain way, the crotch doesn’t rub. It’s the better of two bad choices.
Kind of my life. No good or right choice, only a decision between which shit sandwich I’d prefer today.
It’s messed up that I have a mega-wolf, and I’m about to limp back to the room I share with three pups, feeling like I’ve been kicked in the pussy by a boot.
Maybe I should see if Quarry Pack would take me. I would clean up on the shifter circuit. They probably wouldn’t let my wolf fight. It’s a gambling thing, and no one would bet against her.
It’s a silly thought, but it helps me drag my worn-out carcass out of the trailer and down the path toward the lake.
I thought I’d heard Derwyn earlier, but I can’t smell him now. That’s a relief. I guess now that I’m “mated,” males will go back to smelling like armpits, beef jerky breath, and stale beer.
Mated. Hah.
It would be so much easier to be a human female. They can choose to have sex with whoever they want or no one at all, and there are pills so they don’t have pups if they don’t want them. There are no claiming bites. They can change their minds.
There are a hundred things humans can be and do with each other—talking, hanging out, friends with benefits, casual, serious, exes, side chicks, summer flings—and they both have to agree, or it’s no dice.
I don’t get a choice, but Cadoc does. It’s like Fate gifted me to him, and he gets to decide whether to find a place for me around the house, or take what he wants and send me back to where I came from.
It’s bullcrap, and now that I’ve got the cold wind in my face, and night sounds in my ears, it occurs to me that it’s not exactly true, either.
Maybe Fate gifted him to me. Why not? Just because he doesn’t want me doesn’t mean that I don’t get to decide, too.
Do I want him?
Why would I?
The sex probably could have been worse. I’ve heard plenty of stories from Drona and Arly. He tried to be gentle, and that’s apparently more than you can expect from most nobs. It was nice until it was over. He said nice things. That was all right.
My cheeks burn, and my belly aches in a sad way. I quicken my pace.
Cadoc turned his back on me. He couldn’t get out of the trailer fast enough, and obviously, that’s a clear and unequivocal “hell no” from him.
But I get to choose, too, right? He just beat me to the punch.