Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Blood roars in my ears. A sour, dank wrongness trickles through me. The words make sense, but damn, they reek.
“What happened to leave the scavenger females alone?”
Father has driven that home since I first shifted and discovered my dick.
“If Alban takes over this pack, what happens to the scavenger females?” Father leans forward, bracing his forearms on his knees. He hasn’t lost all musculature yet. The sickness is whittling away at him as it eats him from the inside. “What happens to your mother? To the Collins females?”
He skewers me with a hard stare. “It won’t matter to you and me, though, will it? We’ll be bones at the bottom of the lake.” He changes tack. “Time, son. There is no problem that time won’t solve. You’re training hard.”
He knows I am.
“Killian Kelly is the best. After you bleed Alban out, you can put the scavenger in an apartment downstairs. Fill her with pups. Do whatever you want. She’ll wait. She’ll be there when you want her.”
I don’t want to have this conversation. I know he’s right, but it sits all wrong, and my wolf has turned his back.
“You’ve always been smart, Cadoc. You’ve always done what’s needed doing.” He smiles, his faith and pride in me unmistakable—as it’s always been. “You will be the greatest leader this pack has ever known.”
Certainty rings in his voice.
Inevitability.
I nod. I have no choice but to make it true.
“Do you want me to send Mother back in?” I ask.
He hesitates, searching my eyes, but he sees his point is made, and his shoulders relax. “Send Howell,” he says.
I nod again, and as I leave, I catch my image in the window, a male straining the seams of his suit jacket, but otherwise composed and unhurried. In complete control.
It’s a joke.
My brain spins, my wolf shuns me, mute, a million miles away, and to all the world, I look like a fucking human stockbroker.
And this is the right path?
I let Seth ring for the elevator, and I follow him inside, clasping my hands at my front and watching the numbers light up one by one.
“Back to the gym?” Seth asks.
No. I’ve done my duty for the evening. I’m on my own time.
I hit the button for the lobby. Seth raises an eyebrow. “On a school night?”
I ignore the quip. “What does Derwyn say?”
“Same.”
“Tell him to leave when he scents me.”
Seth grins. “We breaking the rules, boss?”
“I’m the heir apparent,” I say as the door slides open. “I make the rules.”
* * *
I consider shifting, but in the end, I don’t want to be hanging around the Bogs buck ass naked, and I sure as shit don’t want to have to borrow Derwyn’s clothes. So I walk.
The night is still moonless, but the clouds have cleared, and a hundred stars are out, low and bright like they are in fall. Occasionally, a car shushes down the empty streets. The humans have vacated our territory for the day. Mated shifters are home, the unmated are hanging out at the marina, and the elders are in bed.
Everything is as it should be, and there’s no comfort in it at all.
I take the promenade along the shoreline. A couple necks on a bench. Victorian lampposts cast reflections on the water. Urns hanging from wrought iron hooks overflow with reeking white flowers.
It looks like a fucking movie set—like the one where the guy doesn’t know he’s the star of a reality TV show.
My skin itches. Must be the swelling muscles. I should’ve changed into a T-shirt with some give before I left the Tower. I’m about to bust the seams of my dress shirt.
I pass the Academy, silent and dark, and the brick promenade ends, turning into a gravel path. Then, north past the Narrows, the gravel becomes a dirt path.
There are no more lamps and flowers and benches. Real smells appear on the breeze. Moss. Fish. Woodsmoke. I inhale, and the tightness in my chest eases somewhat.
I hear and smell the Bogs well before I see it.
Fresh kills. Liquor. Herbs. And wolves. Fur. Slobber. Piss.
Snatches of music float on the wind. Fiddles. Bass beats. Human music and sad folk songs we only sing at the bar, drunk. The singing devolves into shrieks and curses and laughter until a voice louder than the others starts a new tune.
Seth trails me to the intersection where the entrance to the boards appears between reeds taller than my head.
“Go check on Kenny and the others.”
“Cadoc—“
I blink. I don’t reply. He’s my second for a reason. He knows when to push back and when it’s wasted breath. He shrugs, shoves his hands in his pockets, and continues on.
I step onto the creaking board. It sinks under my weight. The dank water sloshes.
I’ve been here before. It’s the alpha’s duty to survey his territory. Father and I tour the Bogs at the summer solstice each year. Whichever random unkempt half-wolf they designate as spokesperson escorts us by lagging behind and barking an occasional “left” or “keep going that way, and you’ll end up in the drink, you will.”
We bring special allotment baskets, accept a tribute of moonshine from a scavenger with her tits hanging out, and say, “Until next year.”
They don’t want us here. We don’t want to be here.
I don’t want to be here now, except—
My heart slugs against my ribs, a slow, syncopated rhythm, excitement gathering. I smell cloves over the fish heads bobbing in the marsh grasses, and it’s a beacon.
I pick up the pace. As I turn down a narrow board, a couple tumbles from a trailer, laughing, holding each other upright. They startle when they recognize me. The female cackles before her male cuffs her on the side of the head. They both lower their heads and scurry past, giving me a wide berth.
Most males visit the scavengers. Brody and his crew do. Kenny and Griff. Seth’s been. It’s a rite of passage. A male brings his son down after his first shift, fills a female’s donation box, and tells her to show the boy how to be a man.
Father never bothered to ask me if I wanted to visit the Bogs.
It’s not my thing.
It’s not wrong, per se. As Mother puts it, at least the females do some kind of honest work. But—
It’s not my thing.
The nagging question worms its way up from where I shoved it. Has Rosie had visitors?
Is it her thing?
I stop, my stomach churning scallops, my throat tightening near to choking to keep my dinner down.
My wolf’s claws slice, sinking into me, spearing flesh. The pain is enough for me to regain control. Force the thought away.
Bury it.
I continue on. When I turn again down a board no wider than a two by four, finally, her scent hits me like I’ve run into a wall. No, a kitchen. Warm and spicy.
Rosie.
My mouth waters. Her scent is so strong it erases everything that is not her. The ache in my swollen muscles eases.