Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Isla finally lifts her foot off the damn shorts and dashes to a safe distance like I’m it, and this is tag. “She’s sniffing someone’s sweaty shirt.”
There is a chorus of female disgust, but I can’t put the shirt down. If I do, I’ll throw up in front of everyone. I want to stand, but someone has crowded too close behind me, and if I try to get to my feet without bracing my hands on the ground, I’ll lose my balance. If I brace, I’ll be presenting my ass to whoever’s up in my space.
Except for that guy, my packmates are backing away, forming a new ring so I’m on stage left, and opposite me, Alec is standing stage right, his posture deliberately unconcerned, his expression blank.
He’s my mate.
It’s like a metal cord got yanked and a bare lightbulb has lit up all the corners of my insides. Everything is glaring and stark. My wolf is clearer than she’s ever been. Every single hair on her body is cast in high definition, every bump on her rough nose, every black fleck on her muzzle, every long, thin whisker. She’s at the very edge, primed to leap, to become real.
And there’s a thick, braided rope embedded in my chest, its strands woven between my veins and muscle, so tangible that I grasp for it, but my fingers fumble through air and Alec’s shirt falls to the ground.
The stench smashes into my face. I pinch my nose shut, but then I have to open my mouth to breathe, and the smell has a taste, a horrible taste. My stomach heaves.
“What’s wrong with her?” Greer screws up her face like I’m a fat cockroach stuck on my back.
I’m trapped. Surrounded. My body is going haywire, and I don’t know what to do, but Alec will. He never loses his cool.
I look to him, willing him to look back.
Let me know what to do. Step in. Get them away from me.
He’s gazing in this direction, but not at me. At the middle distance. It’s the expression he wears at kick-off when the males play soccer. He’s watching everything and nothing.
“Oh my God, look at her face. She’s bright red,” a male beside me says, crowding closer to see. He smells like pup shit once they’ve been weaned onto solids. I gag, barely choking down the puke.
People are murmuring now, shuffling to get a better look at me, and Alec’s just hanging out over there with his mouth shut, as if this is nothing to him.
My wolf cocks her head and whines. She doesn’t know why he’s not acting, and I don’t know what she’s expecting him to do, but I wish he’d do something. Say something.
Help me.
“Alec?” It comes out of my mouth as a whimper.
“She’s in heat!” Rhona shouts like she’s got bingo. “Look at her. She’s sweating like a pig. Oh my God. Fluffa is Alec Cameron’s mate.” She hoots. Greer screeches.
“No way,” Isla says, her voice dripping with disgust. “Oh, gross.”
People are laughing. Exclaiming. Whispering amongst themselves. Incredulous. Repulsed. Entertained.
I’m crouching, clutching my belly like that’ll keep lunch down, latching onto Alec’s cold, distant gaze, pleading with my eyes for him to stop this. Get me out of here.
Bram Blackburn takes a step toward me, smirking, barrel chest high, hands nonchalant on his beefy hips, dick limp against his hairy, drooping balls. He grins even wider as he looks over his shoulder at Alec.
“Sorry you’re getting my sloppy seconds, bro.” His lips pull back all the way to show his descended canines. “And they were sloppy, if you know what I mean.” He claps and makes a wet, slapping sound with his mouth.
An animated buzz goes through the crowd. The sharp scent of adrenaline cuts through the awful reek. The smaller females shuffle backward and the males press forward. There’s going to be a fight. Blackburn versus Cameron. The air becomes electric. This could decide the future of the pack.
My wolf lumbers to her feet, fur bristling, ears pinned to her head. She’s ready. She will rend anyone who touches her mate into pieces. She’s not sure how, but she licks her fangs. She’ll figure it out in the moment.
Every inch of my human skin burns, gasping, crying for rescue. I would run if I could. Sink into the ground if I could. Fight my way out. But I can’t move. My mate is here.
Something deeper than instinct springs to life inside me. My pain doesn’t matter. My mate is in danger. I have to be brave. A strength I’ve never felt before compels me to stand, forces my shaking legs and wobbling knees to hold my weight. My wolf rumbles her approval. My mate will not fight alone. We look to him for the signal to attack.
His eyes are dark hollows, but he’s smiling now.
He never smiles.
My wolf crouches low, readying herself to leap.
Without glancing my way, Alec snorts and says, “Figures you’d brag about fucking sloppy pussy. I guess if it’s all you can get?” He lifts a shoulder and dismisses Bram without another word, utterly, totally, completely unconcerned, and turns to Leith. “We gonna run, man, or are we gonna stand around all night? Tall Pines?”
A wide smile breaks across Leith’s face. He got his way. He won. “Yeah. Tall Pines.”
And as if none of this is happening, as if none of it matters in the least, Leith lunges forward, his bones snapping as his fur sprouts. The other Munroes follow suit, as happy to run as they just were to brawl.
My head rings. I taste metal in my spit. My wolf finds her feet, confused. Somehow, in the past few seconds, we took a blow to the body, but we didn’t see it coming, didn’t feel the impact, and now we’re left stumbling, reeling.
The wolves aligned with the Camerons are looking at Alec, cracking their necks, getting ready to shift.
The females stare at me, snickering with eyes comically wide or whispering behind their hands. Bram’s mouth hangs open. He wants to say something back, but none of the males are listening anymore. The Blackburns begin to shift one by one, reluctant to give up on the promise of a fight.
Alec isn’t looking at me. The bond digs into my heart like claws.
“Alec?” I swear the voice isn’t mine, but it comes from my bone-dry mouth, my cracked lips.
He was starting to shift, to follow Leith and the others, but he pauses and glances over his shoulder. Like he’d forgotten about me.
“Come over when the heat kicks all the way in,” he says. “I’ll let you ride my cock. Wash it real good first, though, if you’ve been passing it around to dirty bastards like that.”
He sneers at Bram, and then he turns his back to me and his spine lengthens, skin sprouting fur. He’s going to leave me here.
The blood roaring in my ears is deafening. The scene unfolding around me becomes a pantomime—Greer, Rhona, and their crew laugh soundlessly with their heads thrown back, fingers pointing, clutching their guts, every expression exaggerated.
The lower-ranking females shrink back, huddle together, averting their eyes in case my humiliation ricochets and hits them. The males lope off on four legs for the highlands, my mate somewhere among them, probably at the front between Bram and Leith.
I wish I could scrape Alec’s words out of my head. I’d use an ice pick if I had one. I wish the river would swell like a tsunami and wash me away.
I can still taste him. Now that the stink is thinning as the males get further away, there’s a slightly salty aftertaste when I swallow. It’s not strong, but it’s there. I glance down. My knees are still stained green.
Years of deferred shame crash through my body, lighting my face on fire. If shame could shatter bones, my jaw would be in pieces. My skull would be dust.
I touched him. I let him put his cock in my mouth. Every night—every damn night—I dream about him before I go to sleep.
Alec Cameron is my mate, and if I had known an hour ago, yesterday, last year, when I was seventeen years old, how freaking happy would I have been? My heart would have burst.
He ruined everything at the exact moment that it happened.
There’s a chasm in my chest, and it’s so wide and so cold, I can’t feel the rope tethered there.
My wolf is strangely patient. She’s sitting on her haunches, as if she’s waiting for me.
I blink at the jeering females, and my brain creaks into gear. My vision somehow clears.
Greer and Rhona and their crew are still cackling, falling out and slapping their knees, performing, egging each other on to greater shows of hilarity, but the others are edging away, turning their backs on the show. Two Campbells hesitantly make for the cooler of beers. A group of Boyles and Fergusons break off, heading stealthily toward the bathroom.
There’s a new scent in the air now that the males and their stench have cleared off.
Fear.
They’re all afraid. Even Greer and Rhona. They’re afraid of being me.
I am the worst thing that could happen.
Fat. Humiliated. Rejected.
And my brain keeps trying to shove that hard truth into place, but it’s like the baby toy where the pup has to match shapes to get the piece into the puzzle. A square won’t go in a circle. A triangle won’t go in a star. My brain will not let that idea slide home.
Yes, I’m rounder than the other females. I take up more space on the bench at the dinner table, but no more than the males who sit with their legs spread. Miss Nola used to alter my clothes to fit before I learned how to sew well enough to do it myself, but now, I don’t make more work. No matter what they say, I don’t eat more than my share. I eat a hell of a lot less than the high-ranking males. I pull my weight—all of it. I don’t cause trouble.
They look at me like I’m diseased.
An embarrassment.
A hassle and a burden and an eyesore.