Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Leith swings a leg over the bench and sits down at our table without invitation, leaving Tandie standing. I gesture to the free seat next to me, and she takes it, giving Alec a wide berth as she circles around. Close up, I see there’s a clammy sheen to her skin. She doesn’t look well.
“What are you doing here?” Alec’s voice is cold, and his face is shuttered, but Leith doesn’t seem to pick up on the distinct lack of welcome. It makes sense. Back in Salt Mountain, Alec looked like this all the time. Nowadays, he scowls and curses out loud more, but he also smiles sometimes, usually at me, and almost always when he’s got a handful of my ass, or he’s caught me in the middle of changing my clothes.
My stomach begins to ache. Whatever Leith wants, it’s not good.
I try to recall my own defenses, but it’s been long enough, and I dropped them with such relief, I hardly remember how to make my expression blank. Looking at Tandie helps, though. Her face is stone.
“You need to come back to Salt Mountain, man. Is there somewhere we can go to talk?” He glances meaningfully to where Pritchard lurks a few feet away, his gaze passing right over me. It’s weird how quickly I grew accustomed to being seen. It feels strange to be invisible again.
“We can talk here,” Alec says.
Leith shifts so he’s giving Pritchard his back and leans forward over the table. “There’s been a coup, man.” Leith pauses for Alec’s reaction.
Alec’s face doesn’t even twitch.
“Conall left to handle the shit at Quarry Pack, and it’s like Bram was waiting for it. He had it all planned, and most of the unmated Shaws were in on it. We were at the evening meal, and the whole hall broke out in a melee. Two-on-one, three-on-one, whatever it took. Blackburns are in the front seats now, the Sinclairs have replaced the Camerons, and the fucking Boyles—” He sneers at Tandie. “There are fucking Boyles in Munroe seats.”
Tandie drops her head, hiding her face in her scarf. I shuffle closer to her. Asshole. Like any female in Salt Mountain has any control over what the males do.
“They’ve taken the compounds, too. The houses. They’re throwing shit out into the yard, beating anyone on the street who doesn’t bend the neck quick enough.”
Alec finally registers concern. “The elders?”
Leith shakes his head. “They put them out, too.”
“Have they touched them?”
Leith shakes his head again. “No, and so far, they’ve left the females alone. Except the ones who took the opportunity to trade up.” His lip curls in disgust.
“Fraser?”
“Got his leg broken. He’s laid up at the McKays.”
“Hamish and the others?”
“Keeping their heads down.”
Alec’s brow lifts. “You look remarkably good for a male who just lost an alpha challenge.”
Leith gives him a mocking smile, but his blue eyes rage. “The coward wouldn’t fight. He had a dozen of his bitches blocking him like he’s a fucking movie star. Turned his back on me. Your cousin Wallace challenged him. Mac. Keith. Andrew.” For a moment, his smile loses its bitterness. “For what they lack in brains, the Camerons do have balls.”
Alec seems neither flattered or offended. “He wouldn’t fight them either?”
“No. He had his males and the traitor Shaws beat them ’til they stepped down. Bram took alpha without raising a fist or caring a fang.”
“But you want to make him fight for it.” Alec is thinking hard. He’s got that pissed-off scent coming off of him.
Leith leans forward. “We can be back on the mountain in forty-eight hours. Rally our males. I say we throw everything at Bram all at once, smoke him out, and whichever of us ends him, that settles it.”
“And Conall?”
“Fuck Conall. He’s the cause of all of this. Too scared to face his own mortality and pick an heir, so now we get to deal with this shit.”
Alec stares up at the patch of deep blue evening sky visible through the roof above the pool, his mouth tight. The anger in his scent grows thicker.
“Bram gave his brother your place, man. The kid traded your gas range for a barrel of Old Scott’s rotgut.”
My heart winces. Alec loved that gas range, or at least, he mentioned it a lot.
I shift on the bench, uneasy. Of course, Alec can’t let this stand. It’s his family, the things he worked so hard for. He’s going to go back to Salt Mountain, and if it comes down to him and Bram, Alec will win. After seeing him take out the feral, I have no doubt. Alec could become alpha.
I don’t want to go back there. Just Leith’s presence and Tandie’s silent dejection sours my stomach. I can’t go back. I don’t want to feel freakish and invisible at the same time again. I don’t want to do laundry anymore or bend my neck all the time or pretend I have a thick skin when I’m really as soft inside as outside.
Iwon’t.
I shift to press against Alec’s side. But I don’t want to let him go, either.
“How soon can you be ready to go?” Leith asks.
Alec straightens, and very calmly, says, “I’m not going. Pass.”
For a second, Leith is thrown, and then he narrows his eyes. “What do you want?”
“Well, to start, are you fucking blind?” Alec asks with the acerbic tone he uses when someone interrupts him in his makeshift shop with what he considers an egregiously stupid question.
Leith’s brow furrows deeper with confusion.
“Is she fucking invisible?” Alec waves his hand at me. “What do you think I’m doing here?”
Leith shrugs. “I figured you’d be done with that by now.”
Alec’s rage hits me through the bond like a shot of adrenaline, but his posture doesn’t change, and neither does the cool evenness of his voice. “My mate’s name is Flora.” He stands, very calm, totally collected. “But you can keep it out of your mouth.” He grabs my hand, yanks me to my feet, turns to leave, and then thinks better of it. “You can keep that bullshit pack, too, and tell the Blackburn squatting in my house that when I get the time, one night, I’m going to burn his new place down, so he better enjoy it while he can.”
Alec hesitates for a second as if he’s trying to figure out if he’s said everything he wants to say, and then he drops a firm nod and makes to drag me away toward our den.
Leith’s voice stops him before he gets three steps. “She lived with Nola Murphy, didn’t she?”
My heart drops. Alec and I both turn back.
Leith’s eyes light up with a vicious satisfaction. “In one of Duncan Wright’s old cabins?”
I squeeze Alec’s hand. “What did they do to her?”
“They’re trying to turn her out and give the place to a Blackburn. She’s barricaded herself in, but they’re starving her out.”
“She won’t leave that house. She can’t,” I say to Alec before whirling on Leith. “Where will they put her?”
For the first time, Leith addresses me. “Someone’s spare room. Someone’s basement. I don’t know.”
She’s even more frightened of basements than the outside. She won’t even let me down into the cottage’s root cellar. She made me store things in a trunk under the back porch.
“Alec, we’ve got to get her.”
He’s scowling, his wolf rumbling at my distress. My wolf is on her feet and ready to run.
“Not ‘we.’ I’ll go get her and bring her back.”
“She doesn’t know you.” Miss Nola has trouble going as far as Harriet’s cage, and she must be terrorized. She doesn’t shift. I’ve never even heard her wolf rumble. We need to go now. A memory flashes in my head of Miss Nola in her nicest slacks and blouse, sunk onto the bottom porch step, her purse perched on her knees, shaking so hard her teeth clattered.
“She knows me well enough,” Alec argues.
“She doesn’t trust males.”
Alec draws himself up, and his voice takes on that alpha edge. “You’re not going anywhere near that shitshow, Flora.”
I blink. Leith’s shoulders relax like he figures Alec has put his foot down and now things are going his way. Peeking from her scarf, Tandie’s gaze darts from Leith to Alec to me.
“Watch me,” I say, and Tandie’s eyes round.
There was a time I would’ve been shocked at myself, too, and it wasn’t that long ago. It hardly seems possible that a person can change so quickly. Weeks ago, I’d shoveled devilled eggs into my mouth because I was too cowed to say no and snuck off to the woods because Alec jerked his chin.
Now, I walk away from him without a backwards glance with all the confidence in the world because I know something in my soul that I didn’t even suspect back then.
Everywhere I go, Alec Cameron will be behind me.