Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Why would he be? I’m not a threat.
After a few more rolls, he gets bored and flips onto his flank to check my reaction. I’m not stupid. I know this is a display of submission, but I also know it’s a lie. He’s easily twice my size, and under the filthy, matted coat, his muscles are honed. If he attacks, I won’t have a chance against him.
He scrambles onto four feet.
I try to make myself even smaller, tucking my forearms to my chest and dipping my chin to emphasize my own submission.
I’m on my own here. No one will be home for hours. Which is good. I don’t want anyone else to be in danger. I need to pull it together enough to run.
I’ll head away from the commons. Lead him toward Abertha’s cottage. She’s old, but she can handle anything. She has nerves of steel, and I’ve smelled metal and gunpowder in the back of her pantry.
My brain sifts manically through escape routes while my body cowers and the strange wolf trots over to the flower bed with an exaggerated nonchalance.
What is he doing now?
He sniffs a sunflower and then glances over his shoulder to see if I’m watching. I am. I can’t tear my eyes away. He’s the clear and present danger. For once, it’s not in my head.
He casually wanders to a hydrangea bush and sticks his muzzle deep into the pink blossoms. The flowers are on their last leg, so when he delves his snout into a bunch, a handful of petals flutter to the ground. He sneezes. Another bunch of petals burst into confetti and drift down, sticking to his fur.
He glares at the bush, startled and a little put out. Then he casts me another look. This time, it’s expectant.
What does he want me to do?
He waits.
My stomach knots tighter and tighter the longer he stares. If my intestines were rope, they’d be frayed close to snapping.
Sometimes I marvel at all the ways I can mess up my body with the power of my mind—all the parts of my body that I can make ache. My belly, my head, my neck, my shoulders, my jaw. I wonder which part I’ll break first. Probably my teeth from grinding them while I sleep. And anytime I’m around the males of the pack.
I am so tired of myself, and I’m tired of cowering here, soaked in sweat and terrified, while a feral wolf makes a mess of our flower bed.
“Just do whatever it is you’re going to do,” I call to him. In my mind, my words are loud and clear. In reality, they splutter out of my mouth, mumbly and faint.
The wolf cocks his head. He’s meandered behind the sunflowers so he’s standing with all four paws in the mulch, facing me. His brow scrunches, as if he’s lost for what to do next. Then his ear twitches, knocking against a sunflower stalk. It sways, bopping his muzzle, and he startles, his clumpy fur bristling like a porcupine’s quills.
I can’t help it. A tiny smile flashes across my face, half hysteria, half reflex. I mean, he freaked himself out by accidentally whacking himself in the snoot with a flower. Totally something I would do.
His golden eyes light up, and he bumps the flower with his muzzle again, closely observing my reaction.
I gawk back at him. Is he playing
?
He sits back on his haunches, reaches up with a paw, and bats the sunflower, watching me, waiting.
What am I supposed to do?
He picks up a paw and gently presses down on the stalk until the sunflower is touching the ground, and then he lets it go. It flies up and boops his snoot. His wooly brows rise in expectation. My eyes round. He cocks his head and blinks.
He’s being silly on purpose.
Quarry Pack wolves don’t play, at least not like this. When the males are in their fur, they act like animals. They might wrestle or chase each other, but they’d never fool around in a flower bed. They’d never be silly.
He’s looking around now, and I can see his gears turning. Suddenly, inspiration strikes, and he trots to stand between two flowers with small blooms growing close together. He shoves his shoulders between them, stretches his neck, and simultaneously shoves the bottom of the stalks together with his front paws.
He’s given himself sunflower antennae. He tilts his head left and right, showing off for me.
My lips curve again, of their own volition, and so do his, revealing wickedly sharp incisors. Fear snatches at my heart. I moan, my smile disappearing.
His wolf snorts a sigh and flops back down on his belly. Now he has really long sunflower antennae. He raises an eyebrow. It’s a question, but I don’t know what he’s asking.
He waits, watching and listening, but I can’t give him any reaction. Even if I knew what to do, my body wouldn’t let me. At the Academy, we learn about fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, but I’ve only got three in my repertoire, and if I can’t run, I’ll be playing possum.
Once, a possum got into Abertha’s cottage when someone—ahem, Kennedy—left the door open. The little guy freaked out and played dead in the middle of the kitchen. Abertha just picked him up and carried him outside like a baby. He didn’t move a muscle the whole time, his paws sticking straight up in the air and his glazed eyes wide open. I’ve never seen anyone more committed to a bit.
Sometimes, I imagine someone picking me up like that, carrying my stiff body outside and dropping me by the compost heap. It would be a relief.
The strange wolf is losing his patience. First, his tail begins to flick, and then he wriggles restlessly in place. When he gets bored enough, he begins to army crawl forward, keeping his body low to the ground. The closer he gets, the tighter every part of me clenches.
I don’t think he wants to hurt me. Obviously. The sunflower antennae were a giveaway. My body doesn’t believe that though. Neither does the voice that has reverted to tossing images in my mind like a game of fifty-two pick up.
Fangs tearing muscle. Fists pummeling flesh. Heart wrenching cries. Male laughter. Sightless eyes, staring at nothing. A mouth twisted in a frozen scream.
My hands shake in my lap. I curl them until the nails bite into the meat of my palm, and the pain doesn’t make it better at all, but it’s something else to think about besides the sharp-beaked birds of memory swooping and pecking at my brain.
I would give anything to not be this way.
“Please go away,” I mumble, but I can’t even hear my own voice.
The wolf keeps coming, and when he’s a few feet to my left, he casually turns so that we’re both facing the ridge with Salt Mountain rising beyond it in the distance. He sits beside me, watching the sun sink behind the peak for a long moment. My shallow breath is jagged and loud in the quiet.
He scooches his butt a little closer. I can really smell him now. The earthy scent is definitely him. It wafts from him like a just-opened air freshener. My wolf likes it. She sits very still at the edge of the boundary between us and peeks at him from the corner of her eye.
This wolf is my mate.
The heat, his smell, the fact that he’s here at all in our pack’s territory—my head might be jam-packed with all kinds of wild and unfounded fears, but at the same time, I don’t tend to delude myself. He’s here for me.
I swallow. I can hardly get the spit down my throat.
“Y-you should leave,” I say. “B-before they find you here.”
He glances at me out of the corner of a golden eye and snorts.
“They won’t care that you’re my mate. You’re on Quarry Pack territory without permission. My alpha will kill you.”
He blinks, unfazed, and keeps watching the sunset, but I know he’s as aware of me as I am of him. The silence stretches.
My nerves would, too, if they weren’t already strung as tight as they can go.
“This isn’t going to work anyway.” I stare at the scuffed toes of my boots, peeking out from the hem of my long denim skirt. “I’m…I’m not right. I can’t do this. I can’t have a mate.”
His tail twitches, brushing the grass. My heart lurches at the sudden movement, and I gasp. He jumps to his feet, searching the distance, looking for the threat.
Kennedy’s wolf does the same thing when I freak out. He smells my fresh burst of fear, and in the second before he remembers that I’m just messed up, he starts howling, ready to shift and fight for our lives, and then he gets pissy when there’s no one to beat down. It’s a whole thing.
“There’s nothing out there,” I tell the strange wolf. “Ignore the smell.”
He either doesn’t believe me, or he doesn’t understand. Growling at me to stay put, he races up the ridge, and when he doesn’t see anything, he trots the perimeter of the yard and circles the house again before coming to sit beside me. Closer.
He glances over, considering me, a question in his eyes. I shrug a shoulder. He bends his head to sniff himself and then frowns back at me, clearly having trouble believing that whatever’s bothering me could possibly be him. It shouldn’t be a hard leap for him to make. He’s huge, and he looks feral—there’s a burr stuck in his belly hair and dirt inside his ears. I can’t believe females are easy in his company.
“You need to go,” I say with the softest, sweetest voice I can muster. “I can’t be your mate. I’m sorry.”
It’s not that I don’t want a mate. A home of my own. Warm and snuggly pups. A bright fire, thick walls, strong doors with solid bars, and a male made for me who’ll watch for danger while I sleep. It’s the kind of dream that’s so achingly sweet you don’t dare want it lest Fate snatches away what little you do have as punishment for your audacity.
Maybe that’s why Fate sent this wolf. I can’t mate him; there’s no way. He’s either a lone wolf, or he’s from the Last Pack. Either way, he lives in the wild. No walls, no doors, no locks. I couldn’t. Not in a million years.
And he’d want to—mount me.
There are knives in the kitchen. There is a baseball bat in Kennedy’s closet. You can run. You’ve got a clear path.
But I can’t move. I’m stuck here because my survival instincts are cross-wired. I’m a possum in a wolf’s world.
“Please go,” I murmur, knowing he’ll do what he wants. He’s male, and he’s big.