Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
My pack gapes at me, blinking.
They’re tired of hearing it, and I’m tired of saying it, but damned if I can stop myself. “When the smoke shed is full, and the firewood is piled high, when everyone is cared for, from the weakest to the strongest, there is no need for alphas.”
“Well, Alpha, I have some bad news for you. Don’t know that the smoke shed is full anymore,” Khalil says, raising a pointed black eyebrow.
My wolf snarls in my throat.
Khalil puffs his chest and opens his arms. “Well, come on,” he says. “I’ve been waiting.
Alpha.”
My temper snaps.
We meet mid-air in a collision of fur and skin, limbs and fangs and feet and claws. He moves faster than the last time we brawled, but his weakness is still his weakness—what he really, truly wants is pain, not a win.
Except for Elis—who lies still and watches with his muzzle flat on the ground—the others edge away, licking their wounds while they enjoy the show. I don’t fight much these days. No one will try me except Khalil.
He attacks with no strategy, snapping and swiping at whatever part of me he can reach, shifting to dodge and lunge without thinking about where I’m going to be or what I’m doing.
He leaps for my neck. I shift, squat, grab his hindlegs as he sails overhead, and swing him through the air at an oak, just like a game of snatch ’em. He hits the trunk with a meaty thud. I’ve still got it.
He shifts back to man as he slides to the forest floor.
“Stay down,” I tell him, but his eyes are on fire. For all his nonchalance, he’s angry that he had to walk away without a female.
I understand the feeling.
He leaps back to his feet and sprints at me. I wait until he’s close, and I shift, clamping down on his calf with the full force of my jaw. I dash forward, dragging him so he lands flat on his back. He shifts to wolf, curling and writhing, trying to get a piece of me, but I hold him tight and shift again, knocking him across the dirt with the force of my bigger human body exploding into his wolf.
He comes at me over and over, in fur and skin, and I carve him up like a bird at the full moon table. After his calf, I rip into his shoulder, and then a knee, and a hip. It takes him longer and longer to drag himself upright.
He’s fighting to stop hurting. It doesn’t work. I learned that the first few years after I walked away from Annie.
Finally, after a lucky hit directly to his human sternum that steals his breath, he falls onto his ass and stays there. When he’s finally able to speak, he huffs, “We didn’t know that the Byrnes planned to take Kelly out.”
I grunt, spit blood from my mouth, and then crouch next to Elis to continue checking him out. “You should have bailed the minute you figured it out.”
“It was too late. We already scented Kelly on the wind. Would you have had us run like cowards?”
I pluck a stick from the nearby undergrowth and hurl it at his head. He ducks, and it misses, nailing Tiny Jac’s wolf in the side of his head. He yelps and skitters away.
“I wouldn’t have had you do anything because
I am not your alpha
!” I shout, scooping up Elis since he’s already startled and peeking at his belly. It’s a mess. “But if I had been fool enough to join forces with a bunch of delusional lost packers trying to overthrow their battle-chosen alpha, then yes, I would have run when I realized I’d kidnapped his mate. Give me your pants!” I snap at Alroy. He’s the only one of us who took the time to snag his clothes when we did, in fact, run.
Alroy immediately fumbles with his waistband. I quickly look down. Guts peek through the gash in Elis’s underside. It still beats seeing Alroy’s dick.
His pants land in a heap beside me. I amp up my rumble and murmur to the young wolf huddled and shaking in the dirt. “It’ll be over quick, brother. A few moments to get your stuffing back in, and you’ll be right as rain.”
His sad whine tears at my heart.
“On three,” I say. “One. Two.” I roll him onto his back, pin him in place with one arm, and frantically pack his wound with moss before any more intestine pops out. He manages a few weak kicks and swipes before he passes out from the blood loss.
I finish binding his stomach and then glare at the others. “Who else is hurt?”
They scuff their paws in the dirt, hang their muzzles, and keep their traps shut.
I raise my voice. “Who else? We’re not leaving a trail for Kelly to follow. We’re already going to have to move the pack. Did you even think of that? Kelly will come after us.” I’m bellowing now. “Did you consider the elders and the pups? Do you think our females are going to be happy to leave their dens because you took it upon yourselves to kick a gods-damned hornet’s nest? For nothing?”
I give my anger free rein. The rage is well-worn, as familiar now as breathing, but I still remember a time when I didn’t feel it burning in my guts every waking minute. She gave it to me. My mate.
I had hope before. I knew the odds were against me finding a mate. The wasting sickness took so many of us, so many females. But if Max could find his mate picking flowers in a field beside the North Border wall, then maybe mine was out there, too.
And then I found her, and she cowered from me like I was a fate worse than death, and I would have done anything at all to ease her fear. To please her.
And then she invited me into her nest, and I thought everything was going to change, and I wouldn’t be the male that everyone came to with trouble, who always slept alone. I was Annie’s mate.
And she ruined it. Made it foul. I can’t bear to remember, but at night in the dark when I stroke my cock, I always think about that pile of leaves beside the river, and then when I’m at my weakest and about to come, the shame kicks me in the gut, again and again, and I spurt my seed onto my belly, disgusted with myself and hating her.
She has no shame. No regret. At the Quarry Pack dens, she clung to the other females, refusing to look at me, like I was the enemy, like I don’t feel our bond in my chest every minute of every day, a constant aching empty reminder that there is no hope left for me. I am as alone as these sorry, mangy males slumped in a circle around me.
“Alpha?” Alroy’s quavery voice brings me back to the moment.
My pack brothers are all hanging their heads, tails tucked. The stink of their shame drifts like the stench of scum on a warm pond.
I sigh, loud and long, and bend over to pick up Elis’s limp carcass.
“Khalil, take Tiny Jac and Calvus up to the north camp and clear out those dens. Don’t just check for bear. Look for snakes and lizards and such. The females don’t care to share their nests with critters. Alroy, you take the others and tell everyone what you’ve done. Tell them to be packed by the time I return. Max, can you walk?”
He grumbles.
“Well, go on then. Go,” I bark at my packmates. I cradle Elis to my chest like a baby to add pressure to the wound.
I’m last to leave the clearing, but I don’t linger, and I don’t look back toward Quarry Pack.
Annie didn’t spare a look for me.
I have no choice. I walk away again.
5
ANNIE, ONE YEAR LATER
I hate beekeeping. I hate varroa mites more. I hate testing for varroa mites the most.
I shake a few hundred workers out onto a double thick sheet of newspaper and fold the paper like a funnel. Then, very carefully, I pour a cup of bees into the shake jar.
Is the queen in there? Better check.
No. I already checked a dozen times.
Better check again.
I know for a fact that the queen isn’t in the batch of bees I took out for testing. I found her before I started, and I kept an eye on her as I drew other frames from their slots in the box. Then I went back and made sure she was safe and sound.
But are you really, really sure? Better check again.
Iknow that the queen is on a frame I left in the box.
But you should check one more time. Just to be sure.
I let the voice babble her litany of doom and gloom in the background and focus on the task at hand.
Even though it’s early spring and in the low sixties outside, it’s hot as hell inside my white suit, and loose strands of hair are sticking to my sweaty face. There’s nothing I can do with the mesh veil covering my head. I try to huff the hair away, but it’s plastered to my cheek.
As quickly as I can wearing these thick gloves, I fill the jar halfway with alcohol. The bees panic while I screw on the lid, and my nose wrinkles at the chemical stink.
I hate murdering bees. Not because I’m fond of them or anything. They sting, and even when they’re relatively calm, they buzz around you, skulking at the verge of your peripheral vision, and honestly, I don’t know which is worse—a sting hurts, but it feels better once you slap some mud on it. The skulking gives me headaches and drives my wolf nuts.
Somehow, this job defaulted to me after Una mated Killian. Mari point blank refused to take over bee duty, and then she mated Darragh Ryan. Kennedy is really good at not being around when conversations about the divvying up of duties happen.
I’m an unenthusiastic beekeeper, but I’m a truly reluctant bee murderess. No matter how necessary I know it is, drowning them feels awful. I shake the jar as hard as I can, trying to give them as quick a death as possible. They’re dying for the greater good, but they don’t know that, and even if they did, I bet they wouldn’t have volunteered.