Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Of course he did.
How would he know when to nod at me if he wasn’t watching?
And he wanted to see my body. Why else would he tell me to take off my shirt? Why would he always be pushing my hair back when it fell in my face?
Why did I not understand until this moment that I was desirable, when a male like Alec Cameron desired me?
I’ve always understood what the others got out of making me feel repulsive—no one’s pretty if no one’s ugly—but why did I refuse to believe the evidence right in front of me that I’m not?
I don’t know, and I don’t know whether I should feel happy or stupid or excited or heartbroken now. So I keep moving furniture with my head down, and Alec leans against a wall, content to watch as he chomps an apple he dug out of his pocket, until Bevan strolls in, holding up full grocery bags in each hand, hollering, “Guess what I got!”
Immediately, a buzz erupts amongst the elders. I’ve already learned that he could have anything, but it’s bound to be good. Once, he showed up in the middle of dinner rolling a cask of moonshine.
He struts up to Rae’s table, grinning ear to ear, gold teeth twinkling, and upends the bags. A hundred plastic bottles spill out.
“Daubers!” Rae exclaims. “Where’d you get them?”
“Chapel Bell.” He sniffs himself, his slightly elongated, partly-shifted nose quivering. “I reek like humans and capitalism, but it’s a small price to pay.”
“Oh, I love these.” Rae’s already got a cap unscrewed, and she’s stamping a card, squealing with delight at each dot. Elders stir themselves to go check out the action. I quickly offer Bet Nevitts my arm. She’s the tippiest, and she won’t use her cane.
Alec tosses his apple core in the trash and heads over, helping Auntie Madwen and Miss Olwen on his way. His face is even grimmer than it was a few minutes ago, but he patiently helps folks over and unscrews stubborn caps. Everyone has to try the daubers out a few times, even the males grumbling about what kind of pup game we’re expecting them to play.
Bevan is the alpha of the moment, telling all the curious folks about how he rode to town and the route he took and the traffic along the way and what the humans are selling these days and the cost of everything. I don’t know much about human money, but it doesn’t sound like it was a small price to pay.
Beside me, Alec’s silent, seething aggression singes my nose. He’s not grown any fonder of Bevan.
Eventually, some of the females helping with lunch come over to fetch the elders, and after they’ve had a chance to stamp the bingo cards, the area clears except for Bevan who’s sitting by Rae, turning the crank on the cage while he talks her ear off.
Alec and I are left to ourselves at the other end of the table. I make sure the caps are screwed back on the bottles and line them up nice and neat. Alec watches me, arms crossed.
“You could help, you know,” I tell him.
“It’s female work,” he says offhandedly, his focus very obviously on scowling and acting like Bevan doesn’t exist.
“Female work?” It’s such a Salt Mountain male response that I don’t think he even realizes he sounds like an ass before I take the red dauber in my hand and bop him on the nose with it.
He blinks, his eyes crossing as he tries to make out what I’ve done. “Hey. What?”
He scrubs at the dot, but he doesn’t do much but smear it.
I go to dab him on the forehead, but his reflexes are excellent, and I’ve lost the element of surprise. He plucks the dauber from my fingers and dots my nose.
“Hey!”
A hint of a smile tugs up the corner of his mouth, and so quickly that it doesn’t fully register until he’s done, he rubs our noses together. A split second after, his lips are a stern line again.
“I’m going to wash up for lunch,” he says. “Meet me at our table in five.” He gives Bevan one last glower and takes off without a backwards glance.
I watch him walk away. His shoulders are so straight, his stride so assured. He tosses his hair like he does to get a rogue lock out of his face, and he seems like a male who’s never had a doubt in his life.
But I know that the tension in his shoulders is going to ease the slightest fraction when he arrives with our lunch trays and finds me sitting at our table like he asked. Just like it did back in the woods at Salt Mountain when he was waiting, and he first caught sight of me coming through the trees.
I’m lost in memory when Bevan comes to stand beside me, facing the haphazard auditorium I’ve assembled.
“Alec left you here? Alone with me?” He winks.
“He probably figured you could find this resistible.” I gesture at my red nose.
“Nah. I dig it.” He waggles his wolfish eyebrows. “I’ve given up on us, though.”
“You have?” I know he’s just playing, but still, a little thrill bubbles through me. This is flirting. I’m not into him, not like that, but it’s a novel, delicious feeling to know that I am admired. I tuck it close like the Old Den folks do with their markers.
“Yeah. When a female looks at a male like you just looked at the boss man, you have to admit you’re beat.”
“He’s my mate,” I say.
Bevan smiles softly. For once, his gold teeth don’t show. “He’s lucky.”
As I take my usual seat a few seconds before Alec shows up with our lunches, and his shoulders relax and his lips soften as he dusts a finger over the scrubbed tip of my nose, I think, for the first time, that maybe—now, here—he is lucky.
Maybe we both are.
* * *
The next morning,
Alec said he’d be back, but he didn’t say when. I figured he was going to be working away from the den, and he’d be back by dinner. That was five days ago.
I’m not too worried. I can feel him through the bond. He was calm, and then extremely irritated, and now he’s calm again. He’s fine.
And I’m fine here on my own. I have friends for the first time in my life. I’m busy. It’s just—
I should have asked him where he was going. When he said, “I’m heading out,” I thought he meant for the day, not for the foreseeable future. He’s absolute garbage at communication.
I don’t need him, but I’ve been getting used to him. He’s a buffer between me and the others, and I miss that. Now that I’ve noticed that the males look at me, I can’t seem to unnotice it. And I realize it’s not only males. Folks see me here.
They all look at me, and not to make me uncomfortable so I’ll leave, or to point out to their friends how disgusting and weird I am. They look and smile, welcoming me to come and talk. Or they look for me because they have something to tell me or show me.
Those looks are just nice, but I don’t know exactly how I feel about the males. It makes me self-conscious about my body, but in a different way than I’ve always been. I should be above it, be more like Nia who doesn’t even notice when people gawk at her face hardware and her crazy get-ups, but I’m still adjusting.
What’s kind of weird is that as I’m more aware of males checking me out, I’m also more comfortable in my clothes. I tug at them less, and I’m not worrying about how they lay all the time. The space that worry used to occupy in my brain is now totally filled with mooning over Alec. Thinking about that kiss. Floating in his arms.
Wondering where he is and when he’s coming back.
Not because I need him. I don’t. But maybe I want him. I want to tell him about my day at dinner, and like every time, when I’ve convinced myself that I’m babbling, and he’s not really listening, he’ll say something like “which chair are you talking about? I’ll shim the leg tomorrow,” and I realize that although he’s tearing through a pork chop, staring at his plate like it’s a television screen, he’s heard every word I’ve said.
I want to see the flash in his eyes when I clip my barrettes over my ears in the morning, and he tracks me like he used to when I took him in my mouth.
I want to know where the hell he’s been.
But I don’t let on. I eat dinner with the Kemble females and Nia, I scurry in and out of the toilets, keeping my eyes straight ahead so if any spiders are dangling overhead, I won’t know, and I climb into my bunk early. It’s been a long, busy day. Even with worrying about Alec, I fall into a deep sleep in no time.
My nose tickling wakes me up. The dorm is pitch black, filled with the snuffling and snoring of a dozen sleeping females, but the scent of warm jam drifts in from the hall.
Alec.
I’m across the room before I realize I’m only wearing a T-shirt and panties, but I can’t stop my forward momentum. I tumble into the dimly lit corridor, and he’s there, almost where Bevan had been waiting, but he’s not nonchalantly leaning on the wall. He’s standing straight-spined with his shoulders squared as if he’s bracing for a feral to leap from the door.
I skid to a stop. His whole body tenses.
“You’re back,” I whisper, suddenly shy.
Somehow, he draws himself even taller and tenser, searching my face, his gaze lingering on my lips, and I think he’s going to lose it like he did before and kiss me, but instead, he steels his jaw and holds out his hand. I take it, and he leads me up toward the cavern.
“I’m not wearing pants,” I hiss at him.
His eyes drop to my legs, and they glint for a second before he schools his expression and says, “There’s no one up.”
The cavern is dark when we get there, except for a blue glow in the middle of the space where the moon reflects off the pool. It’s late, probably three or four in the morning. Everything is quiet.
He draws me over to the area he staked out for his workshop. There’s a massive duffel bag and a tool chest on a table that weren’t there before.
“You went for your tools?” I ask.