Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Annie groans under her breath.
“I suppose I shouldn’t.” I pretend to eye him up, letting my gaze drop meaningfully from his lips to his chest to his pile of beets. I raise a dubious eyebrow. “I guess I could add you to my list for consideration.”
“That’s all a male can ask for. Due consideration.” He winks and grins wider, returning his attention to his beets, attacking them with the bread knife, sawing them into a huge, shredded mess.
Before the failed coup, Lucan was a dickhead like ninety-nine percent of Quarry Pack males, but even though he’s slightly sleazy and more trouble than help in the kitchen, he’s grown on me. He’s not going on any list, though, no matter how desperate I get.
Annie elbows me. “Want help with those?” She nods at my bowl of clean, wet potatoes.
“Thanks.” We set up our usual assembly line—I peel, and she chops.
Last summer, I caught the flu, and for a day or so, I was certain I was going into heat again. I panicked. I had fever-fueled nightmares of Darragh saying, “When you go into heat next time—tell Killian. He’ll come find me,” and I woke myself up puking.
After I got better, Kennedy and I had a serious talk. I made her swear that when I go into heat again, she’ll tie me to my bed. Or go to town and score serious drugs from a human—maybe the veterinarian—and knock my ass unconscious until it’s over.
The messed-up thing is that no one seems to know what happens if a female doesn’t give in to her heat. Males go into rut if they’re kept from their mate, but apparently, in the history of shifters, no female has ever not gotten on all fours and presented.
Abertha probably knows what happens, but I don’t talk to her if I can avoid it. She looks at me like she knows all my private business, and it makes me want to go after her face with my nails. Despite her weird, youthful vibe, she’s an elder. It’d be wrong to fight her.
My wolf hates her. Since we got rejected, my wolf has pretty much packed herself away into a corner to sleep away the days, but Abertha is one of two people that rouses her interest. My wolf doesn’t try to go after her or anything. She’s too out of it for that. She only opens her eyes a slit, bares a fang, and growls. When she does, Abertha politely ignores her, and for some reason, that pisses me off even more.
Anyway, I don’t know if she and Darragh are fuck buddies or not, and I don’t care, but I’m not asking her how to avoid a heat, and there is no way in hell I am going to just let it happen again.
So Kennedy and I brainstormed all the solutions we could think of. Tying me up. Drugs. That was basically it.
“When are you meeting him?” Annie murmurs, interrupting my thoughts.
“Noon.”
“You’re definitely going through with it?” Her brown eyes are troubled.
I nod and reach over to squeeze her thin hand. “It’ll be fine.”
Annie manages to give me a wavery smile.
Drugs and restraints did not seem like fun, but then, an idea occurred to me. What if I had someone on tap to sex up? Maybe I could do the heat without begging Killian to fetch my mate. Or dying from humiliation, which is what would happen if I ever had to ask my alpha to go get me dick.
Killian’s cooler now that he’s with Una, and they’ve got a pup, but he’s still a massive dick with the emotional intelligence of a bag of rocks.
After I decided to do it, the question became who would be my heat-mate. I immediately ruled out every male in Quarry Pack. If the sex is bad, I don’t need another male I have to avoid. Darragh and his meat is bad enough.
Right after the debacle in the cabin, Darragh had the nerve to come up to our cabin and leave wrapped venison steaks right there on the porch.
I asked Kennedy to throw it away—I wasn’t getting out of bed much at that point—but she took it to Killian instead. Killian must’ve said something to Darragh because he took to giving the meat to him or Old Noreen to pass to me instead of leaving it on the doorstep like a dead mouse.
I eventually summoned up the balls to tell Killian I didn’t want it, and he told me that I should tell Darragh myself.
So like today’s pheasant, I get a lot of meat. I throw it in with the rest of our stores. It doesn’t even hurt much, anymore, that he doesn’t want me, but I guess since he sees me as a responsibility, he’ll go ahead and throw me a few chops now and then.
I don’t know why he needed to give it to me personally today. Probably guilt.
I don’t dwell on it. As I toss the peeler in the sink, I mentally wrap the past hour up in a ball, throw it in a dark closet in the recesses of my mind, and lock the door.
When I was younger, I daydreamed about a house with hundreds of rooms, but now my brain is a hallway with a bunch of locked and barricaded doors. I don’t think I’m any different than most folks. That’s just life and growing up. You’ve got to keep going however you can, and you’ve got to be pragmatic.
“Did you ask Liam to borrow the truck?” Annie interrupts me again. Her anxiety is working overtime today. She gets this way when her routine is going to change. She hates it, but she can’t chill out, either.
“Yup.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said we need to take things to market.”
“But we’re not scheduled to work tomorrow.”
“Liam doesn’t know that.”
“What if he mentions it to Killian, and Killian tells Una? Una knows it’s not our turn.”
I hold up a finger, swipe the potato peels into my cupped palms, and run them to the compost bucket. When Annie gets into one of her worry spirals, she can really get stuck.
That’s why Kennedy and I decided to keep it to ourselves when we first sat down and made a list of all the males we know from other packs. We itemized their pros and cons and had pragmatic discussions about whether being a rich asshole from Moon Pack is disqualifying for reasons of rank solidarity, and if North Border is too far to go for a one-night stand.
There was no clear good choice, and we were getting ready to settle for a dude drawn at random, when Lenox landed in our lap.
It was karma. There was this guy that Kennedy played online with, and he just talked like a shifter. I played the game for a few weeks while we were trying to figure out how to smoke him out. Since the coup, nothing interesting has happened, so deducing that “flowb4bros” was one of us was a big thrill. Eventually, Kennedy worked up the courage to ask him point blank what pack he’s from, and he said Salt Mountain.
And then he asked for my number. He texted me immediately, and we’ve been talking every day since. We chatted on video, and now, finally, I’m going to meet him tomorrow in Chapel Bell to see if we have a “connection.”
That’s his word, not mine. When he talks about feelings, he talks like a guy on a reality TV dating show, and it’s cringey, but in a sweet way. So much better than the double entendres that Quarry Pack males think passes for flirting.
He knows I’m not looking for my mate. I got tipsy a few weeks ago and told him about Darragh and how I want a backup to see me through my heat if it should ever come again. He says he totally understands, and there’s absolutely no pressure, but that he’d be honored to be there for me in that way.
I’m not a hundred percent sure that I’m not skeeved out by that, but then again, I’m not used to males treating me as an equal worthy of respect and consideration.
Anyway, we’re going to get coffee together like humans. We’re going to have fun. No pressure.
I rinse the potato juice off my hands and rejoin Annie. She’s shoveling the chunks into a big bowl to coat them in olive oil and rosemary.
“What dress do you think I should wear tomorrow?” I ask her. On her face, I watch her wires cross. The easiest way to get Annie out of her own head is to ask for her help. She’s the kind of person who will do anything for anyone even when she can’t do for herself.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I got a new dress online, but I’m not sure about it.”
“What does it look like?”
“It’s mauve.”
“You look really pretty in mauve.” That’s Annie. It’s as natural for her to build other people up as it is to give herself a hard time.
It’s going to be the first time I’ve worn a dress in forever. After Darragh, I switched to long skirts, and then after the coup, when Una made Killian ditch the dumbest of the rules, I switched to pants. But for my first real date, I’ve decided to go super feminine. Which is good. It’s progress. Getting back to the me I was before.
I’m excited, I think, at least as excited as I ever get these days. Time is passing more quickly than usual, and my heart is beating at a faster tempo. Nothing extreme. Just healthy, normal excitement.
It has nothing to do with the lingering effects of seeing Darragh. He’s gone again. Locked back up in a dusty corner of my mind where he belongs. He’s the past. I have a future.
“Annie, come help with this.” Noreen’s bent over the open oven door, waving her mitts and frowning.
“I’ll finish here.” I take the bowl of veggies from Annie, and she rushes to Noreen.
“Last chance, Mari,” Lucan calls from the walk-in freezer. He’s holding the sack of pheasant in front of his dick and grinning. “If you want this meat all to yourself, speak now or hold your peace.”
“Pass.” A smile pokes up the corners of my mouth. “Actually, I have a date tomorrow.”
Saying it out loud sends a thrill down my spine. I think things are really turning around.
I’m turning them around. I’m not going to walk around under a gray cloud anymore. I ignore the small unease in my gut. I always feel like puking after I see Darragh.
“Seriously? Unprotected females can’t date.” He chucks the bird onto a shelf and ambles back to the island, studiously avoiding the disaster he made of the beets.
“Who says?”
“Who said you could?” He’s not being a dick. It’s a genuine question.