Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“What happened?” I whisper to Cadoc. We’re standing at an intersection of the boards near Nia’s.
He sniffs the air. “They haven’t been gone long. Less than an hour I’d say.”
We return to shore, stopping in the middle of the path. It’s a sunny, cool day, a wet hint of spring in the wind. Seth and Cadoc scan the distance, noses quivering. Bevan’s pointed, furry ears flicker.
Seth nods in the direction of the Academy. Cadoc grunts his agreement.
That’s where they gather us on the lawn on solstice days and other occasions—like the time Moon Lake was granted ‘treatment as state status,’ whatever that means—and we listen to Madog Collins make a long speech. Maybe he’s back from Salt Mountain.
The tension surging through the bond says Cadoc doesn’t think he is.
“You know what to do if it doesn’t go our way,” Cadoc says to Seth.
Seth’s fingers brush a bulge at the side of his waistband. For once, he’s untucked his shirt and let it hang loose. He’d look like a scavenger if he wasn’t wearing brand new blue jeans without a single rip or hole and hiking boots that—despite his trek to our camp—don’t show much wear at all.
“I do,” Seth answers. “No one will touch her.”
I’m her.
Fear leeches through me and scrapes across my nerves. My wolf is awake and alert, but she’s fuzzy. Can she come if I call her? I’d feel a lot better if I knew for sure that I can still shift.
I reach out, and she’s there, but she’s blurry. She’s less co-pilot than aura.
Panic clutches my throat and squeezes. I hardly notice as Cadoc steers me away down the path.
Bevan and Seth are a step behind us, our entourage. It’s so different from normal. Bevan’s usually gamboling beside Nia and I, and wherever Cadoc goes, he always has a representative from each of the five families strutting in formation around him.
Bevan’s nowhere near as uptight as Seth, but they’re both carrying themselves with heightened sobriety, their chests and chins high.
We feel like a unit. A pack.
We’re silent as we get closer and closer to the Academy, and gathered shifter sounds and scents rise to greet us. No matter how Madog insists on discipline, it’s barely contained anarchy whenever all of Moon Lake is assembled on the lawn. As we approach, it sounds even more anarchic than usual.
There are bays and howls from the pups and the more feral among us, loud talk and terse grumbling from the clustered scavengers. And underneath it all, a muttering of disapproval from the nobs in their straight rows toward the front. The mood is a simmering cauldron.
When the lawn comes into view, I scan the sea of faces for Abertha or Nia, but the throng is too thick to pick out individuals, and my fear is too loud. My eyes won’t focus. I walk closer to Cadoc. Our arms brush.
“Trust me, Rosie,” he says under his breath.
As we pass, the crowd parts, and an edgy silence falls. A pup sobs. Anxious whispers ripple through the people.
The sound system squeals, and someone thumps a microphone. Whatever this is, they’re about to begin.
I want to turn around.
Everyone is staring at us—at me—and even though I wear an alpha’s bite, inside I feel like the plain old Rosie Kemble. The scavengers are looking at us like we’re going to do something. Like we have to. Their fear and anxiety and hope and rage crush down on me like a mantle, and I’m terrified that my bones will just crumble under the weight.
Is this how Cadoc feels? How he’s felt his whole life?
We pass through the scavengers to the nobs. They don’t need to move to allow us to pass. They’re standing in their accustomed lines with a walkway down the middle—the mid-rank families and then the five highest-ranking families at the front—Roberts, then Owens, then the few remaining Moores. Hughes should come next, and at the very front, Collins.
But it’s reversed. We pass Derwyn before we reach the makeshift stage at the top of the plaza stairs. He falls in behind us. For once, I don’t mind him there.
Anxious anticipation floods the bond, and I can’t tell if it’s originating from Cadoc or me or if it’s an intermingling. Whatever is about to happen is going to change everything.
Finally, we reach our destination. Alban, Dilys, and Brody Hughes are lined up behind a podium, surrounded by their seconds and their mates, dressed in nob finery. The males are in pressed dark suits with crisp white shirts and shining black dress shoes. The females are in sheath dresses, mulberry and jade and fuchsia, their necks and wrists and ears glittering with diamonds. Each wears a hat with a short veil and clutches a small purse. Behind the stage, the lake is clear and blue.
A Powell fiddles with the microphone, making the masses cringe each time it squawks.
The council is seated to the left and right. There are chairs missing. I do a quick count. The Moore and Owens representatives are missing.
A jolt zings through the bond, causing me to miss a step. Cadoc stiffens almost imperceptibly. I follow his gaze.
On first glance, I’d missed her, and I don’t know how. Gwen Collins is standing right next to her sister Dilys. Gwen is in red and Dilys is in navy, but the cut of their dresses is exactly the same, as is the style of their purses and the upsweep of their artfully dyed blonde hair.
Dilys has her gloved hand tucked in the crook of Gwen’s elbow. It’s an obvious show of solidarity and status. Gwen is the younger sister, surrounded by the opposition, but she ranks. She’s conceded nothing. She’s switched alliances.
I bet Madog Collins hasn’t gone to Salt Mountain on a diplomatic mission.
Is he dead? Exiled?
I breathe through the ice crystallizing in my chest. Cadoc has done the same math, and his tension has ratcheted up. He’s strung tighter than a bow now. Good thing ‘tightly wound’ is his natural state.
Madog can’t be dead. Gwen would surely show some sign of distress, right? And there wouldn’t be this undercurrent of anxiety in the crowd—it’d be a full out fog of aggression with males posturing to defend and challenge for rank. That’s what happens with the nobs whenever a head of a family passes or loses a challenge.
I scan the crowd for Abertha. She never attends these things—she says dogs come when they’re called, not wolves—and I don’t see her. I see Howell Owens, though, Madog’s second. He’s lined up at the head of the Owens family, his face a careful blank.
Madog must be alive. Howell would be in a cell or a bone pile if his alpha had been bested, but his presence also puts a lie to the Salt Mountain story. Howell would have gone with Madog on official business.
My brain’s whirling with calculations, so it takes me a moment to realize that we’ve come to a stop a yard away from the plaza stairs. The packmates to our left and right shuffle aside, clearing a wide circle around us, a space big enough for a fight.
My heart drums a faster beat.
All eyes are on us. Cadoc and I, side by side, Seth, Bevan, and Derwyn at our backs.
Again, I’m struck by that feeling—pack.
My wolf is there, a shadow through glass, large and looming but fuzzy around the edges. Our pup is there, too, it’s little light a beacon, oblivious to the goings on in the outside world. So tiny.
Fear digs its claws into my throat.
We’re outnumbered.
And then my ears prick to a rustling behind us, a muttering wave rippling through the ranks. I glance up at Cadoc. The corner of his lip rises. He hears something that I can’t with my muffled human ears.
I turn, so I see the moment Nia barrels through a row of Owenses, Pritchard at her side for once. Uncle Dewey, Drona, Arly, and Rae follow at her heels leading a motley assortment of Bog dwellers—my cousin Conway, Enid Wogan, Irv and Tom Nevitts, Mina Scurlock, Gracie Beddoe, and Auntie Madwen, huffing and puffing, bringing up the rear.
It takes me a minute to recognize the other faces, mixed with my people. Lowry Powell. Griff Owen. Kenny Roberts.
I raise my eyes, and I notice that the entire Bog seems to have pushed forward as one, disrupting the nobs’ lines, eliminating the elbow room they leave in their traditional rows. The pack is cheek-to-jowl now except for the open space before us.
I’m so amped with adrenaline, my shifter mind so blown by the upending of place and rank, that when the challenge comes, I don’t register it at first.
Up on the plaza, Alban Hughes slaps Brody’s back, and Brody stalks forward, loosening his wide blue tie, his thick lips twisting. I can’t tell if it’s a snarl or a smirk. There’s no reluctance in his step, nothing but arrogance and scorn.
He must see a bunch of scavengers gathered in front of him and a handful of nobs mad enough to align themselves with the rankless. He believes what he’s been taught—that we’re less than and powerless and corrupting.
I know then that he is going to lose.
Brody doesn’t bother to speak. He throws back his neck, and his wolf howls, demanding submission with an alpha command. It sounds like bubble wrap popping as the entire pack bends the neck or bows the head. Everyone except Cadoc and me.
I hear the command, but Brody Hughes isn’t my alpha.
Cadoc gives the bond a short “stay here” tug, and then he strides forward, takes the stairs, his wolf answering Brody’s howl with a sonorous growl that reverberates off the brick buildings around the lawn.
Brody shows his fangs and draws back a fist.
Cadoc swings, his fist a sledgehammer, launching Brody across the plaza. His people scatter as his body sails through the air and slams into the pedestal of Broderick Moore’s statue with a wet crunch. His limp form slides to the ground.
It’s over before it began.
Cadoc is standing by the podium, hand still fisted, as if he’s waiting for Brody to get back up, but Brody’s out cold, his spine bent at an impossible angle. A wave of “he’s still breathing” and “he’s alive” passes from the front to the back of the crowd. Dilys Hughes gapes at her son in horror, her hand clasped over her mouth, but she doesn’t go to him.
I reach for my small bump. I’ve never felt sympathy for Brody Hughes before, and I’m not such a hypocrite that I do now, but it’s an abomination for a mother to leave her child crumpled on the ground, alone. It’s a symptom of the sickness. This is a diseased pack.