Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“No,” Darragh says. No elaboration. Just “no.” Killian grunts. I don’t know whether it’s approval for Darragh’s restraint or some other male thing I can’t understand.
Oh, it was really dumb to go up there. I see it now that I’m pinned in place with a crick in my neck, a headache gathering from the strain of looking up at these two males from the corner of downcast eyes.
I wish Una would walk by. She’d help somehow, or at least she’d stay close by so I wouldn’t be alone in the middle of the path, called on the carpet with everyone staring at me from behind their cabin curtains.
“You said you would watch her,” Darragh says to Killian.
My body instinctively tightens in anticipation of a fight. No one challenges the Alpha.
“Can’t watch her every second,” Killian retorts. He’s not even pissed. Not at Darragh at least. He’s glowering at me.
Darragh frowns at Killian’s answer.
“You want me to keep her locked up?” Killian asks with a toss of his shoulder.
An old fear blooms in my chest, and a vague memory—a coarse and demanding voice at our front door. Mom hustling me into the closet, shutting the door, and dragging the bureau across it. Snarls and whimpers and creaking springs. Mom letting me out, her hands shaking, and the bedroom stinking of shame, strange male, and human tobacco. Despite the hot afternoon sun, I shiver.
“No. She wouldn’t like that,” Darragh says. Who would like that?
“I could put her in with Cheryl,” Killian offers. “She’d keep her in line.”
Cheryl is the alpha female and Haisley’s mother. She’s mean. Since I was little, she’s always called me a baby doll, patting my cheek and pulling at my curls to make them spring. She does it hard, so it hurts.
Darragh scans my face. I’m careful not to make eye contact. “No,” he says. “That won’t work.”
I blink fast so the tears don’t come. This is existence in Quarry Pack in a nutshell. Lone females are voiceless, inconsequential things to be moved around like furniture. I hate this place. The crick in my neck begins to really ache.
“Well, I don’t know what you want me to do then.” Killian unwinds his towel and wipes his face and sweat-soaked hair. “I can punish her.”
Darragh growls so loud that three cabins away, a female lets out a startled shriek and a door slams. Killian’s wolf snarls back, and both males stand taller and face off, their shoulders broadening, muscles tautening.
Every fiber of my being wants to run, but with two alphas looming over me—and after this, I have no doubt that Darragh is a born alpha, too, even if he’s not the leader of any pack—my stupid instincts won’t let me do anything but cower.
It’s an awful feeling. I shake in my boots as my brain races. This has to end before I start blubbering in clear sight of every nosy packmate in camp. We’ve been standing here long enough that someone’s sure to have alerted Haisley and her crew, and I know they’re lurking somewhere, getting an eyeful so they can throw it in my face later. That’s how they keep their status, grinding the rest of us down.
“I won’t do it again.” It flies from my mouth in a burst of courage born of pure misery, and yet, I sound like a squeaking mouse.
Killian raises both eyebrows. Darragh scowls into the distance over my head.
“I won’t leave camp again. I swear. Just let me go home. I was just—” Shit. I’m talking too much. I shut my mouth, but Killian tilts his head.
“Just what? Go on,” he says like a dare. I think he’s kind of enjoying this. I’m living through one of the worst moments of my life, and he’s amused.
I hang my whole head. Please, can’t this be over? “Nothing, Alpha. I won’t do it again.”
There’s a moment of silence. I assume Darragh and Killian are exchanging meaningful glances. Then Killian barks, “Ivo!”
Footsteps sound on the porch.
“Take Mari here back to the lone females’ cabin,” he orders.
Darragh’s wolf starts a fresh racket while Ivo blithely trots down the steps. He stinks, too. I can’t help but scrunch my face. He smells like dirty dishwater left overnight.
“Come on,” Ivo says to me, and with my heart flooding with relief, I don’t even notice him take my forearm until his grip is ripped away in a whirl of flying male, unsheathing claws, and flashing fangs. There is a moment when I can’t tell Ivo, Killian, and Darragh apart—they’re a heaving mass of swinging limbs and gnashing teeth.
I fall into a low squat, wrap my arms tight around my shaking body, tuck my face to my chest, and pray that the fight doesn’t bowl into me.
For some reason, Killian doesn’t flipshift into his beast, and I’m grateful. My wolf and I are terrified of it.
I don’t see the resolution, I just come to realize after a few seconds that even though three muffled wolves are still vocalizing, the thuds of flesh impacting flesh—and the crack of bone—has stopped. The males are panting. The foul scents of dishwater and pond scum waft over to where I’m huddling in a ball. I peek up.
The three have separated and are bent over, catching their breath. There’s blood. The collar of Ivo’s T-shirt is torn and hanging by a thread.
“One day, man, I’m gonna convince you to go on the circuit,” Killian says to Darragh, straightening and slapping him on the back. “You better take her to her cabin.”
Killian hooks his arm around Ivo’s neck and tries to poke him in his blackening eye as Ivo ducks his head and snaps his teeth.
“Your worries are unfounded, man,” Killian says over his shoulder to Darragh. “You kicked Ivo’s ass without shifting, didn’t you?” He cracks himself up. Ivo is not amused, but he follows Killian back up the steps to his cabin.
“And impress upon the female that she needs to follow the rules?” Killian chuckles as he strides unworried through his cabin door, leaving Darragh and me alone in the path.
Well, alone except for all the old dams with their noses poking out from behind their curtains. I rise to my wobbly feet and smooth my shredded skirt. It feels good to be able to straighten my neck, but it’s also weird. My wolf and I are both very aware now that Darragh is an alpha, but it’s like he’s not our alpha. The instinct to display deference isn’t there, not like it is with Killian.
I don’t know, it’s confusing, and I’ve had enough. I’m feeling hot and thirsty again, so when Darragh grunts “come on” and leads the way up toward home, I fall in behind him. I even hang back a good length so he doesn’t have to power walk, but now, for some reason, he’s matching his pace to mine. He’s careful to leave enough space between us, though, so he’s walking in the grass instead of beside me on the path.
I feel as bad as Killian and Ivo smell. I don’t have any courage or energy left. I’m just going to trudge home, keep my mouth shut, and think about showers and cold baths and ice water.
I don’t expect Darragh to speak to me again after ratting me out, so I’m surprised when we clear the commons, and he says, “Don’t leave camp again.”
I nod. I mean, I’m not going to do what he says. I live for market day in Chapel Bell. But I’m not going looking for him again. Lesson learned. Message received.
I figure we’re good, but a few yards further on, he clears his throat and says, “You didn’t have enough water.”
Yeah, I realize that.
“That bottle only holds, what, twenty-one ounces? You need forty.”
I got this bottle because it came in a cute lavender color. I wasn’t thinking about backcountry hiking.
He seems to expect a response, but I am not in the mood to “yes, sir” him. He can’t act like an elder with me. He might not want to accept it, but he’s my mate. A part of him is flowing into my chest right now. I might not be able to read it clearly, but it’s undeniably there.
We walk a few more yards, and he huffs a sigh, actually looks over at me, and says, “There are animals out there.”
We’re animals. Also, I didn’t see or smell any carnivores at all, only your garden-variety big vermin—raccoons, possums, and groundhogs.
He knits his brow. “You might not smell them, but a predator can and will encroach on our territory at any time.”
I just keep walking. We’re almost to the hill leading to home. So freaking close.
“People have disappeared,” he says.
I know. We’ve been warned about the dangers of venturing away from camp unescorted for our entire lives.
“I’m serious.” He stops in his tracks and grabs my forearm. I whimper and snatch it back. Apparently, when he dragged Ivo off me earlier, Ivo didn’t let go right away, and I got bruised. I hadn’t realized.
Darragh looks like I slapped him in the face.
“What’s wrong with your arm?” He’s staring at it like it’s a snake I’m cradling.
“Nothing. It’s just a little sore from earlier.”
“Show me.”
I rotate my forearm, hold it out toward him with my elbow still tucked tight to my side. There are faint bruises shaped like fingertips. With shifter healing, they’ll be gone in a few minutes.
He stares at them with the greatest look of baffled horror I’ve ever seen on a male.
“There’s nothing you can really do for bruises,” he says, like he’s Liam the pack mechanic telling Una that the truck we borrow to drive to town is going to need a new transmission. “You need to ice it.”
“They’ll be gone by the time I get home.” I eye the path toward the cabin meaningfully.
He frowns at my arm. I tuck it back against my belly.
“You shouldn’t have left camp,” he says. “You don’t understand what kind of threats there are outside the territory. You aren’t prepared.”