Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
I know I’m not. I’ve never been in a fight in my life, and except for when my father tried to kill me, I’ve never been in danger, either. I feel like I should resent him talking to me like this. I’m not a pup, and I’m not dumb.
I’m not resentful, though. He’s fussing, and for some reason I cannot fathom, I kind of like it.
I stop eyeing the path, and all of a sudden, I’m not so desperate for a drink and a shower even though my skin is still so hot it heats wherever it touches—my belly where my arm is pressed, my thighs where they clench together. My breath quickens.
“I can take care of myself,” I say even though I don’t believe for a second that I can, not against whatever kind of animal he’s talking about. I just want—I want to know what he’ll say. I want him to keep fussing at me.
He growls in the back of his throat.
Him. Not his wolf.
“You don’t know what’s out there,” he says, the gold ring around his eyes darkening to a burnished bronze.
“What’s out there?” I ask, breathless.
He takes a step to close the distance between us. He smells so good. It makes me inhale deeper, clearing my head and fuzzing it up at the same time.
“You don’t need to worry about that. It’s handled.” He’s breathing deeply, too. His broad chest rises and falls and his biceps twitch.
I want to rest my palm between his pecs, in the cleft where the bond disappears. I want to know what his chest hair feels like. It looks like it’d be soft to the touch, not crinkly like the fur Dermot and Eamon and the other older males sport. Darragh’s not as old as that crew, anyway. Even if he lived with the pack, he’d be on his own. There are not many males his age.
For the first time, it occurs to me that it must be because of Declan Kelly. When he took over the pack, he killed any male who could be a challenge to him. Darragh would’ve been an older boy when that happened, just young enough to escape the slaughter.
My blood chills. That time always seems like ancient history, but it isn’t. Just because I don’t remember much doesn’t mean those days aren’t alive in other people’s memories.
I want to ask him what it was like. I want to know what he was like when he was a pup and when he was my age.
I want to know if the bond feels the same to him right now, like sluggish honey, warm and trickly. I want to know if he wants to touch me, too. If the bruises on my arm really bother him.
I lick my dry lips. His gaze drops to follow my tongue. I’m not thirsty anymore. My mouth has grown wet. I swallow. He tracks the gulp down my throat.
“Mari,” he says. It’s the first time he’s said my name. It comes out like a request. Like he wants something.
I do, too.
“Mari, you don’t know what’s out there,” he says again, gruff desperation edging his words.
“I’m not out there. I’m here.” The need to soothe him is deep. Instinctual.
He growls low in his throat. He’s not soothed. He thinks I don’t get it. “Folks disappear, Mari. They just—” He snaps his finger. “Not our people. Not often. We’re careful. But Moon Lake. Salt Mountain—” He grimaces. “There’s something out there.”
I’ve heard this my whole life. Don’t wander off. Follow the rules. Danger lurks everywhere outside our territory.
Funny because all the bad shit that’s happened to me has happened here.
I nod, though. He’s working himself up, and it unsettles me.
He shakes his head and rubs his temple. For a second, I think he’s going to say more, but he must change his mind. He takes my elbow and urges me to continue up the path.
It’s less than a quarter mile, and he sets a brisk pace. In too short a time, he’s dropping me at the bottom of our porch stairs, stepping away, nodding at me to go on up.
I don’t want to.
He takes a few more steps back, shoving his hands in his pockets. I don’t want him to go. Not quite yet.
I hold my forearm out for him to look. “See? They’re gone.”
For a moment, his eyes flash, sunlight glinting off the gold rims, but then his face shutters and goes grim. “Don’t leave camp again. Or I’ll—“
I wait, but he doesn’t finish the threat. His tanned cheeks darken under his beard, and he jerks his chin toward the door.
“Go on,” he says. “Get inside.”
I do, a dopey mess of irritation and curiosity and hurt and excitement. A strange pulse beats between my legs. He lingers in the path for several minutes before eventually, he strides off back toward the commons. I know because I spy on him from the gap between the front curtains, and I count the seconds and the minutes it takes him to summon up the will power to go.
Chapter 3
3
MARI
I take my shower, but I forgo the bath. Even though the cabin is cool—it doesn’t have the best insulation—I’m hot. Not feverish exactly, but flushed and warm to the touch. I guess that’s why they call it heat.
I can’t settle. I repaint my nails and change into a loose flowy white top and skirt, and then I pad into the kitchen for something to eat, forget what I’m doing, and wander into the common room to plop next to Kennedy on the sofa.
She’s lazing and gaming, her belly round with whatever she caught on her hunt earlier. Annie’s in her usual chair, fussing with her crochet. She’s teaching herself, so there’s a lot of unknotting yarn and muttering under her breath.
Una’s in her room, masterminding or whatever it is she does in there. She likes her privacy.
“He’s back,” Kennedy announces without taking her eyes off the TV screen. She means Darragh. He’s come back four times so far since he left me here earlier this afternoon. He stops for a few minutes by the old groundskeeper’s shed opposite our cabin and paces a while, plunging his fingers in his hair until he loses—or wins—a fight with himself and stalks off.
He really doesn’t want to be my mate. That’s fine. I feel ambivalent, too. He’s about the opposite of the male in my daydreams. Still, he could be a little less publicly conflicted. I’ve got feelings. And right now, they’re squishy and raw.
Kennedy’s wolf is unsettled by another male infringing on his territory, so we get a warning rumble a little bit before Darragh’s scent hits my nose.
Every time he swings by, he smells better. I’ve got my phone, and I’m scrolling, but the screen is a blur. I want to go out and confront him, put myself out of this misery, but I also want him to come knock on the door, so I’m trapped on the sofa, irritated by my own indecisiveness.
I feel like a train is rushing at me. I know that heat can come on over hours or days, weeks even. It depends on the individual. They do tell us that. Of course, Fate decided to stick me with not only the most unlikely mate, but what’s shaping up to be a fast heat. When did I first feel it? Yesterday morning?
I want more time. I want to know why Darragh’s wolf is crazy and why he lives up in the foothills away from the pack. I want to know what he likes to read and if he’s a good male underneath the hard exterior or if he’s at least a decent one. I’m not ready.
He’s going to put a pup inside me. I break out into a cold sweat. I can’t have a pup. When I have nightmares, I still crawl into bed with Una. Not often, but it happens.
I twist over the back of the couch and draw back the curtain an inch. He’s leaning against the cinderblock building across the path, glaring daggers at our front door. He’s done something with himself. Washed and combed his hair. Gotten someone to even it up and trim his beard. He’s wearing different pants. They’re a darker denim with no holes, no threadbare patches.
Are they brand new? I ease the window up a crack and sniff. It takes a minute to untangle the scents, but yeah, those are brand new jeans.
“What’s he doing?” Kennedy asks as she smashes buttons.
“Leaning against the creepy groundskeeper’s shed.” I hate that place. You couldn’t pay me to go inside. Kennedy says there are spider webs in there so thick they look like cotton stuffing.
“Maybe he’s waiting for you to go out and talk to him,” Annie suggests. Kennedy and I told her about the mate thing and swore her to secrecy. She’s horrified. Darragh’s basically her worst nightmare of a male.
She probably wants me to move him along. She and her wolf get so anxious around dominant males. No doubt that’s why she’s dropping all those stitches.
“Maybe he should come over here and talk to me.” I’m playing like this is a human courtship—the shy guy who knows he’s a little too old for the girl, working up the nerve to knock on her door—but I know it’s nothing like that.
There’s no such thing as too old for shifters. Dermot’s in his fifties, and Haisley’s in her early twenties. And Darragh isn’t working up his nerve. He’s waiting for the heat to take over, for me to lose my mind, make my nest, get on all fours, and present. My stomach aches.
This is supposed to be a special time. My mother is supposed to give me a basket of familiar blankets, quilts, and pillows. My mate is supposed to guide me up to the dens if he’s traditional, or to the cabin he’s gotten us if he’s done well enough on the circuit to earn one. But I don’t have a mother, and my family’s linens were all redistributed when she died, and they fostered me out.
And Darragh doesn’t fight, so no cabin. Is he going to take me to the dens? It’s not what I dreamed of for myself, but it could be okay. I don’t quite know how to describe it, but the dens smell like pack. Like if we had a smell, all of us, even the ones who’ve gone before, the dens would be that scent—earth and stone and long-ago smoke. It’s not my aesthetic, but I’m Quarry Pack, too. It speaks to me.
But if Darragh takes me to the dens, what will I do for a nest?
I anxiously knead my skirt. I don’t like how it feels on my legs. I don’t like the elastic on my panties or the places where my top brushes my breasts either, but the skirt is the worst.
“Do you guys mind if I just—?” I stand, shimmy the skirt off, and kick it away. Cool air hits my legs as Kennedy and Annie look up at me, quickly masking their surprise.
“You do you, buttercup,” Kennedy says and goes back to her game.
I collapse back on the sofa, and the upholstery feels one hundred times worse against my skin than the skirt did. I don’t want to go back to my room for pants, though. I’m glued to peeking out the window at Darragh. How can he stand so still for so long? Maybe it’s because he’s such a great hunter.
A picture pops into my head of him stalking through the dark woods, that sword at his side, silent and lethal, tracking his enemy, barefoot and bare-chested. I squirm, clenching my thighs and drawing my knees to my boobs. I feel puffy and swollen between my legs.