Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
She lingers a moment, her unsteady hand hovering over my cheek. “You look like him.”
The red blaze in her eye dims as she stands and backs away. “Pity you’re no wiser.”
She walks toward the trees she emerged from, unconcerned, her stride unrushed. As if that’s the final word. As if it’s over.
No.
I don’t accept that.
I stand. Inside me, my wolf circles back, fading until he’s a smudge on a distant horizon. I open my mouth to call the witch back, but my mouth is full of fangs.
An unholy howl rattles my ribs and rips from my throat, louder as my wolf breaks for the wall, racing faster and faster, his form sharpening in my mind as his breath grows hot on my neck. I raise my hands, now tipped with wicked claws, and I plunge them into my chest, tearing flesh and muscle as the wolf emerges, fully formed, leaping for the witch.
She disappears, my wolf’s paws landing in snow. He whips his muzzle around, scenting for his prey, howling his rage, his loss. He roars his existence into the dark sky lit with drifting diamond flakes, awake and alive and real, and then he wails for his mate.
He speaks for me.
It’s several minutes before the witch’s scent catches our nose from above. My wolf trots toward the tree line and lifts his muzzle. She’s up in an oak, perched on a limb, legs dangling, watching. Her eyes are pitch black again. Considering.
My wolf lowers himself to sit, his every muscle taut, the fur along his spine prickled. Snowflakes land on his wet black nose. He sneezes.
The witch’s lip quirks. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Cadoc’s wolf. I wasn’t sure you’d ever really exist. A potion to lure a pup into being is one thing, but a wolf is a different matter altogether.” She brushes snow off her shoulder. “I am a witch of uncommon power, though.”
She slides off the limb, floating the fifteen feet to the ground, landing face to face with my wolf.
There’s a moment when my wolf considers her, and she searches his eyes. Something flashes across her inscrutable face—recognition? Pity? I can’t tell.
I would beg her if I was in my human form, but my wolf doesn’t bend his neck. He waits. As if she’s known to him, an old ally of some kind.
She exhales, and in an instant, her usual, wry smirk returns. She tousles the fur on my wolf’s head and sinks to sit next to me in the snow as if she’s a female half her age. She wraps her arms around her knees, as we stare past the woods to the foothills rising in the distance.
“I’m going to tell you a love story, Cadoc’s wolf, and then I’ll tell you what you want to know. I’m sure you won’t care either way, but the story has a happy ending.”
She pauses. My wolf grumbles for her to begin, and she snorts.
“It’s about a great alpha’s daughter. We’ll call her Lavender. She was madly in love with a great warrior named Thyme, and he loved her, too, beyond measure.”
Weird names, but I’m following. My wolf is whining low in his throat, impatient, but she ignores him.
“Tragically, the lovers were born under an unlucky star. Lavender was not Thyme’s fated mate.”
She glances over. My wolf returns her gaze.
“But that was not the worst of it. Danger stalked the pack. The Great Alpha was growing old, and he had no sons to inherit. Only Lavender and her weak older sister. Chaos threatened to consume the pack, turning brother against brother.”
I get it now. She’s talking about my parents.
“Lavender knew that only her lover Thyme was strong enough to hold the pack together, and the only way the pack would accept him as alpha is if he were the father of the future heir.”
My parents aren’t mates? Is she telling the truth or spinning stories?
She goes on. “Fate did smile on these star-crossed lovers, though, because in this pack, there was a wise woman of uncommon power and foresight.” She winks at my wolf. “The wise woman gave Lavender a potion that would allow her to carry her true love’s child, and in nine month’s time, a pup was born who would grow up to rival the Great Alpha himself.”
She falls silent and stares at my wolf, a strange smile playing at her mouth.
“True love conquered all.” Her voice cracks. She dashes snowflakes from her eyes and sniffs. “And the pack got its second great alpha. See? A happy ending for everyone.”
She leans close to my wolf, nestles her nose in the fur on top of his head, and whispers in my ear. “You have to make it all worth it, Cadoc Collins.”
I don’t know what she means, but the moment has passed. She ruffles my wolf’s fur again, and he growls. She grins, standing, dusting her skirts.
“Rosie took your Land Rover to tow the trailer,” she says over her shoulder as she strolls into the woods. “It’s got GPS, right?”
Chapter 10
10
Chapter 10
ROSIE
There is something out there, nosing around my camp. I draw the worn quilt up to my nose and cower. It’s dark and cold, and I have to pee, but there is no way I’m venturing outside to my makeshift latrine. In the mad rush out of Moon Lake territory, I forgot a few things. Bras. Deodorant. And the fact that there would be no water and sewage hookup in the wilds of the foothills.
It’s been five weeks, and I don’t smell so great—in two ways. There’s my own stank, and the discovery that Arly and Drona weren’t exaggerating when they said that pregnancy turns you human. My wolf senses have been dulling pretty much daily—smell, taste, and hearing.
I can still hear whatever is rustling around my campsite, though.
I spent the first few weeks doing exactly what Bevan suggested. I found a knoll near a creek that looked to frequently overflow its banks, so I felt safe enough to chug gallons of bottled water, shift, and pee on every tree in one square mile of my new home.
That first day, I saw signs of natural wolves, coyotes, and at least one bear, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since, so I harassed some foxes to establish my dominance over my new territory. I couldn’t bring myself to actually hurt them. It was hard enough to sneak up on them once they’d caught sight of my wolf. They didn’t want any part of her.
Same with the ferals. I picked a place to camp where there was no evidence of fires or makeshift shelters, but I still scented a few around in the early days. I never ran into them on my patrols as my wolf, but they must have caught sight of her and bolted. They’re not around anymore.
I am pretty freaking huge.
I’m chunking up in human form, too. My belly curve is more pronounced even though the pup is only the size of a sunflower seed according to the book Drona tucked in my backpack. My padding is more likely due to the fact that I’m bored and lonely, so I eat, and then I worry that I’m eating through my stores, and to soothe my anxiety, I snack.
I suck at wilderness survival.
I’m so lonely that I’ve been making nice with the foxes, feeding them to see if I can befriend them. No luck so far.
My wolf is perfectly happy. She’s waiting. For what, I don’t know.
Probably for whatever is skulking outside to attack so she can swallow it whole and nap like a snake who’s snarfed down a rat. I don’t think she’s aware that she’s near the point in this pregnancy where she’s grounded for the next six months or so.
My nerves are on edge. If I weren’t stiff as a board and freezing to death, I’d be jumpy, but as it is, when I hear the faint step or skitter of rock, I clutch the quilt tighter and try really hard to think about anything other than the fact that I’m all alone, no one knows where I am, and I’m practically human.
And it was all my decision.
The first one I’ve ever made, and I guess it was the right thing to do—no one is coming anywhere near my baby out here in the wilds—but in the day-to-day, I traded misery with company for night terrors, boredom, itchy skin, and a Pandora’s box of shitty feelings that I can’t open—I can only smack it with a metaphorical stick every time it rattles around in my brain.
I hate Cadoc Collins.
I hate what made him, and I hate what he is, and I hate that unlike Brody Hughes or Geralt Powell or his father, he doesn’t look and act like a villain, so you let your guard down.
I hate that I’m such a cream puff that I went “la, la, la” and threw myself off the mating cliff like a lemming.
I hate that Fate decided it would be entertaining to put me up against the entire power dynamic of Moon Lake pack.
And I hate Cadoc Collins for being no more than what you’d expect, so I hate myself for being stupid.
And then my stomach aches, so I crawl out of bed, maneuvering the quilt so it stays wrapped around my body, and I wander to the kitchen to get a snack and stare out into the gray pre-dawn and wonder what kind of rabid or lethal creature is bold enough to ignore my scent marking to slink around my campsite with the stealth of a drunk Uncle Dewey.
On second thought, I don’t care. I’ll kill it if it comes for me, somehow, and until then, I’m going to huddle in bed, cram summer sausage into my mouth, and pretend that I’m not going crazy.
I stay there, shivering and wishing I had a drink to wash down the sausage, until the sun rises high enough so the shadowy, scary nooks of the trailer turn back into the familiar corners in need of dusting. Most days, it takes me a few more hours to drag myself out of the trailer and make myself useful.
I have a plan to map the territory I’ve staked and then search it for ashbalm and whatever else might be valuable. Every day, it’s harder to get myself motivated. The hills are mostly shrubland. Between the rocks in the soil and the acidity, if it’s not a pine, it doesn’t have a great chance of growing.
Whatever’s outside is still bumping around. It disappeared for a while, but it’s back now. It hasn’t come near the trailer so it has to have some sense.
Maybe one of the foxes has discovered where I live, and it’s hanging out to get a jump on the others at snack time. The thought almost makes me smile and consider getting my ass in gear, but my body and the air and the empty hours in front of me—it’s all just too exhausting.
And besides, it sounds bigger than a fox. I should be freaking out. It doesn’t make sense that I’m not. Maybe this is the first stage in going feral. Irrational chill.