Filed to story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“Mudded it?”
“To hide my scent.”
“You did that on purpose?”
“You thought I kept it that way?” He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Because I’m ‘Last Pack’ as your people say? And we’re wild animals.”
I drop my hand to my lap. That is what we’re taught.
Justus’s mouth curves down, his face shuttering. I clasp my hands in my lap.
“Worse than wild animals, I guess, since animals keep their coats clean.” He braces his forearms on his thighs and stares across the den.
The air between us sours. I shift so our thighs aren’t touching.
I stare at the picture of Thumbelina riding the bird. I can feel through the bond that his pride is bruised. That’s when males are the most dangerous.
The voice is missing a trick. I had to remind myself this time.
Justus sighs. “I guess your pack only comes across us when we’re, uh, hunting. I see where they might have gotten the impression.”
Hunting or stealing females. I keep my eyes on the book.
Justus rumbles and tugs at my wrist—coaxing, not demanding—and I’m so thrown by the touch that I let him lift my hand.
“Don’t stop because I’m proud and bad with words,” he says, pressing a bristly kiss to my inner wrist and then covering my hand with his and returning it to his cheek, cradling it there.
“People do say that about your pack,” I admit.
“Is that why you didn’t want me?” he asks tightly.
My hand trembles. Justus guides it lower to press against his bare chest. His heartbeat thumps against my palm.
“I was afraid.” I splay my fingers, stretching them across his breastbone. His muscles tense. The line where his tattoos ends cuts straight down between my middle and ring fingers. He keeps his hand pressed on top of mine. Like we’re staunching a wound.
“That I’d be rough with you? Or that I wouldn’t be able to care for you?” His rumble grows jagged.
“That it would hurt,” I whisper. “And other things.”
“What things?”
I don’t know how I’m doing this, speaking to a male I don’t really know, far from home, surrounded by strangers, but my belly is full, I’m out of adrenaline, and the den is drowsily dim and warm like a dream or a fugue. Justus is so much stronger and fiercer than me, and I’ve let him so close, that he’s not really a threat anymore. A brandished knife is a threat. Once it’s been resting against your throat for a while, it’s something else. A negotiation, maybe.
“Everything.” I swallow a bitter laugh. “Mostly that you’d take me away.” For the first time, I try to line all my anxieties up in a way that I can explain them to someone else, and I just can’t. There are too many. So I try to explain a different way. “I’ve set my life up exactly the way it needs to be so that I can function. It has to be the way it is, or I’m a mess. It’s just the way it is.”
I wait for him to argue like Mari and Kennedy do whenever I say something like that.
Nothing is as bad as you make it in your head. You can’t live scared. If you want to grow, you have to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Challenge yourself.
Like every minute of every day isn’t a challenge.
And yes, you can live scared.
Justus blows out a slow breath. “So what’s the set up?” he finally asks.
I look at him, surprised. He’s serious.
For a second, I feel too silly to tell him, but it’s just us, and his earthy scent has somehow untied all my knots. “Well, I have my places and the things I do, and I know everyone, who’s okay and who I need to stay away from. And I know where the exits are, and the hiding places, and what I can use for a weapon.”
He’s nodding. I decide to go on.
“And I have my tea and my knitting and my work with the bee hives and in the kitchen. I always know what’s happening, you know?”
His brow creases. “I didn’t think about any of that back then.”
“Or now,” I say softly.
He smiles ruefully. “Or now.”
We sit a few moments in silence before he clears his throat and asks in a very careful, even voice, “What happened to you?”
Sightless eyes, staring at nothing. A twisted mouth frozen in a soundless scream.
“Something bad,” I answer softly. “When I was a pup, I saw something, and eventually, most of the others who were there got better, and I just didn’t.” I shrug and hunch my shoulders. I’m squeezing the book so tightly, the edges bite into my palm.
“I didn’t realize back then,” he replies, his voice low, too, like we’re telling secrets. “And I never really worried about how you felt. I figured you’d come around.” He shakes his head. “My head was so far up my ass. I knew it all, right?”
I peek at him. His lips are curving again, like he’s chagrined. I don’t know any males like him. None of the males at Quarry Pack will freely admit that they’re wrong. If they’re backed into a corner, they sandwich their “my bad” in excuses and reminders of all the times they were right. Inevitably, they lose rank.
I’ve never heard a male say he’s been mistaken like it wasn’t costing him everything to say it, which is funny since females in the pack apologize all the time for things that aren’t even their fault.
“We were young,” I say, letting him off the hook because that’s what you’re supposed to do when a male humbles himself—preserve his dignity at all costs. A male with hurt pride is dangerous.
“I didn’t think,” he says. “I was so happy that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.”
“Happy?”
He glances down at the rug, the hollows under his cheekbones darkening. “You were all I ever wanted.”
I wish I could believe him—my loneliness longs to—but I was never na?ve enough to take that kind of thing at face value. “You wanted a mate, you mean.”
He’s quiet for a moment, but then he draws a deep breath and gnaws his lower lip. “Stay here,” he says.
Where would I go?
I’m expecting him to leave the den, but instead, he crosses to the big basket and begins to unpack it. It’s a clown car. I have no idea how it holds so much. He takes out a stack of fluffy blankets and several quilts, two feather pillows squished flat in a plastic case, a leather knife roll, and an assortment of pants and shirts. No socks and no underwear.
My face heats, and I fuss with my blue sheet dress, arranging the hem so it covers my bare feet.
Finally, Justus reaches the bottom of the basket and takes out a round hatbox. I wouldn’t recognize what it was except a vendor at the Chapel Bell farmers’ market decorates them with decoupage and sells them for fifty dollars apiece.
Justus pushes the hatbox over to me with his knees and then sits on his heels so it’s between us. His lips are curved in what I recognize as his usual, hesitant smile, but his shoulders are tense, and his eyes are carefully blank.
“Open it,” he says.
I’m scared. A male has never given me a gift before, and I think that’s what this is, even though the box is plain white cardboard. I look up at him.
His hands are firmly braced on his thighs like he’s ready for something to go down. “Go on. It’s for you,” he says.
I take a deep breath and lift the lid.
It’s yarn. Lots of yarn, hand-dyed, and by the look and smell, homespun, too. I raise a skein to my nose. Merino. I brush it against my cheek. It’s so soft.
“Keep looking,” Justus says, his voice low and gravelly, and nudges the box closer to me.
I pile the skeins on my lap. The colors are almost too bold for natural dyes, which must be what Last Pack uses. They aren’t blue and red and green; they’re indigo and crimson and emerald. “They’re so beautiful. Who spun them?”
“The females,” he says.
No shit. “Which females?”
He looks caught for a second, and then he says, “I’ll find out. Keep looking.”
I take out the rest of the yarn, and underneath, there’s a rectangular leather case, about the size of a laptop. It looks handmade, too. The stitchwork is very neat and even, but not perfectly uniform like you’d get from a machine.