Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
On a picnic table and benches by the trampled ground where the trailer used to be, glittering snowflakes catch on the leaves of dozens of potted plants and cuttings in glass jars, sparkling in the starlight.
Rosie’s warm scent fades second by second as the first snow of the season falls, and my pulse throbs. My wolf howls his rage, his condemnation. I am too late.
My brain roars, and I surge back into my body, seizing my limbs, wheeling around the yard.
“Rosie!” I bound onto the shack’s porch, rattle the locked door and bang on the window. “Witch!” I roar.
I know Abertha isn’t here—her scent is days old—but my bare feet pound across the porch, behind the shack, searching because what else can I do to keep from collapsing, from being crushed like an aluminum can under the weight of my fuck up.
Rosie isn’t the scavenger who is my mate, the female who I can’t claim—she’s air.
And I thought I could hold my breath forever?
I listen for the bond, but it’s muffled, hushed almost to nothing, and I can’t pick out the notes from the rush of panic in my ears. The part that connects me to her drifts in space, unanchored. Severed.
I did this.
“Rosie!” I stand in the dead grass as the snow falls, and I shout for her even though I know she’s not here, and if she were, she wouldn’t come.
The blow comes for me like a speeding train, bowing my spine.
I chose wrong.
There’s no one to fight. No good, no right that I’m defending.
I’m the enemy.
My eyes burn. My fists clench, but there’s nothing to swing at.
I fucked up, and my arms are empty.
I had her, and I let her go.
My father, my mother, Howell Owens, every instructor I’ve ever had since I could walk has beat me with the shame of failing the pack. Failing in my duty. Failing in judgment. Courage. Foresight.
They were all wrong.
There’s no greater shame than this, and the shame is nothing compared to the fear.
Rosie couldn’t fight her way out of a paper bag. She files her nails short and paints them. Pink. I don’t think she can even run in human form. She sits on the bleachers when we do sprints. She needs me.
And I can’t live without her.
A shadow darts in the woods beyond the barren patch where the trailer was.
“Rosie?” I step forward, heart leaping.
“No.” A hovering form in a white dress appears between two rowan trees, their bare branches outlined by fresh snow, the berries red in the moonlight.
The witch.
Her long silver hair and thin white gown float even though there’s no wind. My blood runs cold.
“Where is my mate?”
She glides toward me, the toes of her white slippers grazing the ground, and for once, her expression isn’t sly and amused. Her gray skin is drawn over sharp bones. Her eyes are black pits.
I’ve never feared her before. I don’t know why, but heaven help me, I fear her now.
“What’s happened?” Terror squeezes my throat, straining my voice. “Where is my mate, witch?”
“You have no mate.” She bares her teeth. “You threw her away.”
I step toward her, but somehow, she’s no closer. “Where’s Rosie?”
“Why do you care?”
“Tell me, witch.” It’s a command.
“Gone.” Her lip curls in satisfaction.
“Where?”
“No. You’ll answer my questions now,
Alpha Heir,” she sneers. “How do you decide which of Fate’s gifts to scorn? Fate gave you power and riches and strength and a beautiful mate who will bear you strong pups. How do you decide which gifts to spit on? Do you even choose, or do they wind you up and you march in the direction you’re pointed?”
Pups. My abs clench, and I strain to move—to do what, I don’t know—but I’m paralyzed, held in place by some magic. The snow dusts my cheeks, clumps on my lashes, burning my eyes as it melts.
“Tell me, son of Madog, what have you done to deserve anything you’ve been given?” Her face twists with scorn. “Tell me, heir to the Great Alpha Broderick Moore, what have you done for the souls entrusted to you?”
“I do my duty.” As I grit out the words, I can taste how they mean nothing.
Abertha laughs bitterly. “And what is your duty, Cadoc Collins?”
I open my mouth.
“And don’t give me Madog’s words.” She spits in the light covering of snow. “His words hold no weight with me.”
My muscles strain against the force pinning me in place, frozen, naked in the moonlight. “Stop with these games, witch. Tell me where Rosie’s gone.” I invest the words with every ounce of power at my command.
The witch laughs again, a bitter cackle that fades into the silence. “You don’t answer me because you can’t. You have no idea why you exist, do you? You might be the exception that proves the rule—the shifter who actually is one with his wolf. You’re both soulless lumps of clay, aren’t you?”
She’s wrong. I have a soul. I know that now. Too late.
“Where’s Rosie?” My voice is jagged and raw.
In the same instant, whatever was holding me in place dissipates. Abertha drops, her feet thudding to the ground. She stalks across the final distance between us. In the moonlight and snow, her silver hair is white-blonde, and her flowing skirts hide her old woman’s shuffle. With the moon’s reflection off the snow brightening her eyes, she could be my mother’s age. She could be any age.
Foreboding trips icy fingers down my spine.
She’s not some hedge witch after all. This is a female of uncommon power.
“What do you want to give her back to me?” I lock my gaze with hers so she knows I understand what I’m offering, and that I see what she is.
She stops a foot from me, tilting her head back, her lips softening, a dreamy vagueness falling across her face. “You want a take back, is that it? Ado over
?” She enunciates the human terms with scorn.
“Please.” For the first time in my life, I humble myself.
Her eyes flash red. In the distance, thunder cracks. “No take backs!”
She flings her arms wide, and a wall of power collides with my chest, knocking me into the air. I skid across the frozen, snowy ground, knocking through planters.
I stagger back to my feet. I can’t fight her. She’s a pack female. Rosie’s mentor.
My wolf is wild behind his wall, scrambling at it with his claws. His howl of rage sounds in my skull.
She’s still coming. “No do overs!” she shrieks, and I’m blasted again, slammed into the thick trunk of a black walnut.
Her hair floats and tangles, glittering and twisting. “You turn your back on what Fate has given you, you throw your mate away like she’s replaceable, like the universe will give you infinite chances at happiness, like you’re special, like the world won’t keep turning and the sun won’t come up if you don’t do your duty.” She spits the word like a curse. Her bitter rage is an electric sizzle in the air.
She crouches over me. “The sun will rise tomorrow regardless of what you do, and it’ll come up the day after, too. Rosie will get stronger and stronger. She’ll forget you, and you’ll end up bleached bones in a pile like everyone else, and no one will cry over you.”