Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Miss Nola nods sharply. The worried creases at the corner of her eyes deepen. She always holds herself so rigid, like she’s hard as nails, but it’s a shell, brittle as an egg.
“Did she tell you that he took off?”
Miss Nola nods again. “She said they were hard on you.”
I lift a shoulder and blow on my tea. “It wasn’t so bad.”
Around when I first came to live with Miss Nola, Rhona and Greer started a trend of pinching my sides when I made my way down the bus aisle to my seat. Miss Nola walked in on me changing and saw the bruises. I told her I got them playing human sport. She didn’t believe me.
She sat in her glider in the parlor, but she didn’t pick up her knitting. She just sat there. After maybe an hour, she firmed her jaw, stood, and went to her room. For the first and last time that I’ve known her, she changed into slacks, a blouse, and shoes that tied. She put on her coat and got a purse from the hall closet. I didn’t even know she had a purse.
She made it to the bottom step of the front porch. She was shaking so bad she had to sit. Her legs wouldn’t hold her. I carried her purse back into the house for her and filled the kettle while she got herself back inside. I knew she wouldn’t want me to see how she managed it.
Miss Nola hasn’t left the property once since Brenda brought me here. I’m not sure when the last time she left was, but she must’ve at some point. She wasn’t raised in Salt Mountain. She’s from Quarry Pack. She never talks about it, though. Or what she’s afraid of. I’ve never asked. People are scary and mean. I get it, and she’s got me to do what she needs doing.
“I’m sorry I didn’t bring dinner.”
She shakes her head like it’s not a thing. “You went for a run?”
I can’t help but smile, and her lips curve, mirroring mine. “Yeah,” I say.
“It was amazing, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s she like? Your wolf?”
“Big. Strong. Fast.”
“Yeah?” Her eyes crinkle.
“Yeah.” For a moment, we both smile, quiet together in our small, silent house. I wind the string around my teabag until it’s wrung out.
Miss Nola sets her cup down and glances out the window over the sink. It overlooks a small clearing, fancied up with the birdbath I made her out of stacked terra cotta pots painted with daisies and fat red mushrooms. The woods edging the yard grow wild, sprawling into our little green patch no matter how often I prune them back. Beyond the thick growth, above the soaring oaks and pines, the mountain rises.
Miss Nola gazes up at where the sky must be beginning to glow pink behind the rocky peaks. She can’t be looking at anything else. The mountain blocks your whole view.
“You know, when I came here, I thought I was escaping,” she says. There’s a distance in her eyes that tells me I don’t need to say anything, just listen.
She pushes her cup away. “Killian Kelly said I was free.”
Killian Kelly is the alpha of Quarry Pack. Males hate going up against him in the fights. He always wins, and since they aren’t allowed to put money on their own matches, they can’t even bet on which round he knocks them out in.
“He traded his dead daddy’s fancy truck for this place.”
I always wondered how Miss Nola got a whole house of her own, especially a sturdy one like this with vinyl siding instead of asphalt shingles.
“He said I could do whatever I wanted. He made a deal with Conall Shaw so I’d be fed and the electric would be paid for as long as I live here.”
I thought she earned her keep from the mending she takes in, and for taking care of me when I was younger, but it makes more sense that there were arrangements made. My father is on the building and repair crew, and he’s only got a bed in a bunkhouse on the Munroe compound.
“I didn’t.” She stares out the window, her eyes growing more distant and pained. I want to reach for her hand, but she’s not a toucher.
“Didn’t what?” I ask.
“I didn’t do what I wanted.” She exhales, her gaze surveying the clean but cluttered kitchen. “I stayed in here.”
“What did you want to do?”
The question seems to throw her for a moment, but then her eyes find mine, and she says, crystal clear, “Decide for myself.”
Others would probably say well, why didn’t you? If your house and electric is paid for, and your food is free, what’s holding you back? What are you complaining about?
I know Miss Nola better than anyone, though. If she could’ve gone after Rhona and Greer back when they were messing with me, nothing would’ve stopped her. She’s not free, and she didn’t choose this.
I reach across the table and rest my hand near hers, palm flat to the table. She smiles at me. Tears gather along her lower lashes, but they don’t fall. Neither of us are criers.
“What do you want to do, Flora?”
For a second, I think she means right now, like do I want breakfast, or do I want to go to bed.
“If you could decide for yourself, what would you want?”
I don’t think I’ve ever asked myself. For years, I wanted Alec Cameron to be my mate, or if he wasn’t, for both of us to be mateless. I fantasized about a day in the far future when we’d both accepted that Fate had forgotten us, and I got hurt bad—maybe hit by a male in a truck while I’m pushing the laundry cart—and faced with losing me, Alec would realize that he’d loved me all along, and we’d live together for the rest of our lives, taking in an unwanted pup like Miss Nola did with me.
Dear God. I wanted to be someone’s last choice. I daydreamed about getting hit by a truck.
What’s wrong with me?
“I don’t know,” I say, my eyes stinging.
She grabs my hand, and I’m so startled, I straighten in my chair.
“Well, I want you to go see what else is out there.” She squeezes my hand, her grasp delicate, like her finger bones are hollow.
I remember my wolf standing at the edge of Salt Mountain territory, wondering what was past the woods below. A spark flickers to life in my chest, not in the gaping hole in my sternum and the thing anchored there, but a little lower, almost in my belly. There are other packs out there. Human towns. Cities.
“I don’t know where I’d even go.” I have no human money, and Salt Mountain scrip is worth nothing outside of the village, and I don’t have any of that, either.
Miss Nola’s crinkled eyes light up. “You could go anywhere.”
“What would I do there?”
“Anything you want. If all else fails, every place has laundry that needs doing.”
I couldn’t. It’s what angry pups think to comfort themselves to sleep.
I could run away. Leave here and never look back.
“You need me.”
Gently, Miss Nola draws her hand back. “Maybe I need you to go.” She says it so softly, and with so much gruff love, that the words don’t have the least bit of sting. “Maybe I’d finally get it together if I didn’t have you doing things for me.”
“But Harriet—” Some days, Miss Nola can manage to get herself out to the yard, but not most days.
“Don’t you worry about Harriet. Shaw promised Killian Kelly I’d be cared for. I won’t be left to starve, and whoever gets sent with dinner can feed the rabbit.”
Am I really considering this? It’s crazy, but I think about tomorrow—trudging back to work after the day off, everyone ignoring me or snickering behind my back. Going to dinner at the hall. Seeing Alec. He’d be in his usual seat up front at the Cameron table, and I’d be at my seat in the back, and the whole pack would be looking back and forth between us, sneering, laughing, shaking their heads at what a mistake Fate made.
I’m not against running away on principle. It just never occurred to me that it’s an option. “But where can I go?”
“I don’t know.” Miss Nola gets a glint in her eye. “But I know who would.”
“Who?”
The glint turns into a full-blown twinkle. “You, Flora Ritchie, need to go wash your face and change your clothes. Then you need to get the scrip from the mason jar on the top shelf in the pantry and whatever you’ve got of your own.”
“I do?”
“Yes. Because you’re going to pay a visit to the gray wolf.”
Chapter 3
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