Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Some tension leaves his body. “Well, usually, one of us keeps an eye out for threats while the other looks for signs of prey.”
“Dibs on being the one who keeps an eye out for danger,” I say.
He smiles. The tightness in my chest lightens. I made a joke, and he got it. This is good.
“Good. I’m really good at tracking.”
“Elspeth told me.”
“She did?”
“She said when you were little, and Max was teaching the pups to hunt, he had to put out a decoy trail for you so you’d leave some animals for the others.”
He smiles, bashful but clearly pleased. “I wasn’t that good. I was just a bad listener. Max probably figured I’d learn better on my own and out of his hair.”
His arms loop loosely around his knees now as the atmosphere has eased. He is so unlike Quarry Pack males. They take compliments as their due—or at least they act that way. Modesty is weakness.
And no Quarry Pack would sit beside a female in a field of wildflowers, not unless he was about to mount her.
My face catches fire, and I catch a whiff of my slick in the air. I immediately clamp my thighs together, my gaze darting over to Justus to see if he noticed.
He is very obviously pretending that he didn’t. His pupils are blown, the gold only a thin ring, and his muscles strain again, his cheekbones coloring. He makes a great show of sifting through the tall grasses at his side, humming under his breath.
“Here’s a good one,” he says, plucks a geranium, and passes it to me. “See, I’m a good tracker. You don’t have that one yet.”
“It’s a wild geranium.”
“Yes, he was. Very wild. He was a very wily foe. Don’t expect me to bag you one of those every day, now.”
“I’ll keep my expectations low.” I struggle against a smile.
He leans over, plucks another, and gives it to me. “Not too low,” he says.
I stop fighting and grin at him. His mouth curves, mirroring mine. “Okay, mighty hunter,” I say.
“Now we’re in accord,” he says, rising to his feet, brushing bits of grass off his hairy, bare thighs. I quickly avert my eyes.
“Ready to go back to camp, Scout?” he asks, low and gentle. “We don’t have to decide anything tonight. It’ll keep for tomorrow.”
I guess it will. I clutch my bouquet in one hand, hold my gown closed with the other, and let Justus help me up by the elbow.
“Okay,” I say.
I let my mate lead me back to his den, and I am bad at my job because the entire way, despite the pecking voice’s best efforts, I don’t dwell on any dangers.
I hold my flowers, and I walk beside my mate in the moonlight.
13
JUSTUS
I hardly sleep at all, and I’m up before the sun to get hot water for Annie’s tea. I don’t know how long we have, and time is nipping at my heels.
I wake her up by being as loud as I can when I come back from the bonfire, and despite her blurry eyes and grumpy face, I can’t feel bad. I don’t want to miss a second with her.
She grabs whatever is at hand to cover herself and ends up under a haphazard pile of yesterday’s gown, a quilt, a thermal blanket, a pillow, and the sheet that she kicked off the pallet in her restless sleep. My den overflows with the scent of her approaching heat, so thick and delicious on my tongue, so heady.
I can’t afford a fuzzy head. If this is all the time I get with her, I want to remember it all. And I need all my wits to convince her to stay, or at the very least, if nothing else, not to fuck up the mating like I did last time.
I wracked my brain all night for a strategy. Flowers seemed to work, so maybe Max and the other happily mated males are onto something. I don’t want to leave her to rustle up chocolates and treats, though, and it just doesn’t seem like enough.
How do you make a female fall in love with you? In one day, maybe two if you’re lucky?
“Tea,” I say, ducking and cautiously entering the den.
She rubs her eyes, frowning, and makes grabby hands. I smile and pass the tea. She still has the spark from last night. Good.
She sips and tries to raise herself to sit cross-legged, but the blankets are hopelessly tangled, and there’s no way to sort it without spilling the tea. She glares down at the messy pile of blankets around her, her willowy arms raised, the mounds of her lovely breasts showing over the hem of an old patchwork quilt.
She looks like a princess from a picture book with one of those big, poofy dresses, but even better than that because her hair is a complete wild mess, and instead of sparkles and satin, she’s surrounded by my things, saturated in my scent. She looks made for me.
She was made for me, so I must know somewhere deep down how to make this work. If I were a female, what would I want?
I am not going to think about Annie slipping her graceful fingers into her wet slit while she bites her bottom lip and whines my name. That’s not helpful. I am going to stop picturing it now.
Right now.
Fuck.
I get up, turn my back, and rummage in the basket like I’ve got a sudden basket emergency.
What would I want? Well, I would want pants for a start. I couldn’t stand walking around in a bedsheet.
I paw through the contents of the basket with renewed purpose. I have a pair of pants with a drawstring that’ll do for her, and a thin sweater I wear when it’s too cold to go shirtless but not cold enough to go full fur. It’ll hang off her, but it smells like me. Maybe she won’t mind.
I noticed how she has the blankets piled close to her nose so she can tuck her head and take a good whiff of my scent. I’m doing the same, but since her scent is so thick in the air, I’m pretty much breathing twice as fast, once for oxygen, once to soothe the need gnawing in my belly. It’s not doing much for my clarity of thought. I root right past the pants I’m looking for twice before I grab them.
“You can wear these,” I say, setting the sweater and pants on the edge of the pallet. “And then we can—“
We can what?
What do females like to do? Long baths in the stream with no one asking them for anything, talking with the other females, hell, I don’t know—Lelia likes throwing knives with the males. Ashleen likes dancing and cards. Mabli likes propping her feet up and tippling from the flask of moonshine she keeps in her knitting bag.
None of this works for courting. What do I like to do? My mind is blank.
I like her. Annie. My pretty, perfect mate.
She gazes up at me with big brown eyes and delicately sips her tea, a knotted hunk of hair sticking up from the side of her head. I would love to do anything that this female would let me do.
“We’ll do the rounds,” I say. That’s all I can think of. We’ll do what I usually do.
Why is this so hard? It’s Fate, right? And nature. I’m supposed to be born knowing how to woo this female.
Annie stares at me. She’s set her tea down on the floor, and she has the shirt in her hands. Oh. She wants me to leave so she can change.
“Right,” I say, wiping my palms on my canvas pants. Well, I’m proving Plato wrong, moment by moment here. My soul has knowledge of jack shit, at least when it comes to females. “I’ll go.”
Her scent sours.
“Not far. Just outside. I’ll be right there.” I drag a hand through my hair, and then, after a few more excruciating seconds, my feet take pity on me and walk our ass out of the den.
I stride over to the ledge and survey the camp below, hands on my hips, pretending that I have some dignity left. Folks are slow to rise today. They usually are after a successful hunt.
I see little Leon has beat his dam awake. He’s snuck from her den and toddled all the way down to the clearing and across camp to the bonfire where he’s begging bread from Rodric. When Annie comes out, we’d best stop there first and take him back before Delphie wakes up, misses him, and panics.
Just as I make the plan, Annie clears her throat behind me. I spin, overeager, my heart catching in my throat. In the daylight, she’s twice as lovely. My faded gray sweater swims on her, and the pants bag around her legs like potato sacks. She tamed her hair and tied it back with what looks like a strip from yesterday’s gown.
With her brown hair and eyes sparkling in the sunshine, she looks like a forest sprite. She clasps her hands and rocks on her small feet, bashful but enthralled, just like me. She takes me in, too. I can’t help but straighten my shoulders while her gaze darts to my chest and then slides down.
My cock swells, and her eyes snap back to mine. I smile—very, very careful not to let it turn into a smirk—and say, “Ready?”
“Okay,” she answers softly.
I gesture for her to go ahead of me down the switchback path. As we pass the dens, I call out a greeting if I hear rustling within and tread lightly if it’s quiet. When we pass Delphie’s, I hear her stirring, so I call in to her that Leon is down at the fire with