Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Agnes’ rheumy eyes round. She gets it now. A slash of red appears across her weathered cheeks. “Well, I think Flora is a perfectly good name,” she mutters, and I’m about to forgive her when she looks back at the eggs, and her brow furrows. “There’s only three left,” she says.
My stomach turns. Her eyes narrow at me in speculation.
She raises the eggs higher under my nose. They slide around in their juices.
“Come on.” She prods my chest with the dish. “It’s not worth wrapping.”
I open my mouth to say no thank you, to make some excuse, but before I can, Brenda snaps, “Just eat them, girl.” Alpha command underscores the words.
Complying is instinct. I reach for a slimy disk with a shaking hand, but it slips from my fingers. Agnes sighs, irritated, whatever discomfort she felt at messing up my name gone. I try again, trap one, and pop it into my mouth whole. My throat convulses, but I force it down.
I hate devilled eggs. Mayonnaise is disgusting.
I gulp down the second and the third, and before anything else can happen, I bob my head in Brenda’s direction, excusing myself, and escape toward the big furnace. The eggs skate in my stomach.
I pass Rhona Blackburn and Greer Munroe, the highest-ranking unmated females, on their way back from the bathrooms. They snicker under their breath as they strut by, casting glances that somehow come from both the sides of their eyes and down their noses at the same time.
When I was younger, the snickers freaked me out. I’d check my zipper, surreptitiously wipe my nose, suck in my gut. I’m twenty-two now. I’ve long since figured out that they do it to mess with me.
I ignore them and skirt the big furnace, giving the older males a wide berth. The big furnace is actually a stone fireplace, as long and high as the north wall of the great hall that stood here before its roof caved during a blizzard fifty years ago.
The pack has always gathered around it, even when I was little and folks had stolen half the stones to shore up their own walls and fireplaces. Alec actually runs the crew that rebuilt it last year. They quarried slate from South Peak and built it even grander and sturdy enough that it was too much work for anyone to liberate parts of it for their own projects. It cost so much that Alpha Shaw said he’d skin a wolf for every stone that came up missing, and so far, not one has.
I take advantage of the cover the back of the big furnace provides and hurry up the well-trodden path to the concrete outbuilding that houses the toilets and a storage room. I duck around back and clamber up a sharp incline into the tall trees. The further I get from the pack, the higher my spirits rise.
I scrub the last few minutes from my mind, and anticipation fizzes in my belly, replacing the sick egg feeling. My pulse picks up, and my lungs tighten. By the time I get close to the place where we rendezvous, I’m panting. I stop for a minute to catch my breath. The dense woods are alive with critters rousing as the sun lowers behind the crest of Salt Mountain.
I run my tongue over my teeth, take my hood down, and smooth my hair, tucking loose strands behind my ears. I bite my lips to give them color.
For the first time today, for the first time in weeks, my blood rushes through my veins, and I’m wide awake. The air smells fresh and clean, like summer is about to break, and green branches steeple above my head, delicate and lovely.
This is why I do it. This feeling.
My life is on repeat, the same thing, week after week, year after year. I collect the washing, run it through the machines, hang it on the line, take it down, fold it, and deliver it to the high-ranking packmates in their compounds. I sweep powdered soap from the concrete floor, pinch my fingers in clothes pins, and fix the errant wheel on the old metal cart for the hundredth time.
I eat breakfast and dinner with my head down in the back of the hall and lunch from a sack in between loads. I bring Miss Nola her meals, tidy our small cottage, feed my bunny, Harriet, clean her cage, and stroke her soft fur. Good, bad, or indifferent, everything is always the same.
But sometimes, every so often, Alec Cameron catches my eye and jerks his chin toward the woods. Or back in the day, when we were still in school, he’d nod in the direction of the bleachers at the stadium at Moon Lake Academy or the broom closet by the library.
I used to weave all kinds of dreams around it. He’s my mate, and one day, I’ll come into heat, and we’ll be together forever. Or if we’re not mates, then he’s falling in love with me, but as a contender for future alpha, he doesn’t dare risk his rank to declare himself, but he can’t stop himself from seeking me out. One day, though, he’ll be so swept away that he’ll mark me and build me a cottage of my own high on South Peak, and we’ll have a dozen pups, and I’ll find Harriet a mate and she’ll have a dozen kits, and I’ll never be lonely again.
I’m not a teenager anymore. I know what this is and what it isn’t. I should be ashamed, but I’m not.
I force my breath to calm and hurry the last few yards until I catch sight of him, leaning against a thick oak, bent leg propped against the trunk. The familiar chain reaction bursts into life inside me as shivers skitter up my spine, race across my skin, pucker my nipples, and tingle between my legs.
He’s so gorgeous. He’s playing on his phone, his dark hair falling in his face. He’s wearing his usual white compression shorts under black soccer shorts and a long-sleeved shirt with a human’s name and the number seven on the chest. His black shoes have a white check mark on the sides, his crisp white socks just visible. How are his socks so clean after running up and down beside the river all afternoon, kicking a ball?
He glances up, although with how hard I’m panting, he must have heard me coming. I realize I’m still carrying the foil-wrapped plate, and I blush.
The corner of his lip quirks for a split second. He never really smiles, never shows his teeth. His brown eyes darken to black, though, and a bulge appears in his shorts. His gaze drops to the plate, and he raises an eyebrow.
“It’s for Miss Nola,” I say. He tosses a shoulder and slips his phone in his pocket.
“Put it there,” he says, nodding to a mossy patch beside the tree.
This is always the most awkward part. He likes me to go to him. He keeps it cool, lounging against the tree like he couldn’t care less while I set the plate down. I approach him with slow, small steps. His arms hang at his sides, but the fabric still clings, molding to his ripped biceps and broad chest. The white of the fabric sets off his tanned skin.
He’s so handsome, so different than the other males who swagger and bray around the village, always jockeying for rank, loud and aggressive. He moves with a casual arrogance, saying little, his face giving nothing away. At least not to anyone else.
I know his tells. At least some of them. I come to a standstill a foot from him, gazing up into that cool expression of feigned indifference, and note the pulse at his left temple and his clenched jaw. If I glanced down, I’d see that his shorts are fully tented.
Folks in this pack go out of their way not to look at me. Their eyes skip over me like I’ve been scribbled out, like I’m an embarrassing mistake. The fat shifter. Our kind aren’t supposed to carry extra weight. That’s a human thing. We don’t have overflowing breasts and pudgy bellies and thick thighs. I’m made wrong.
But Alec looks at me. Not around the others, but when we sneak off—his dark eyes eat me up.
“Take this off,” he says, plucking at my hoodie as he finally lowers his leg to stand on two feet. I pull it over my head, trying not to mess up my ponytail. I glance down. My white breasts spill over my pale blue bra with a lace edging. I exhale. Thank goodness it’s not the nude.
He swallows a deep growl, and someone else might miss the split-second rumble, but I don’t. My pussy throbs, and I soak my panties.
What is he going to do next? Is he going to be quick or draw it out? I never know.
Sometimes he tells me to touch myself. I love those times.
I whimper when he drags the cups of my bra down and fills his hands. He lifts and molds me, kneading my soft flesh, his breath growing ragged. He’s not gentle or smooth. He never has been. I don’t think he cares whether I like it or not, but I do. My breasts grow full and achy as I watch his work-roughened hands leave pink fingerprints on my white skin.
We’re both breathing heavily now. He’s been drinking lager. I keep my lips pressed together, praying he can’t smell egg.
His eyes rise to my face. He skims my cheek with a demanding hand, mashing my lower lip with his thumb, gripping my chin like I’m a doll, a plaything. I shouldn’t like this either, but it feels like a dream to be seen, not by someone looking to find fault, but by a strong, beautiful male looking to please himself.
“Take this out.” He tugs the plastic band holding my hair back. He likes it down.
I yank the tie free and shove it in my pocket as he lifts my breasts and lowers his face, taking a brownish nipple in his hot, hungry mouth. I watch, my hair falling over my bare shoulders, whimpering as he suckles hard, lapping and lashing me with his rough tongue. His five o’clock shadow scrapes my skin. It hurts, and it makes me feel so good.
I moan, and I don’t try to stifle it. He used to hold a hand over my mouth when we were in school, but out here, with no one around, he likes to hear me.
When the slight pressure on my shoulder comes, I’m expecting it. Sometimes I pretend I don’t know what he wants, and I make him say, “Get on your knees, Flora,” his voice gravelly with his wolf. But I don’t mess with him today.
I sink down. The moss is soft and springy. It’s a lot better than asphalt or tile.
Alec frees himself from his shorts, tucking the waistband under his balls. His cock is thick and ruddy, the vein running down the underside so plump that I squirm looking at it. I used to think he must be average sized, but then I was dumb enough to let Bram Blackburn get in my pants, so now I know Alec’s packing, not that it’s a plus when it comes to oral.
I always wonder what Alec would feel like inside me. Would it be different—good—since it’s him? But we never go that far. He doesn’t even kiss me. He did when we first started messing around, way back when, but at some point, he stopped bothering.
Alec grunts, impatient, and flexes his hips, bumping my cheek with his cock. I dip my head, lick around the mushroom head a few times, and drop kisses along the shaft, watching his abs tense with frustration. This isn’t what he wants.
I love his stomach. When he’s relaxed, he has ridges, but when he’s flexing—like when I tease him and he’s losing patience—he has bricks. I’m not sure how I feel about the way he tucks his shirt up under his chin so he doesn’t get cum on it by accident, but I do like the show.
I lap the glistening slit a few times, reacclimating myself to his salty taste. It’s not my favorite, but it’s not the worst, either. I actually like his smell. It reminds me of bread fresh from the oven.
“Flora,” he groans. I lap some more.
He tangles his fingers in my hair, gripping the back of my head. Once, early on, he shoved my head down and thrust forward at the same time, and I puked on his brand-new cleats. He’s more careful now.
He nudges my lips with his cock and applies slight pressure, urging me to take him in my mouth. I turn my face and nuzzle his shaft with my cheek.
“Quit fucking around, Flora,” he growls.
I almost smile. If I were to get up and walk away at this exact moment, he’d be devastated. I’m sure he’d be over it in no time, but still, for a few seconds at least, I’d have broken his heart.
I reach up and grip his base at the same time I part my lips and let him push into my mouth. Wrapping my hand around the base of his dick was another hard-learned lesson. It took a lot of choking and dry heaving before I figured it out.
He works himself in and out, holding me to him with his hand on the back of my head, and I relax my jaw, mentally disconnecting my gag reflex. My eyes tear up. He grunts, his breath coming quicker, his hips snapping. His wolf rumbles in his chest.
I love the sound. My wolf does, too. She lumbers forward, panting, to snuffle along the boundary between us. Obviously, I haven’t met her yet, but I know she’s a big girl, and she’s got a heart of gold. She reminds me of a pup—she’s into playing, squirrels, food, cool smells, and that’s pretty much it.
She also likes Alec’s wolf. Whenever she hears him, she’s off like someone shot a starter pistol, racing back and forth, sliding like she’s in socks on a hardwood floor.
I used to think her reaction was evidence that he’s our mate, but we’ve been messing around since junior year of high school, and there’s been no sign of my heat. He’s not mine, and ultimately, it’s for the best. He’s not nice, and despite what we do, he’s no different than the others.
Alec groans and shoves my head closer, smushing my nose against his pubic bone. Oh. I kind of got distracted and stopped sucking. Not like you can suck much with a dick this far down your throat. I wiggle my tongue as much as I can, and that seems to do the trick. He moans and lets up a little. I can take a full breath again.
He used to come in two or three minutes flat. I guess because he has more experience at this point, it takes a lot longer now.
My stomach hurts at the thought, but there’s nothing I can do. At least he’s not dating Isla Sinclair anymore. That was the worst three months of my life. I’m sure Alec didn’t tell her about what we do, but she must have sensed something because she ganged up with Rhona and Greer to make my life miserable. It wasn’t like Alec and I fooled around when they were together. He pretended I didn’t exist like everyone else.