Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
He slowly rises to his feet again, turning to gaze at me, narrow-eyed as if he’s trying to figure me out. I stare at my feet.
I know I don’t really have a choice. Sooner or later, I’ll go into full-blown heat, and then it won’t matter that I’m scared. I’ll get on all fours and stick my butt in the air until he takes me. Or, if I manage to fend off the heat long enough, he’ll break first and go into rut. He’ll pin me down, and it won’t matter how hard I fight. I won’t have a chance against him.
A fresh wave of terror barrels through me like a freight train.
The strange wolf growls as he takes a few steps away, but this time, he doesn’t scan the horizon. He keeps his gaze riveted on me. He’s figured out that he’s the danger.
He stands at a distance a little longer, his head cocked, waiting. Confused. Or disappointed.
Sweat trickles down my face, but I can’t even raise my hand to wipe it away with my sleeve.
“Please go,” I mutter into my lap.
After a few more seconds, I hear him pad away. His scent fades, and my lungs can finally expand to take in a full breath.
My muscles go slack, and I slump forward, resting my forehead on my knees.
What do I do?
I listen for the familiar, almost reassuring chant of run and hide from my wolf, but she’s silent and shaking. She knows it’s hopeless. We’re trapped. There’s no way out but through.
This is happening.
There’s no way to stop it.
We’re going to have to live through hell.
Again.
2
JUSTUS, AGE EIGHTEEN
My mate’s name is Annie. She’s beautiful, but she smells bad, and there’s something wrong with her.
She sent my wolf away. That’s not surprising. Colm’s female screamed at him every time he got close to her for moons and moons when he first brought her back from North Border, but she still ate.
Annie wouldn’t eat the squirrel I brought her. She took it out to the backyard and buried it. I thought she was hiding it from the other females so she didn’t have to share, but she just left it there. She did the same with the black snake and the hare.
Maybe she’s picky. I hope so. If she’s sick—
No. I can’t think that.
I drop the dead goose dangling from my maw onto her front porch, spitting out as many bloody feathers as I can. When I’m done, I’ve only got a few still stuck in my teeth.
She should definitely like this. Goose is delicious, and this particular one is plump and juicy. My wolf and I definitely earned our fair share after the hassle of hunting it down, but we decided to settle for a little taste, saving most of it for her. She’s not got enough fat on her for winter, let alone for bearing pups.
My blood heats at the thought. I can’t wait to see my seed dripping from her pussy crack. When I knot her, she’s going to look over her shoulder at me with those big brown eyes, and there won’t be any fear anymore. She’ll know that I can take care of her, and she’ll stop stinking as if I’m about to attack her.
I pad away from the goose and sit further off, angled so that she’ll see the bloody goose bite on my haunch when she comes out. The wily fucker managed to nip a chunk out of my butt cheek before I ripped its throat out. I guess that means I’ve eaten my own ass.
At least no one from the pack saw. I’d never live it down. Annie doesn’t know it was a goose that got the drop on me, though. For all she knows, maybe I fought off a natural wolf for the goose. Or a feral.
I fix my face, trying to look like even though I’m in pain, I’m suffering stoically. Females love fussing over every little injury. At least that’s what I remember from when my dam was alive. It was a long time ago, but I do remember that.
Maybe if Annie sees me injured, she won’t be as afraid. It’s a small scratch, so she won’t think I’m weak, but she’ll see that I’m a wolf like any other.
Or maybe she’ll think that I’m the kind of sad, sorry wolf who gets himself hurt taking down a bird?
Shit. I quickly rotate so my uninjured side is facing the door.
I wish I could just fight someone and take her. I feel like an idiot, skulking around this cabin, bringing her meat she won’t eat, hoping she gets used to me enough to stop smelling like I’m a monster come to murder her.
Mating a female is the least dignified shit I’ve ever done. I should have brought her straight to the dens, but no, I listened to Max. He said if I stole her, she’d cry and make me wait, and it’d be better in the long run to hang around her territory, where she feels safe, until she presents. He said she won’t fight so hard afterward once the bond is in place.
I don’t know about that. It doesn’t smell like she feels safe here, and she’s crying and making me wait now. I’m sleeping outside under the bushes and hiding from the Quarry Pack patrols like I’m scared of them. It’s embarrassing.
She keeps saying that her pack is going to kill me, but they’d have to catch me first, and they’re not going to do that patrolling the same routes every day at the same time. That’s what happens to you when you spend so much time as a man. You start thinking like a human and ignoring your instincts. Wolves don’t follow the same trails day after day. Because it’s dumb.
As soon as I get her back to the dens, that’s the first thing I’m going to teach her. She takes the same paths every day at the same time. She needs to vary her routes. And another thing—someone’s going to steal her if she doesn’t pay more attention to her nose. Every time I approach her, she startles. I haven’t bathed since I got here. My wolf should not be able to sneak up on her.
At least I think she’s close to presenting. She didn’t go to the lodge this morning or up to the witch’s afterward, thank Fate. I hate it when she goes to the witch’s place. I track her there, but I don’t get anywhere near the boundaries of that female’s territory. I like my balls attached, and the witch has been clear. If you trespass without permission, she says she’ll go “collecting nuts.”
What is my mate doing in her cabin now? I know she’s in there. The spicy scent of her heat wafts from the open windows, a dinner bell to a starving male. It makes me hungry to take my skin, and I’m never excited to become the man, not like I crave the wolf when it’s been too long.
My wolf rises to his feet, restless, and trots over to peer inside a window. The large front room is dark. It’s filled with all kinds of human equipment like the stuff we find abandoned in the woods. I press my nose to the glass, teasing out the scents. Plastic. Metal. Chemicals. Teabags left seeping and biscuit crumbs. Traces of the three females she lives with—the hobbled one, the blessed one, and Mari.
Despite whatever’s wrong with Annie, I’m happy that Fate gave her to me. She is the prettiest of the females I’ve seen, either here or back home, and she has the best tits. One is a little bigger than the other so it spills over her bra cup, and it shows through her shirt. I want to bite that little pooch. But gently.
She’s also clever with her fingers. I snuck up to the porch when the others were at dinner last night and watched her in her rocking chair, knitting. She knew I was there—of course, she did—and she tensed, terrified, but her fingers kept looping and hooking the yarn, despite the shaking. She dropped stitches, but she caught and mended them all. She will make good blankets to keep our pups warm and to trade for the things we can’t get ourselves.
I don’t know how to make her understand that I won’t hurt her. I keep low around her, but I’m a big wolf. I can only make myself but so small. I show her my neck, too. Doesn’t seem to make a difference.
She’ll be calmer after I mount her. Then she’ll know she has nothing to fear and that I know what I’m doing.
I will be very careful to please her. Lelia and Diantha both let me mount them when they’re needy, and they’re the pickiest females in the pack. I must be decent with my cock. It’s thick, but Alroy’s is much thicker, and they won’t let him near them.
Once Alroy asked me why they liked me and not him, and I didn’t want to tell him it was because I do exactly what they say to do when I mount them, so I told him it was because I had a deeper rumble. He spent a month rumbling as deep as he could whenever the females were around, annoying the hell out of everyone.
I pad quietly along the porch and peek in the next window. The room is dark. It belongs to the hobbled one. She’s not old, but she acts like a dam to my mate and the others. They follow her like ducklings up to the witch’s cottage and down to the lodge, slowing their pace to match hers.
My dam died during the wasting sickness that fell during the year of the late frost, not long after my sire passed from injuries he got fighting a feral. My mate’s parents are gone, too. I’m happy that Annie has had a female to care for her.
I don’t remember my dam very well anymore. I can’t recall her face, but I can picture perfectly how one side of her mouth curled higher than the other when she smiled. I remember random things—her ginger cookie smell, her wolf’s rough tongue lapping crumbs from my snout, her gentle yips calling me back when I ventured too far afield.
I was an adventurous pup. For a long time, I thought that’s why Fate took her. Because I didn’t keep a close enough eye on her like my sire asked me to do before he passed.
I’m grown now. I’ve lived eighteen years, and I’ve long since figured out that Fate doesn’t have reasons for what she does.
An owl hoots, and my fur bristles.
Why does Annie not come out? She’s not even creeping to the door to see what I’ve brought her.
I growl softly to let her know that I’m coming closer and then leap over the porch rail, continuing alongside the cabin to her room. Her heat is heavy in the air. I don’t know how she’s held out this long. If I were in human form, I’m sure I would have gone into rut days ago.
I reach her window, peer through the glass, and come eye-to-eye with her peeking through her curtains. She startles, screams,and bolts. Her footsteps pound toward the back of the house. The kitchen door slams.
My wolf sighs. We made noise. We brought a goose. How did she not smell the goose? Its blood is all over my face.
My wolf trots after her. We give her lots of space. Maybe if she runs long enough, she’ll be too exhausted to be so afraid.
She races up the hill, down the far side of the ridge, and into the woods. I let her get far enough ahead that I can’t see her through the trees. It’s no trouble tracking her with the scent of terror and the noise she’s making. She must be whacking into every low branch she passes. Thank goodness the patrols are east and west at this time of day. There’s no one between us and the border of Quarry Pack territory.
Of course, she’s going to reach the river first. Will she try to cross it? It’s wide, deep, and fast where she’s heading, and I doubt she swims much. I’ve never seen her without a shirt buttoned up to her chin and a skirt down to her ankles.
If she tries to swim for it, I’ll have to shift. My wolf is an otter in the water, but he can’t very well fish her out of the rapids with his paws. I can only imagine what she’d do if he tried to bite her by the scruff to haul her out.
My pulse races as I think of her neck in my mouth. I can’t wait to mark her. My bite will look perfect on her delicate, willowy neck. I’ll teach her to hold her head high so everyone can see. She doesn’t need to bow down all the time anymore. Now she has me, and I don’t show neck to anyone.
Thankfully, when we reach the river bank, she doesn’t even consider jumping. She whirls to face me, her tits heaving, her eyes wild. Her pupils are pinpricks. Her heat is riding her hard.
Is she gone yet?
She has to be very, very close. She’s finally stopped shivering and shaking and squeezing her hands into little fists. Her gaze is darting around as if she doesn’t know how she got here.