Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
The voice hurls bombs at me, dredging deep in my memories, like horror is fuel, like that’s what I run on.
Camphor.
Rattling lungs.
A white sheet almost flat except for the knobs of Ma’s knees and the ridges of her hips.
The voice scrapes the very bottom.
Declan Kelly at our door, smirking, with a palmful of fangs. “Sorry, Aileen. This is all that’s left of him. Had to pick these out of my leg. The rest of him is in my belly.”
Ma falling to her knees as Declan Kelly belched.
Why am I back here again? I’ve already lived through all this. I grew up. I’ve come all this way, miles and miles from where I started, and here I am, fleeing, but back, not away from, and I can’t stop. My momentum has the force of a super magnet.
The trail levels, and I find my stride again, even though I’m favoring my right leg since my left knee is scraped and bleeding. I’m not running as fast as I was, but Justus isn’t gaining on me. The trees become sparse, fields of wildflowers opening on either side. Their stalks and new buds are dark outlines in the moonlight.
Where am I even going? I can’t outrun my own body.
But I can’t stop, either. The voice has hijacked my control center—I don’t even know where my wolf has gotten to—and I’ve never learned the trick of calming myself down. Box breathing, balloon breathing, visualization, counting items, listing colors, naming a thing I can see, smell, hear, taste, and feel, plunging my face in cold water to stimulate my vagus nerve—I can panic through it all.
I’m doing it right now, slow jogging through this field of bluebells and Jack-in-the-pulpits and Dutchman’s breeches. I can see the past clear as a picture—me, out of my mind, naked in the dirt, ass up in the air. I can smell my shame, hear the river, taste the blood from where my teeth bit through my cheek.
I can’t do it again.
My fear spikes, the scent charring my nostrils. I trip over my own feet, cry out, and pitch forward.
A howl rings out. Something darts around me.
I land hard, face down, on a huge heap of fur, the air knocked from my lungs.
Freeze!
I do not need to be told.
I’m lying across a wolf. Justus’s wolf. He’s on his side. I’m sprawled on top of him. He slid underneath me while I fell like a baseball player stealing home. He’s very quiet and very still except for his flank that lifts and lowers me as he breathes.
I tilt my head so I can see his face. He’s already craning his neck to look at me, his soulful wolf eyes watchful and guarded.
I haven’t seen this wolf in years. A fist squeezes my heart.
He caught me a goose. He made himself a pair of alien antennae out of sunflowers. He sat beside me on the porch. Before he figured out what was wrong with me, he tried to hunt down my bad mental health.
I’ve missed him, and I didn’t even know it.
With his eyes locked on mine, he slowly rolls under me so he’s on his back, so I’m lying on soft belly. He slowly sprawls his legs in an X, rests his head back on the ground, and lolls his long tongue out of the side of his mouth. He’s pretending he’s dead. Like I killed him when I fell.
I giggle.
He snuffles and picks his head back up so he can see me. Wolves can’t smile, not really, but it sure seems like it, with his golden eyes dancing.
“Hi,” I say, softly, and try to push myself up without squishing his belly by accident.
He rumbles, lifts his head, and licks my face, chin to forehead. Right up, in, and over my nose.
“Oh, gross!” I roll off him, landing on my butt. He scrambles to his paws, backs off maybe three feet, and sits on his haunches. Was he always this huge?
I draw my knees to my chest, doing my best to cover myself with my mess of a gown. A strip hangs off where I stepped on it, and there’s mud on the hem and grass stains everywhere.
Justus’s wolf flops onto his belly, laying his chin on the ground and gazing up at me with his golden eyes. Did they always glow like that?
His tail thwaps the tall grass behind him. I startle. He drops his tail with a whump.
I watch him. He watches me.
He slowly folds his ears back until they are flush against his head. He looks almost like a pup. A gargantuan, razor-clawed, sharp-fanged, oversized pup.
Very, very slowly, he raises his right ear. Just his right ear.
What does he hear? There’s a mouse rustling in the underbrush and a bullfrog croaking over in the woods, but otherwise, there’s nothing but the wind and our breath.
I frown.
He slowly lowers his right ear and lifts his left.
What is he doing now?
Even more slowly, he lowers his right ear and simultaneously lifts his tail straight up in the air like a handle.
He’s kidding around. I’ve lost my mind, run a mile in a bedsheet, and now I’m sitting in the dirt, and this wolf is joking with me. Oh, and lest I forget, I’m in heat. Explains why the other females today were enjoying their hot cups of tea by the fire while I was desperate for a breeze.
I can’t do this again.
My panic rises, and Justus’s wolf whines. He drops both tail and ears and wriggles forward on his belly, his furry rump working side to side.
I stretch my legs straight, my shoulders slumping. He’s not going to hurt me. He’s a sweet wolf.
Justus is sweet.
I’m the problem.
Justus’s wolf sidles up and plops his head on my thigh. He stares up at my face, the angle making it look like he’s giving me a rueful smile.
“I wish I wasn’t like this,” I tell him, my eyes prickling with tears.
An owl screeches in the distance, and I glance away. In that split second, the wolf disappears, and Justus is there instead, sitting cross-legged beside me, knees up for modesty.
I hang my head, my cheeks heating. I was talking to the wolf. I didn’t mean to say that to him.
“I don’t wish you were any different,” he says, gruff and gentle.
I sniff. “You can’t possibly feel that way.
I don’t.”
He shrugs. “We see things differently.”
That’s his story now. “‘Pathetic coward,’ remember?” I spit at him. “‘A female like you would make weak, spindly young.'”
I don’t want to be bitter like this, not anymore. I know I’m throwing his words from years ago in his face, and he’s apologized, and I believe he meant it. I don’t want to make him feel sorry again. I just want him to be honest.
His head bows forward, his long hair falling in his face. My stomach knots. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to hurt me, either, but I’ve got a multi-tool in my brain, and it’s all knives, and every edge is serrated.
His bare chest rises, and he lifts his head back up, skewering me with his gaze, shining gold in the dark. “Something happened to you,” he says.
My lower lip trembles. I don’t have to answer. He’s not asking.
“You survived.” He takes a deep breath, and his nostrils flare. “I hadn’t found you yet, and I wasn’t there to protect you, and you survived. Then I found you, and like an idiot, I walked away, and you kept surviving. Our young will be tough as hell. They’ll be so, so strong.” His deep voice is too ragged to be bullshit.
I mash my lips together to stop the trembling, but all that does is make my chin wobble.
“And they’ll be fast as hell on two feet,” he says, his lips quirking, coaxing me, inviting me to believe his fairy tale where the tiny thumb-sized female ends up riding a sparrow to her prince rather than being eaten by any one of the monstrous goldfish or butterflies that stalk her like dinner.
We can run.