Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
As it gets later, the stream of visitors tapers off. Annie excuses herself to bed. Kennedy changes into her comfy sweats and puts on a movie. Out on the porch, Lucan and Fallon shoot the shit in undertones.
Is Darragh just going to leave me here? Go back to his shack in the woods like nothing changed?
Did anything change?
My fingers skim the hot skin surrounding my claiming mark. The bite itself is an angry red, but it’s already hurting less. I didn’t bite him. Will that make it easier for him to walk away? For me to get left again?
I ease onto my feet, shuffle to the kitchen, open the refrigerator door and stare at what I already knew was in there. I hate this feeling.
So why am I feeling it?
Screw this. I hobble down the hall to my room and change into a pair of soft leggings and a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt. As I move, the stiffness eases although I still feel battered and bruised. I slip on a pair of boots and tell Kennedy I’m heading down to the lodge. She jumps up to come with me, but I tell her that I’ll take Lucan and Fallon. Her eyes are bloodshot, and she’s chewed the skin beside her thumbnail raw. She needs a break.
Fallon and Lucan don’t want me to leave the cabin, but when I walk past them and head down the path, they fall in behind me, grumbling about how Darragh is going to beat the shit out of them, and it’ll be all my fault, and they’d haul my ass back, but then Darragh would tear their heads off for touching me.
A memory of Smith’s dented skull dropping into the dirt flashes in my mind, and my stomach goes queasy. I pick up my pace, a sense of urgency coming over me.
I listen to the bond, following it as I trip down the path past the A-roster cabins across the lawn to the lodge. Unfamiliar males are clustered out front, grim-faced, speaking in hushed tones. I smell Moon Lake, Salt Mountain, and an earthy variation of Moon Lake that must be the new Old Den Pack.
North Border must not have gotten here yet.
As I pass the strangers, whispers follow me.
That’s her. The lone wolf’s mate.
Warmth sparks to life in my chest. My wolf lifts her head.
I climb the steps, Lucan and Fallon in my wake, and for the first time, I feel like the center of attention. It’s strange, but I’m not worried about it. I’m worried about my mate. He’s here. I can feel him through the bond, but I can’t tell which version I’m going to find—the cold and silent male who cast me aside four years ago or the male who recited plot summaries to keep me calm and called me brave and beautiful.
I know which one I want. I know how quickly and irreversibly my foolish heart has pinned its hopes on him. And I also know how many times in my life fate has broken my way.
I open the glass door, my heart speeding like everything is riding on this next moment, like I’ve got no hard shell left, like I’ve shed whatever resilience I once had, and now I’m raw and pink and exposed.
There are twice as many males in the lodge as were gathered outside. Some are on laptops and phones, some sitting or hovering as if they’re waiting for orders. Up on the dais, someone has pushed together two tables, and a dozen males surround it, gesturing at a huge map.
Darragh is up there next to Killian, talking to two males in black suits. A harsh chemical scent assails my nose, and my stomach churns. Humans.
My wolf growls as my claws extend, snicking through my fingertips. Darragh’s gaze flies to mine. My pulse skids to a halt.
Without a second’s hesitation, he stops mid-sentence, steps down from the dais, and strides across the floor, straight for me. My wolf yips, and my claws slide back.
He’s had a shower. His skin is marred like mine with scrapes and bruises, but he’s clean. His hair is combed and his beard is trimmed. He’s wearing a fresh flannel and a different pair of his same old blue jeans. My heart pitter-pats back to life.
This male is my mate.
As he passes, our packmates pay him the homage they would an alpha, the quick lowering of eyes, the subtle dip of the head. The overhead lights catch the flecks of gray in his hair and beard, and when his gaze catches mine, I can’t help but notice the creases in the corners of his eyes and bracketing his lips have deepened from exhaustion. No one looking at him—at how he carries himself—could doubt that this male has been through it and emerged from the other side, not once, but many times.
Yet, despite that, in the wide-open brown of his irises and the way he holds himself when he stops inches from me, tense and stone-faced and vibrating with nerves, I can imagine the nine-year-old, alone except for the sister taken from him, fighting his way down the stairs that are still just over there, on the other side of this very lodge.
I know how he would have fought.
He fought that way for me.
I shiver.
He shakes himself off and begins to unbutton his flannel.
I watch with a cat holding my tongue. He peels off the shirt, revealing a tight, worn undershirt that clings to his pecs, and drapes the flannel over my shoulders, nudging me to stick my arms in the sleeves. I do. He steps closer to button me up, and I smell sunshine in the middle of the night.
Tingles begin low in my belly, and a wave of shyness creeps over me. Even with my eyes cast down, I know everyone’s looking at us.
“I didn’t want to interrupt you,” I say, my cheeks heating, as if that isn’t exactly what I did.
“You were sleeping.” His fingers haven’t left the placket of his shirt. He smooths it down, his hand hovering over the place where the bond flows from him to me and back the other way.
“You haven’t slept yet,” I say. It’s a guess.
He shakes his head.
We stare at each other, flushing and awkward as hell, and I vaguely register that the others are going back to their conversations and devices.
Is he thinking about the container? About what we did?
My fingers fly to the bite mark. He tracks the movement, and before I can lower my hand, he’s gently tugging my collar away from my neck, and our fingers tangle.
He sucks in a breath. “It’s red. Is it supposed to be red like that?”
I have no idea. “It doesn’t hurt as bad as it did.”
He tenses and drops his hands to his side. “You wouldn’t let Abertha touch it?”
My stomach turns. “It’s my mark.”
His shoulders relax. The answer seems to assuage his displeasure. “She’s a friend, you know. She just wants to help.”
I take a step back and fold my arms. “Your friend.”
Slashes of color appear under his cheekbones, and his gaze darts around the lodge, like he’s looking for an out or an assist.
I don’t know why I’m pressing the point. I understand how things were between them, and it’s not like we’re a normal mated couple, and even if we were, you don’t get to be upset because your mate had experiences before you found them. That’s way outdated thinking.
I still hate her, and there’s no way she’s touching my bite mark.
He takes a step forward, leaning closer. No one is near enough to overhear, but still, he pitches his voice lower when he says, “There’s been no one since I noticed you.”
Blood floods my face. Part of me wants to change the subject, but I don’t know what to change it to, and I don’t know what I’m doing here except I couldn’t stay away from him any longer.
Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Me chasing him?
My frightened eyes cling to his vaguely panicked ones, my brain clinging to what he just said so I don’t spin into a full-blown freak out. He hasn’t been with anyone since he noticed me? “That morning at Abertha’s cottage?”
He blinks, the line between his eyebrows reappearing. “It was before that.”
It’s my turn to blink. “Before that?”
He shifts in his boots, scrubs his neck, and glances over his shoulder at the males conferring on the dais. “Let’s get out of here for a while, eh?”
The change of subject throws me, but I’m quick to nod. I don’t like being around this many strange males. It’s the opposite feeling of the females gathered around me in the infirmary.
“Wait here,” he says. He goes to talk to Killian, and one of the humans interrupts, showing him something on a phone. He shakes his head, cutting him off, and returns to me.
While he was preoccupied, no one came over or even shot me a glance. It’s like there’s a bubble around me or an invisibility cloak. I’m female, the only shifter with blonde curls that I know of, and I have boobs. Males always look, especially those from other packs. But not in this room, not now.
It’s a weird feeling. I kind of like it.
As Darragh strides back to me, it hits me hard. My life is different now. Even if we go back to pretending each other doesn’t exist, I’m not going to be little Mari anymore, going about my honey and craft business, more or less background scenery for the high-ranking wolves in this pack.
I’ll be Mari, the lone wolf’s rejected mate.
My stomach sours.
“Want to go somewhere?” Darragh asks when the door of the lodge shuts behind us.
“Yeah.”