Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
There’s an area with all the things you’d find in a workshop, and another area, way too close, where the young pups play, climbing stacks of truck tires and crawling in and out of a blanket fort made of every color and pattern of sheet, quilt, comforter, and tarp.
On the far side of the pool, there’s a fire pit for cooking and long tables for dining made of plywood panels on sawhorses. Against the furthest wall, orange extension cords run the length of the cavern, powering chest freezers and an ancient television with rabbit ears wrapped with tin foil. Males are gathered around, shouting and rocking back and forth on the buckets they’re sitting on.
“Ignore them,” Nia says as we pass. I sneak a peek anyway. An enormous truck with green flames drives over four, lined up rusty cars, races up a ramp, and flips, landing on its hood, its ridiculous big wheels spinning in the air.
“Rewind!” a male hollers.
“You get up if you want to see it again,” a male in the seat closest to the television shouts back.
“You can literally bend over and hit the button.”
“I can literally bend your mother over and hit her button.”
Someone throws a soda can, nailing the smart-mouthed male in the back of the head. He launches himself into the gathered group, and anarchy erupts. Males are knocked off buckets, fists fly, snarls fill the air. Nia stops us a little past the action and turns to watch.
I frown at her.
She shrugs. “I’m not into monster trucks, but I dig wrestling.”
The brawl rages until Seth Rosser jogs over from the far side of the cavern, wades into the melee, and starts tossing bodies into three piles. An older, drunken male, more wolf than male, refuses to stay where he’s thrown, so Seth lifts him by the back of his overalls, grabs another male, knocks their heads together, and drops their limp carcasses back where he’d put them.
It all ends with a pile of groaning, grumbling males rubbing various parts of their anatomies to ease their ouchies, and one skinny pup on the verge of his transition, sitting calmly on a bucket in the middle of the carnage, legs casually crossed, a remote control in his hand.
“You threw Uncle Dewey in the wrong pile,” the pup says. “He’s a Kemble, not a Wogan.”
Seth bares his teeth and growls. “Is that the missing remote, Danny Powell?”
“Danny Kemble, not Powell.” The pup smirks. “You’re real shit at names, aren’t you?”
Seth starts for the pup, and the groaning, bellyaching males liven up. Someone calls, “Watch yourself, Rosser. His dam’ll come after you, and not the way you’ve been angling for.”
Nia snickers and nudges me to move along. “Come on. I’ll show you the warrens.”
She leads me to the entry of a round tunnel clearly carved by hands, instead of nature. She points to another opening, a jagged gash in the wall, halfway across the cavern. “That’s the passage to the latrines. There’s another exit that way, too.”
She gestures me into the hobbit tunnel. Lights strung from a cord throw halos on the walls. Every ten feet or so, another tunnel breaks off. Nia takes a left and another left.
My wolf loves the scent and the feeling of being surrounded by earth, but my human side gets a little anxious.
“Do the lights ever go out?” I ask.
“Hardly ever. If they do, just shift and use your nose.”
“What about pups?”
Nia’s brow knits. “What about pups?”
“What if they’re down here alone and the lights go out?”
“Who’d leave a pup alone?”
My cheeks warm. I was alone plenty when I was little. My dam worked in the laundry, too, and even back then, Brenda was fussy about females bringing their young to work, so I stayed with my aunt. She thought exercise would be good for me, and she didn’t want me under foot since her hands were full with her own pups, so she sent me outside. I had to stay out there except for lunch.
I didn’t mind it so much. I’d explore the ravine behind my aunt’s house, build play houses out of stones and logs, weave flowers into necklaces and crowns. If it was lonely, at least there was no one to make critical remarks. I mourned the freedom and peacefulness when I got old enough to go to school.
“These dens are for mated pairs.” Nia gestures to the openings along the tunnel covered with beaded curtains or bedsheets hanging from tension rods. “We’ve run out, so there’s a waiting list while we dig out more.” She says it like it’s pertinent information.
“Oh. Alec and I aren’t really mated.” I instinctually cover my bite mark with my hand.
Nia nods, not at all thrown. “Pritchard and me neither.”
She must read my curiosity. “Fate doesn’t get to decide who I share my life with.
I decide.”
Yeah. I give her a smile. We both know it’s not entirely true, it can’t be, what with heat and rut, but still, even if you don’t get every choice, you don’t have to give up all of them. I get that.
Nia’s mutinous expression fades. “Don’t get it wrong. Pritchard isn’t an asshole or anything. We’re just not suited.”
I nod and try to give off the air of a female who has totally turned down males before.
“Is that how it is with Alec?” Nia asks. “I don’t mean to pry, except Alpha’s gonna want to know the story, at least the broad strokes. If you’re going to be Old Den.”
The words warm my heart. I want to be Old Den, more than anything. Everything is so mismatched and haphazard here, I can’t imagine I’ll stand out.
“So do you two just not get along or—” Nia arches an eyebrow. Yeah, she’s not averse to prying. Shifters love gossip, all of us, even badass females with rings in their noses.
“Oh, no, he’s an asshole all right.” I laugh. Alec’s surly, and for years, he treated me like a toy he could take out and put away at whim. That evening at the river, he was cruel.
He can’t say sorry, or he won’t.
All the evidence I have that there might be a decent person inside—carrying the pack, making sure I drink, trying to comfort me when I was going into heat in the river, failing miserably, killing the feral, following me here—all of it can be explained by the biological imperative to secure a mate.
Except that kiss.
It’s flustering.
Kisses shouldn’t count, certainly not against so many strikes. Not even kisses that feel like finding a friend in the darkness. Like coming home.
I clear my throat. “We don’t fight or anything. We’re just not together. I’m not sure he’s even going to want to hang around. I’m the one who wants a new pack. He wants to go back to Salt Mountain.”
Nia snorts. “Oh honey, that male isn’t going anywhere. If I know anything, I know what a clinger looks like, and that dude is it.”
I shake my head. Alec is the opposite of a clinger. “It’s just biology.”
“Fuck biology.” Nia holds up her palm again like the humans do. This time, I’m prepared, and I slap it good.
“All right.” She grins.
She takes me all the way to the furthest den and brings me back a different way. She shows me where the pups bed down for naps during the day, and we watch the tangled cuddle puddle of softly snoring little ones for a while before we wave goodbye to the female knitting in her rocking chair as she watches over them.
Nia explains that mostly dams drop them off when they get cranky, but sometimes, pups will decide they’ve had enough and deliver themselves to the nap den. She taps the walkie talkie clipped into the belt of her black jeans and talks about how each “area of endeavor” has a “marshal” who is in contact via radio. She says easily half the calls are to the nap den with a marshal jokingly asking if one of his grown workers is there.
“So marshals are the highest ranked?” I ask as she leads us up a new corridor.
“We don’t have rank. Except for Cadoc. And Rosie. And Rosie’s wolf.”
“How is that possible?” Rank is innate in shifters, like heat and mates and our wolves themselves.
“Well, maybe I should put it a different way. Rank is there, it just doesn’t matter. You don’t get anything because of it. And if you want to do something, and you can do it, no one’s stopping you. And we try not to talk about it, but you know—” She shrugs. Yeah, shifters talk.
“So how do you pick marshals?”
“Honestly? Usually whoever shows up early and will do the work. And it helps if folks will listen to you.”
“Are you a marshal?”
Nia smirks. “You could say that. I kind of marshal the marshals.”
“Is Pritchard a marshal?”
“He’s in charge of facilities.”
“So you outrank him?”