Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“I’m not hungry,” I mumble under my breath. I don’t want his friends-with-benefits fruit.
“Eat it,” he says. It’s not quite a command, but it’s not a suggestion, either. I imagine an elder might say “eat it” like that to a pup. I feel squirmy. He might be older than me, and I might be young, but I’m not a pup. I never really was. I’ve been looking out for myself since long before my mom bailed into the river.
I polish the apple on my tattered skirt for something to do. Tulle’s not going to clean anything.
Darragh watches me, and the squirmy feeling grows stronger until I can’t take it anymore, so I take careful, slow steps to sit on the trunk. Darragh backs up so he remains as far from me as the shack allows.
I clear my throat. Clearly, he’s not going to address the elephant in the room. “I came up here because I thought we should talk about it. You know, the whole mate thing.”
Even though there’s just the two of us, well four, if you count our wolves, my face still burns. This is the most excruciating encounter I’ve ever had with anyone in my entire life.
I wait. He stares at me like I’m a venomous snake that’s plopped itself on his only piece of furniture and asked to have a heart-to-heart about his feelings.
All of a sudden, a horrible thought pops into my head. “You feel it, don’t you? That we’re mates?”
Without hesitation, he jerks a sharp nod.
My lungs unfreeze, and I can breathe again. There’s never been a case of a male not recognizing his mate, but if it were going to happen, with my luck, it’d happen to me.
“I guess you’re as surprised as I am, eh?” I try to smile, but again, I think I’m giving toothy chimpanzee.
He shuts his eyes for a moment, and it’s strange, the difference it makes when those dark brown eyes with the blazing gold outlines aren’t boring into me. He looks less scary. More like any other guy from the pack, maybe more built, a little hairier and rough around the edges, but a Quarry Pack male.
“I’m Mari,” I offer.
“I know,” he says. His wolf’s rumbling makes his voice vibrate.
For a moment, I think we’ve got a conversation started, but the seconds tick by, and we lapse into silence. I look around the room again, but I saw it all the first time—fireplace, trunk, sleeping bag, lantern, book, whiskey bottle, rusty sword.
“So do you hunt a lot or—“
His gaze moves to the big-ass sword leaning against the weathered gray planks of the wall.
“That’s not rust, is it? That’s blood?” I ask, even though it’s really the last thing I want to know.
Darragh grunts.
“So is the big stack of bones out back or—” I force a smile like I’m joking, but I’m not. I’m so out of my depth that literally every thought that pops into my head is falling right out of my mouth.
Darragh cannot be my mate. I mean, I didn’t want, like,a softboi, but this guy sailed way past dominant and landed smack dab in the middle of cleans his teeth and butchers his meat with the same knife.
Without thinking, I unscrew my water bottle to take a sip. When nothing comes out, I try to save face by shaking the last few drops onto my cracked lips. I’m completely parched and dripping with sweat at the same time. It’s such a weird combination.
After all this time with Darragh over there and me over here, I’m not expecting him to move, so I jump out of my skin when he lets out a sudden exhale and stalks with surprising grace to squat in front of me. He looks at me expectantly. I freeze.
His brows gather, and he tilts his head. Then he leans forward, seizes my hips, and in one smooth movement, he lifts me and stands me on the floor. His hands don’t linger, but the feeling does—strong and sure and warm. My breath hitches.
He unlatches the trunk and throws it open. I catch a glimpse of its contents—books. Beautiful leather and cloth bound books with lovely gilt and rough-cut edges, at least a hundred of them. There’s also a neat stack of clothes and a gallon of water wedged in a corner.
He holds his hand out to me. “Give it here.”
I don’t respond quickly enough for him, so he tries to take the water bottle gently from my hand. I’m so slow on the uptake that I keep clutching it tight. He stands close, closer than he’s been since he rubbed my wolf’s belly. My heart gallops in my chest.
This close—he’s so much. Tanned and tall and muscled and rumbly, and if you disregard the untrimmed beard and bitten-to-the-quick nails—pretty. The grays threaded through his brown hair and the lines in the corner of his eyes and the softness of his lips against the harshness of his jaw and his nose and his constantly furrowing brow— Yeah, somehow, he’s pretty.
Darragh curls his fingers over mine.
My wolf skitters back from the boundary between us like her paws were zapped by lightning. My gaze darts down. His hand completely covers mine, rough and warm.
My other hand flies to press against my chest again. The bond is reaching toward him, flowing through my fingers like liquid sunshine, seeking the bond reaching for me, winding alongside it, twining, weaving together like a braid. I hold my breath. I can’t believe this is happening.
My gaze darts up to meet his. I can’t read his eyes. They’re too gold, too—much.
He peels my fingers off my water bottle and steps back as he unscrews the top and fills it from his gallon jug. I stand there with my mouth open and a palm pressed to my chest like Old Noreen when she hears a shocking bit of scandal.
He holds the bottle up for me to take.
I blink at it. It’s a twenty-one-ounce wide mouth, and it looks like a baby bottle in his hand. I feel like a kid next to him. He towers over me. Like his shadow totally falls on me. How are we going to fit?
He shakes my bottle and grunts.
I reach for it, my hand trembling so bad that I fumble it. If he hadn’t still been holding it, I’d have dropped it.
My face flames.
Once I’ve got a firm grip, he squares his shoulders and goes back to his corner by the fireplace.
I stare dumbly at the water for a few seconds, and then my thirst hits me all at once. I unscrew the cap and gulp down half. It isn’t cold, but somehow, it’s the best I’ve ever tasted. He’s staring at me, not from the corner of his eye anymore, but straight on. He looks alarmed. Or pissed.
I slow down and try to sip like a lady.
Why do I care about being ladylike in Darragh Ryan’s murder shack? Patriarchy. It’s the only explanation.
“Thank you,” I say. It comes out breathy and soft. Eyes cast down, I dig the toe of my boot into the dirt floor.
“Where did the black wolf who brought you go?” His voice feels like river stones on your bare feet, that kind of hard and smooth at the same time. I like it.
It’s easier to stare at my boots when I answer him. “Kennedy? He’s out hunting. I said he could go.”
“You shouldn’t have come here.” He’s talking down to me like an elder, but he’s not that old. And I’m not that young.
“I know,” I tell the tops of my white patent leather Docs. “I got the message.” He doesn’t want me here. I guess I was supposed to wait for him to come to me. “It’s just that I think we need to talk about this.”
“What is there to talk about?”
Heat. Nests. Knotting. Are we going to do it here? On that bedroll? Is he going to fit? Will it hurt? What happens after? How can I have a pup? I can’t have a pup. I’ve got my own crap I can’t deal with, and honestly, it’s enough of a challenge taking care of myself.
Darragh’s brow raises. I guess it wasn’t a rhetorical question.
I can’t talk about any of that with him. To stall, I reach for the apple that fell to the bedroll and start polishing it again.
He clears his throat. “It’ll be fine,” he says. It does not sound like he believes what he says in the least.
The panic rolls back, sweeping away all the other feelings, and suddenly, I want to go home. I want Una and Kennedy and Annie and my things and my own space. I need to regroup.
“Can I go back now?” I ask in a low voice.
For a long moment he doesn’t speak, but then he sighs. “Of course.”
When he moves, he moves quickly. He grabs a pair of well-used work boots from behind the trunk and steps into them. He props his foot on the trunk and bends to tie it, tightening the laces eyelet by eyelet with a firm tug, and for some reason, I can’t tear my eyes away. His thick thighs flex against the denim of his jeans, and loose strands of his newly cropped hair fall across his forehead.
My pulse kicks up again, and my belly joins the acrobatics, doing some weird upsy-daisy thing that isn’t fear or anxiety, not at all. The desire to go home fades.
Darragh looks up from where he’s kneeling and grimaces. The bond between us somehow lights up and sizzles, and a gush of heat rushes between my legs.
My heart lifts. My wolf isn’t terrified of Darragh Ryan, and maybe my body is kind of interested, too. Maybe this hasn’t been a complete disaster, just the world’s most awkward meeting of mates. Every pairing can’t be two people falling into each other’s arms and heading to the dens to make sweet, primal love. This is the real world.
I need to roll with this better. No expectations. Let it happen.
Heartened, I take a few more sips of water and a bite of apple. Darragh growls. It sounds like approval. I flush.
“Ready?” he asks as he straightens, finished with his laces.
“Maybe I could stay a little longer. We could—” My gaze darts around. “Read? I’m into books, too. What do you like?”