Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“I made her a little sling. I needed my hands for the other stuff.”
Harriet’s sides rise and fall with the slower rhythm of deep sleep, but her pink nose and white whiskers still quiver.
I don’t know what to say.
I thought you were using me, and I went along with it because my life was that sad and empty, but I loved you, too. I loved how tough you were, and how you didn’t care about anyone. I loved how you made me feel alive and special, and how because of you, I had dreams to keep me going through the drudgery of my days.
You broke my heart, and it made me stronger than I’d ever been before. Strong enough to leave.
And you followed me.
I smooth my palm over Harriet’s haunches. She is so small and soft and vulnerable. I always felt a camaraderie with her, ever since I found her huddled up to her mother’s body, cooling in a snare up on the western ridge.
I’m not a rabbit, though. I’m a wolf.
I’m not trapped. I’m free. I can choose.
Whether I believe or I don’t. Whether I forgive.
Whether I trust.
I decide.
I slip my hands under Harriet’s belly and stand, carrying her to the box in the corner. There’s timothy hay, a dish of water, and one of the chews I made in it. I put her down gently, and she immediately plasters herself against the side and conks out.
I use my toe to flip Pritchard’s sleeping bag into halves, and then I fold it the rest of the way, trying to touch it as little as possible. Even so, Alec’s wolf rattles his chest, and my wolf gives me an earful. She does not like me this close to another male’s scent-marked sheets.
I set the sleeping bag on the trunk, and Alec backs up to watch me from the doorway. He recognizes the behavior, but he’s confused, probably because he doesn’t smell heat. I’m not feeling it either. I guess there’s a bun in my oven. I can’t think about that right now. I’ve made a decision.
I squat beside Alec’s duffel and unzip it. The linens are all packed neatly in a stack. I knew he’d bring them. I shake out a thick patchwork quilt and lay it on the polished concrete. Then, I spread the blankets, one on top of another, until the floor isn’t quite so terribly hard.
Alec tracks my every move, tense as a bow string.
I kneel in the middle of my nest, peel my shirt over my head, and toss it away. His pupils explode.
I ignore the urge to cross my arms and leave them loose at my sides. Alec’s gaze zeroes in on my breasts, his chest lifting and muscles flexing like he’s at the starting line, waiting for a pistol shot. His hunger, his longing, his cynicism, his desperate hope, it’s all written on his face as clear as day.
I catch his eye.
I jerk my chin toward the blanket.
He doesn’t hesitate.
He crashes to his knees, wraps me in his arms, and lowers me to my back, his lips slamming into mine, his knees spreading my legs. One of his hands plunges into my hair, cradling my head, protecting it from resting on the hard floor. The other rips my panties off.
He grabs my thigh, hikes it up, and sinks inside me with one frantic, insistent thrust. I take him, over and over, as his hands search for mine, our fingers meshing, his biceps caging me while his hips work. He’s staking his claim, proving his dominance over my body, fucking me into submission while he mutters promises and pleas into my gasping mouth.
“I’m going to make you happy. I’m never gonna fuck up again. Okay, Flora? Fuck, I love you. Whatever you want, I’ll get. Whatever you need. Don’t ever walk away from me again. I love you. You’re my mate.
Mine.
Beautiful. So beautiful.”
I can’t ride the wave. It tears through me, almost before I realize it’s happening. My core clenches, and I’m swept off, pleasure racing from nerve to nerve, surging to the tips of my fingers and curling my toes.
I scream, and Alec says, “Yes. Do it again.”
And he suckles my nipples and plays with my clit and strokes, slower then faster, gentle then rough, feasting on me, wearing me out, muttering a litany of praise and gratefulness and love, until I do.
When it’s done, and I’m curled up in a ball, and he’s sprawled on his back, trying to catch his breath, his hand resting proprietarily on my hip, it occurs to me.
When I left Salt Mountain, I didn’t just free myself.
I freed us both.
And the little bean that’s probably sprouting in my belly right now.
I did that. Even when I was doing it, I didn’t know I was capable of it, but Iwas.
My wolf lets out a sleepy grumble, as if she can’t let the thought pass. I can’t be sure, but I think she’s saying girl, I knew it all along.
Chapter 14
14
Chapter 14
FLORA
We settle in. It takes Alec a whole two weeks to get us a den of our own. I’m happy I didn’t know how he did it until after it was done. Nia was the one who told me that a major pipe burst in the aqueduct system, and when they called Alec to the scene, he said he could fix it, but it’d cost them.
He swam under a collapsed archway in the pitch dark. Nia said he was down there so long, Pritchard and Seth went in after him, and all they got for their trouble was cussed out for getting in Alec’s way when he reemerged.
I yelled at him that night. He yelled back. Then I cried, and he stormed out and came back with Harriet and a rumpled plastic baggie of candied pecans. “No one had chocolate to trade,” he said. “But I’ve got some coming in with the next delivery from Moon Lake.”
Harriet doesn’t like the main hall, although she doesn’t mind our den for short hangouts. Alec built her a new treehouse hutch halfway up a pine near the den’s entrance, and he always scent marks the area when he comes and goes. It’s not to discourage predators—the patrols have cleared anything remotely dangerous from Old Den territory—but to discourage packmates like Uncle Dewey who are feeling peckish from helping themselves to a convenient snack.
I’ve settled into doing mostly elder care, although I help cover the pup den or the infirmary when I’m needed. With me as a reliable second pair of hands, Rae has been able to set up a schedule for the older folks with wolf runs and pool time and nights that everyone attends where we project human movies on the cavern wall. I never knew I was a pack person, but it turns out, I am.
My favorite part of the day is when Alec pops up. At breakfast, we tell each other what we’re doing for the day, and then at some point, Alec will show up where I am with some excuse like he’s on his way to trade out wrench sets or change his shoes. The elders are always excited to see him—the males because they like to tell him how he should be doing whatever job he’s working on, and the females because he is the most beautiful male in the pack.
Sometimes Alec doesn’t bother with an excuse. He’ll just stand by the tunnel to our den, catch my eye, and jerk his chin. I always go. I never regret it.
I haven’t bitten him yet. I will. I want to. The time is somehow never right, though. I don’t want to do it because that’s what females do when they’re carrying their mate’s baby. Which I am. Probably. I haven’t taken a test yet, but the smell of eggs and dairy make me gag, and my mouth tastes weird. Like I fell asleep with a sour gummy in it.
Alec steals glances at my stomach when he thinks I won’t notice, but he follows my lead and doesn’t bring it up. I’m not ready to think about all that, not when I’m navigating the whole new pack and new mate thing. Luckily, with my belly, even if a bun is in the oven, you couldn’t tell.
Overall, I’m content to see how each day unfolds, and it’s good, each better than the last, and then messengers from Quarry Pack arrive on ATVs in the middle of the evening meal.
Without a word spoken, the anything goes, free-for-all pack I’ve grown used to immediately reverts to hierarchy. Pups are hustled to their dens. Elders are moved to the back of the hall. Females are shuffled behind a line of males, and Cadoc strides forward, flanked by Seth, Pritchard, Derwyn—and Alec.
A fierce pride glows in my chest, competing with the dread trickling down my spine.
The male from Quarry Pack speaks loud enough for all of us to hear. There’s been a kidnapping. A female from their pack and Darragh Ryan, the male known as the Haunt of the Hills, were taken by humans aided by a rogue shifter. The human government is involved. The alphas of the four civilized packs are gathering at Quarry Pack.
Cadoc leaves immediately with a handful of lieutenants, and over the next few hours and days, information trickles in, unclear and conflicting. The rogue is from Salt Mountain. No, he’s not, that was a cover story. No one knows where he was from, or if he’s the only traitor to our kind.
We hear that Darragh killed all the humans and the threat is over. Then, no, the enemy is still out there. It was the human government. No, it was powerful humans, hunting shifters for sport.
Seth is left in charge of the day to day since Rosie’s occupied with her new pup. Security is tightened, and Alec is temporarily reassigned from marshal of facilities to leading third shift perimeter patrols. I hate sleeping alone, and I’m scared he’ll be kidnapped by rogue shifters or the human government or billionaire hunters, and it’s so bizarre, but finally, there’s an explanation for all the folks who left Salt Mountain over the years without taking their things, never to be seen again.
Then, one evening when we’re finishing dinner, and I’m forcing myself to smile and act okay so that Alec doesn’t stress the whole time he’s on patrol and give me indigestion via the bond, I catch a whiff of Salt Mountain. The scent is followed by a bustle of activity by the entrance.
I don’t have a chance to brace myself before Leith Munroe rounds the pool and strides for us, surrounded by an escort of stone-faced Old Den males. Leith’s white teeth flash an arrogant smile as he tosses his shiny sun-streaked hair out of his face, to all appearances unfazed by the fact he’s strolling through another pack’s territory.
I don’t notice right away that there’s a female trailing him. She has a scarf wrapped around her head and the bottom half of her face, and it takes a minute for me to recognize Tandie, the quiet female with the dark marks on her face who cleans the Blackburn compound. She seems to be following Leith of her own accord, but she has the air of a hostage.
“Alec,” Leith hails when he catches sight of us. His easy, plastic smile broadens, and he grips Alec’s hand and claps him on the back. He doesn’t acknowledge me. He never has.
Behind him, Tandie offers me a hesitant nod, and I give her the best smile I can muster. A sense of foreboding constricts my lungs.
“How are you, man? Long time, no see. Wow. Look at this place.” Leith surveys the hall the way you would a zoo enclosure. “Wild.” He casts a wry glance at the males guarding him. “Tell them I’m cool, man?”
Alec considers it for a long minute and then gives the males a nod. They back off and spread out, but they don’t leave.