Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Last Pack
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They’ll tear you apart.
She’s beginning to see the issue. A high-pitched whine rises from her throat, and she continues to creep backward, her belly dragging in the dirt, a fresh wave of fear perfuming the air. Justus squeezes his eyes shut, the tip of his nose flushing red as if the scent burns. It kind of does if you’re not used to it.
They’ll rend you limb from limb. Eat your flesh. Suck the marrow from your bones.
The pecking voice is back in her full glory, a tinge of vindication in her tone.
Your mate hates you. He’ll hand you over to his pack and leave.
She flashes a picture in my head that I didn’t even know existed in my mind—Justus walking away from my nest by the river, his back stiff, his muscles tensed, his hands balled in fists. Like he’d been hurt, and he was hiding it. I’ve seen plenty of males walk away like that when Killian has the males spar after dinner in the lodge. The ones who lose.
What do I do? I’m petrified, crouched low and shaking, terrified, with every reason to be, while this male waits for me, his palms raised, like I’ve lost my mind yet again.
How would he like to stroll into the Quarry Pack commons naked and uninvited?
My wolf whines. It’s a question. Do I want our skin? Upon consideration, she doesn’t want to walk into this, either.
There is no way in hell. I huddle in my corner, and she huffs a sigh.
At the same time, Justus seems to make a call. He huffs, too, scoops up my wolf, and tucks her under his arm like a football again.
“Never the easy way with you, eh?” he grumbles, more in resignation than complaint.
Little does he know how right he is—it is never, ever the easy way for me.
The last leg of the journey to the Last Pack is only about a half mile, so the voice doesn’t have much time to predict our imminent demise, but she makes up for it with imagination.
They’ll skin you, wear your fur, chew on your flesh until you’re almost dead, then let you heal, and then do it again, night after night.
Her warnings come louder and faster as Justus climbs a steep, pebbled path that winds between craggy outcroppings and emerges on a kind of tableland.
My breath catches. This can’t be real.
I’ve never seen any place like this before. We emerge from a narrow choke point between two sheer rocks, and all of a sudden, a sprawling glade and entire shifter camp is spread in front of us. Slabs of white rock rise like a natural amphitheater around it, dotted with deep green patches of tall hemlock, cedar, and cypress, and beyond and above the terraced rock, other ridges and spires tower to the north and west. Water burbles somewhere, but I can’t see the source.
I don’t see how it could possibly be man-made, but I also don’t see how nature could make a place so clearly designed as shelter. It’s a place out of time. Even the colors are enchanted. Every brown and green and white is bold—the brownest brown, the greenest green.
As my gaze darts around the clearing, searching for threats and escape routes, I pick out at least a dozen low, sloped entranceways among the rocks. Those must be the dens. Glowing almond-shaped eyes blink from the shadows, visible from hundreds of yards away.
Closer, and more terrifying, dozens of males have risen to their feet, looming beside rough-hewn stools, wooden crates, and overturned rusted buckets, glaring at me in spiky silence, poised to attack. I know that stance. I’ve seen it a hundred times in front of Killian’s dais after dinner when he calls the males to fight.
Don’t move. Don’t breathe.
My wolf presses closer to Justus’s side, searching for the feel of his low rumble. It soothes her. She trusts him to protect her.
I don’t.
I cram myself in the furthest corner of the limbo where I exist, sliding down to scrunch myself into the smallest space possible, hugging my knees to my chest. I wish I’d run when I had the chance. I should have never taken a different way home. I should never have left my room in my cabin where I was safe.
Safe, but scared all the time, anyway.
My wolf peeks under Justus’s arm at the males stalking toward us. Some are in full fur on four legs, but most have arrested themselves mid-shift, pointy-eared and fanged with various degrees of shag. None are in their skin alone.
When we arrived, two males were fighting, but they separated the instant we emerged in the glade. Now, they stalk toward us side by side, chests heaving. The skinnier one’s ear is torn and bloody, half perked, the other half drooping like a leaf with a snapped stem.
Most of the males were clustered by the huge fire pit in the center of the clearing when we arrived. Now they approach us, carrying whatever they were working with. One elder carries a fiddle and bow at his side. Another holds a knife in one hand and a rabbit skin in the other.
They hold themselves the same way, and wear the same type of worn, low slung pants, but based on looks, they could have come from a half dozen different packs. Some are Black, some are brown-skinned, some are pale and ruddy. They’re all tall, cut, and have the same natural confidence that Justus does.
They all have tattoos like Justus, too, the same intricate maze of lines and spirals that wind around the simple outlines of boats or trees or fish, draped over their right shoulder, arm, and torso like a shawl. The older the male, the further their tattoos stretch down their right sides to their thighs. Some have tattoos all the way down the tops of their right foot. Even the oldest males seem willing and able to shred an interloper to pieces.
There are so many cocks nestled in such thick pelts.
Where are the females? The pups?
The brawling males reach us first, pausing a few feet away the instant Justus’s rumble takes on a note of warning. Like Justus, both of these males are in their twenties and wear their hair and beards long, but that’s where their similarities end.
The taller one is brown skinned, and there’s a glint in his dark eyes. He’s smirking, his canines denting his lips. The only wolves I’ve seen with his exact coloring were some of the males from North Border who came to Quarry Pack to train with Killian.
North Border wolves don’t have a single look, but they all carry themselves in a certain way so you can recognize them from a distance—like they’ll attack first, without provocation. This male doesn’t carry himself that way, though. He gives off assurance, maybe even cockiness, but not aggression.
The other brawler—the one with the injured ear—is pasty, red-headed, and freckled. He’d fit in fine at Quarry Pack. He has the confidence of a young, B-roster fighter, the kind of arrogance that reads as distemper and smells like bravado.
Both of the brawlers’ expressions are suspicious, and their posture is almost hostile, but they toe the line Justus set with his rumbling. They clearly want to get into our space, but they stay back, pacing that invisible limit, nostrils flaring, tails whipping.
The other males gather closer, too, circling behind us, blocking the way out. My heart pounds faster.
They’re cutting off your escape. Fight. Fight!
My wolf’s fur bristles. She’s with the pecking voice.
“This is my mate, Annie,” Justus says calmly and sets me on the ground like he’s presenting me to them as a gift.
He does it so quickly that there’s nothing I can do. One moment, my wolf is cradled in his arms. The next she’s standing on her own four, wobbly feet on the plush, mossy ground, mere feet from the prowling males, surrounded on all sides, frozen in terror.
See. You can’t trust anyone.
My fear explodes.
The redhead’s face instantly contorts like he’s sucking lemons. “What did you do to her?” he asks as he tries to wave the smell away from his face.
Justus sighs. “She just smells like that sometimes. You get used to it.”
“The females won’t like it,” the redhead says.
Justus doesn’t reply, and I can’t read his face. I’m paralyzed, staring at the pack as they circle us, gathering closer and closer. How many are behind me now? How close? I still don’t see any females.
What have they done with the females?
Panic claws up my throat.
The redhead pinches his nose and asks, “Did you trade Kelly for her?”
“No trade. She’s my mate.”
The other brawler snorts. “You stole her.”
“She’s my mate, Khalil,” Justus repeats more firmly. “I didn’t steal her.”
The redhead’s pacing becomes more agitated. The gathered males mutter to each other, glowering in our direction. They look like the illustrations of ferals in the Moon Lake Academy textbooks—long, wild hair, lengthened fangs that dent their lower lips, furry chests, and wolfish ears and tails.
In the illustrations, ferals are always slavering or lunging or swiping at a cowering female with their claws. These males aren’t acting like that at all, but they definitely aren’t like Quarry Pack or Moon Lake males, either. I don’t know quite how to describe it except that they don’t stand like a pack at all.
Back home, when the males gather, they face the leader, usually Killian, and stand according to rank, higher in the front, lower in the back. This group is all over the place.
One lanky male is eating a drumstick. Toward the back, two younger males bump into each other, riling up the others nearby, trying to egg someone into a fight. A few elders have crouched to watch the proceedings from under the shade of an elm. Periodically, they bark when the others block their view.
There is a great deal of scratching among the furrier ones. A few who are fully shifted have padded to the front and plopped on their sides to watch. This pack isn’t waiting for orders; they’re waiting to be entertained.
“Well, did you take out Killian Kelly before you took her?” the redhead asks.