Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“I didn’t think—” My bottom lip wobbles so badly that I have to bite it until my teeth make an indent. “I guess I thought, if it came down to it, he wouldn’t—“
I search for the reason why I thought Cadoc Collins wouldn’t let me down. Because his wolf kept me company when I foraged? Because he slept on the ledge behind our trailer?
Oh, Fate. It’s so clear now. He was tracking me because I was going into heat. I saw Pritchard do it with Nia, Geralt Powell do it with Drona—
Did I really think Cadoc Collins saw me as anything besides a hole because one time when I was a pup, he helped me reach a bottle cap?
Did I think because he wasn’t actively horrible like Brody, that made him good?
I wasn’t grasping at straws—I was grasping at thin air.
“I thought he was, I don’t know, kind? Kind enough?” I say since Nia seems to be waiting for me to finish my thought. “He’s the alpha heir, right? All he had to do was tell Brody to shut up and go away.”
Nia offers me a wonky smile. “Nobs are all the same.”
Cadoc gave me a stone like Geralt Powell brings Drona a pint of bourbon or a clip for her hair. Like the nobs drop envelopes of cash in the donation box when they visit her or Arly.
It was a trade, not a gift. I shouldn’t have pitched it at him. I should have kept it. It wasn’t worth throwing away.
None of this is a surprise, so why do I feel like I’ve been dropped off a cliff?
“Has it been three minutes?” I glance up at the counter.
“Probably. Do you want me to look?”
I sigh, squeeze my eyes shut, and then hoist myself to my feet. “I got it.”
I don’t have to move. I can see the two pink lines from where I’m standing. I sink back down onto my butt.
“Shit,” Nia exhales. She doesn’t have to ask. She can see my face.
“Shit,” I agree.
“I’m gonna be an aunt!” She raises her hand in the air like the human’s do. I can’t force a smile in return, but I brush her palm with mine.
“Aunt Nia,” I agree.
I poke my belly. I don’t feel anything but lingering nausea and a dull ache from my abs getting a workout.
“Can you sense its wolf?”
I close my eyes and draw my focus inward. My wolf is lazing around. If she were human, she’d give me a nod and go back to her knitting. I squint into nooks and corners and strain to listen, but there’s nothing new.
And then, so quiet and small it’s almost more of a suggestion than anything real, I feel it. A blip. A flutter.
It’s alive.
My eyes fly open. “Yeah. It’s in there.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Nothing. Existing? I don’t know. I can feel it though.” I rest my hand over my lower belly, and I don’t know if I’m protecting it from the world or comforting it or what. “It’s definitely in there.”
“Holy shit.” Nia’s eyes go huge.
“I know, right?”
We stare at each other, minds blown, and for a second, this morning’s awfulness is shoved out my mind like it never happened, and then like a wave, it comes crashing back.
“What if it’s a boy?” Shit. He’d be heir to the future alpha. Or would he? “If Cadoc doesn’t claim me, does that mean the baby isn’t in line for alpha?”
Nia’s face reflects my dawning horror. “I have no idea.”
This has never happened before that I’ve heard of. Of course, back when we lived in the dens, there weren’t scavengers and nobs—only pack.
You better snatch that pup as soon as it falls out of that dirty cunt.
Drona’s warning from weeks ago filters from my memory. I need to decide if I’m okay with the nobs taking my baby away.
At the time, I didn’t understand that the question was rhetorical. Of course I’m not okay with that. I could no more let them take my arm or leg. The nobs are not taking my pup.
I draw my knees to my chest. I know what I’m doing now. Protecting it.
“Do you think Cadoc would take it away from me?” I ask, but I don’t have to.
If he wants to, he will. Hell, if his parents or the council want him to, he will. Does he do anything except for what he’s supposed to?
Nia doesn’t have to answer. The fear in her eyes echoes the terror that must be in mine.
“Geralt Powell left his pups with Drona.” It’s possible, right? Especially if the pup is female. Nobs like to talk about males and females being equal, but there’s never been a female alpha or second, and there’s only two females on the council of twelve.
Nia’s sucks her lip ring into her mouth. “Yeah.”
There’s no comfort in the word.
For a minute, we’re both quiet as we take in the heaviness of it all. Growing up in the Bogs, you’re never really innocent. You always know the cost of things. You know that people who are here one day can be gone the next. You know the food won’t last although they’ll tell you it will, and the odds are stacked against you, even though you’re told you have every opportunity.
But I see now that until this moment, there were still scales on my eyes.
Cynicism, complacence, denial, dumb hope—all of it is paper thin against the reality of a little living being that will rely on me to be safe and loved.
I need to be stronger than I am, and wilier, and tougher, but I’m just Rosie Kemble.
“What are you going to do?” Nia asks.
And until this moment, sitting on the faded plastic flooring painted to look like tiles, in a ray of weak sunlight filtering through the dirty kitchen window that has somehow survived the decades of abandonment intact, I don’t think I’ve ever made a decision.
Not a real one, not when there are stakes.
I go along to get along. I don’t fight like Nia or Bevan. I don’t plot like Abertha. I don’t let life eat me from the inside out like Drona, or drink away the pain like Arly and Rae. I don’t hide from reality like Uncle Dewey. I float in the current.
I accept what I’ve never had a prayer of changing.
But it’s like I’ve come to the end of a road—no, the end of a bridge like the one Nia, Pritchard, Bevan, and I watched being built that summer before we moved to the upper school. The nobs were having it built, and we loved to watch as it stretched from one bank to the other, closer and closer every day.
There was a point when it was about halfway done when Bevan started talking about jumping the river on his bike. Every day, he’d go on about whether he could make it, or if he should leave it another day.
Finally, after a week of listening to Bevan run his mouth, Pritchard showed up with his bike, pedaled as hard as he could from as far back as he could, and while the construction workers shouted and scattered, he sailed for a brilliant moment against the blue sky before he plummeted into the river with a mighty splash. We still bust his balls about it.
I feel like Pritchard on that bike, facing a yawning chasm, palms sweating, heart pounding.
I’m never the one on the bike. I’m always the one on the bank, watching.
But not this time. Not in this moment. I can’t be a spectator in my own life anymore.
Can I do something as big as the idea forming in my mind?
There’s nothing in who I am or what I’ve ever done that suggests I can.
But Rosie Kemble is going to have to become something new.
“I’m going to go for a walk,” I say. “And I’m not going to come back. And I’m gonna need to steal a car to do it.”
* * *