Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
When I swallow, totally ruining any remaining minty freshness, I sigh again and drop my head over the foot of the bed, dangling my arms. I peek up at Cadoc’s wolf. His head is slightly cocked.
“You should convince Cadoc to go home. That’s what he needs to do.”
The words don’t seem to register with Cadoc’s wolf at all. He stretches his hind legs, thwaps the floor one more time, and lays his muzzle down.
I roll onto my back and inchworm up the mattress until my head’s back on it. Like this, I can see the wolf whenever my eyes flicker open.
He keeps guard all night, his snuffles and grunts making it sound like home. I sleep deeper than I have since I left the Bogs.
The next morning, when I wake up, the wolf is gone, the door’s open, and Cadoc the man is poking his head in, dressed and somehow shaved.
“Come on,” he says. “I have something to show you.”
Chapter 11
11
Chapter 11
ROSIE
It takes me an hour to get ready—towel bath, force down some breakfast jerky with tea, change into my least dirty outfit of blue jeans and a red sweater with a white snowflake pattern. The temperature dropped overnight, but the sky is clear and bracingly blue.
Cadoc holds his jacket up for me to slip my arms in, and he slings my backpack over his shoulders. It’s fuller than usual.
“Where are we going?”
He nods north, toward Salt Mountain.
“Are we going far?”
“Further than yesterday, but not too far. We’ll rest. I packed food.”
“Stew?”
His lips curve. “No. Canned salmon.”
I guess that’s all right. I let him lead the way, falling in behind him as we follow deer trails and stream beds and ridges. It doesn’t feel like a direct route, but the foothills are sinuous—you can’t really take a direct route anywhere.
As we hike, the elevation increases, and I gradually lose steam. Cadoc calls breaks more frequently, and he watches me, assessing, as I drink from his metal water bottle.
Finally, about an hour after lunch, we reach the base of a slope, much too steep for us to climb. At first, I think he’s leading us around it, but then he squats, gathering back the bare limbs of a low bush, revealing a gash in the hillside.
“After you,” he says.
I crouch and peer inside. It’s dark and dank and earthy, but in the distance, there’s a grayish light and a widening of the walls.
“It’s safe.” Cadoc nudges me on.
“There could be bears.” My sense is that the space is huge.
“There aren’t. I ran them off a while back, and there’s no fresh scent.”
The nape of my neck prickles. There’s something about this place. If I didn’t know for a fact that I’ve got no magic in me, I’d think it was enchanted.
“Come on.” Cadoc’s tone is hushed as he leads me down a rounded tunnel. About twenty feet in, there’s a bend, a blast of blinding light, and my breath catches in my lungs.
It’s a cave—a huge cave the size of the Academy stadium—but there’s a crystal blue pool in the middle of it, and an opening in the roof that lets in the sun. There are green things growing on the rock—moss and spindly evergreens.
And there’s a box of crates in a corner cordoned off with yellow caution tape.
“What is this place?”
“The den that Broderick Moore led us out of.”
Holy crap. I squint into the shadows gathered along the far walls. I can’t tell how far it goes, if there are exits to other caves, if it’s a warren of some kind. It feels vast.
“What’s in those crates?”
“Equipment. My father let human anthropologists up here a couple years ago.”
“He let humans in here? I’ve never even known a shifter who’s been here.” The dens are history, but not the kind we were forced to learn about in human museums. The bad past that we were taught we were lucky to escape.
Cadoc shrugs, craning his neck to stare up at the blue-gray sky strewn with wispy clouds. A shaft of light falls across his face, highlighting the strain at the corners of his eyes. “My father brought me up here a few times.”
“Why?”
“He was making a point about how far we’d come. How much rides on me.”
I wander toward the pool, turn my back to the water, and slowly pivot, surveying the space. The floor of the cave is smooth beige rock, and the intact arched roof drips with stalactites. If there ever were stalagmites on the ground, they’ve been worn away.
The air is cool, still, and fresh.
I try to imagine it filled with shifters. I can’t place the nobs in here, but it’s easy to see Drona, Arly, and Rae cackling on a fur together, the pups wandering over for cuddles or to beg for a snack. Bevan and Pritchard and the other males would dash through on their way to hunt, and the older males would lounge by the pool, raising their heads every so often to bark at a boisterous pup.
A wave of homesickness chills my skin. I go to stand next to Cadoc in the sunlight. He glances down.
“It doesn’t seem so bad,” I say.
“The anthropologists discovered that our ancestors had rigged up indoor plumbing.”
“Seriously?”
He grimaces. “It’s communal and rudimentary, but it functioned.”
“Is this it? This cave?” Unless shifters have changed a lot in three generations, it would’ve been really loud.
“There’s a network of smaller chambers running off of this one. Several dozen. There’s evidence that they excavated new caverns when they needed to expand.”
“Why’d they leave? Did they run out of space?”
Cadoc’s lips compress, and he shoves his hands in his jean pockets. “According to my parents, Broderick Moore made the momentous decision that we would no longer live like animals, prey to the elements, threatened by human encroachment and discovery. He had the foresight to understand that to survive, we needed to be more human than human, or they’d wipe us off the face of the earth.”
This all sounds vaguely familiar, like a lecture I daydreamed through in history class.
“So that’s what happened?” Broderick Moore must have had a silver tongue. I wouldn’t have wanted to leave here. Even empty and cold, it feels like a nest. Well built.
Right.
“That’s what they say.” There’s a sharp note of cynicism in his voice.
“It’s pretty awesome. It’s got a sunroof.” I smile up at him. I don’t know why, but I don’t like the hint of bitterness in the bond. He’s obviously questioning what he’s been told since birth—and Fate knows he’s been fed a steady diet of bullshit—so of course it’s gonna throw him when he realizes he’s been busting his ass to head in the wrong direction for his entire life.
I guess I’d thought it’d be cool to watch a nob finally begin to see clearly, but it isn’t. It’s worrisome. It makes my stomach ache.
What happens if he wakes all the way up? What does Cadoc Collins do? Does he screw his eyes back shut and go back to his tower and fancy cars? His human life?
Or does he finally become a real wolf? And if he does, what will I need to become?
Cadoc suddenly moves, shaking off his own deep thoughts. “Do you want to move the camp up here?”
“Really?”
“It’s a lot more secure. There’s fresh water here and a river nearby. I dealt with the bears.” He flashes me a wry smile. “It’s got a sunroof.”