Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
I seize the bond and tug. He trips forward a few steps.
I watch the emotions flit across his face. Surprise. Alarm. Curiosity.
The bond tugs in my chest. It’s not a violent yank, it’s more like a steady pull, urging me along. I stagger.
He grins. It’s quick, a flash of straight, white teeth, almost a baring of teeth. But it was there. For a moment.
I pull the bond again. He firms all his muscles. The seams at his shoulders split. This time, he doesn’t budge an inch. His lip quirks, smug and proud.
The bond in my chest draws me toward him. It’s a more controlled force than last time. Gentler.
He lets go when I’m standing toe to toe with him.
“We look like drunk idiots,” I tell him.
His lips curve higher. “Yeah. You more than me.” He nods for me to continue toward the Math Hall.
I walk at a normal pace, and he falls into step beside me.
“Did you know you could do that?” he asks.
“Yeah.” He didn’t?
“How?”
“Well, for one, my Uncle Dewey does it when he wants my Aunt Rae to come scratch him.”
In the Bogs, it’s called “yanking the leash.” I knew it was possible, of course, but I didn’t know how exactly to do it. That was instinct. “You didn’t know?”
He lifts a shoulder as if it’s inconsequential.
Nobs have given up a lot of our ways. It’s hard to imagine his parents don’t yank the leash on occasion, though. How does his dad know when it’s dinner time?
We’re almost at the far end of the lawn. General Numeracy is in a portable behind the next building. Our steps slow in unison.
“It didn’t hurt, did it?” he asks as if it’s suddenly occurred to him.
“No.” I slide him a sidelong glance. “Did I hurt you?”
His lips soften again. “I’ll recover.”
For a brief second, our eyes meet, and there isn’t that frisson, that compulsion to submit, the dread and strange excitement. For that instant, he’s any male, like Bevan or Pritchard, and we’re shooting the shit in the sunshine, lollygagging on our way to class.
And then movement in a window of the glass-and-metal Research and Technology Center draws my attention.
Brynn Owen and Brody Hughes are watching us. Brody’s smirking. Brynn’s green eyes are narrowed like a cat. She spits something, and Brody replies. A shiver runs down my spine. I drop my eyes to the brick.
For all that’s holy, don’t catch a nob’s eye.
Behind Brynn and Brody, a half dozen other nobs are gathered, staring and sneering. Cadoc’s wolf rumbles a warning at the building, and for the first time today, I’m afraid.
* * *
I take a nap in General Numeracy, and I lay my head down in Office Applications. The instructor leaves you alone if you turn on the computer screen and tap the keyboard when he walks past. I sit by a cracked window, and I discover that males I’m related to don’t reek. Bevan and a few other Kembles trade seats, and I make it through class without yakking.
The jacket helps, too. I keep my nose tucked in the upturned collar. Nia alternates between laughing at me and clicking her tongue ring between her front teeth, worrying.
We skip lunch to hang out under an oak beside the library. There’s no way I’m doing the Commons when it’s filled with males. Pritchard and Bevan bring Nia and I trays. I feel like a real asshole making Pritchard eat his all the way on the library steps, but he smells like fart. Not normal fart—that I could handle. Condensed fart.
“What does Pritchard smell like to you?” I ask Nia as we recline against the tree trunk, watching Bevan mess around with a hacky sack.
“Berries.” She crosses her legs and props the heel of one combat boot on the toe of the other. “What does he smell like to you?”
“Butt.”
“Dingleberries,” she says. We both crack up.
“How about him? What’s he smell like?” Nia nods at Derwyn Collins. He’s skulking out by a hedge a few yards away, playing on his phone, glancing over every so often. I think he’s keeping tabs on me.
“Wood, but in a bad way.” Happily, he’s far enough away that I only catch a whiff when the wind blows in our direction. “Does this seriously last until Cadoc and I do it?”
“Yup. All dudes stink until you bang your chosen one.”
I sigh and snuggle into my new jacket. “Well, I guess it won’t be all bad, then, if it makes the smells go away.”
“It doesn’t have to be bad at all. You have to tell him what you want.” Nia rolls over and rests her head in her hand.
“How do you know what you want?” I mean, I do touch myself. I know what I like when I’m going lone wolf, so to speak. But I just can’t imagine Cadoc Collins circling my clit at a steady pace for ten minutes and then tweaking my nipples while rubbing a smidge harder until I come. And my skin’s already blooming red even thinking about telling him to do that.
“Just let him go nuts. If you like it, go—” She moans and bites her lower lip. Pritchard’s pointed, fur-tipped ears prick. “If you don’t like it, say ‘no, not like that.'” Her tone is sharp. Pritchard’s ears droop.
“I’m gonna tell the alpha heir ‘no, not like that?'”
Nia’s eyes grow hooded. “To be honest, the first time, when you’re in heat, you’re not really in a condition to talk. Nature kind of takes its course, you know?”
I don’t, and I’m terrified.
Nia reaches over, takes my braid, and tickles my nose with it. “You don’t have to be scared. Nature is fully invested in you surviving the experience, you know?”
“That is the least reassuring thing you’ve ever said. And you told me once that my ass was probably small enough to fit in that tiny canoe Pritchard found.”
“And I was right!” Nia grins, remembering.
“My butt got stuck in the stern seat. Bevan had to yank me loose, and we almost capsized.”
“We were close to shore. It would’ve been fine.”
“You’re such an optimist.”
She waggles her eyebrows, sunshine catching the gold hoops. We laugh because she isn’t, and neither am I, but we’re outside together, and the white clouds are drawn across the vivid blue sky in brush strokes, and every so often a yellow leaf flutters down on us like slow motion confetti.
We spend the rest of lunch clapping for Bevan whenever he misses a trick. Our favorite is when he tries a stall, freezes, and the hacky sack wobbles and plummets dramatically to the ground.
Nia and I alternate saying, “Almost had it!” and “Better luck next time!” Bevan ignores us, but we crack ourselves up.
Too soon, the bell tower chimes one, and it’s time for afternoon classes. Today I have Human Sport followed by Introduction to Communication-Part Three and Foundations in Art. Scavengers get Sport every day so we can “run off all that energy.” It could be worse. The Communication instructor is the only one who tries to make us work.
Nia pops to her feet and gives me a hand up, and we head for the gymnasium, my friends buffering me between them.
Derwyn shoves his phone in his pocket and waits for us to get going, falling in to shadow us to the gymnasium. He makes no effort to be subtle, and people notice, whispering to each other when we pass. Some from the five families make remarks.
“Another whore is born.”
“You know what they say, scavengers will do anything you want for a button or a bill.”
“Well, you gotta roll around in the mud before you can get clean.”
Derwyn doesn’t blink. Guess he’s not here to protect my feelings.
Nia’s more bothered than I am. She struggles to bow her head when the nobs look down their noses at us. The cords strain in her thin neck.
I don’t understand why she’s letting it get to her now. We’ve been called worse our whole lives. I don’t like it—it doesn’t feel good—but like Abertha says, you don’t get mad ’cause a rabid dog foams at the mouth. You get the hell away from the dog.
Bevan snaps his fangs at their backs after they pass, pretending he sees a squirrel when they turn around. He’s enjoying himself.