Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“This sucks,” I say quietly. “It’s so embarrassing.”
“I mean, it happens to everyone eventually,” Annie says with a gentle smile.
“Not to males.”
“They go into rut.” Annie’s eyes round. A whiff of her fear snakes into the new jeans, sunshine, and green grass scent wafting through the cracked window. “That’s worse.”
I guess she’s right, but it’s no comfort. A male in rut loses his mind and takes what he wants, regardless of whether the female has fully succumbed to her heat. It’s horrible, and females get hurt. The bond doesn’t usually survive, at least not in any functional way. That’s freaking awful, but I don’t feel any better about my body disconnecting my brain and morphing into one hundred percent horny animal.
I don’t even think my wolf likes the idea. She’s pacing nervously around inside me, jittery and tense. She wants us to go to Darragh. She thinks he’ll help.
I’m not ready for that kind of help.
I shift to rest my chin on the back of the couch, and my boobs skim the cushion. I shudder, the slight brush wracking my whole body like I was zapped by a live wire. I wrap my arms tight across my chest, hoping the pressure stops the sensation, and it’s better, but my breasts still feel like ripe cantaloupes about to burst.
“This is so awkward,” I mumble, my breath fogging a cloud on the glass.
“Do you want an ice pack or something?” Annie asks, concern in her voice. Annie might be as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof, but she’ll always be there for you if you’re not doing so well.
“You can tell that I’m hot?” I crane my neck to look at my chest. My skin is as rosy pink as if I’ve run a mile.
“Your face look like a baboon’s ass,” Kennedy pipes up. On the TV screen, a tank explodes. She smirks.
I lay my palms against my cheeks. The heat radiates. “I wish I knew how long I had. Until—you know.”
Annie and Kennedy both grimace. They get it. It’s the sword hanging over all our heads. Lucky females like Haisley Byrne or Rowan Bell, with powerful fathers and brothers, are raised to look forward to their heats like it’s the equivalent of a human quincea?era or something. Nothing bad could possibly happen. The males in their lives wouldn’t let it.
But we don’t have male relatives. There are no guardrails when our biology turns us into mindless animals. I squint at Darragh. He’s casting tortured glances down the path. I bet he’s going to take off again soon.
Is he going to hurt me? I mean, I know it can hurt the first time regardless, but is he going to be careful? He took a shower and changed. That’s a good sign, right?
A voice in the back of my head whispers “that’s a really low bar, don’t you think?”
I can’t take the strain anymore. I rise abruptly to my feet, snatch up my skirt, and tug it back on. Annie startles.
“Sorry,” I say.
She waves it off and digs in the chair cushion for the crochet hook she dropped.
“I’m going to head down to the lodge for dinner prep.” I’m a half hour early, and as a rule, we don’t show a minute earlier than we have to, but I can’t sit around in this stuffy cabin anymore. “You don’t have to come.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Kennedy says. “Just let me get to a save point.”
Annie begins to wind up her yarn and stow it in her old lady knitting bag. I bang on Una’s door to tell her we’re leaving early, but she’s in the shower. She’ll meet us there. She likes to go separately anyway. She takes longer than we do because of her leg, and she gets embarrassed that we walk slow to keep pace with her.
By the time we leave for the lodge, Darragh’s gone. The shadows are just beginning to lengthen as we make our way down to the commons. Most folks live in cabins clustered at the center of camp, but Killian stuck us up on a ridge as far as he could get us from the center of action and still be within the patrolled zone of our territory.
I always wondered if he did that because he thinks we’re some kind of bad influence—which, admittedly, we are, but only to each other—or if we’re just so worthless that the pack doesn’t want to waste prime real estate on us. No reason it can’t be both. It’s demoralizing to think about, though.
Is heat making me emo? I don’t usually dwell on how bad we’ve got it in this pack. I’m all about distractions and daydreams. This mate business is bringing me down. It might be my new reality, but it sucks.
When we circle around the back of the lodge to enter the kitchens, Old Noreen is already elbows deep in peeling potatoes. I need to do something to get my brain off Darragh and heat and how I’m going to get on all fours, and he’s going to be able to see my entire hindquarters, and I don’t even know his favorite color or food or anything.
I force down a breath and wipe my sweaty palms on my skirt, shuddering at the feel of the fabric.
“Phones away,” Old Noreen calls to us, pointing to the hidey-hole behind the crockpot with her knife. “And I don’t want them going off again during service.” She narrows her rheumy eyes at Kennedy.
“It was only the once,” Kennedy mutters as she turns off her ringer.
“It was memorable. I’m not going down for you again, girl,” Noreen scowls at her affectionately and goes back to her potatoes.
Some friend that Kennedy games with rang her once during dinner. His ring tone is “Paint It Black” by The Rolling Stones. It went off while Killian was giving one of his hour-long lectures.
Eamon and Lochlan Byrne burst back here like the police, and poor Noreen was on her own since we were all standing in the dining area like idiots with trays in our hands, waiting for Killian to lose steam.
Lochlan started tossing the kitchen while Old Noreen insisted it was her making the noise. She swore she’d drifted off and started singing. Eamon said, “Oh yeah? Sing it again.”
Noreen didn’t know the words to anything except the theme songs to the sitcoms that she watches on the little TV we bought her with farmers’ market money, which she wasn’t supposed to have either.
So while Eamon and Lochlan growled at her, forcing her to bend her neck, she sang the entire opening song to
The Big Bang Theory. She says they dropped the issue just so she’d stop.
Kennedy detours on her way to wash up to give Noreen a big bear hug. Noreen good-naturedly shakes her off, her wizened cheeks coloring.
“Peel those carrots if you want to show you’re sorry,” Noreen calls after her, but Kennedy’s already drying her hands and heading out to the floor to do set up. The males use the lodge hall for sparring practice between meals, so we have to roll away the cafeteria-style tables and rack the folding chairs three times a day.
Kennedy has permanent dibs on setup and breakdown. She hates cooking. She doesn’t think she’s too good for it or anything. It’s just her preference.
I don’t mind meal prep, but I hate serving. I guess because of the whole blonde hair, blue eyes, big boob thing, the males hassle me more than Una, Annie, and Kennedy. That’s why I take care of the elders and pups. It doesn’t cut out all the nonsense, but it does cut down on a lot of it.
I grab the carrots Noreen wants peeled, and after I wash my hands, turning the faucet as cold as it goes and running the stream over my wrists for a while to cool off, I set to work. Kennedy props the back door open with a bucket, so there’s air flowing, but still, my temperature is increasing by the minute.
My panties are damp, and my lips are slip-sliding with each step, and it kind of helps to squeeze my thighs together, and it kind of makes it worse.
Is Darragh coming to dinner? I feel like he has before, at least a few times, although I don’t recall a particular instance specifically.
He’ll probably sit with A-roster, up by Killian. That means Una will serve him.
A sharp flare of jealousy flashes to life in my chest and fizzles just as quickly. Una is like a big sister to me, and besides, she steers clear of the unmated males like the rest of us.
Haisley, Rowan, and their crew don’t steer clear, though. My wolf’s ears perk, and she bares a sharp incisor, a lazy growl rolling in the back of her throat. She’s hot, too, wilted and splayed out on her side, her flank rising and falling like she’s run a race. She does not like the idea of unmated females around Darragh.
I don’t know what she could do about it. She’s basically a miniature, not quite a runt, but a good percentage of her size is white fluff. Haisley’s wolf has my exact shade of fur, but she’s at least four times as big. Haisley’s mom might technically be the alpha female, but we all know who really keeps us in line—it’s Haisley’s mean, petty, ginormous she-beast.
“Mari? You’re up, girl,” Kennedy slaps my back on her way past me.
I blink. Crap. Noreen has already plated dinner, and it’s time to serve. I was so busy freaking myself out about Darragh and females and sweating my butt off that I did all my prep work on autopilot. I dry my palms on my skirt again and take a tray.
“You okay, sweetheart?” Noreen asks as if she’s noticing for the first time that I’m a bright pink, sweaty, damp mess.
“I’m good,” I tell her and muster up a smile. I actually am fine—preoccupied and soggy, but holding it together—until I go through the swinging door into the lodge hall and my face collides with the most unholy of stanks.
How did I not smell this in the kitchen? It’s like I was standing mere feet away from a latrine filled with zombies and sour milk, and I had no idea.
I’ve never felt my gorge rise before—I’ve only read it in books—but it rises, and I have to clamp my throat shut, or I’ll spew right onto the linoleum. I don’t know what would come up. When did I last eat? I had a plan for Una’s Manchego, but I didn’t end up following through.
I try to turn back, but Annie is right behind me, her tray rattling in her shaky grip. I have no choice but to step further into the miasma.
“What is that stink?” I hiss under my breath as she comes alongside me.
She sniffs. “The roast? Don’t let Noreen hear you. She won’t let you have any if she hears you talking like that.”
I press a forearm to my nose and focus on balancing my wobbling tray one-handed.
Annie clings to the wall as she picks her way to the B-roster tables closer to the dais. Killian’s already up there in his folding chair, manspreading in baggy athletic shorts, barking orders at two males he’s called up to spar for his entertainment.
It’s Fallon and Conor, a totally unfair match up. Conor’s in his twenties, and Fallon’s younger than me. Conor pins him round after round, and Fallon keeps barely wriggling free seconds before Ivo slaps the floor to call the match.
“See that?” Killian calls to someone at the A-roster table with glee. “It’s like the pup is greased.”
Whoever he spoke to doesn’t answer, but my gaze follows the direction of his comment, shuddering to a halt when I notice Darragh, straight-backed and tense, in the seat of honor at the head of the A-roster table.
Rowan is crowded way closer than she needs to be at his right. She’s leaning as far forward as she can while reaching for a saltshaker, her tits spilling obligingly from the neckline of her peasant blouse, but Darragh’s not looking at her.