Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Brody screws up his fleshy face. “You didn’t bite her, though, did you? Test driving the pussy is one thing, buying it’s another, right?”
Nia’s shooting daggers over her shoulder at me, aggression rolling off her in waves. If she weren’t holding Rosie, she’d attack. I have to walk away, defuse the situation, end this.
Rosie’s shaking, teetering despite Nia’s support.
I can’t walk away. I fucking can’t.
“My question is did you leave any virgin holes for the rest of us?” Brody slaps my back. “You know what they say—fat ass and a tight asshole.” His wolf rumbles, anticipating a challenge.
Mine is silent, intent on the females huddled together in the grass. He will not leave. Rosie’s pain courses through the bond, hacks at me, a rusty knife, and I can’t fight for her, and I can’t walk away from her.
I’m the alpha heir, and I’m fucking powerless.
Our packmates are gathered by the infield, clustered by rank, gawking as the drama unfolds.
I can shut Brody up in one blow. I can lay him flat, crush his larynx. Bash his skull in with my foot. I can kill Brody Hughes in less time than it would take to blink.
I want to.
Need to.
And I wouldn’t have to claim Rosie Kemble. Representatives of each family would be eyewitness to the alpha heir elevating a scavenger over Broderick Moore’s progeny. I’d shoot the shot that starts the war that ends with my father and I dead at Alban Hughes’ hands and the scavengers exiled or their corpses piled in a ditch in the woods.
Ultimately, it is no effort to stand silent and say nothing while Rosie’s pain guts me, shredding me down to the marrow.
I was born and raised for this.
Leadership is sacrifice.
No individual is more important than the pack.
I watch Rosie straighten and wipe her mouth with her sleeve. As Nia holds her up, she looks back over her shoulder, but she won’t meet my eye. Her gaze is lowered to the track under my feet.
“I guess this is what you are, then,” she says, quietly.
She doesn’t spare me another second. She shuffles away toward the locker room, huddled into herself and shaking. The cousin jogs to join them, and Derwyn follows at a distance.
I eat the agony flowing through the bond. I bare my neck to its teeth.
I do what has to be done.
Deep inside me, in his noiseless cavern, my wolf opens his maw wide. On the far side of the opaque wall separating him and I, a sliver of a crack soundlessly appears. A hairline fracture.
I don’t feel it.
All I can feel is Rosie’s pain as it holds a mirror to my blank face and makes a joke of what I thought I was.
Chapter 8
8
ROSIE
My mouth tastes like the baked sugar apple I had for breakfast, if it had been baked in sour ass. I spit as Nia drags me along.
Did you put a pup in a bog rat’s belly?
You better snatch that pup as soon as it falls out of that dirty cunt.
Test driving the pussy is one thing, buying it’s another?
Did you leave any virgin holes for the rest of us?
Brody’s voice is a loop in my head, whiplashing my brain back and forth, louder than Mr. Arnold’s whistle, louder than the rubber-soled sneakers as they begin to pound the track again.
It’s so loud, I can’t hear Nia, and her forehead knocks into mine as she half-drags and half-shoves me along, her lips moving, but I can’t hear her over Brody Hughes’ jeering on repeat and Cadoc’s deafening silence.
He may as well have said—
I did.
I will.
It is.
Why don’t you find out yourself? I don’t mind.
Rosie Kemble is nothing. Not worth a word, not a single solitary word.
At some point, Bevan’s there, trotting alongside us. I become aware of sound again.
Mr. Arnold shouts, “Nevitts! Get back here.”
Irv Nevitts replies, “Oi, Mr. Arnold, I’m right here.”
Tom Nevitts calls, “Which Nevitts, Mr. Arnold? Me?”
A chorus of Nevittses rises, and in my bombed-out brain, it sounds like the baying of the pack when we tree a racoon.
My family. The flicker of warmth in my chest is a spark in an ice field, and I cup my hands around it. I’m not alone. I’m not nothing, never have been and never will be.
I have Nia and Bevan. Pritchard is somewhere close. I can’t see him, but of course, he’s there, probably trailing Derwyn Collins who’s schlepping his ass along behind us, visibly bored out of his mind, like my life is a sucky chore he got stuck with.
Fuck him.
I didn’t ask for him. I didn’t ask for any of this.
“I want him to go away,” I mutter, tasting salt when I open my mouth. Am I crying? Oh, hell, I am. My cheeks are frozen from the cold, but the skin is hot with tears.
“What, Rosie-cakes?” Nia asks. “Who?”
“Fucking
Derwyn.”
“Yeah, fuck Derwyn.” Bevan bounces on the balls of his feet as he walks, full of energy. “Say the word, and I’ll go lay a beat down.” He says ‘beat down’ in his lowest bass like a complete idiot.
What am I saying? Derwyn has fifty pounds on Bevan, and I just need this over. “Never mind.”
“Nope, it’s a brilliant idea, and I’m gonna make it happen for you, cousin. Get ready to run ’cause even if Pritchard jumps in, I’m only gonna buy you a few minutes.”
He cracks his knuckles.
“Bevan, no.” I grab for his sleeve, but he dances away.
“Mad love, cousin, but you don’t outrank me.” He waggles his wolfy eyebrows, bares his gold teeth, and runs backwards, waving like an idiot.
“Tell the Bogs I died a hero!” he shouts, turning mid-stride and driving for Derwyn, slamming his shoulder into Derwyn’s barrel chest. Out of nowhere, Pritchard leaps into the fray, piling on, swinging his fists with no regard for where they land.
“Friendly fire,” Bevan yelps before the scrum devolves into growls and snarls.
“Come on,” Nia squeezes my hand and breaks into a run. I let her pull me.
We dash around the corner of the gym, cutting through the breezeway between the Arts Building and its annex, into the faculty and staff parking lot. It abuts a field where scraggly vegetation grew over the displaced dirt from the construction of the Research and Technology Center.