Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Folks move to clear a path for us as we make our way for Bram, and then surge back together behind us to form an impenetrable wall of bodies.
For the first time, my confidence wobbles. We’re vastly outnumbered, and even though Alec is uncommonly strong, if everyone attacks as a pack, it’d be like fighting a tidal wave. I reach out through the bond. I’m not sure whether to look for comfort or to urge a retreat, but before I can do either, an unmated male, a Sinclair, doesn’t hustle quickly enough out of our way.
Alec’s wolf snarls, the sound booming from his chest pure alpha command. The Sinclair jumps out of our path and cowers, and every soul that I can see bows their head and bares their neck, everyone except Leith Munroe.
The intensity of my fear ebbs, but the pit stays, sour and hard in my stomach. I wrap my arms around myself and duck a little more fully behind Alec.
Folks are muttering, the tone veering from gleeful to leery, except for a peal of coarse laughter that rings out from a cluster of unmated females. My ears are so well-tuned, they easily pick out the words.
Fluffa. Fat slut. Dirty pig.
Alec’s back is ramrod straight, every muscle rock hard and radiating tension. I strain to listen, but nothing comes through the bond except an indecipherable kind of emotional static. The signal’s jammed.
I watch the cords popping in his neck, and somehow, I know he did it. He’s blocking the bond.
Why?
Is he scared? Is he having second thoughts?
I feel sick, but time has run out. The Blackburn males back away, and we’re left alone in a wide circle in front of the big furnace, facing a smirking Bram now sprawled in his recliner with a thick leg thrown over an arm, a beer bottle dangling from his hand. He’s so beefy, it’s a miracle the chair’s frame is holding.
It feels like the whole pack is holding its breath, waiting for Leith and Alec to attack, or for Bram to crash through his seat to the ground.
“What’s this? The prodigal returns?” Bram spits onto the stonework patio under his feet. “Too late, Cameron. You walked away from the pack. They won’t follow you now. And Munroe.” He tuts, sneering. “This is your move? You think you’re gonna take this pack from me with one male at your side?”
Beside us, Leith’s wolf growls, and a shiver creeps up my spine. There’s something in the quality of the sound that reminds me of the feral in the woods.
Alec ignores both Bram and Leith’s wolf, and calls, cool and clear, “Where’s Nola Murphy?”
Bram chuckles. “That’s what brought you back? That crazy old hag?” He rises slowly to his feet, an oily smile spreading across his blunt-featured face. A memory flashes to mind, that broad face, flushed plum purple and dripping sweat, as I whimpered slow down, give me a minute,it hurts, and he puffed be quiet, I’m almost done.
Bram takes a step forward. “I have to say, I didn’t find that fat bitch’s cunt anywhere near good enough for this level of effort, but I suppose standards vary.”
He raises a thick eyebrow. My lungs freeze. Behind us, the Blackburns shift. Readying themselves.
Somehow, despite the white-hot shame blanking my brain, my instinct still parses what’s happening. Bram is baiting him. He doesn’t intend to fight either Alec or Leith in an alpha challenge. He’s messing with Alec, and when Alec loses it, Bram will give a signal, and his males are going to use the distraction to take Leith out, and we’ll be next.
“Alec,” I whisper, reaching out to touch his back.
He snarls at me, glaring over his shoulder, and I drop my hand. My heart plummets. There’s rage in his eyes. Disgust.
I try to shrink, disappear inside my clothes, but I can’t. I’m huge. Obtrusive. Gross.
No.
I don’t think those thoughts anymore. I ball them up, throw them to the ground, stomp them dead.
My gaze skates across the faces of the people hemming us in, the jeering and smirking, the sniggering disdain, the bloodlust and scorn. I blink, and all of a sudden, I can see through it.
They’re ants, crawling over each other to get a piece of a dropped crumb, giddy to feel someone else’s body under their feet, grateful that it’s not their turn to be crushed this time.
Their contempt isn’t something I have to bear. It belongs to them. It’s a whiskey before bedtime so they can sleep at night, a toke before work so they can get through the day. It’s theirs, another crutch they use to drag themselves through their small, scared, bitter lives.
And Alec may be bitter, but he isn’t small, and he’s not scared. He might be furious, but not at me, and if he’s disgusted, it’s with them, not me.
I know it like I know my own soul now.
“Last chance,” Alec says, as cool and unaffected as if he’s facing off against them in a game beside the river. “Where’s Nola Murphy?”
Bram lifts his chin to look over Alec’s shoulder. “What do you say, Fluffa? After we deal with your mate, I’ll let my boys work that extra weight off you, and maybe I’ll give you another chance to get on your knees for me.”
Leith moves faster than any male I’ve ever seen in human form.
With an unholy howl, Alec swings his hammer in an arc, but before it’s even over his head, Leith has leapt past him and tackled Bram, knocking him onto his back on the hearth, out of the range of Alec’s reach. Alec can’t stop the swing; he can only redirect it toward the crowd. It whooshes through the air as males flail and fling themselves backward to avoid impact, knocking each other over like dominos.
As soon as he can redirect the hammer, Alec spins, sprinting toward Bram, murder blazing in his eyes, but Leith is in the way, knocking the bigger male back and forth like a punching bag, driving fists into his kidneys, slamming the flat of his palm into Bram’s nose.
Meanwhile, the Blackburns rediscover their courage and surge forward. One reaches for me, but as his arm extends, Alec’s sledgehammer comes swinging up from below, colliding with the male’s elbow, shattering bone, and sending the limb and the attached body windmilling through the air.
Alec glances over his shoulder at the hearth, and there is a second when his next move is obvious on his face. He’s going to go through Leith if that’s what it takes to get to Bram, and it’s just as clear that the Blackburns will take advantage of his turned back to swamp him. They’re already gathering in a loose formation, some shifting, some drawing knives from their boots.
“Alec,” I cry and stagger into the nearest, least menacing Blackburn. I have a vague idea that I’ll create a distraction, but the move ends up with me losing my footing, my thrashing arms whacking the confused Blackburn about the head and chest.
Alec snatches me away, flings me behind him, and sends the Blackburn flying with a swing of his hammer. His back leg pivots as he follows through, just like they taught us in human sport back at Moon Lake Academy during the golf unit.
“Stay down,” he growls at me, and now that he’s lined up against all the males willing to fight, he gets serious, cutting a swath through their ranks like an angel with a flaming sword, mowing down males and wolves like a scythe through wheat. They try to band together, to get behind him to where I cower, but they can’t. Two against one, three, four, five—no one can bring him down and no one can get past him.
Wet crunches and sharp cracks mingle with screams. The females and pups flee and form a loose circle several yards away to watch in horror as male after male crumples at my mate’s feet.
Behind me, in front of the big furnace’s hearth, Leith Munroe whales on Bram Blackburn’s limp body. At some point, when the attackers have been winnowed down to a handful, Tandie ventures over from the gravel lot and picks her way through the carnage to crouch beside me and stare as Leith pounds Bram’s face into pulp. There’s an odd expression on her face. I wouldn’t quite call it pleased, but I can’t think of another way to put it.
Maybe if I had a mirror, I’d see that I look the same. There is a weird satisfaction in seeing him flaccid and powerless, his body flopping back and forth with the force of Leith’s fists.
My chest is unknotting, my muscles relaxing as the fight seems to wind down, but then, when Alec is temporarily distracted by a particularly wet crunch coming from Leith’s fist driving into Bram’s gut, a wild-eyed Scott makes a last-ditch leap for Alec’s back, his claws unsheathing mid-air.
I jump at the same moment that my wolf launches from our body, sailing through the air, colliding with the Scott and rolling him away from our mate in a tangled ball of claws, fangs, and snarls. He doesn’t have a chance. My wolf is twice his size, and she’s not playing. She tears chunks from his flesh, ripping grooves in his pelt wherever her claws gain purchase.
Alec unleashes a series of ringing howls, stark promises of a painful death, but all he can do is stand over us, searching for an opening, because my wolf isn’t letting up. She’s shredding the Scott’s wolf. Fur flies. She spits tufts from her mouth as she goes in for the next bite.
I can’t stop her. I can only squeeze my eyes shut and try not to think about the splatter on our face.
Finally, when there’s nothing but chunks and glop on the ground, she takes a break, panting, and shakes out her fur. Drops of blood pitter patter on the ground. She scans the silent pack, frozen in horror and awe.
She’s looking for someone.
Oh, no. I don’t know how to hold her back. I’ve hardly mastered letting her out.
She lifts her muzzle and sniffs the air. She must scent what she’s looking for because she takes off for a cluster of females gathered at the front of the spectators. As she bounds closer, they try to melt backward and disappear into the crowd, but the packmates behind them shuffle together, closing ranks.
My wolf runs straight to Rhona Blackburn. She’s clutching Brenda Shaw like a life raft.
My wolf gets right up in her face, but since my wolf is so tall, she has to kind of squat. I know that despite what she just did to that Scott, she’s not a bloodthirsty monster. She’s much more of a mama bear. Rhona, Brenda, and the others don’t know that, though.
My wolf lifts her head and howls. Every neck bends. Despite the scent of warm piss rising in the air, she must not feel heard and understood because she launches into a tirade of snarls, growls, and snapping teeth, darting toward the females, faking them out and reveling in their screams.
Vaguely, I register Alec coming to stand behind me, dragging his hammer in the dirt behind him.
Not a single person makes a move to protect the females, and for some reason, that incenses my wolf even more. She has fully dominated these females, as she’s been waiting to do forever, but in her mind, it isn’t right that the males leave them to their fate.
She howls at the cowed males, railing at them to protect their females, and for a second, they exchange panicked glances with each other. Then Alec’s wolf lets out a muffled howl, a very clear “don’t even think about it,” and as one, they shuffle back a step and bow lower.
My wolf looks over her shoulder, glaring her disapproval, and Alec lifts a shoulder. “They won’t be much good to the females if my wolf comes out and tears them up.”
My wolf narrows her eyes, and Alec’s lip quirks. She huffs and wanders away from the pack to nudge his hand and lick his fingers.
“Beautiful mate,” he says under his breath.
My wolf rumbles, accepting the words as her due, and then as quickly as she took our skin, she relinquishes it, and I’m left standing buck ass naked in front of the pack. I shriek.
Immediately, Alec strips off his shirt and drops it over my head. It’s tight across the boobs, but thank goodness, it’s long enough to cover my butt.
Alec takes my hand and leads me back to the big furnace where Leith is still pounding away. We pick our way through groaning and limp bodies, and as we pass Tandie, she falls into step beside me.
“Your wolf is so big,” she whispers, and the admiration in her voice touches a raw part of me, but it doesn’t sting.