Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Is there a way to make it stop? Am I really Cadoc Collins’ mate, or is it a cosmic mistake?
What’s going to happen? Will they take my baby? Will I end up like Drona, but worse, because the nobs won’t let the alpha heir’s rejected mate muddle along in a trailer in the Bogs, will they? They’ll bury me in a cell under the High Rise, and who will care about my baby, then, if she’s not with our people?
And what’s wrong with Cadoc Collins’ wolf?
Shit, what’s wrong with
Fate
?
Will it hurt? How bad?
Will all this get me killed in the end? Will I go for a walk and never come back?
Where do the people go when they don’t come back?
I have a hundred questions, but I know the witch, probably better than anyone. I saw a television show once set at a carnival. There was a machine, a tall cabinet with a glass case, and inside was the torso of a man in a gold shirt with a long black beard. You put a coin in the machine, and he told your future. One coin. One answer. That’s Abertha.
It’s the kind of pressure a person can freeze under, but not me. I open my mouth, and let what comes, come.
“What did you mean when you said ‘I see it’s all come to pass?'”
She smiles like the cat who got the canary, and I can see the silver tooth in the back of her mouth. I asked the right question. She sets her cup in its saucer with a clink.
“Sometimes I wonder if you don’t have a bit of magic in you after all.” She squints at me, brow wrinkling, and then she shakes her head. “Nope. Nothing.”
“Off day when you picked me?”
She lifts a bony shoulder. “Remains to be seen.”
She considers me a few more moments, stroking her chin. “I think I’ll tell you a story.”
Sweet. Her stories run long, and my arms need a rest. I get comfortable, resettling myself cross-legged.
“You can grind while I talk.” She taps the pot of dragon’s tongue with her spoon.
I sigh, grudgingly tong another hunk into the bowl, and start crushing.
“It’s a love story.” Abertha frowns, her brow wrinkling. “Maybe. You’ll have to be the judge.”
Apollonia begins to knead her lap, and Abertha trails her fingers down the cat’s flanks. Abertha has young hands, no wrinkles or veins or swollen knuckles. When she’s not being dramatic she doesn’t move like an old woman, either, but the creases on her face are deep, and her gray hair is dry like straw.
“It’s about the youngest daughter of a powerful alpha. We’ll call her—” She glances around the shack, and her eyes catch on the herbs strung in the window to dry. “Lavender. Lavender had great ambitions, but she was female, the younger of two sisters. She was so close to the throne, but she might as well have been down in the Bogs with the rabble. No offense.”
I shrug and keep grinding.
“So, Lavender hatched a plan. She found the strongest male in the pack. Let’s call him—” She glances toward the window again. “Thyme. He was an extraordinary leader. Charismatic. Terrifying. A male for the ages.”
Abertha’s eyes drift far away. Her fingers still on Apollonia’s back. “Lavender seduced him with the offer of power and riches. And probably some fairy tale about changing the world and protecting the pack from annihilation by the humans and justice and progress and all kinds of shit like that.”
Obviously, Lavender is Cadoc’s mother, and Thyme is his father. At the solstice day ceremonies that we’re forced to attend, Madog’s always making speeches about those sorts of things.
“Anyway, since the Great Alpha only had two daughters—and no sons—there was no clear heir. Lavender figured that Thyme was strong enough to hold the pack until her son came of age. Thyme, he was a goner. He’d do anything for her. She only had one problem.”
“No son?” I guess.
Abertha gives me a wink. “No son.”
“Thyme wasn’t Lavender’s mate?”
“No, he wasn’t.” She pauses to let it sink in.
This story is too wild to be true. You can’t have a pup with someone who isn’t your mate. I mean, it happens—very, very rarely like any freak occurrence in nature—but you can’t bank on it. Or plan the takeover of a pack based on it.
“See, Lavender was a clever female, as well as ambitious and power hungry, and to be honest, a real bitch. She’s the sort who makes friends with people she thinks might prove useful. One of these ‘friends’ was a wise woman. A girl. Let’s call her—“
Her name’s obviously Abertha.
“Marjoram.
Marjoram, the wise girl. She was gifted and brilliant and smokin’ hot.” Abertha waggles her eyebrows, amused with herself. “So one day, Lavender visits Marjoram in her little shack, much like this one.” She gestures around the small, cluttered room. “With tears in her eyes, Lavender begs for a potion that will let her carry the pup of her one true love.”
“There’s no such potion.” Ashwagandha, chasteberry, and a handful of other herbs are good for fertility, but none work full out miracles.
“Didn’t I say Marjoram was a wise woman of uncommon power? And she loved her friend, her only friend in the whole, cold world. Here I—Marjoram was in a drafty shack, cast out of even the Bogs, all alone except for her cat—” Abertha looks down at her lap and makes a kissy face at Apollonia. “She would have done anything for Lavender, and so she did.”
“She made Lavender a fertility potion. And it worked?”
Abertha’s mouth tightens as it curves. Her harsh smile sends shivers down my spine. “What is it I’ve told you is the first rule of magic?”
“It’s also the law of conservation of energy?”
Abertha nods. “If you create something, something will be taken away. It’s an immutable law of the universe.”
“What did you lose?”
Abertha tuts. “Not me.
I’m not the kind of fool poor Marjoram was.
Marjoram delivered the potion to Lavender, so proud of what she’d made. No other witch had ever managed such a thing. Marjoram strutted around for weeks afterwards, imagining the new home she’d have in the tall tower the alpha was building, the accolades, the abiding respect of the pack.”
My heart twinges for young Abertha. “Nobs don’t trade.” They take or they pay, but they have no concept of fair exchange.
“No, they don’t. Eventually, Marjoram got tired of waiting for her reward. It was announced that Lavender had mated the great Thyme, and she was carrying his pup. Marjoram thought surely now she’d be rewarded. No more drafty shack in the woods.”
We both glance around. Wind whistles through a crack in the wall.
“One day, Marjoram decided she wouldn’t wait anymore. She went to Lavender’s home at the top of the tall tower and knocked on the door, a list of demands on the tip of her tongue.”
Abertha stops and takes a long sip of tea. I’m holding the pestle mid-air. I have no idea when I stopped grinding. I wait. She likes to pause for emphasis, and if you prod her to go on, she’ll drag it out longer.
Finally, Abertha sighs. “Marjoram never got the chance to ask for anything. She wasn’t allowed past the threshold. Lavender ordered Thyme to throw the wise woman out and warn her that if she ever came back or dared gossip about her betters, she’d be exiled to the foothills or sold to the Last Pack as a whore.”
“Gwen Collins said that?” She always struck me as too prim to swear.
Abertha ignores me. “Thyme dragged poor Marjoram out to the lakeshore and flung her on the rocky beach, calling her a liar and a con woman. That would’ve been the end of a sad story if Fate didn’t have a wicked sense of humor.” Abertha’s iridescent gray eyes go distant. Filmy. “Just as Thyme turned to go, Marjoram’s heat struck, and in an instant, they knew each other as fated mates.”
“Holy shit,” I exhale. “You’re Madog Collins’ fated mate.”
Abertha blinks.
“So Cadoc’s parents aren’t real mates?”
She blinks again.
“And Madog never claimed you?”
Her lips twist in a wry smile. “I never got the condo in the Tower, either.”
“That’s a horrible story.”
She lifts a fine eyebrow. “It could’ve been worse. I could’ve ended up stuck with an asshole who’d turn his back on his fated mate for wealth and power.”