Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
He comes to a halt a foot from me and proceeds to scan me, head to foot, glowering even more darkly, as if he’s checking for damage.
“What’s wrong?” he finally barks, I guess when he doesn’t find whatever he’s looking for.
“Nothing.”
“Did that female just leave you here?”
I change the subject. “Did you get a shower?” I am so jealous.
“I scrubbed off in the pool.” He jerks his head to the centerpiece of the cavern. For once, there’s no one splashing in it, and now that I’m noticing, the crowd has thinned. I guess folks have left for the run. My wolf whines. She’s jealous of them.
“You’re upset,” he presses.
“I feel nasty.” I peel my shirt away from my skin. It’s damp from the coolness of the deeper warren. “Where’d you get pants?” Unlike my yellow sweats, his new ones fit him perfectly. He looks more like his cool, collected self.
“I fixed a clog, and a guy traded me.”
“The demon clog?”
“It wasn’t a thing.” He frowns at me.
I see him opening his mouth to ask me what’s wrong again, and I rush to head him off. “Where’s our backpack?”
“Pritchard stowed it for us. It’s safe.”
I gaze over Alec’s shoulder wistfully. I’d give anything to be brave enough to bathe in the pool. The late afternoon sun streaming in from the skylight is so bright that the water must be warm.
Alec lets out a sound halfway between a growl and a sigh. “You aren’t gonna tell me what’s bothering you, are you?”
I shake my head.
He chews on that for a long moment, and then he digs in his pocket. “I got you these,” he says brusquely.
He holds out two plastic barrettes with rabbits on them. They’re the old-fashioned kind that don’t hold more than a few strands before popping open.
I take them from his calloused palm. The white plastic is yellowed with age. When I was young, I had blue ones with ducks and pink ones with a cat playing a fiddle. They’d been my granddam’s. I used them for my dolls.
“You like my hair down,” I say because it’s the thing that comes to mind.
“You like it pulled back.”
I blink up at him. He’s still frowning, swaying like he does when he’s playing ball and waiting for the whistle, palpably uncomfortable.
“How’d you get them?” I ask.
He tosses a shoulder. “I traded. For the drain.”
“The clog that wasn’t a thing?”
“I got us a mattress and bedding, too.”
My face flushes at the word ‘mattress.’ “Is that all?”
“Some human cash. They don’t use scrip here.”
“And the clog was nothing?”
“If you know what you’re doing.” From another male, it’d be bragging. From Alec, it’s exhausted disappointment in his fellow man.
We fall silent, and my gaze wanders to the pool again.
“You can get in, if you want,” Alec says. “There’s an alcove there by that island thing where I can block you.”
I’m about to say no.
Of course, I’m going to say no. I’m ashamed of my body. There’s no way I’d risk anyone seeing it in broad daylight, even if there’s only a few older shifters chatting or futzing around in far corners of the hall. The pups must have all been herded into dens to nap or be kept out of trouble.
But I’m grimy and sticky and still sore between the legs. My poor feet are desperate for a long soak. And besides, for good or ill, my body’s nothing new to Alec.
And I’m beautiful. Or so I’ve been told.
I pop open my new barrettes and run my thumb along the plastic teeth. “Okay. I need a change of clothes. Where’s the backpack?”
“I’ll get it. Meet you there.” He points to the low slope where folks get into the pool and jogs off. He seems relieved to be doing, or at least to be done talking.
He really isn’t a talker. I’m quiet, too, but it’s more because that’s what’s expected of me. If no one better’s around at the laundry, I’m the listener, and if a higher ranking packmate shows, I’m supposed to fade away into the background. Only Miss Nola’s interested in what I have to say, so I’ve become accustomed to just thinking my thoughts.
Folks listen when Alec talks, but he rarely does. He doesn’t deign to. Or does he suck at it?
I smile to myself. Oh yeah, he sucks at it. The only time he seems comfortable with words is when we’re alone, and he’s growling orders. Orders? Or requests? I can replay things he’s said to me in the heat of the moment, word for word, but for the life of me I can’t be sure of the tone anymore.
Iheard them as demands. Because I saw him as the one in control and myself as—well—as the one on her knees.
What if I read it wrong?
The sound of Alec’s bare feet hurrying back to me on the stone floor distracts me from my thoughts. He’s got a big terry cloth towel, a net bag like you use to wash delicates, a shirt, and a pair of my jeans tucked under his arm.
“Where’d you get a towel?” I ask.
He shrugs, drops my clothes, and shakes the towel out, holding it up like a screen.
“Payment for the nothing clog?”
He ignores me, scanning the hall. “No one’s looking.”
Am I really going to do this? I scan the hall, too, but the few folks around are still immersed in whatever they’re doing. No one’s paying us any attention.
“Look away,” I say, and Alec huffs, but he tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling. A ray of sunlight catches his hair, showing the black for the dark brown it really is. His Adam’s apple bobs, and the cords in his neck tense.
He’s thinking about what I’m doing.
My breath shallows.
I peel off what I’m wearing, quickly folding everything and stashing my bra and panties between my top and bottom. I tuck my new barrettes into my pocket and take the towel from Alec’s outstretched arms, winding it around me, clutching it together at my back.
Alec kicks off his sweatpants, grabs the net bag, and steps easily down into the pool. I rotate the towel so I can tuck it between my breasts. The edges gape if I don’t curve my shoulders forward, but at least it’s long enough to cover my whole ass.
Alec offers me a hand. I take it and lower myself to the ledge, easing my legs over the side. The water isn’t warm, but it’s not cold, either, and it’s crystal clear. The bottom is smooth gray stone. This close, I can see a slow current running through.
“The water doesn’t come from rain.” I’d figured it collected during storms from the cave’s sunroof.
Alec grunts. “The river feeds it. It comes up there.” He points to a spot on the far side of the pool. “And it drains there.” He points to a rocky outcropping at the base of the little island to our left. It’s covered in moss with clumps of grass and wildflowers with a few actual spindly pines, no bigger than potted trees, growing from the rock.
“There’s a river under us?”
Alec grunts again. “It’d come in real handy if anyone here knew shit about fluid dynamics.”
“They don’t?”
Alec snorts. That’s a negative. “The folks who used to live here did. They built a whole drainage system, carved it from the rock.” I’ve never heard this note of respect in his voice before. Except maybe—maybe—when he said you’re the good one. Before he kissed me.
I shake the thought away and slide all the way into the water, hiking the towel higher so it’s above the water line. The bottom is slippery. As I take a careful step away from the edge, Alec grabs my elbow. I don’t fuss. The last thing I want to do is slip and send water splashing everywhere like a cresting whale.
No.