Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Eileen hustled me off to the kitchen to help her with the dishes.
The past decade hasn’t been kind to him. His knuckles are gnarled, and the hair on his head has receded, although his mutton chops are as bushy as ever.
Lochlan is his nephew. Eamon raised him. They’re two of a kind. They walk the same, hunched but swaggering, arms swinging. Like wiry, foul-tempered chimpanzees.
As they plow forward, I get no sense that they’re going to make way. Annie dodges into the tall grass, but I’m not that nimble. I’m still in the middle of the path when they come to a stop, inches from me.
My wolf growls, baring her teeth, and my heart thunders. I shrink back. She’s going to get us killed. We’re alone.
I make to step aside, but Eamon grabs my upper arm, digging his fingers into the muscles. His sneer is echoed on Lochlan’s face. Both their noses flare. They must smell Killian.
“Not so fast.” Eamon rakes his eyes down my front, pausing at the white and silver hairs I didn’t manage to brush off. I jerk my arm, but he squeezes tighter, the tips of his claws snicking, ripping my sleeve.
Instinctively, I reach for the place the bond was, but there’s nothing there.
My wolf wants to fight. She’s riding some kind of high from taming Killian’s beast. I tamp down hard. That’s not reality. We’re outranked and outnumbered, and I can taste the malice wafting off these two.
In my periphery, I see Annie skulking away. Both males are focused on me. She’s going to bolt.
Go, girl. I need to distract them.
“What do you want?” I force the words out of my tight throat.
A rumble sounds in Eamon’s chest. “What was I just telling you, Lochlan? When I was beta, bitches didn’t speak unless you asked ’em a question. Shit’s gotten way too lax around here.”
Lochlan nods in full agreement. From the corner of my eye, I see Annie inching farther up the path.
“If you have a problem, take it up with the alpha.” I brace for a cuff to the side of the head. I’ve seen Eamon deliver those blows to his mate for as long as I can remember. I can hardly breathe; my chest is so tight.
“And if a bitch didn’t learn when to keep her mouth shut, well-” Eamon grins at Lochlan. “Hard to talk with no teeth.”
Lochlan nods again. “Some bottom feeders have gotten real comfortable around here. Attacking their betters.”
He’s talking about Haisley.
“No matter what Killian Kelly does, you can’t change the reality of rank in a wolf pack,” Eamon says.
He extends his claws just enough to prick my skin. Annie has disappeared over the crest of the hill, and I’m sweating bullets, but I can breathe a little better now that she’s safe.
Eamon leans down to whisper in my ear. His sideburns scratch my cheek. “Strength rules. It always has. It always will. And you and your band of rejects aren’t very strong, now, are you?”
He straightens, retracting his claws and dropping my arm, and gazes up at the blue sky. Then he steps off the path and waves me forward. “Enjoy this while you can, female. Change is coming. Something tells me you and the other sluts up the hill aren’t gonna like it very much.”
He slams his shoulder into mine as he passes, knocking me back, and by the time I steady myself, they’re gone. My blood is thundering in my veins, and my crazy little wolf is leaping, snapping her teeth, straining to attack. It’s all I can do to hold her in.
And then Annie, Mari, and Kennedy’s massive beast of a black wolf come racing down the path.
My heart stutters with relief, and then gladness. When he comes to a halt beside me, I plunge my fingers into Kennedy’s thick, silky pelt. He stares toward camp with his unearthly silver eyes, lips peeled back from inch long incisors. It’s clear he wants to go after them, but that he won’t leave us to do it.
“You came to my rescue,” I murmur. This is such a risk for her. The wolf growls low in the back of his throat, and then he licks my hand.
“What did they want?” Mari asks. “Were they messing with you ’cause you attacked Haisley?”
“Kind of?” Haisley is a Byrne-Lochlan’s cousin and Eamon’s niece. They’ve never seemed to give a crap about her before though. “Eamon was, like, doing a whole villain monologue.”
Mari shudders. “His sideburns are creepy as shit.”
“Agreed.”
“A-are you going to tell Killian?” Annie asks.
I wrap an arm around her waist as we turn to walk home. She’s shaking like a leaf. “Why would I?”
“So he can tell them to leave you alone.”
I shake my head. I’m not opening any can of worms with Killian Kelly. That was bad and scary, but it’s just words. We’ve all heard it before, and we will again. In Declan Kelly’s day, blah blah blah. You females better watch out because blah, blah, blah.
I don’t want to say that, though. It might be true, but I don’t want to ever tell my girls we just have to ‘suck it up, buttercup.’ So I say, “Killian’s not my mate.”
“But he is your alpha,” Mari pipes in.
I’m not sure why the point makes me grumpy, but I get quiet, and when we get back to the cabin, I turn down a beer and excuse myself to take a shower before kitchen duty.
I’ve got wolf drool and hairs all over me, and my clothes reek of Killian’s wolf. That’s probably why the Byrnes decided to hassle me. I walk the blouse and skirt to the hamper while I run the water, and because I’m weird, I hold them to my nose and sniff.
All the lingering disquiet from the encounter with the Byrnes dissipates, and my wolf’s tail wags, excitement thrumming in my middle.
Killian’s scent is awesome. Like the one night each summer growing up when the elders let us pups go to the fireman’s carnival in town-humid haze, velvet darkness, candy apples, the tantalizing trace of plentiful prey, and happy howls.
The scent drags me back in time, uncoiling the anxious knot in my belly and winding me up at the same time. It’s dark magic. Tempting. Familiar.
Intriguing.
I dangle the clothes over the hamper lid, but I don’t let go.
I should soak them in the sink so the place doesn’t reek of male. Laundry day isn’t until Friday. The other girls don’t want to catch a whiff of alpha every time they use the bathroom. Talk about harshing your mellow.
I should do that, but instead, I walk them back to my bedroom, fold them neatly. and hang them over the chair by my bed where I put the clothes that I figure I can get another wear out of before washing.
It’s dumb and embarrassing, something a girl would do right before her first heat, the kind of nesting mimicry that girls always got teased for in high school. It’s a ridiculous thing to do, but my wolf approves wholeheartedly. It gives her ideas.
I head back to the shower, and while I scrub briskly from head to toe, rinsing off the fear scent with scalding hot water, she bounces around-the Byrnes forgotten-spitballing. We should go for a run with Killian’s wolf. Sleep huddled up next to him. Wear the skirt to dinner so the other females know he’s ours.
I put the kibosh on that. Not ours. Don’t want.
She growls, but her heart’s not in it, the silly, giddy, ball of sunshine.
Not ours. Leave him alone. No fighting.
I flex, force her to recognize that I’m serious. She whines, and then she tucks herself in a corner, grumbling.
She’s not actually going to act on her ideas. She’s chastened. Haisley’s wolf tore her up. She’s painfully aware of her limits now, and besides, I don’t think she can take me by surprise again. I know the sensation of an oncoming shift now. I’ll be able to stop her if she tries to take our skin.
I’m sorry that she’s disappointed, but she’ll get over it. We both will.
I hustle back to my room, wrapped in my towel, after listening to make sure Kennedy’s playing her video games out front. Mari, Annie, and I don’t mind a little nudity-or in Mari’s case, a lot-but Kennedy is bashful.
I sit at the vintage school desk I use as a vanity and take my time brushing and braiding my hair. Old Noreen never really needs us until it’s time to serve. She says we get under foot.
My oval mirror hangs on a nail from the wall. I scavenged it from the white elephant table at the farmer’s market. My seat is a step ladder that I found in the outbuilding across the path. Mari’s terrified of the place, but it’s just an old groundskeeper’s shed. There’s not much in there except cans of dried-up paint and glass jars filled with cobwebs and nails.
Sometimes I wonder what the other female’s rooms look like, the ones who mated at first heat, or the ones with fathers or uncles to live with. The “protected” females. Do they have nice, matching furniture? Framed pictures and padded satin hangers for the clothes they buy from town?
I watch HGTV. Do they have an accent wall? A window seat filled with pillows?
I’m not jealous. Not much. In a way, it’s my worst nightmare. I don’t want to be accountable to a male for where I go and what I do. But I do wonder. What’s it like knowing there’s a powerful male looking out for you?
A memory flashes. Killian’s wolf laying sprawled on my lap, his sharp eyes taking in everything-me, the garage, Liam and Annie, the birds overhead, the distant forest hoots and cracks and snaps. I wasn’t alone. No one would have dared approach us. Touch my arm. Prick my skin with their claws.
I rub my biceps. The nicks are already healed.
My wolf yips and waggles and rolls. She likes remembering. She wants me to rush down to the lodge. Find him. Lick his face. Tickle underneath his chin with our fur.
Down girl.