Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
He’s staring back at me. His irises have turned such a dark brown, they’re almost black, except for the occasional flashes of gold like sparks off a blacksmith’s hammer.
The bond is a straight line through the hall, uninterrupted by packmates and tables, strong and new and strange and real. Inescapably real.
A male brushes past me to get to a trash can. My stomach lurches as his stench burns my nostrils. My shoulders heave. I keep the vomit down with will power and desperation. Darragh rises to his feet.
For the first time ever that I’ve seen, he’s wearing a shirt. A blue and green flannel. His hair is combed back neatly. I don’t like it. I want it messy, falling in his face. I want to run my fingers through it. I want to pull it.
I do?
I shift, transferring the tray to my other hand. I was too hot to wear my boots, so I slipped on pink ballet flats with tiny gold bows. I’m sliding around in them. Even my feet are sweaty.
My gaze drops so I don’t meet Darragh’s eyes. That would be too much, and this is already much, much too much.
I have to move forward, get to work, get through this somehow, but I’m trapped in place. I don’t want to wade any deeper into the stink of my packmates, but I don’t want to turn back anymore, either. My mate is here.
A sudden burst of blazing heat tears through my chest, and in that moment, a veil is ripped from my eyes. What have I been thinking? Darragh’s not a stranger. He’s as familiar as the paths I tread every day, as the trees standing sentinel over our territory, as the scent of sunshine.
I focus on the sweet flowing bond, and in my mind, I curl my fingers around it, and with all my might, I draw it to me.
Darragh squares his shoulders and firms his jaw. He comes to me.
He strides between the tables, every inch an alpha, packmates bending their necks out of instinct, those hungry for rank darting him challenging glances, but only out of the corners of their eyes. Females thrust their tits up, their fingers moving to fuss with their hair.
My wolf growls a threat she can’t possibly back up.
Up on the dais, Killian clears his throat, compelling everyone to give him their full attention. “Listen up, numbskulls,” he says as he does when he’s about to launch into a lecture.
No one sees me lead Darragh through the door to the kitchen. I take him out the back, past the dumpster and the oil tank before I slow to a stop, confused. What am I doing? I shake out my top, peeling the cotton free of my clammy skin, desperate for a hit of cool air.
Darragh growls. I blink up at him. There’s a full moon tonight, and it backlights him, casting his broad shoulders and chest in sharp relief. He’s so big and tall and silent and still and smoldering. He looks at me like I’m a plump partridge, and he’s waiting, waiting for me to waddle into range of his claws.
I’m so freaking hot. I’m a furnace. When the breeze blowing down from the hills hits my bare calves and chest and cheeks, it feels like ice water flicked on a frying pan.
“My body feels weird,” I tell him softly. “I can’t think straight.”
For a second, he tenses, that worried brow furrowing, and I think maybe he’s going to bail, run, disappear on me, leaving me alone. Again.
But then he reaches out, grabs my hand in a strong but gentle grip, and leads me away from the others and their stench and noise. He takes me into the woods and down the cut-through that connects the lodge to the cabins on the far side of the commons. It’s a quick walk in the dark. The tall trees rustle in the night wind, and Darragh’s warm and bright scent combines with the bark and moss to clear my lungs.
“I-it’s t-time, isn’t it?” I ask him when he takes me to a tidy cabin on the outskirts of camp. He grunts.
This one’s built the same as all the others, a simple one-story timber frame with a porch, but it has freshly painted green shutters and pansies in terracotta pots along the edge of the porch. I know it’s used as a guest cabin, but I guess Darragh has the rank to claim it.
“It’s nice,” I say.
He grunts again and scrubs his neck. “Listen—” He seems to search for words. “You’re really young, and—” He blows out a breath. “It’ll be okay. I won’t hurt you if I can help it. All right?”
Finally, he gazes down to meet my eyes.
Part of me is terrified, but it’s like that part has stepped back into whatever half-world my wolf comes from. There’s another me now assuming this body, a confident female, serene and secure. Of course, it’ll be okay. He’s my mate. This is fated. If I ever imagined things differently—a male closer to my age, sweet words, flowers and soft music—I was wrong. This is the way it’s supposed to be.
I flash him an encouraging smile and trip up the steps to the porch. I need blankets. And pillows. And I have to get rid of these damp, clinging, nasty clothes.
I fling the door open before he can reach it and stride inside, inhaling. Lemon and wax. It’s been cleaned top-to-bottom recently. That’s good.
A den would be better, of course. Safer. But this is safe enough. My mate is strong. His wolf is vicious. No one will dare attack us, and if they do, he’ll rip out their neck. In the very far reaches of my mind, the words “he doesn’t even eat the meat” echo. My wolf purrs her approval.
Yes, our mate wouldn’t eat the flesh of his enemies. He’d leave it to rot as a warning to others. He’ll make a good sire to our pups. I absentmindedly rub my empty belly. It aches and cramps, but that’ll be over soon. Fate has done well by us for once. Our mate will take care of everything.
I quickly examine the half-bath, the cute kitchen with brand-new, stainless-steel appliances, the nook with the stacked washing machine and dryer. My mate has provided for us beyond what I could have imagined. I won’t have to send the washing out to the laundry. I can just do a load whenever I want.
My wolf rumbles her delight. Our mate is clever and powerful.
In the hallway, I slide open the doors of what I assume must be a linen closet, and my heart falls. The shelves are bare.
Of course, he must’ve just been assigned the cabin. He wouldn’t have had time to stock it. That’s fine. I have things to build my nest at home.
I turn to head toward the door, but Darragh takes my hand again and gently leads me back down the hall. “Come this way,” he says.
He draws me into the bedroom. On a cedar trunk, there’s a tall stack of linens and pillows. I raise the corner of a comforter to my face and bury my nose in it. It smells like detergent and nothing else. It’s new like Darragh’s jeans. He must have bought them today, and he had them laundered so they’d be soft and fresh.
He’s such a thoughtful mate. I rumble my approval and set to work. We don’t have much time left.
There aren’t any sheets on the brand-new mattress, so I don’t have to undo anything before I get started. I put on a pad and a fitted sheet, and then I scoop up armloads of blankets and dump them in a pile in the middle. Darragh hovers by the door, watchful, tension radiating from him.
Good mate. Guarding the entrance. I yip my approval. His broad chest swells.
I go back to the trunk and pitch all the pillows, one after the other, onto the heap in the bed, and then I climb on top, wriggling into the softness and sighing.
I’ve never been happier or more excited, and neither has my wolf. It’s a buzzy, hazy feeling, but we’re both luxuriating in it, stretching and lolling, tingling with anticipation. We belong now, here, with this male. We’re home.
I need my clothes off. Clothes don’t belong in a nest. I peel off my top and drag down my panties and skirt in one move. There’s a whiff of Darragh in the fabric, so I bunch them up and tuck them in a corner of the cocoon I’m building in a haphazard, distracted way.
I arrange piles, and then I flop back, snuggle, sniff the sheets, enjoy the glide of the silkier fabrics against my heated, sensitive skin. My nipples are pointed and dark as raspberries. I pluck them between my fingers, and streams of delicious sensation sizzle through my belly down to the folds plumping between my legs.
My fingers smooth my lips apart. They look so different than usual—rosy-red, swollen, and shiny with slick. They feel different, too, like they’re throbbing. I find the nub that’s popped from its hood and circle it, strum it, make myself squirm and pant.
From his station at the door, Darragh growls.
I startle, remembering myself, and I notice a spot in the nest that isn’t quite right, so I leave off playing with myself and mess up the whole arrangement and start again, certain that even though I have to fix it, I’m still doing everything perfectly right. My mate is pleased with me. He watches me with burning, gold-rimmed eyes, his cock tenting his jeans, his hands fisted at his sides.
There’s a tang of salt in the air, and I know it’s coming from him. The scent drives my thinking self even further back into the recesses of my mind, and I pat a few last pillows into place.
Hazily, I note that Darragh is stripping, so I roll onto my belly and prop myself up on my elbows to watch. He’s the best possible male for me. His body is the kind of strong that looks tested and tried, tanned and tough, faint scars decorating his skin like random hash marks. A shifter has to be hurt very badly—or very young—to scar. My mate is a warrior.
I smile. He will be a good protector for our family. He’ll never hurt us. Iknow it in my bones.
For a moment, an echo from the past casts a shadow over my happiness, but I don’t reach for it, so it passes as easily as a cloud blown by the wind.
Darragh’s thing
—his cock—is standing up straight, and even though I’ve seen plenty before—we’re shifters, we get naked—I’ve never looked. It’s thick and long and vaguely threatening, but in a way that makes me rock my hips into the mattress, chasing relief for the ache I started with my fingers.
He strokes his length with his strong, rough hands, his eyes swirling so prettily. It’s weird that a male so rugged and imposing and standoffish can be pretty, but he is. To me.
I want to do what he’s doing. I sneak my hand under my flushed body to slip through my sopping wet folds again, finding the nub that’s throbbing and flicking it like I do sometimes late at night when everyone’s asleep, or sometimes in the bathtub, quietly, so no one suspects. This feels so good. His eyes on me makes it feel sharper, more raw, more all-consuming.
Darragh’s chest rumbles. I reach for him with my free hand. He comes to me immediately. My wolf and I growl in harmony, pleased and ready and brimming with squirming, gnawing excitement.
I’ve been waiting too long. It’s past time.
Darragh kneels in my nest, and I roll over onto my back, scooching towards the headboard to make room for him. My knees fall open, and his eyes drop immediately to watch me plunge my middle finger inside my hole as I thumb my clit.
“You know what you like,” he says, gruff but approvingly, and I flush with the praise. His face is hard and inscrutable, but his dick strains, and every one of his muscles is bunched impossibly tight, like he’s holding himself back.
“You don’t have to. It’s okay,” I tell him, and I know he’ll understand what I mean, because the bond between us is singing, speaking tongues that I’ve somehow known since before I was born. This is the male made for me, designed by Fate to please and protect me. The sire of my pups. The male who’ll replace the family I lost.
Everything is unfolding exactly as it’s supposed to.
He reaches for me with shaking hands, running the calloused pads of his fingers down my side, over my ribs, along the crease of my hip, his touch exquisitely gentle.
“Up you go,” he growls and takes me by the waist, rumbling reassurance as he turns me onto all fours, stroking my spine as I arch like a cat, raising my hips and sliding my knees apart. I look at him over my shoulder, my curls bouncing.
He’s focused between my legs, brow knit, lips speared down, a sheen of sweat glistening on his beautiful chest and abs and arms.