Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“If he’s like his brothers, he’s got a good bit of meat on his bones,” I say and rip off his head, pitching it aside.
Her eyes bulge.
I slide a claw under his pelt at the shoulder joint and do my best to peel him like an orange. It’s not my best skinning work, but I don’t have a knife, and I’m not going to make my mate pick fur from her teeth if I can help it.
She makes a strange noise. I glance up. She’s not watching me. Her eyes are glued to the squirrel’s head. It’s kind of looking back at her.
She makes the noise again, a sharp horking sound.
Oh.
Shit.
I snatch her up and dash for the bushes. We make it clear of the shelter seconds before she loses the content of her belly. It’s only water, but somehow, it keeps coming. I sort of aim her at a shrub and breathe through my mouth.
How does she have this much in her stomach? Did she sip from some puddle while I wasn’t looking? She drank where I did, and I feel fine.
She hawks up air for a bit, and then she quiets, whining. I carry her carefully back, and I try to interest her in the squirrel, but she won’t even open her eyes to look at it.
She’s had enough for one day. I have, too. I suppose it won’t hurt to sleep now and let her stomach settle. Tomorrow, we’ll meet up with the river, and I’ll catch her a fat fish. She can eat trout with the head on.
I clean things up and sweep out the alcove while she watches from a distance. She’s so exhausted that she’s listing on her thin legs. She makes no complaint when I pick her up and settle her behind me, my body between her and the outside. There is still nothing more dangerous than a raccoon out there, but I don’t suppose that matters. The dark is terrifying when you’re small.
I remember when I was young. Predators stalked at night, and I was already vulnerable enough without being blind, too—small, alone, and so many years away from shifting.
It’s unbearable to think that my mate knew that feeling, but she did, didn’t she? When I found her, she had no living blood family, like me, except she didn’t have her wolf to come to her defense. And she is so delicate. Her weight is nothing against my back, the pressure of her chest rising and falling almost a flutter.
And I stomped away from her like a pup throwing a tantrum. I left her.
How do I make this right?
For one, I’ll discover what hurt her, and I’ll kill it. Then I’ll teach her to shift correctly and fight so she doesn’t have to be afraid ever again.
A stiff breeze picks up, and the temperature drops. I’m shivering, stuck in my skin, huddled in the dirt. When the wind blows just so, I catch the scent of my mate’s vomit and squirrel blood.
I’ve just realized that I made the greatest miscalculation of my life.
But my mate’s wolf is breathing softly on the back of my neck, and I can feel her heart beat against my shoulder blade.
I’d live in this moment forever if I could.
7
ANNIE
I’m trapped between my sleeping mate and a wall of dirt, but my wolf isn’t panicking. I’m petrified, cowering in a corner of our psyche, but she’s wriggling up against his back and snuffling at his neck.
I can’t believe her. She nuzzles the skin behind his ear, rubbing her chin on his shoulder,scent marking him. I don’t know how he hasn’t woken yet.
There’s drool.
Don’t wake him. Don’t touch him. Be still. Don’t breathe.
The voice bellows commands while I moan and rock. My wolf ignores us both. She wants to bite her mate. Gnaw on him like a drumstick. Desperate to discourage her, I toss pictures of the headless squirrel into her brain. She freezes, mouth open, midway to a nibble.
Thank goodness she’s squeamish. Quarry Pack males and their mates hunt and eat in their fur during full moon hunts, but I never have, since I’ve never gone on a run. The meat I eat comes wrapped in brown paper.
Her stomach rumbles at the thought, the memory of the squirrel swiftly losing its ick factor as she stretches her jaw and gently locks it around Justus’s muscular upper arm. His bicep flexes, almost imperceptibly, while his breath remains slow and even. He’s pretending to be asleep.
It’s a trap!
I focus with all my power on dragging my wolf away, but she’s in full control, and she’s lost all sense of self-preservation. There’s meat in her mouth, and she’s not letting go. She slowly sinks her teeth down, but not enough to puncture his flesh. She’s just—playing. She knows he’s awake.
My wolf doesn’t play. She never has, not even when we were very little. She stays quiet and keeps her head down.
But now she’s closing her jaw on Justus’s arm, slowly shaking her head back and forth, gnawing his bicep like a marrow bone. Suddenly, with a growl, he flips to face us. She drops his arm and scurries backward, but there’s no space, so she ends up plastered against the curved dirt wall with her paws braced on his rock-solid chest.
He grins, his fangs flashing bright white in his thick beard. He snaps them, playfully, pretending to bite my snout.
My wolf yelps.
I scream.
Fight! Run!
Immediately, a fog of fear swamps the small space, and I have a close up of his face as it contorts in horror and disgust. If he was wearing a shirt, he’d tug it up over his face like the males at Moon Lake Academy did when someone passed gas. My wolf screws her eyes shut and shoves her snout into the dirt as if that will get us out of this.
I smell awful.
Usually, for me, embarrassment is an aftereffect, and panic is the main reaction, but for some reason, even though the pecking voice is wailing in the background somewhere about how I need to claw my way out through the dirt, I’m not drowning in terror.
The reflexive fear is there, but for the first time, it’s being drowned out by a desperate, terminal mortification. I stunk the place up. I can taste it in my mouth. That means he can taste it in his mouth, too.
“Sweetling,” he says, low and cajoling. “Open your eyes, sweetling.”
He doesn’t sound totally disgusted. Actually, his voice is oddly nasal. I peek.
He’s pinching his nose closed. My wolf moans like she’s the most miserable creature alive. He grins again, flashing those long, wickedly sharp canines, but this time, I don’t panic, and I don’t look away. I can’t. His teeth are so clean and pointy. His soft lips are so mysteriously curved as they disappear into his beard. I want to trace them with my fingers to see if they’re as soft as they seem. Or if his beard is as scratchy.
“I’m not a danger to you. No need to smoke me out,” he says, chuckling, and bobs forward to drop a quick kiss on my nose before he wriggles backward, out of our alcove. “Come on now before that stink settles into your fur. If I walk into camp with you reeking like this, the females will beat me with their brooms.”
He’s teasing. Females would never do something like that to a male his size. He’s still grinning while he walks a few steps and pauses to stretch, arching his back and folding his arms behind his head.
His abs are taut. There is a smattering of hair peeking above the waistband of his low hanging sweatpants.
Run. Now. It’s your chance.
The voice is so faint, like it’s coming from under a bucket.
My wolf ignores her completely and pads over to stand next to him. She lifts her rump and lowers her forepaws to stretch her own back, cracking her spine, breathing through her mouth while her fur airs out.
It’s very early. The gray light is only now turning mellow gold and every new green leaf is still wet with dew.
The voice is right. Now is our best chance to escape. I could trot off to the bushes. Pretend to need privacy to relieve myself. Get a head start.
Which he’d close in seconds.
He’s fast and strong and somehow familiar with the terrain, even though it’s not his territory. The area we’ve been passing through isn’t marked by any pack. There are some signs of humans, the wrappers, cigarette butts, and bottles that follow their passage like the wake of a boat, but none of it is fresh. There’s no one out here now except us.
If I ran, and for some reason he let me go, I’d be alone. It’d take a day to get home—if I could find my way. I can track as well as most, but he carried me for miles while I slept, and he doesn’t leave signs. I noticed that early on.
Would my wolf even let me go?
No. I don’t even need to ask her. She’s fascinated by him. Even now, she’s mimicking his side stretches, even though it doesn’t work at all with her sausage-shaped body. If I want to run, I have to take back our skin, and then I’ll be naked and slow. I won’t get far if he comes after me.
Maybe he wouldn’t. He seems fond of my wolf, but he hates me. His contempt burned in his eyes at the river. He didn’t try to hide it. He wanted me to know how he felt. I don’t need to dig the bond out of the deep hole I buried it in to confirm it and feel his hatred in my insides.
I don’t care. It’s good that he hates me. I don’t want any of this. I want my morning tea, my toast and jam, and my bathroom. I’m so dirty. My fur is stiff, and I do not want to know what’s in it.
I don’t want to go to the Last Pack. Everyone says they live in dens like our ancestors, like animals, with no laws but strength and no justice except claws and fangs. At least that’s what the instructors said at Moon Lake Academy. The Last Pack chapter in the textbook was short and mostly about how they steal pups and females.
Justus stole me. But why, if he loathes me?
To make you suffer. To kill you. Run now while you have the chance. Before it’s too late.