Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Darragh’s throat bobs. “Abertha says you’re okay.”
She left here and went to him. They talked about me. He talked to her. The cold black pit inside me yawns wider.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
The wound in my side is hot, and I guess it hurts, but I don’t even register it as pain. I can’t feel anymore. Iwon’t.
“You’re safe. He can’t—I won’t let him near you. I swear.” His voice is gritty and raw, his face bloodied, his golden eyes wild and tortured, and I don’t care. The black pit is overflowing like floodwater, like a thick fog, numbing everything.
A very calm and clear voice lists out facts in my head.
He sent Abertha to you. He didn’t come himself. Then, he talked to her about what his wolf did, and he got into a fight, and hours later, he comes to stand outside your house to tell you that Abertha says you’re okay.
He is not your mate.
The black spreads until it doesn’t exist inside me anymore. It is my insides. This is reality. I don’t have a mate.
And yet, still, without conscious intention, the question flies from my lips. “Why?”
And I really am a stupid, na?ve child because despite the fact that I know there is no explanation that will fix this, no explanation that will make it okay, no explanation that would make him a different person, a male who didn’t nut on my back and bail—a very small flame of hope still flickers in my chest all the same.
“W-why?” I ask again and hold my breath.
His spine straightens and his shoulders go back like he’s facing an opponent in the ring. Like he’s waiting for the bell.
He doesn’t say anything.
He meets my eyes, his chin high, somehow still unbearably beautiful despite his beaten face, and he doesn’t say anything at all.
But I wait.
I hold my breath until my lungs burn because the part of you that wants to be loved is so very, very fucking hard to kill.
I hold my breath until I can’t, and the air whooshes out in a jagged rush, and rage tears words from my throat.
“Get out of here! Go away and don’t you ever dare come back. Don’t ever even speak to me again. Don’t look at me. You’re dead to me, you hear? You’re dead. Fuck you, Darragh Ryan. Fuck you.”
Then I whirl around, run inside, and slam the door, my pathetic little girl voice stumbling why? echoing in my ear.
There is no why.
Not in this fucked-up world. There’s only what is and what’s next.
Darragh Ryan doesn’t exist in this world anymore.
I crawl back into bed, and I stare at the pink canopy, and I begin to teach myself how to make that real.
When Darragh finally leaves, I don’t know. And if there’s a mournful howl in the wee hours, just before daybreak, I don’t hear it. Not at all.
Chapter 5
5
MARI, FOUR YEARS LATER
“Hey, Mari,” Kennedy hollers through the screen door of the lodge kitchen. “Special meat delivery for you!”
Old Noreen, Annie, and Lucan pop straight up from what they’re doing and look at me. My face bursts into flame.
“You take it,” I call back, my body tensing like I’m bracing for a hit. “You’re out there.”
I hear her murmur in low tones to someone out back. No, not just someone. It’s Darragh Ryan. The mate who wasn’t, but who won’t quite go away.
I concentrate on the carrots I’m peeling, focus on not getting distracted and nipping the tip of a finger off with the peeler.
Go away, go away, go away.
For years, he was content to drop off his gifts of obligation with Killian or Old Noreen and disappear again for weeks, or once, months, but early this summer, he started showing up at the kitchen door when I’m doing meal prep with fresh meat or firewood or tanned skins and furs.
I’ve managed to avoid him every time. It’s not the bond that gives me the heads up—I’ve become a master at ignoring it—but his scent precedes him and gives me fair warning to make myself scarce. He snuck up on me this time. I sniff, and damn if it’s not there, under the overpowering smell of the onions Lucan is chopping.
Like always, the sunshine smell tickles my nose. While I try to blink away a sneeze, I notice a tingle between my legs, and immediately, I panic. My heart lodges in my throat as I scan my body. My boobs feel normal. Except for the tingle, which is gone now, there’s nothing going on downtown.
I’m hot, but the kitchen’s hot. It’s a normal hot. This isn’t heat. That’s not why he’s here.
I force myself to breathe and will my pulse to slow its roll. Everything’s okay. For now.
How much longer am I going to luck out? Four years between heats isn’t unheard of, but it’s definitely on the long side.
Does Darragh sense something I don’t yet?
I lay a carrot on the cutting board and whack it into dime-sized pieces like a machine. The thwack, thwack helps ease the tightness in my chest.
It doesn’t matter if he senses something. I have a contingency plan, and even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t present to Darragh Ryan if there was a gun to my head. Not in a million years.
I’ve learned next to nothing about him these past few years, but I’ve learned a hell of a lot about myself. I’m not that sweet girl with her head in the clouds anymore. I’m never going to stroll blithely into a trap again, I don’t care who sets it—Fate, biology, a grizzled loner with a guilty conscience.
“Mari!” Kennedy pokes her head through the door. “He says he needs to give it to you.”
She’s trying to make it not sound dirty. Still, Lucan snorts and mutters, “That’s what she said.”
Kennedy drops her straight face and snorts, too. I really thought she’d hate Darragh forever out of solidarity, but at some point over the past four years, the whole night we almost got killed by his wolf became an epic adventure in her mind that she always retells when we get drunk. She still shit-talks him to my face, but I’ve seen her from a distance, giving him a chin dip when he deigns to come to camp.
That’s fine. I don’t need anyone else to hate him. I’m holding onto this grudge hard enough to make sure he’s never in a position to hurt me again.
“Uh, Mari?” Kennedy calls again. “He’s not going anywhere.”
He will if I keep ignoring him and chopping carrots. He’s only ever passing through. He’ll never just stay gone, but he’s never around for very long, either. It’s like he picked the perfect way to make sure I can never get over what happened—he won’t stay gone, and he won’t stay around long enough for me to become immune to him.
“Mari?” Kennedy calls, louder.
I slam the knife to the wooden board.
What the fuck does he want?
I’ve never asked that male for anything. He got his way—no one besides a handful of people even know we’re mates. And I’m finally getting on with life—with what life’s supposed to be.
Since Killian and Una mated, things have changed. I have a job that pays human money and a bank account to put it in with my name on it. I make scented candles infused with homegrown herbs for our online store, and they sell like hotcakes. I can go into town without having to sneak off. Life is good.
Fuck Darragh Ryan and his guilt meat.
He needs to get the message.
I jerk my apron off and drop it on the counter. Lucan and Annie take a time out from their work to gawk at me stomping to the back exit. As I throw open the screen door, Kennedy ducks through, offering me a rueful smile.
The scent hits me first. It’s November, so there are all the usual fall smells—leaves and cold earth and hints of woodstove—but there’s a distinct note of late summer afternoon threading through the crisp air, and it’s Darragh. Warm hay and thick green clover and the mellow stillness of four o’clock in August when the worst of the season’s heat has broken.
I hate that his scent never fails to deceive me. My muscles always relax when it hits my nose, and then I remember that night, and I tense up. It’s jarring. He should smell like spilled blood. My body wouldn’t mistake him then.
He’s standing a respectful distance from the concrete patio where we keep the recycling bins and the gas grill. I force myself to look at his face even though I can’t meet his eye.
He looks surprised that I came out. It makes sense. I haven’t willingly been within yards of him since the night his wolf attacked me. When I catch sight or scent of him, I head the other way.
Now, he’s maybe ten feet from me. I can make out the crinkles in the corners of his eyes. They’re a bit deeper, and there’s a little more gray threaded through his brown hair, but he doesn’t look that much older. His jeans and boots are the same, just a few more scuffs and tears, and his flannel is a different color than the one he wore that night, but I’m sure he’s had it just as long.