Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Darragh’s face darkens. He doesn’t like the idea of living close to people, but I know he’d do it, for Cait and me.
“Wait until you see the gates installed?” He reaches across our baby and winds a curl around his finger before he tucks it behind my ear. I snuggle into the feather pillow.
“Okay.” It’s getting dark, and soon, one of us will have to get up to make dinner. I already know it’ll be Darragh. He takes care of everything except cleaning the breast pump. He gets really ham-handed and flustered, and after he broke one, we decided it was best if I handled it.
I yawn so big my ears pop. “Are you really going to put up a net?”
He hums. I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open.
“That’s ridiculous.” I smile, thinking about Cait bouncing in a circus net as Darragh climbs in after her.
“It’d be a backup.” He reaches across our baby to trace my curved lips. I nip the tip. His rumble deepens, and something swirls in my belly.
Maybe I’ll be ready soon. Tonight. After a nap.
I quit fighting it and let my eyelids stay shut. “I love you, mate,” I mumble. I tell him all the time. He says it less often, but he shows me every minute of every day.
“I love you back,” he says, his voice low and gravelly with exhaustion.
“I’m the light of your life.” Sleep steals over me like a shadow, but before I fall, I hear him answer.
“You’re my everything.”
I wake up in the middle of the night with a start, searching for Cait with my heart in my throat, but she’s right there, arms thrown over her head, snuffling in her sleep. I slept straight through dinner. I rub my eyes, and for the first time, my gaze shifts past my sweet little baby to where Darragh had been lying.
He’s gone.
His gold and bronze and brown patchwork wolf lies there in his place, sprawled on his side, wide awake. He’s watching Cait, his tail flicking back and forth.
He raises his bright eyes to me. My body tenses, my adrenaline spiking, but I’m not afraid.
I know this wolf.
He knows me.
We belong to each other, too.
He twists his neck, idly licking his flank, and then he lays his head back down, stretching his legs across the bed to knead my thighs with the rough pads of his paws. He yawns, snaps his jaw shut, and slowly, his golden eyes drift closed.
After a few minutes, he starts snuffling in his sleep, too.
I lie there for hours before I join them, listening to my baby and my mate’s soft snores, wondering at the mystery of Fate and the blessings that only come with time.
* * *
The Five Packs saga began with
The Tyrant’s Alpha’s Rejected Mate.
Want more Cate C. Wells while you wait for the next in series? Check out
Charge, an opposites attract romance between a down-on-her luck single mom and the biker next door.
Chapter 1
Volume 4
1
FLORA
Alec catches my eye from across the clearing and jerks his chin toward the woods. It’s so quick and subtle that no one but me would notice. My heart takes off. My gaze drops to my sneakers, and my cheeks burst into flame.
I shrink into my sweatshirt, glad the hood is up. But it’s not like anyone’s paying any attention to me.
The unmated males are clustered on the river’s edge further upstream, drinking beers and arguing about the game they just finished. They play a mashup of human sports with the ball from soccer, the scrum from rugby, the tackling from football, and no firmly agreed upon rules. Then they spend the next couple of hours before the pack run fighting over how the plays should have been called.
The dams are packing up the leftovers while their males are gathered by the big furnace, smoking pipes. Pups are everywhere—splashing in the shallows, climbing on the huge tires that serve as a playground, crawling under the picnic tables over in the pavilion, annoying the gossiping elders.
The unmated females are posing on blankets on a grassy bank, sunning themselves in bikini tops despite the chill in the air as the afternoon fades.
I’m alone on the smooth rocks jutting into the river. When the males are messing around in the water, the females sit here to watch, but it’s all mine now.
I should stay right here. Pretend I didn’t see him. Or turn my back and face away so he knows I’m turning him down.
That’s what a female with pride would do, right?
But I’m already climbing to my feet, picking my way down the rocks to the sandy bank, licking my dry lips, and wiping my palms on my faded jeans. I wish I’d washed my hair this morning. I threw it back in my usual low ponytail, and—oh, no. What bra am I wearing?
I can’t remember. I wriggle in my oversized top as if I can somehow tell by feel. Please be the black one.
Alec doesn’t always ask me to take my shirt off, but with my luck, he will today, and I’ll be wearing the industrial strength nude contraption with four clasps that makes my boobs look like cones.
I’m careful to keep my pace unhurried as I skirt around the clusters of laughing males wrestling on the pebbled beach and the shark-eyed females propped on their elbows, surveilling the scene.
I think I’m going to make it, but when I pass by the tables where the food was laid out, Brenda Shaw, our alpha female, calls me over.
“Here, girl.” She snaps her fingers, her long acrylic nails clicking. “Take this back with you to Nola.”
I dutifully take the aluminum wrapped plate she’s thrust in my direction, bending my neck and averting my eyes.
“Don’t you go and eat that yourself now, hear?” she tacks on. “That’s for Nola.”
My shoulders shoot to my ears as I duck my head lower and erase my face. A ball of shame catches in my throat. I’d never eat Miss Nola’s food, but that doesn’t matter. The alpha female has spoken, and the shame is a reflex.
After waiting a few seconds to make sure she’s done with me, I try to leave, but before I can take two steps, an age-spotted claw grips my forearm. “Hold up, Fluffa. Finish these eggs, won’t you? There aren’t enough left to waste the plastic wrap.”
A nearby female gasps. Another snickers.
Agnes Campbell squints up at me, oblivious to the reaction, as she holds a tray of devilled eggs in a shaky grip. There are three halves left.
The other dams fussing around the table stop what they’re doing to gawp, their ears pricking.
Brenda sighs as if she’s been inconvenienced. “Her name’s Flora,” she calls to Agnes.
I freeze in place, staring at the trampled ground, praying that Agnes has the grace to just drop it and let me go, but I know better.
“What?” Agnes barks like she couldn’t hear.
“That’s Flora. Donal Ritchie’s get,” someone supplies from the far end of the table at top volume.
Agnes’ thin lips screw into a scowl. I can’t fault her confusion. My father hasn’t acknowledged me since my dam died. He bailed when she caught the wasting sickness, and then he just stayed gone.
“No, I’m sure her name is Fluffa.” Agnes isn’t giving up.
“The others just call her that. Her name’s Flora Ritchie.” Brenda goes back to ladling macaroni salad into an empty whipped cream tub, the issue settled.
With that dismissal, the instinctive weight keeping me here eases, but Agnes still has my arm. She peers into my face. “But why do they call her Fluffa?”
To keep me in my place. Because they think it’s funny. To amuse each other and score points. Because being me is their worst nightmare, so they have to joke about it. Because if they shove me as far down the rank as possible, they will never be lowest.
I keep my head bent, but Agnes has shrunk so much with age that she’s still glaring up into my burning face.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. It’s because of her—” On the other side of the table, the beta’s mate puts down the bowl she was holding to free her hands. She puffs her cheeks and gestures with her hands, making huge mounds in the air around her boobs and belly and butt. “You know, ’cause she’s fluffy.”