Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“My body’s all wonky since this whole thing—” I gesture in the vague direction of my uterus. “My senses are off. I can’t tolerate cold as well. I’m not sure if I can still shift or not.”
“So soon?”
I nod. I wonder if it has to do with my wolf being the size of a house. “So, yeah, I’d like to, but I’d turn blue. I’ve been doing the whole pits, tits, and naughty bits with a washcloth thing.”
It’s hard to tell for sure because of the beard, but I think there’s a dark slash underlining his cheekbones. He rises again and adjusts his jacket where he’s wound it through the straps of my backpack.
“Well, uh—” He jerks his head in the direction we came. “We should, uh—“
I let him lead, and I don’t make a crack about the tent he’s got in his pants. I wonder if it was the word ‘tits’ or ‘naughty bits’ that did it. Or the idea of a towel bath.
Was he picturing it?
The bond flows a little faster, a little more sparkly.
I feel my insides warming, and it makes me nervous, so I pick up the pace, push myself until the walking is work. Cadoc matches his stride to mine.
I don’t want to get lulled into a false sense of security again, or whatever it’s called when you know you’re in for a world of hurt, but you forget to brace yourself.
I can’t afford it.
Cadoc casts a worried glance down at me.
Again, it’s not any different from his default face, but the fact that he looks down—and the subtle shift in the bond’s flow—makes it read worried.
I don’t see what he has to be concerned about. He’s out here finding himself or whatever, but I’m sure the minute he turns back up at Moon Lake, everyone will slap him on the back and pour him a beer. Or champagne, or whatever he drinks.
On second thought, I bet he’s a protein shakes and mineral water kind of guy.
We follow a rocky gulch back as it winds between hills. I let him lead—he’s fixating on the loose stones and kicking them out of our path—and I glare at his broad back and think mean thoughts.
No one should have the innate confidence that Cadoc Collins has. He’s obviously spent a hell of a lot more time indoors than out, but he navigates the terrain with supreme confidence, picking our trail as if he knows this place like the back of his hand.
He slows down to help me over fallen logs and washed-out ditches. I brush past him, nose in the air. He takes it in stride. I guess it’d take more than a cold shoulder from me to take him down a peg.
I know I’m being petty and cranky—which doesn’t ruin anyone’s day but mine—and I know my hormones are in the driver’s seat, but I also know that I have every reason to feel the way I do, and I don’t know how to stop being mad.
And hurt.
And fucking disappointed.
I want to scream at him that his swagger is wasted here. He showed up too damn late. If he wanted to come through for me, he had his chances—plural—and he didn’t want them.
“What’s changed?” I ask again. This time, my voice catches.
‘I have’ isn’t anywhere near a good enough answer.
The question out of nowhere throws him, as much as he can be thrown. He stops, and meets my eye, and says nothing. Time stretches. His left hand fists. His throat bobs. He doesn’t know what to say, but I’m not letting him off this hook. He’s going to have to rip himself off it.
Eventually, he raises his eyes to the distance. Something up ahead catches his attention. He jogs a few steps to a thick pine growing out of the side of a steep incline. Its exposed roots intertwine like braids. He ducks and peers under the bank.
“Come see this.” He waves me over.
I guess I’m not getting an answer. I’m frustrated, but still, I go over. I’m curious.
He sticks his head in an entryway made by a natural parting of the roots. It’ll serve him right if a critter bites his nose off. Doesn’t he know to throw some rocks in first?
Sadly, his head emerges attached to his neck. “It’s a den.”
“What?”
I elbow him as he moves aside to let me see. I squat and squint into the shadows. The roof is low, but the hollow goes fairly far back. The floor’s been leveled, and there are rectangular indents in the packed dirt where a trunk or a bureau of some kind must have been. I sniff, but all I smell is damp earth.
I crane my neck to catch Cadoc’s eye. “Can you tell how long ago they were here?”
“It’s been a long time. I can smell them, but barely.”
“It’s so small.” I crawl in on my hands and knees, and when I’m all the way in, I prop my back against the smooth wall. I couldn’t stand upright in here. When Cadoc follows me in and sits beside me, he has to hunch over so his head doesn’t whack the ceiling.
I’ve never been in an actual den. I’ve seen pictures in textbooks, but they were bigger than this.
There’s a rumor that Quarry Pack takes their females to their old dens to mate. They’ve got to be bigger than this. The bed in the Airstream is roomier than this. My face heats. I didn’t mean to think about that, and I don’t know what to do about the tingles puckering my skin and stirring my belly.
I cough. “Do you think the shifters that lived here were Moon Pack?”
“Probably.” He’s sitting really close, almost crowding me. The den’s chilly, though, and he’s not trying to put his arm around me or anything. I don’t scoot away.
“So this is one of the dens the Great Alpha Broderick Moore led us out of?”
“This is too small to have been a permanent shelter. More likely this was storage, or, uh, maybe for heat—“
The word hangs between us in the frosty, damp air.
“Listen, Rosie, that night—“
“You just stood there.” I rush to interrupt him.
I don’t want to hear him talk about the mating. I don’t want to hear him say sorry. I don’t want a crappy excuse that’ll just hurt as bad as getting tossed into a wall.
“You just stood there while Brody called me a bog rat, and he said you were test driving my pussy, and he asked if you left any virgin holes, and I was literally puking in the grass, and you didn’t say anything.”
With every word, he tenses beside me, and the bond jangles, sharp and angry. The anger isn’t mine, and it’s not directed towards me.
“I don’t care that you didn’t claim me,” I lie, my voice hardly wobbling. “I don’t claim you, either. Fuck biology. Fuck Fate. But I wouldn’t let some asshole talk like that to anyone I know. No matter his rank. And if I was as strong as you—” I blink the tears away. I’m not crying over this. Not one bit more.
Cadoc’s knees are bent, his forearms resting on his thighs. His hands are clasped tight together, his knuckles blanching white.
“I thought I was doing what I had to do.” His eyes are swirling silver in the shadows. “I was wrong.”
“You had to let Brody Hughes take shots at me while I got sick?”
“I thought I had two choices. If I claimed you, all the anti-scavenger folks would throw themselves behind Alban Hughes. He’d challenge my father. There are reasons—Alban could win.” Cadoc lowers his head. “I can’t flip-shift. It’s not a given that I’d win against Alban Hughes either.”
“Alban Hughes can’t be alpha.”
“He can be regent and make Brody the heir.”
“Alban would exile us. That’s the best-case scenario. We’re rats to him. He hates us.” I’m piecing it together now. I’m seeing. “You have to go back.”
“No. There are more than two choices.” He raises his head, and for once, his inscrutable face doesn’t look empty or hard—it looks unflinching. “You have to trust me, Rosie.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Trust me, Rosie,” he says again, his voice lower, a deep whisper.
“Why should I?”
“Because I understand now.”
“What do you understand?”
“What’s important.”
He’s too calm. The future’s unfolding in my brain, as clear as if I did have foresight. A Hughes as alpha won’t hesitate to demolish the Bogs. They taunt us every day with what they’ll do to us when they have the chance. My lungs seize. There isn’t enough air in this den. I scramble to my knees.