Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
I wait for the shame to hit, the self-loathing, but that’s not the feeling in my cracked-open chest, although I couldn’t name it if you paid me.
It’s like I’m a new person now that I’ve left Salt Mountain, and I don’t have to feel the old feelings. There’s room to feel something new, become something new. However it was before, it isn’t now. I changed things. Shame is a choice, and I don’t have to choose it.
“There’s nothing to figure out,” I say. “I’m never going back to Salt Mountain.”
Alec doesn’t answer. He stares at the fire. Eventually, he puts down his poking stick and rests his clasped hands on his chest.
I’m drifting off when he says, low but clear, “Just so we’re straight, I never fucked Isla Sinclair.”
That’s it. No follow up. My eyes pop open, my whole body tensing, and he doesn’t even look over at me.
He didn’t?
It shouldn’t matter.
I shouldn’t believe him.
But it’s strange—a male like Alec Cameron, justifying himself to me. Even though that can’t be what he’s doing.
Can it?
He’s here because he has to be—he doesn’t want to go into rut, and if his mate runs off on him, especially if I run off on him, he’ll be a laughingstock no matter how snarly and badass he is, no matter how much natural alpha he has in the way he carries himself.
He doesn’t have to lie to me about Isla Sinclair.
This isn’t about feelings. I don’t need to be wooed. My body will give in to him eventually. He just needs to wait me out. We both know it.
So why lie?
Or if it’s the truth, why tell me?
He’s still awake a half hour later, when my brain is finally too exhausted to chew it over any longer, and it glides off into sleep like a swimmer pushing off a wall.
He’s still awake, glaring at the sky, my knife by his left hand and my rusty hatchet by his right.
Chapter 7
7
ALEC
I don’t really sleep, and I get up around daybreak to get some feeling back in my body and see about rustling up breakfast. Flora is curled up on her side, knees tucked to her chest, snoring softly. Her braid is coming undone. My fingers itch to touch it. Her hair is soft as hell.
I shake out my arms and legs, shuck my sweats, and shift. My wolf bolts for Flora, but I quickly pull up the reins and steer him away, reminding him that we’re away from pack territory and surrounded by unknowns.
He grumbles, but he’s happy enough to go for a quick run, checking the perimeter I marked off last night, spraying some fresh piss. Nothing had the balls to come too close in the dark, but I catch the trail of a bobcat that came right up to the line before he changed his mind. He’s long gone, and I can’t imagine bobcat tastes very good. I don’t bother tracking him.
I frighten a fat hare out of a thicket, but I hold the wolf back. I’m not bringing a dead rabbit back to Flora. I’ve already fucked up enough with her. I don’t need to put the last nail in my coffin.
She didn’t say anything when I told her about Isla.
She was probably too tired.
Or she doesn’t care.
What the hell was she doing with Bram Blackburn?
Isla told me she felt her heat coming on, swore she knew that I was going to be her mate. I did what a male is supposed to do. What my old man should have done. I cut things off with Flora, and I took care of Isla. It was the right thing to do.
I snort. I was one hundred percent wrong.
I spent my whole life doing the opposite of what Graham Cameron would have done, and I ended up dropping my mate for another female, and then, when my mate did go into heat, I lost my shit on her and drove her out of the pack. The irony isn’t bitter. It’s pristine.
My wolf pulls up short and considers some partridges on a high branch in an oak tree. I admire his ambition, but I redirect his attention to a hefty squirrel making his way down the trunk. Flora seemed to like squirrel meat fine. Feeding her felt like the first thing I’ve managed not to completely fuck up, and I still burnt half of it.
I need to stop fucking around and go fix this shit.
She’s pissed, but she knows the facts of life as well as I do. She’s going to present. With the way she was messing around with that quilt, it’s going to be sooner rather than later. I’m going to make sure I don’t fuck that up, and then we’ll work it out.
She’s Flora. She’s too sweet, and she’s hurt. I’ll take care of this. Females are simple. Seems like if you don’t piss them off on purpose and leave them in the kitchen to their business, they’re happy enough.
My wolf lunges and a thin bone snaps. Squirrel dangles from our maw.
Good. Go back.
I don’t have to tell him twice. He bounds through the woods, limp squirrel limbs slapping his muzzle, and when we get close to the place where we bedded down, he’s got so much momentum that he keeps going. I have to dig my heels in the dirt to stop him and guide him back to the clearing.
I should’ve smelled it.
The clearing’s empty. No Flora. No backpack. The only things left are the remnants of the fire and the sweatpants I left hung over a low branch.
She left. Again.
I shift, dropping the squirrel from my wolf’s mouth to my human hand as I rise onto two feet. The carcass is wet, warm, and sticky. My stomach churns.
I have a right to be pissed. This isn’t a game. But a shadow of unease drifts across my mind like a cloud crossing the sun, and I can’t summon up any indignation.
I caused this.
What if she won’t come back?
What if I’ve broken something that I can’t fix?
What if I broke her?
Flora’s sweet, and she’s hurt, and in my head, I’ve been counting that the same as I would with anyone else. She’ll come around. Her feelings are hurt, but it’s a cold, hard world. Shit happens, life’s a bitch, you can’t let it get to you. No one’s gonna feel sorry for you.
I can hear my father in my head. Uncle Fraser. Aunt Shona.
It’s my wolf who calls it.
Not cold for Flora.
She’s our mate.
If it’s cold, build a fire.
Dumbass.
And it’s so fucking simple, but it rearranges my mind. Flora isn’t everybody else. She never has been.
So why did I treat her like she was?
* * *
It takes about a half hour to catch up with her. She’s huffing and puffing, which is fine, but she’s also limping.
“What happened?” It comes out sharper than I meant, but she doesn’t flinch. She’s got a mulish expression on her face, and her cheeks have those pink lollipop dots she gets when she’s working hard, so the end result is just cute.
In seconds, my anger loses its edge like it always does around her, ever since I really started noticing her freshman year at Moon Lake. I used to sit behind her so her fingers would brush mine when she passed papers back, and her scent would stick on my worksheets. I was a dumbass.
“Flora.” I grab her forearm. She freezes in her tracks.
“Let me go,” she says between pants.