Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“Boss? You coming?” Derwyn calls from safely around the corner. I see boredom has won out against his sense of self-preservation. I do need to go—I have to—but it’s not easy to drag myself away from the tin can on a floating dock. It’s only biology, the male instinct to guard his property.
Rosie’s still sleeping. The bond is faint but steady. She’s fine.
I give the bond a tug.
Nothing.
I tug again. There’s a sluggish surge in the bond, and a grumpy tug in response. I swear, I can hear a grumble through the wall.
I suppress a smile, and go do what I have to do.
Seth is waiting on shore with black coffee, a change of clothes, and his Hummer. He knows me well enough to keep his mouth shut and drive.
Quarry Pack territory is less than an hour away, and most of the drive is on dirt access roads, pockmarked with potholes. Seth’s strategy is to launch the vehicle at them at top speed to see if we can catch air and sail over like in an action flick. It’s one way to wake up.
I text Derwyn when we leave Moon Lake territory. Rosie hasn’t come out yet.
What does she do on weekends?
Shit, what does anyone do on the weekends? I spend every free waking moment training. Have since I first shifted. Even before that, really, although the focus was conditioning, not sparring.
“What would you be doing right now if we weren’t training?”
Seth glances over. I usually don’t have anything to say on the ride to Killian Kelly’s gym.
“Sleeping,” he says.
“But, like, when you woke up.”
“Eat something.”
I sigh and run a hand through my matted hair. I look like shit, and Killian’s gonna let me know about it.
“Is there a right answer you’re looking for, man?”
I shake my head and crack a window. My brain’s not as clear as usual. Could be the bad sleep these past few nights. Could be the beginning of rut. My shoulders tense, and I feel all the aches that the heated seats haven’t worked out yet.
I don’t need to go into rut on top of everything. I don’t even fucking understand it.
“You know anyone who’s gone into rut?”
If Seth’s thrown by the question, he doesn’t let on. That’s another reason why he’s my second.
“Not personally. I’ve heard about it.”
“Who?”
“Art’s cousin Trevor.”
“What happened?”
“Izzy Owens was his mate. She wasn’t keen on a demotion to mid-rank, so she made him wait.”
“And?”
“I don’t know, but Trevor left for Salt Mountain, didn’t he, and Izzy—she’s not right.”
Yeah. Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen Izzy around in a long time.
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
I lean my head back on the rest and stare out the tinted moon roof. Rosie’s tougher than I first thought—she doesn’t stay down when she gets knocked down—but she’s so soft. Not just her body, which is—
I can’t think about that now. I’m not popping wood alone in a car with Seth.
The fact is that Rosie is not physically strong. She doesn’t have the musculature. She’s not made like high-ranking females, with those kinds of genes. She’s got pudge. You can squeeze her, and she shivers, and molds to your hand. She’s got a body you can sink into.
And now I’ve got a fucking hard on, and Seth’s very intent on keeping his eyes on the road.
I crank down the window and breathe in the strange mustiness of Quarry Pack territory. It’s got the same plants and trees as Moon Lake, but damn if it doesn’t smell completely different. I bet the Quarry Pack males have pissed on every inch of dirt they own. They would. They’re primitive. Throwbacks, my father calls them—what we were like two generations ago.
Quarry Pack females would never dare pull the kind of shit our females pulled with Rosie in the locker room. They’re mild-mannered. Circumspect.
Apparently, Killian relaxed the rules somewhat when he mated, but Quarry Pack females won’t look or speak to males outside of the pack—not even at the Academy. They’re quiet in a way that’s a little too hard to read.
Rosie’s got that quality. It’s unsettling.
To distract myself, I circle back to yesterday. “You got the names of the females who did that shit to Rosie?”
Seth grunts. “Yeah. It was a Hughes. Teagan Roberts. A Lewis and a Morris.”
“The ringleader?”
I have my suspicions, but I want confirmation.
Seth clears his throat uneasily. “Brynn Owens.”
The daughter of my father’s second. So she’s aligning herself with the Hughes contingent. Another fuck in the cluster. It’s obvious ‘woman scorned’ bullshit, but she can’t claim I ever favored her over any female in our allied families. She was the one who kept shooting her shot and missing.
I prefer enforcing the rules the old-fashioned way. Like with the scavenger with the gold teeth. Bevan. A few licks and done. He got in the shots he could, took his beating with dignity. No pride too damaged and order restored.
I loathe dealing with females. I understand the necessity, especially in this case, but it doesn’t feel right. I learned at Father’s knee, though, that if you let one thing go, a hundred things will follow. That’s pack life—a precarious balance on the back of the alpha.
“All of them lose their internships. Bust them down to the mailroom. If they’ve got a brother of age, he gets put on training rotation with me. If any of their fathers have an application in for a better residence, it gets rejected with prejudice. Don’t be shy about why.”
“And Brynn?”
“Change her schedule. She doesn’t cross paths with Rosie. And she sits with the mid-rank from here on out.”
“She’s not gonna like that.”
I don’t care. “And Griff is out of the inner circle. Replace him with a Powell and tell him he can thank his sister.”
“Man, but—” Seth stops himself, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.
“You disagree?”
He blows out his cheeks. He doesn’t see it as his place to question me, and usually, I agree. This is uncharted territory, though.
“What would your father say?” he finally says.
“I didn’t ask him.”
He bites his cheek in an effort to keep his thoughts to himself.
“Say what’s on your mind. I don’t keep you around for your looks.”
He exhales, fluffing the forehead curls that the females are always squealing about. Rosie doesn’t seem to notice him at all. Boy band looking motherfucker. “Howell Owen isn’t gonna like you going after his kids.”
“His kid shouldn’t have gone after my mate.”
“She isn’t your mate, though, is she?”