Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“First human date,” I say.
“Should I have waited for a full moon run and cut you off from the pack?”
That’s how it’s usually done between shifters who get with people besides their mates. It always reminded me of a lion picking off the weakest gazelle in the herd, but I guess when you do it that way, there’s the fiction that your animal is calling the shots. Maybe that’s easier than making the decision yourself. Maybe then there isn’t the gross taste of wrongness in your mouth that the taste of tea can’t begin to cover.
“No, this is nice.” I force a smile. It isn’t Lenox’s fault that I’m ambivalent about it all.
A man bumps the back of Lenox’s chair, and he deftly lifts his cup so nothing spills. “It’s crowded here,” he says.
“Yeah.” The scent of human is thick. My wolf’s head must be stuck deep in a hole somewhere because it should be driving her nuts.
“How would you like to go for your first human walk?”
“How’s it different from a shifter walk?” I say with a little glow of accomplishment. It was a rough start, but I’m totally holding up my end of the conversation now.
“Slower,” he says, his smile creasing the corner of his cool gray eyes. “Definitely slower.”
I told Kennedy and Annie that I’d be at the coffee shop, but I don’t see the harm in a stroll, as the humans say. I’ve got my phone, and I’m sure we won’t go that far.
“Okay,” I say.
Lenox stands and offers me his elbow like in a movie. I take it, and he leads me down the sidewalk. He points to the green. “Is that where the farmers’ market is?”
“Yeah. On weekends.”
“And you sell your candles there?”
“Yeah. Along with other stuff. Mushrooms, honey, herbs.”
“Sweet,” he says. “Your alpha must be really liberated. Even Moon Lake doesn’t do business in human territory.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it liberated. More the opposite, really.” I grin to myself. Killian will do basically anything Una wants. It’s enough to make anyone jealous, but no one deserves a male who lives and breathes for her more than Una. Una risked her life for me when I was a baby, and she’s worked her fingers to the bone to make a better life for us than she had coming up.
Sometimes, when I’m fighting the insomnia hard, and I can’t beat back the black thoughts, I wonder if I have the right to feel so wronged by Darragh Ryan. What have I done to deserve a happily ever after, after all? Fate is capricious. I got what I got. What right do I have to feel all tragic about it?
I need to take a page out of Una’s book and make my own way.
I firm my tentative grip on Lenox’s arm. We stroll past storefronts, sipping our drinks, pointing out things in the windows. The blue sky is high above and crystal clear, and a brisk breeze is nipping at my cheeks. I’m still wearing Lenox’s hat, and for a second, I feel my steps grow lighter.
I could be any human girl on a date with a handsome boy, nervous about whether he’ll kiss her at the end of the evening, nothing lodged in her chest, intrusive and inseverable, withered like a mangled limb.
No. I’m not thinking about that. I force myself to smile up at Lenox, and he grins down at me. His eyes are a smooth, light gray. They’re really hard to read, but his face is wide open. He’s the opposite of tormented and hostile.
“Can we turn here?” he asks when we get to the intersection with the Chapel Mews. There’s nothing down the cobblestoned alley, just the back of the buildings on High Street, but it’s a cut through to the park.
“Okay.”
We turn, and my stomach churns. No. It’s not churning, it’s fluttering. This is anticipation.
The mews are only a block long, but it’s private. It’s cool enough outside that none of the windows are open.
Lenox straightens the elbow I was holding onto so my arm falls to my side. He grabs my hand. My heart jerks. No, it flips.
Is he going to kiss me?
My heartrate kicks up a notch, and my stomach knots. I curl my free hand into a ball. I’m not freaking out. I’m excited.
I want him to kiss me. I’ve never kissed anyone, and I’ve been mated for four years, and that’s bullshit. My eyes prickle. I blink them quickly.
Lenox slows and draws me in front of him so we’re facing each other. Oh, crap. When I was blinking, did it look like I was batting my eyelashes? Does that actually work?
He gently unclenches the fingers of my other hand and takes it in his. His palms are smooth and cool. He gazes down at me. “You’re really special, Mari,” he says.
I swallow.
“You’re hot as shit, too,” he says. “Fantastic tits.” He smiles wider. I smile back out of habit, but something in my chest feels weird. I don’t think I’ve heard him cuss before. And “tits?”
“Sorry that this had to happen,” he says. “It’s nothing personal.”
What?
His grip slides to my wrists, clamping down until the bones grind, and he spins me so my arms are crossed over my chest, and I’m caught, and I can’t breathe. The cobblestones rattle. Tires squeal. A white van screeches to a halt in front of us. The sliding door flies open.
I kick and lose my footing. I’m dangling forward like a ragdoll, trapped by my own crossed arms. My wolf springs awake, but she’s disoriented, slow in stumbling to her feet. I scream as I’m thrown with full force into the van, my shoulder slamming into the metal interior wall, inertia sending my body airborne as the van speeds forward. My head slams into the rear doors, and everything goes black.
* * *
When I wake up, I’m being hoisted out of the dark van into the bright daylight, rough hands seizing my arms and legs. A piercing pain spears my temples.
I squeeze my eyes shut and go limp. My wolf is awake, too, but she’s cowering in a corner, fur damp with fear sweat. My heart bangs so loud it’s almost impossible to think over it.
What do I do?
I fight. Shift.
Come on. Take our skin.
My wolf stumbles a few steps forward on wobbling legs.
That’s right. Come on. We need the fangs and claws.
She totters to a stop, nose quivering, whining low in her throat. She won’t come any further. She senses something I haven’t. I force my eyes to open, force my lungs to draw air.
What does she sense that I don’t?
The tang of carbon steels burns my nose. Guns. The males hauling me across a clearing toward a tree line are armed. They have holsters at their sides and strapped to their ankles. They’re dressed in all black, black skull caps, black boots.
And they’re human.
I squint and try to force my blurry eyes to focus. There are six of them that I can see. Four carrying me, one loaded down with gear, and a gray-haired man leading the way. I draw in another breath. Lenox is here, too, following behind. We’re heading away from the scent of asphalt and gasoline fumes into a wood. It doesn’t smell like Quarry Pack territory.
How long was I out?
What are they going to do with me?
They’re going to kill me.
My panic rises to a sudden, crashing crescendo, and spurred by instinct, I fight, buck, flail, but every time I manage to free a leg or an arm, the gray-haired man is there, and he has a stick, a taser, and he jabs me in my side. The pain sears. I jerk and spasm, my wolf screaming, but I keep fighting, keep thrashing, because I don’t want to die.
The gray-haired man jolts me again and again until my muscles seize, and then they won’t work. My tongue is bleeding. Only two men are dragging me by my armpits now, through underbrush, over exposed roots. Thorns and low branches catch and tear my dress and my skin. My shoes are gone.
“Think she’s finally had enough?” one of the men says, chuckling.
“Why doesn’t she shift?” the gray-haired man asks over his shoulder. He’s taken the lead again.
“Couldn’t say,” Lenox answers. “Her wolf might be too intimidated. She says it’s small.” I told him that in confidence, late one night over video chat. He asked to see pics, but I didn’t have any.
“Smart wolf. She should be scared.” The gray-haired man smirks.
She’s terrified. She’s paralyzed on her feet, pupils blown, fur bristled, trembling. She’s not hiding, though. She’s waiting for an opening. We’re of one mind. We’re getting out of this.
We come to a small clearing, no more than a quarter mile from where we started, and the men drop me. Instantly, I curl into a ball, my knees to my chest, arms tucked to my sides where the taser singed holes in my dress. I let my curls fall in my face and watch the men from slitted eyes.
Without speaking, they fan out in a circle. Two of them disappear into the surrounding trees, moving in a sure and practiced way, like they’ve done this before. My blood runs cold. Are they the human government? Am I being kidnapped for some kind of unsanctioned experiments? There have always been rumors, scary stories told around the bonfire after full moon runs.