Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Gross. I shift in my seat. I want to shrink into my clothes, but there’s nothing to this sundress.
Drona taps her spoon on the brim of her teacup like she means it. “No more time for squeamishness, girlie. The witch isn’t around, and even if she was, she couldn’t save you from this. You’ve got to use your brain, and you’ve gotta be tough.”
Arly and Rae nod. Nia flashes me a look of sympathy over the rim of her bowl as she slurps down the oat milk.
“You gotta decide what to ask for.” Rae flicks her ash. “Don’t settle for cheap.”
“Get yourself your own trailer,” Drona says. “Not that we don’t want you here. But Cadoc’s the alpha heir. You could get yourself a double-wide. Maybe take Dewey and Rae with you.” Drona flashes Rae a veiled glance. “No offense.”
“None taken.” It’s the truth. Rae’s got a thick skin. You have to if you’re gonna share a bed with a male with Dewey’s toenails. “Ask for cash, too. Large bills. Weekly, not monthly.”
Drona murmurs agreement. “Get him to put it in writing. The nobs take shit seriously if it’s in writing.”
My stomach churns I sip the tea, and it’s chamomile, but it doesn’t do much but slosh around. This is a nightmare.
“And you want double with each pup, and triple if you breed a male.” Drona stabs the table with her finger. “Have him put that in writing, too.”
“I don’t want to have Cadoc Collins’ pups.” I don’t mean to say it. It just slips out.
All four females fall silent and shift back in their seats, shooting glances at each other as if to prod someone else—anyone else—to say something.
Finally, Rae draws in a breath, hacks, and says, “They grow up quick. These days, they’re out of your hair by thirteen or fourteen.”
“You like our pups.” Arly gives me a weak smile. Arly was carrying her second pup when my brother went for his walk and didn’t come back, and she lost it, so she only has the one. I know she wishes she had more. I feel like an asshole.
“It’s just I don’t want to have a pup that I don’t want to have. You know?”
Nia grunts, and her boots hit the floor. She must have had them propped up under the table. “You don’t have to have pups if you don’t want.”
Drona, Arly, and Rae look at her like she’s spouting bullshit.
“Make him use a condom.” Nia folds her arm so tight her leather jacket squeaks.
“Cadoc Collins isn’t a lap dog like your Pritchard.” Drona thins her lips. “Cadoc will want his own heir, and he’ll get him.” Drona turns to me. “You need to decide whether you’re okay with him taking your pup over to the other side of the lake. It’d be best if you are. If you can’t abide that, you need to start thinking real hard.”
I drop my cup, rattling the saucer.
“Didn’t consider that, did you?” Drona keeps on, no mercy. “You think the nobs are gonna let their future Alpha be raised as a scavenger? There’s no way.”
All my innards sink. For the first time in days, I’m freezing cold.
“Don’t condoms get busted by the knot?” Arly asks, oblivious to the tension.
“You’ve got to be careful. Don’t roll it down all the way.” Nia pantomimes with her hands.
“Sounds like Russian roulette,” Rae says.
“Better than the alternative.” Nia reaches over and pats my arm. “Nobody’s gonna steal your pup and raise him as a douchebag.”
Everyone at the table knows that there’s no way to stop them. My body’s going to betray me. It’s inevitable. And then the nobs will do whatever they want. They always do.
I am so very screwed. I need Abertha, and she’s Fate knows where.
For the first time since all this began, I’m scared down to my bones. There’s no way this ends happily, or with me fading back into the scenery, yesterday’s news.
I have to face facts. “What do I do?”
Arly and Rae say nothing. All they have to offer me is compassion.
Nia’s angry. She’s stabbing her teabag with her spoon.
That leaves Drona, my big sister with the nob mate who breeds her and leaves her, who didn’t get anything in writing so she has to take on visitors to make ends meet. “I can’t tell you,” she says. “But I’m going to point out that you have advantages I never did.”
Drona leans back in her chair and lifts her chin. “You know whatever that witch has taught you. She does what the hell she pleases, and the nobs leave her be. If she hasn’t taught you the secret to that yet, best you learn, and quick.”
There’s a fraught moment while we sit with that, the bitter air tainted with our mingled fear and futile rage and powerlessness.
When I was younger, not too much younger than I am now, when I walked into a room and the females were quiet around a table like this, it’d be like my entrance pushed a “play” button, and action would resume, the clatter of teacups, an offer of a refill, an elder saying, “well, then.”
Now I’m grown, and I can’t break the silence we’ve lapsed into. I’m stuck in it, too.
I’m almost grateful when there’s a banging at the front door. Uncle Dewey howls, roused from a nap.
“You could get the door,” Rae yells, but she’s already pushing up from the table, muttering “never mind.”
The trailer is small, and by leaning back, I can see down the narrow hall to the front. I can also see Nia stiffen when she hears Seth Rosser clear his throat and say, “I need Rosie.”
“Do you, now?” Rae says, letting her housecoat fall open and cocking her beefy hip so he can’t see past her to the kitchen.
“I need you to get her. She’s due at the Academy.”
Rae takes a long draw of her cigarette. She’s giving me time to bolt. I don’t have it in me to squeeze out Danny’s bedroom window, though.
“This is the first I’m hearing about this.” Rae calls over her shoulder, “Arly, did you know Rosie’s due at the Academy?”
“What does that mean?” Arly shuffles to the door and wedges herself next to Rae. Nia jerks her head toward Danny’s room and chugs the last of her tea. She wants to do a runner.
“I don’t know. Myself, I’ve never been due anywhere. Drona, you ever been due somewhere?” Rae’s enjoying this. I can hear the sparkle in her gritty, raspy voice.
Drona joins them, her slippers flapping on the linoleum. “What’s this now? Rosie’s due? Not possible. She left an hour ago. Maybe more.”
“It was closer to six,” Arly says.
“No, you’re getting it all mixed up. Rosie left right after daybreak. Slunk off, head hanging like she’d gotten wasted and banged her own cousin.” Rae’s really hamming it up, and I can see exactly where this is going.
“No, that was Cadoc Collins.” Drona’s not even trying to smother her snicker. “He was the one doing the walk of shame right after daybreak.”
Nia rises soundlessly and gestures for me to follow her.
“Enough.” Seth Rosser is unamused. We all tense at the note of dominance in his voice. “Send Rosie out now.”
His scent finally makes it past Rae’s cigarette smoke to my nose. The tea in my empty stomach sours. He reeks worse than yesterday. Now he smells like week-old rotten egg.
Nia stabs her finger toward Danny’s room.
I don’t want to go to school. I don’t know how I can hold it together without barfing or spontaneously combusting, but nobs don’t take no for an answer, and my sweet, reckless family, sassing the alpha heir’s second like they’ve got neither fear nor sense—nobs don’t tolerate that for long. A scavenger who comes to his brother’s aid gets it twice as bad. Everyone knows.
And all four of these ladies would take a beating for me without a second thought, but I would never let them.
I shake my head at Nia and rise, ready to go do what needs to be done, when Cadoc’s voice growls out, thin and distant. “What?”
“The females aren’t complying,” Seth says, clipped.
“Am I on speaker?” A wave of heat rolls over me when Cadoc speaks.
“Yes.”
“Drona?”
My sister makes a strangled squawk.
“Get Rosie,” Cadoc orders.
But my feet are already moving. I don’t like that Cadoc knows my sister’s name, or that his second is on our doorstep. I hate that I’m being fetched. It feels as rancid as Seth smells.