Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
I’m ducking through the rope when the elevator dings, and I catch a whiff of fresh meat. My wolf bolts to the wall, scrabbling at it with silent claws.
Brody Hughes.
I smile and suck the blood from my teeth.
“Cousin. Come spar with me.” I wave him into the ring.
He strides forward, puffed up, his game face on. He came for this. He drops his duffle bag on the floor. His yellow eyes gleam, and his fat nostrils flare. Art hustles off, mumbling about gloves.
“Bare knuckle?” I ask.
Brody gives a short nod. He must have been working himself up to come down here for a while. His joggers and T-shirt already reek of aggression.
I toss Griff my grappling gloves and crack my neck.
The other males rouse themselves to limp over and gather around, the groaning and bitching replaced by excitement. Vaughn tries to get some action going, but no one’s stupid enough to bet against me.
I bounce on the balls of my feet and wait as my cousin stretches his arms and rolls his shoulders.
I’m going to take my time. For every word he spoke to Rosie, I’m going to break two bones until he’s a meat sack. If he ever dares lay eyes on her again, he’ll piss himself from the association between what he said to her and the hurt I’m about to lay on him.
One of us will get what he deserves.
I crook my finger for Brody to come on. He surges forward like his string’s been cut, full steam, high on whatever his bootlickers have been saying to give him the balls to step to me.
I let him go to town. I eat the pain. I fall, and I drag myself up again. He’s got fists like anvils, and the Great Alpha Broderick Moore’s brute strength.
He’s also got no instinct, no technique, and no fight IQ.
“Cadoc, man—” Seth mutters from the sidelines. His voice hardly makes it through the fog.
Cuts knit together as Brody breaks new skin. I call the wolf. Welcome him. Scream his name.
The whites of his wild eyes flash at me from the other side of the thick glass pane as he throws himself against the boundary. His contempt for me burns like acid.
Well, fuck you. Shift, then. Take the body.
Shift.
Brody’s foot drives into my gut, and I fly into the ropes while my wolf howls soundlessly.
Damn you.
Brody stomps my knee, and it shatters, the plate sliding loose under the skin. I welcome the wolf, arms wide.
Shift. Do it.
My wolf sprints and leaps against the wall as the pain roars through my brain, blinding white, and then, for a second, by happenstance, my eye lines up with the crack in the wall between us, and our eyes meet. No barrier. No distance. His silver eyes swirl. His broken howl stabs. And I can hear him. He deigns to speak to me for the first time in my whole damn life.
Wrong choice.
Brody’s toe slams into my side, and I roll with the impact.
What was the wrong choice?
I stagger to my feet.
Which choice?
My right arm’s broken, hanging useless, so I use my left, driving my fist into his solar plexus. Windpipe. Nose. Brody falls to his knees.
Which choice? I shout at the wall, but my wolf is a shadow again. A figment.
At my feet, Brody bleeds and wheezes. He props himself up on one shaky arm and raises his head, defiant, his thin blond hair matted flat to his scalp with sweat.
“Your time will come, illegitimate heir,” he snarls. Art, Vaughn, and the other Hughes and Floyd males shuffle and straighten as if they’ve been called to arms.
Illegitimate heir. Sounds like a term that’s been thrown around before.
But as I’ve proven, and as no one could have doubted, Brody Hughes has no chance against me in an alpha challenge.
“You should be heir because your dam was first born?” I spit between gasps. It isn’t a genuine question, but my brain seizes it. Mulls it.
“And because I have the balls to do what needs doing in this pack. You and your father will let the filth drag us back to the dens.” He spits in derision, and it splatters red on the mat. “You steal from the hardworking ranked members of this pack to indulge the lazy and turn them useless.”
Rosie’s gentle voice, filled with conviction, whispers in my head.
No scavenger has ever stolen anything from their own pack.
I think of the hours Rosie spends in the woods, foraging, for plants that heal and other “useful” things. I think about how no matter the hour, the Bogs are never quiet, never still. Whatever the scavengers are, they aren’t lazy.
Whatever they do with their time, can it be more useless than play fighting each other in a ring when money has bought rank for the past fifty years?
What am I even doing here?
What are any of us doing here?
My brain is thick, certainly concussed, and every inch of my body screams as it knits itself together again, but I need to leave.
And go where?
What do I follow if not the rules? What do I do if not my duty?
What else is there?
I stagger for the ropes, somehow tumble myself through, and prop myself against the platform until the spinning eases, and I can think.
I’m gulping down water when a buzzing breaks out across the gym. Phones come out.
“What?” I demand.
“There’s a disturbance in the Bogs.”
I don’t need to hear anything else. I bolt for the emergency exit, stumble through the door and stagger up the stairs to street level. The sun has gone down, and the streetlights have come on. Any stars that might be out are obscured by the orange glow over downtown.
Should I get the Land Rover?
No. My wolf is here. We’ll run. It’s quicker.
I raise my arms.
Take the body.
And this time, my fucked-up wolf leaps forward immediately, cracking my barely healed bones again.
* * *
I let him have his head. He knows where he’s going. He cuts off the road, hating the feel of asphalt on his paws, racing through lawns until we hit the undeveloped land beyond the Academy, and then he kicks it to top speed, dashing between trees, hurdling exposed roots.
In the distance, at the far end of the lake, a great howling rises, wild and haunting, but my wolf veers into the woods at the Narrows, tearing up a familiar dirt path. When he skids to a halt, my heart lurches, sticking in my throat.
He brought me to the witch’s shack.
The Airstream is gone.