Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
He’d held me by the scruff of the neck and scrubbed me clean in the river while I fought and bit, and then he fed me and threw me in a pile with the other pups who’d lost everyone. He kept watch over us every night until Elspeth finally let him sleep in her den, and even then, he’d come to comfort us if a pup cried out from a nightmare. If
I cried out.
I’m not ashamed to tell Max that I don’t want to let Annie go, but I want it so bad that it feels dangerous to say out loud. The things you want the most—the things you can’t live without—that’s what Fate takes.
“So don’t let her go,” Max says. He drinks from his canteen and offers it to me. I take a sip and pass it back.
“It’s not that easy.”
“It could be. You should have heard Elspeth holler.” He grins, remembering. “Knowing the female she is today, you’d never guess the pair of lungs she had on her. They must have heard her in Moon Lake.”
In sync, we cap the canteen and continue hiking. Up ahead, Alroy has caught up to Khalil, and they’re taking a water break, too.
“I don’t want a mate who despises me,” I say, aware that Max could take offense if he chose, and also that I’m lying. The years have worn my pride away. I could live with Annie’s hate if it meant when I woke up in the night, she’d be there where I could see her.
Max says, “Pfft. She’ll get over it eventually. Just tell her how things are going to be. Be firm and consistent. She’ll come around. It’s the natural order.”
I snort. “You told Elspeth how things were going to be?” There is no way. That female rules him.
Once, she left her favorite comb at our summer camp one year, and she didn’t realize it until we’d reached high valley. His wolf ran all the way back for it himself in a snowstorm, and then when she idly remarked that his fangs had scratched the wood when he carried it in his mouth, he carved her a new one, but not until he traveled all the way to red clay camp for more of the teak that he’d made the first comb from.
“Not in so many words,” Max mutters. “But she knew.”
I hide my smile as we reach Alroy and Khalil. We’re getting close enough to the lake that if there’s elk, we should start seeing signs of them. So far, I scent nothing on the wind but possum, raccoon, and the like.
“I’m not as brave as you,” I say to Max.
“What are we talking about?” Alroy asks, falling into step beside us.
“How my balls are bigger than the alpha’s here,” Max answers.
I growl.
He raises his hands. “Sorry, my balls are bigger than
Justus’s.”
Khalil and Alroy both hum in ready agreement. I roll my eyes.
“I was asking Justus here why he won’t grab his balls—smaller than mine though they may be—and claim that mate of his. Tell her she’s First Pack now, and that’s that.”
“That is not how females work.” I’d love to hear him repeat that in front of Elspeth. He’d be out of the den, bunking with the pups again, as soon as the words came out of his mouth.
“Oh, so you know how females work now?” Max raises his bushy gray eyebrows, and Alroy snickers.
“He read about ’em in that book that said only wolves in zoos have alphas.” Khalil smirks at me. He’s spoiling for a fight. He must have sobered up.
“It’s a matter of respect,” I say, flagrantly ignoring our long and storied tradition of stealing our mates from under their birth packs’ noses.
“It’s fear,” Khalil shoots right back, holding my gaze with his laughing, red-rimmed eyes, daring me to deny it. “Brother Justus won’t claim his twitchy little mate because he’s figured out that if he has nothing, he has nothing to lose.” He flashes me a wry smile that tells me he figured out the same thing himself.
I smack him upside the back of his head for calling Annie twitchy. He grins and ducks away. He knows he overstepped, and we all know he’s right.
We’re pack. We let each other spout our preferred brand of bullshit, but at the end of the day, we’ve run together our whole lives. We’ve shared hundreds of kills, breathed each other’s farts, huddled together in the dead of winter to keep from freezing. We’ve stood together in six-foot holes, shoveling dirt so we could bury our dead.
We know each other to the bone.
It would kill me to really have her and lose her. I couldn’t walk away from that. And then what happens to the pack? Who will remind them, over and over again, that freedom for safety is a bad trade?
I listen to the elders’ stories. I know that history repeats, and we could so easily go the way of Quarry Pack.
When the lost wolves moved out of the dens to build their towns and cities—seduced by light at night, cold air in the summer, and fresh meat from a box at any time—some banished their wolves more thoroughly than others. Moon Lake built high rises so they didn’t even have to smell the earth anymore. North Border built walls to cage their own people.
For a long time, Quarry Pack kept to many of the old ways. Some even lived in dens, and we still ran with them then during full moons. And then, when my parents were young, Declan Kelly came from nowhere, killed their alpha, and took over, in part by convincing them that we were the enemy.
Obviously, there were no more runs after that, but until the wasting sickness decimated our numbers, our males would still risk occasional incursions onto their territory. Twice they found runts left to die in the forest, and once, they rescued a female beaten and left for dead in a gulch. One of the runts died, but the other lived, and the female happened to mate the male who carried her back to camp and birthed Alroy before she was taken by the sickness.
I love my pack, but I know them. They’re as susceptible as anyone to the lure of a strong male who promises to keep the bad wolves away. They want to believe that someone has the power to keep them safe, and if they were weak and scared again, like they were after the sickness, they’d follow any old asshole with a loud mouth and confidence.
No matter what they call me, I’m not the alpha, but I am the male sitting in the alpha’s seat so no one else can take it. As long as I’m here, Alroy’s dickishness is a nuisance. Khalil’s fatalism hurts only himself. If I’m gone, what happens when Alroy realizes no one can tell him to shut up? What happens when Khalil’s death wish tells him the pack can outrun a blizzard on the way to winter camp?
I almost didn’t survive walking away from Annie the first time. I’m a flawed, flawed male, but I know myself. I wouldn’t willingly live through that again.
But do I have a choice?
Already, thoughts of her run on a constant loop in the back of my brain—is she okay? Elspeth will keep an eye on her, and none of the males will dare go near her. The worst that can happen to her is boredom, but she doesn’t know that. Is she scared?
Of course, she is.
What is she afraid of? Or maybe she feels better without me around.
Is she relieved that I’m gone?
Is she thinking about me?
I march on, stiff as a soldier, and my mind spins. I don’t know what to do. Fate is making all the calls, like she always does, and I need to make it right, and what do Ido
? Who do I fight? Who do I bark into submission?
Max must smell my angst because he snorts and says, “Oh, don’t worry about it too much, pup. Soon enough, you’ll be fetching her a snack at three o’clock in the morning because you were an asshole in her dream, and she can’t stand smelling you for another second, and she’s hungry.”
Alroy and Khalil’s faces twist in mocking disbelief.
Max laughs. “You wish you had what I have.”
They can’t say anything because we all know that yes, yes they do.
Finally, a strong wind gusts down from Salt Mountain, and I catch a faint whiff of bull. We instantly fall silent, our noses quivering.
Alroy jerks his head to the north, and I nod. We head off in that direction, careful to stay downwind. Alroy shifts and runs ahead to scout.
Khalil slides me a glance. “Winner gets the backstrap?”
I grin. “Loser gets the shank?”
He nods.
We bolt, Max’s long-suffering sigh in our ears. We race between the towering pines, our steps silent, our breath ragged. The sun is so high that the sky above us is a blue wash, not a cloud in sight. The tension and dread seep from my body as the clean mountain air fills my lungs.
My wolf wants out, but he knows this moment is mine. I need it—to remind myself that I am sure of my step and my direction.
The elk’s scent grows stronger. Khalil harnesses a second wind and pulls ahead, raising his bow. He’s got the bull in his sights. I’m not going to outrun him.
A ridge rises to my left. I cut over, scramble up the steep incline on all fours, and then sprint along the crest, loose stones and dirt rolling under my feet, skittering down the sides. I see the elk in a stand of trees. He lifts his head, alerting at the ruckus I’m making.
His eyes darken, recognizing my wolf.
My wolf howls.
The elk’s haunches flex.
Max’s voice floats to me on the wind. “Idiot. He’s gonna scare him off.”
No, I’m not. I’m quicker than that. I raise my bow, notch my arrow, aim, and let it fly.