Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
If she does, she doesn’t show it. She hops right over and presses her quivering pink nose through the wire. I pluck a piece of timothy hay from her feeder and offer it to her. She takes it, munching, her fluffy cheeks wobbling.
“I’ll bring you some fresh greens later,” I promise. I grow parsley and cilantro for her in a makeshift windowsill greenhouse I made out of plastic and old Lincoln Logs. She’s crazy for them.
I unlatch the door and reach in to stroke her soft side while she finishes her nibble. She’s a little plump, too. I overfeed her. I know I do. I try not to, but I love her, and greens make her happy. I harden my heart enough to cut her off every now and then, but she gives me sad looks and won’t come out of the box I made her out of wood and carpet scraps.
No one’s overfeeding me. I don’t know why I am the way I am. Shifters have hyperactive metabolisms. We learned that in biology at Moon Lake Academy. For some reason, I just don’t. I’ve always been this way. In my baby pictures, I had thigh creases and a double chin.
I remember my dam trying to fix me. She’d scrape half my dinner onto my father’s plate, send me off to help with the dishes so I’d miss dessert. It didn’t make a difference except the hunger pains made it hard to fall asleep, and whenever I did get dessert, I’d cram as much in as I could to make up for the times I missed out.
If I were thin, Alec wouldn’t have turned his back on me like he did.
He wouldn’t have snuck around with me. He would’ve held my hand and let me sit in his lap like he did with Isla Sinclair.
I burrow my nose in Harriet’s soft side before I pull myself away, sighing, and latch her hutch. A thought, utterly obvious and totally mind-boggling, pops into my numb, exhausted brain.
If I were thin, I would have never snuck off to meet Alec Cameron.
I’m chewing that over like Harriet with her hay, standing in the damp grass and staring at nothing, when the pebbles in the lane crunch under heavy steps. My heart jolts. Alec rounds the bend and comes into view. The wind shifts, and I smell him, too late to brace myself. My hand flies up to press on my chest, steadying the bond that floods to life.
He’s angry. Furious. It flows from him to me, bitter and sharp. I stumble back a step. He bares his teeth, and I think he’s going to snarl, but then he notices what I’m wearing. “Is that my shirt?”
I glance down. Oh, yeah. It is. “D-do you want it back?”
“Keep it.” His voice is sharp, too.
He doesn’t come any closer. He’s in a fresh shirt and shorts, identical to the shirt I’m wearing and the shorts I sorted into the dark load back at the laundry. He’s strung tight, his shoulders squared, his jaw cut.
What’s he got to be so mad about? I’m not Fate. I didn’t do it.
For once, I refuse to bend my neck. I make myself look him in the face. My hands ball.
His eyes flick from my fists to the hutch behind me. A flash of irritation or confusion—I can’t tell which—crosses his face.
“What the hell is that?”
“My rabbit.”
He peers closer, and his brow furrows. “Why are you raising lops? Don’t they only get to, like, five pounds? That’s hardly any meat.”
My jaw drops. “I’m not gonna eat her.” Good Lord. Is this what he thinks of me?
“It’s prey,” he says.
I step to the side so I’m fully blocking him from the hutch. “What do you want?”
His temple tics. He looks over his shoulder and back down the path like he’s not sure how he got here, and he’s wondering that himself.
Finally, he spits in the grass and looks at me again, strands of jet-black hair falling in his face. “You really let Bram Blackburn fuck you?” he asks.
I should have been braced for a blow. Why wasn’t I braced for a blow?
“Did you let Isla Sinclair fuck you?” The words fly out of my mouth. For a second, I’m not sure if I made sense. I don’t know where it came from.
His lip curls. “I knew you were a whore.”
“What’s that make you?” I can’t remember what those males are called, but Miss Nola watches those cop shows. I know they’ve got a name.
“How many times?” he demands.
“What do you mean?” It takes a second for me to understand what he’s asking. “I’m not telling you.”
“Who else?”
The numb peace I achieved on my run dissolves into pieces. All of a sudden, my body is back in the clearing by the river, surrounded by the jeering pack, my face on fire, desperate and alone. No one is coming to help me.
I’m not trapped now, though. All I’ve got is a bunny behind me, and Alec fuming in the path, glowering. There’s no one between me and the door, and Alec might outrank me by a hell of a lot, but my body doesn’t seem to think I need to show him my neck.
It takes five bounds to reach the porch and three to dash up the steps and fling the door open. Before I duck inside, a wildness overtakes me, and I throw over my shoulder, “Who else? Well, your dad for one.”
I slam the door shut, throw the bolt, and a second too late, I remember that Alec’s dad is dead. Horror strikes me, and I cringe, my neck shrinking into my shoulders. Oh, Lord. I didn’t mean it.
I press my ear to the door and strain to listen, but all I can hear is the thud of my heart.
I’m an asshole.
No, he’s the asshole, but I still shouldn’t have said that. I creep to the front window and peek out. He’s gone.
Good. Now my stomach can untie itself.
I take a few deep breaths, and I’m about to head for my room when I hear slippers padding down the hall.
“Flora?” Miss Nola calls, her thin voice wavering.
“It’s just me.” I step out of the parlor so she can see me. She can scent me, but if she can’t see me, her anxiety tends to get the best of her.
“Oh, there you are.” She pauses. She’s still wearing her worn flannel nightgown. She gets up and ready early, but not at the crack of dawn. “Tea?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I kick off my shoes and follow her into the kitchen.
“No one’s with you?” she asks, squinting past me.
“No.”
“I heard a male.”
“It was just Alec Cameron. He’s gone now,” I tell her. “No one’s outside except Harriet.”
She makes her way to the stove, her trembling fingers skimming the baker’s rack and the table like she does, as if she’s reassuring herself that everything’s where it’s supposed to be. She fills the kettle and puts it on.
I get the milk from the fridge. “I’m sorry if you were scared.”
She waves me away. “I was up anyway.” It’s not an answer to what I said, but that’s how she does. She steps over things she’d rather not acknowledge like cracks in the sidewalk.
“Did you lock the door?” she asks.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She glances worriedly in the direction of the front of the house.
“I’ll double-check,” I say and go back, relocking the door so she can hear the bolt slide home with a thud.
When I return to the kitchen, she’s setting the cups on the Formica table. They clatter on their saucers, but the tea doesn’t spill. I seat myself and reach for the sugar bowl, spooning two cubes into Miss Nola’s and one into mine. She pours the milk, a splash for me, a quarter cup for her.
I notice a familiar plate still wrapped in aluminum foil, sitting on the counter. It makes my stomach ache. “Who brought that?”
She follows my gaze. “One of the Boyle girls. Tandie, I think she’s called.”
Tandie was one of the females who looked like she was trying to disappear back at the gathering place. I don’t know her well. She’s a year or two younger than me, and she works around the Blackburn compound, cleaning or something. She has a birthmark on her face, so she tends to keep her head way down.
“Did she say anything?” I ask.
Miss Nola’s lips thin. “She did.”
I take a sip of tea. It’s hot. “She told you Alec Cameron is my mate?”