Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“Get away from me!” she shouts, staggering to her feet.
I keep very still, painfully aware of my size and how wild my long hair and beard must look after so long in my fur. I must look frighteningly different from the Quarry Pack males with my tattoos and wolf-tipped ears and canines. I’d smooth them into human ears and teeth, but I’ve never bothered to before, and it’s too late in this moment to figure it out now.
Her scent has taken on an acrid note, and her eyes are wild, the pupils hardly even pinpricks. I slowly raise my hands in the air.
“Stay away.” She raises her palms to fend me off, even though I’m standing stock-still. She glances wildly over her shoulder at the river. “Don’t come any closer.”
Her gaze careens left and right. She’s searching for the best way out. She’s going to run. The intention blares through the bond.
“Don’t run,” I warn her. If she runs, my wolf will take our body and chase her. Normally, I could keep him reined in, no problem, but the mating exhausted me too, and honestly, it’s a fifty-fifty chance whether I could stop him from taking our skin. I don’t want to know what Annie will smell like if my wolf runs her to ground.
Shit. Is that the burning feeling in the bond? Her fear? I need to make it stop.
“My wolf won’t hurt you,” I tell her, just in case it comes down to it, and she does bolt, and my wolf goes after her. He’ll tackle her, and he might bite her to hold her still, but he won’t maul her or anything. “I won’t either,” I add.
She should know that, but clearly, she doesn’t. She’s acting like she’s been attacked.
“Get away from me! Now!” Her voice is stronger than I’ve heard it yet.
I rise to my feet and take a small step backward. I’m not going anywhere, but I need her to breathe. My wolf is working himself up into a lather, priming himself to attack whatever’s frightening our mate, and it doesn’t even occur to him that it’s me.
“Annie, please. Calm down.”
She bolts, breaking right. My wolf surges forward to take our skin. I race to intercept her, and at the same time, I wrestle the wolf back, somehow navigating through inner and outer space in the same split second.
My head spins as my arms wrap around my mate. Her heel cracks against my shinbone. Her arms turn into windmills. She’s silent as the grave while her fists and elbows drive into my shoulders and side and chest, anywhere she can land a blow. The back of her skull clunks against my jaw. I grunt. I can’t stop her without hurting her. I have to let her go.
I drop her as gently as I can, but she’s fighting so hard, she staggers and falls on her butt. I immediately sink to my knees and reach out my hands. Gasping in terror, she crawls from me. On all fours. In her human form. She’s only got her shirt on. Her dirt-caked knees are cut. They’re bleeding.
“Please stop,” I beg. “What are you doing?”
In her panic, she’s heading toward the river bank. Is she going to jump? Am I such a terrible mate that she would risk death to escape me?
“What’s wrong
?” If she’d only explain, I could fix it.
“You’re wrong,” she cries, scrambling to her feet. “This is wrong.” She waves her hands wildly between us. “I don’t want this. Why won’t you go away? Just leave me alone. You got what you wanted.”
No, I didn’t. I don’t want a mate who stinks like fear and crawls away from me like I’m a monster.
I want a mate. A family. What other males have. What everyone wants.
For the first time in these long, wretched weeks since I scented my mate on the wind, I let my temper flare. She’s acting like I’m unworthy. Feral. Like I took her without care.
“You presented. You said ‘do it.'” I heard her clear as day. She can’t deny it.
She tugs her shirt tightly around herself. Her knees are knocking. “We had to get it over with, and we did. You can go now.”
“We are mates.”
She understands what that means. Even Quarry Pack males—with their pulley machines that they work at for hours and make nothing, their constant sparring, and their hoisting weights for no reason, over and over while they admire each other—even they haven’t ventured so far from their roots that they don’t bond with their fated female. Why does she say I can go? She knows I can’t.
“You come with me.” I reach out my hand again. “We’ll go to our den now.” I try to make my voice ring with authority like Max does when us younger males get out of line, but I only manage to snarl and scare her more.
I hate her fear stench. It accuses me, and I did nothing to her that I didn’t have to do.
“N-no.” She whips her head back and forth. Her breath comes harder. She’s almost wheezing, her lungs working like she’s run a mile. “D-don’t c-come any closer. Don’t t-touch me.”
I take one step closer. That’s all. I’m still six feet away, at least, but I might as well have lunged for her.
She shifts.
And it’s carnage.
Her human body basically pitches her wolf out of her skin, and it’s all wrong. Her wolf thrashes into being, bones cracking, tendons snapping, and muscles tearing. The shift goes on forever.
I reach for her, but there’s nothing I can do to help, no part of her I can hold as her body rips itself to pieces, so my hands hover in the air, useless. My wolf gapes in horror as our mate seizes and writhes on the ground while her animal stitches herself together.
My gorge rises. It’s a scene from a nightmare.
I know the lost packs have forgotten how to shift the right way, but I’ve never seen them do it up close. It’s torture. Annie’s screams morph into her wolf’s agonized howls, and I’m powerless to help. I sink to my knees again, pounding my chest so that my wolf will rumble louder. It’s all the comfort I can offer.
How can they do this to themselves? This must be why they spend so much time in their skin. To avoid this agony.
Finally, after what feels like an entire minute, her wolf staggers to her wobbling feet. Despite the horror, my heart warms. She’s lovely, just as pretty as her human self, slender and shiny with a white topcoat, a light gray underbelly, and light gray socks. I can’t make out her eye color. They’re narrowed into slits.
“Welcome, beautiful,” I say softly, offering her my fingers to sniff.
Her lips peel back.
She comes for me.
She launches herself at my neck, claws unsheathed, an unholy howl rising from her chest. She’s coming for blood.
I snatch her from mid-air, pinning her forelegs to her sides, holding her away from my face to avoid her gnashing fangs. If I was a slower male, she’d have ripped my throat out. She still will if I let her go.
She hates me.
“What did I do?” I ask and shake her, just a little, just to calm her down.
Her wolf bucks and flails. The whites of her rolling eyes flash. Her teeth snap.
“Is there a male of your own pack that you want? Is that it?” I’ll kill him. He doesn’t deserve her. She lives in fear. No worthy male would allow it.
She struggles, all claws and teeth, fighting with every ounce of her strength while I try to keep her from hurting either of us.
It can’t be another male. She was so afraid of me, if she had another male, she would have certainly gone to him.
She doesn’t want someone else. She just doesn’t want me.
Because she believes what her people say about us?
Of course. She must. And because I’ve always been honest with myself, at least, I have to admit that a lot of what her people think is true. We steal their females, and their pups, too, if the females can’t bear to be parted from them. We live as Fate intended, and we don’t do human shit like have an alpha who makes decisions for folks whose brains work perfectly fine.
The lost packs think we’re a step away from feral, but ferals don’t come from the camps. They were all born in packs who live in houses with walls and doors and locks.
Annie’s wolf doesn’t respond to my words. She’s losing energy, but she doesn’t give up and grazes my forearm with her small, sharp canines. I hiss. Fear floods her wolf’s eyes.
My temper roars again. I’ve done nothing to deserve such a look. I’m not unworthy. I’m a good hunter, and I have never harmed a female or pup, nor would I. But she hated me from the first moment she saw me. She never gave me a chance. I didn’t want a female from a lost pack for a mate, but I didn’t try to fight Fate. I courted her, even when she scorned me.
She stunk and cowered, but I didn’t treat her with contempt. Not like she treats me.
“Stop fighting, and I’ll put you down,” I grunt, grappling with her legs, so weak, but somehow as slippery as butter. She struggles harder, lunging at my face.
I can’t bring her home with me. She won’t come willingly.
There will be no family. No fire, no steak, no sweet giggles.
My heart is sick. I can’t bear it. I toss her from me as far as I can. I try to be gentle. She lands in a heap, but she’s on four feet in seconds. She bolts, but she’s disoriented and picks the wrong direction. Almost immediately, she has to skid to a stop at the edge of the river bank.
She scrambles backward and wheels to face me, her crazed gaze darting left and right, searching for a way to escape as if she’s trapped between me and the water. I guess she can’t swim.
My cock shrivels. My mouth tastes like ashes. I disgust her. She thinks I’m nothing but an animal.