Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
But she doesn’t have a vehicle.
Did she steal one?
I shake my head as I pace the porch. No, Flora’s not going to steal a car. How would she have even learned to drive? Besides, she’s not the type. She’s a rule follower. She doesn’t make waves.
She ran away.
No one leaves the pack. We lose people, same as the other packs, to predators or the Last Pack or drunken misadventures, but no one leaves. When they disappear, their stuff is left behind. Their pups, their mates.
She left me.
Not a word. Just bailed.
There’s something stuck in my throat. I pound my chest with a fist. Doesn’t help.
The bond is there, and for the first time, I stop and notice. It’s strong. When you work my kind of construction long enough, you get a feel for the tensile strength of a thing, how much weight a thing can carry before it breaks.
I can’t quite make out the bond’s dimensions. I can sense it, but I can’t say it’s physical. Not really. It’s strong, though. At least as strong as my heart or lungs.
I could give it a yank. Like Fraser does when he wants Shona. Could I pull her back?
My wolf yips, dragging my attention from that train of thought. He’s still hyper-focused to the south, pawing at the ground.
Because that’s where our mate has gone.
I’m an idiot.
I kick off my shorts as I peel my shirt over my head. I have the presence of mind to hang them on the railing instead of leaving them in the middle of Miss Nola’s porch, but as soon as I’ve done that, I summon the wolf.
He doesn’t need an invitation. He’s already bursting out of our skin, racing down the path, hell bent for leather, our mate’s scent in his nose.
Chapter 6
6
FLORA
Walking takes forever.
Abertha says this new pack, the Old Den Pack, is several day’s hike due southeast. Her map is basically haphazard shapes—a triangle, some squares—and I’d be stressed if I didn’t have to just follow the squiggle all the way. The squiggle is the river.
The problem is that sometimes I can walk beside the water, but every so often, I’m blocked by dense growth or steep banks that are too crumbly or slick with red clay to walk along. I get nervous when I have to detour. The woods are thick and dark, and they smell strange. Like rust from human machines.
And my feet hurt. So, so bad. I’m used to standing all day and pushing my cart up and down the village, doing pick-ups and drop offs, but I figured I should wear my boots for this hike, and it was a bad decision. The boots weren’t worn-in nearly well enough, so my heels are rubbed raw, and there are blisters forming on the balls of both feet. I’d have done better with my sneakers.
I wish I’d brought them. I had to take what I could carry, though, and I had to make sacrifices. A second pair of shoes. My books. Harriet.
I try not to think about her. Miss Nola will make sure she’s okay. And maybe one day, once I’m settled in my new home, and I’ve made some scrip, I can figure out a way to get her.
I try not to think about other things, too. Alec, yesterday, those words that burrow through my brain in endless figure eights.
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.
So I force myself to focus on the present. My poor feet. How hot I am. Whether I should take off my T-shirt and tie it around my waist with my hoodie. The breeze would be amazing, but what about ticks? And the sticker bushes?
I keep trudging forward, slower as the hours pass and the sun disappears behind the craggy peak of Salt Mountain. I’m hungry. Miss Nola packed almost everything she had in the cabinets, but it didn’t amount to much, and I want to stretch it out in case it takes me longer than several days to get where I’m going.
At this rate, it’s going to take a month.
I’d shift, except I don’t know if my wolf would carry the pack. She’s bounding around inside me, excited about the new smells and probably still amped from her first run. She’d have the energy to do it, but I don’t know if she’d understand what I want her to do. I try to explain it.
Carry backpack.
She races closer to the boundary between us, tongue out and ears up.
Bird!
Other bird!
I sigh. There are a lot of birds out here, way more than higher up the mountain. Probably because the males back home are always shooting them and feeding them to their wolves.
It’s better if I keep going on two feet. I’ll get there eventually. I’m sure not turning around. Ever.
So I walk and worry. Will the new pack take me in? What will I have to do for them to take me? What if they don’t? I’ve got a hundred fears flapping around in my brain, but I’m not the least bit uncertain.
Despite my feet and the sweat dripping down my back into my butt crack, I feel like I’m on the right path. Like Idid something, for once. Something brave.
And being brave makes me feel strong. I like it. I use the energy to put one foot after another, over and over, as the river winds down the mountain side toward the foothills.
I don’t consider stopping until the shadows grow long, and I start to hear an evening kind of rustling in the brush. I find a clearing about a yard wide and ease my pack off my aching shoulders. I set it down on its side and plop onto it with a whoosh. The sound comes from me, not the bag. The bag is straining its seams. I didn’t leave any room for air in it.
I unlace my boots, but I don’t take them off. I’m afraid if I do, my feet will swell, and I won’t be able to get them back on. I slip my heels up, though, so there’s nothing touching them. The heels are the worst.
My stomach grumbles. I’ll have to stand again soon to dig out my dinner and the quilt that’ll have to do for a sleeping bag. But not quite yet.
I breathe in the cooling air, listening to the woods as my heart rate slows back to normal. A nighthawk chitters in a nearby tree. The world is calm.
And, like always, so very lonely.
The nighthawk flaps off with an indignant screech. With a sigh, I reach down to push myself off the pack, and a huge wolf with mottled brown and black fur comes tearing into the clearing. I shriek and leap to my feet. My wolf leaps to hers.
Mate!
She’s immediately elated.
I didn’t smell him coming. Not a whiff. He’s going for my legs, snuffling, butting. I stumble a step, and he crouches and circles my ankles, his tail whapping my calf. He howls. Inside me, my wolf howls in reply.
He nips at the hem of my pants. I kick out of reflex and miss. He leaps, landing with a paw on each of my shoulders, claws pricking through the cotton of my T-shirt, his wolf breath meaty and hot in my face. I turn my head and screw my eyes shut as if that’ll block it. A wet, rough tongue slurps my cheek, chin to temple. His howling makes my ears ring.
I don’t know what to do, and he’s so heavy that I just sink back down onto the pack. He ends up with his forelegs tangled in my lap, pushing himself up onto my thighs and backing up his hindquarters so we’re nose to nose. His tail goes thwump, thwump through the air.
There’s no way this wolf is ice-cold Alec Cameron. I peer into his golden eyes, and yeah, there’s no sign of the human I know. This wolf wants to lick me to death.
I dodge his wet tongue, and for lack of options, I plunge my fingers into his coat around his neck to try to hold him at arm’s length. His eyelids close like curtains, his body going completely still except for his thwumping tail. A whine escapes from the back of his throat.
Oh, he likes it. I give him a scratch, and he plops onto his rump. I’ve never seen a wolf so blissed out. My fingers must be slow because he tosses his head until I do it better.
There’s a weird feeling in my chest. Raw. Warm. Almost too sweet—the kind of sweetness that hurts your teeth.
This is what it feels like to not be alone. To be wanted.
“What are you doing here?” I ask while I ruffle his stiff, bristly coat.
He ignores me, leaning into the scritches.
Did the wolf take over? I can’t imagine Alec Cameron not having complete control over his animal, but that’s pretty much the only thing that makes sense.
“Did you run away, too?” I bury my nose in his fur. My wolf dances. That’s the only way to describe it.
Alec’s wolf smells delicious, like a crock pot of mulling spices and a thick, warm puffer jacket during the first snowfall of winter. It stirs a feeling in my stomach, an anticipation edged with a strange nostalgia. I’m missing something I’ve never had. I inhale as deeply as I can. I want to keep it in my lungs.
“You’re going to get into trouble.” I bet no one but the laundry is going to notice or care that I’m gone, but Alec is a different story. His family, at least, will come after him. He’s their chance at the top spot in the pack. They won’t like it if they find him with me.
“You’ve got to go back,” I tell him as I scratch and nuzzle. It feels like I’m talking to an old friend I never had.