Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
I don’t want it between this
Cadoc and me.
That
Cadoc was him, too, though. I’d be a fool to forget it.
“Rosie?” His voice is low. Worried. He feels my distress in the bond. It’s a more naked feeling than being in this tub.
“It’s nothing.”
There’s a pause before he speaks again. “Do you miss home?”
That’s an easier subject. “Yeah.”
“What do you miss?”
“Nia. Bevan. My sister and my nieces. Arly, and Uncle Dewey, and Rae. Even Pritchard and my nephew Danny.”
I miss more than that—the creaking of the boards and the whispering marsh grasses. The splash of wings as geese and heron lift off and land on the lake. The forest trails I know like the lines on my palm. The laughter and singing at night in the Bogs. The baying and howling of my people as they run together under the moon.
I miss my pack.
“Do you miss Moon Lake?” I ask Cadoc.
He doesn’t hesitate. “No.”
“You don’t miss your family and your tall buildings and cars and stuff?”
“I’ve got my car. Thanks to you.” I can almost hear his subtle smile.
“You don’t miss your parents?” I miss mine. Every day.
He thinks for a minute. His knife scrapes, and the fire crackles. The trees around the clearing and the Airstream are black outlines against a royal blue sky.
“My father’s sick, and I can’t save him. I bought him time by stepping down in favor of Brody. It’s all I could do.” He pauses. “It’s what I chose to do.”
“What’s wrong with your father?”
“Wasting sickness.”
“Shit. He hasn’t been able to get ashbalm?”
“The witch tells him she’ll get it. She says it’s a matter of time. He has to hold out ’til spring.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“He’s the strongest wolf I know.” There’s fondness in his voice, and regret. “I think if he were me, he’d do the same thing I did.”
I remember Abertha’s story about Lavender, Thyme, and the witch. I don’t say anything, but I think Madog Collins made a different choice.
I think Cadoc is the better man.
“My father was strong, too.” I’m not sure why I tell him. I mean it as comfort. As an offered hand.
“What happened to him?”
“He went for a walk. My mother, too. They didn’t come back.”
“What does that mean? I know it’s a scavenger expression, but—” His voice trails off.
“It means what it says. Scavengers go finding. Or go for a walk in the woods. Or a night run. And then they don’t come back.”
“Do they leave? Go feral?”
“No one knows. They don’t ever come back.” I curl my fingers over the cold lip of the tub so I can look Cadoc in the eye. “Do you know where they go, Alpha heir?”
There are stories. Theories. A den with bars, deep in Last Pack territory. Supernatural beasts, no longer wolf or man, who come down from the hills to hunt. Secret cells in sub-basements under the High Rise.
“I don’t. It’s known that scavengers are transient. The census in the Bogs is an estimation.”
“It is known,” I repeat and leave it hanging in the space between us. One beat. Two. My breath waits.
“I am told,” he corrects.
And my lungs expand and fill with fresh evening air. “My father left a half-full pouch of pipe tobacco on an end table. My mother was knitting me a pair of mittens. They were almost done except the thumbs. She hated doing the thumbs.”
I fight back the old sadness. There are times for sifting memories. Times for railing at Fate, and times to reach for those we’ve lost across whatever separates us now. But this isn’t the time for grief.
This is me offering an open hand, trusting the male Fate gave me with something real and true, and waiting with bated breath to see whether he will hold on or look past, blind as ever.
My heart thumps. I press my palm to my chest, and I can feel the tap, tap, tap.
“They were taken,” he says, and I can tell by the tone of his voice and by the pause before he speaks, that he’s come to that conclusion now, in this very moment, and now I have to fight back the rage that he can be older than me, born and raised in this pack like me, as smart as—maybe smarter—than me, with the same eyes to see and ears to hear, and only now, does he comprehend one of the basic realities of life in Moon Lake.
“They were taken.” Despite the warmth of the water, goosebumps pucker my skin.
He’s silent. I watch him, my chin resting on the cold rim of the tub.
“You’re looking for them—when you’re out foraging.”
Always. “For signs, yeah. Clues.”
“Have you found anything?”
“Nothing.”
“How many?” he asks.
Nia would know the exact number. Her bolt hole in the Empties is near the trailer where a makeshift shrine and a tally is kept. I don’t keep track. “Dozens,” I say.
He’s quiet again except for the scraping of his knife. “My father knows.” It’s an extrapolation, not a confession.
“He must.”
The hand holding the knife falls idle, and Cadoc stares into the fire. The orange flames reflect in his silver eyes.
“We’ll look for them,” he finally says, and then he glances over to me. “We’ll keep looking.”
He has said it, so it will be done. My Alpha mate. He understands now, so it matters now. I want to claw at him. Shake him. Slap his grim, determined face.
And burst into tears.
And let him carry some of the grinding weight.
He turns toward the fire again, but I know he can feel all I feel through the bond—and he accepts it.
I push back from the tub edge, flip to float on my back, and let the water buoy me up. I watch the stars come out as the night wind begins to blow down from the mountain. I let it go for this moment. I’ll pick it up again soon enough down the line.
Just as the water grows almost too cool, Cadoc tops the bath with a steaming pot and mumbles something about changing the bed. He rummages in the crates in his truck bed, and carries an armful of linens into the trailer.
No way.
Clean sheets?