Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“Oh, he was fully grown,” Diantha says, her gaze hardening as it turns to me. “He was newly mated. That’s why he was out in those woods. He was trekking back to his mate’s pack territory yet again to check on her.”
My stomach knots.
Yet again
? How many times did he come back, and I didn’t know?
“Diantha,” Elspeth warns quietly.
Diantha ignores her, staring me down. “I have another story, since we’re talking about mothers.”
“Diantha,” Elspeth hisses louder.
“Remember how Alys died during the worst of that winter, when we were losing one or two people a day? Everyone was either sick themselves or too busy nursing their own blood or burying the dead. Remember how no one made their way up to her den for days? How Justus had done his best to bury her by himself. Was he eight? Nine?”
Justus’s words in the den echo in my head.
I swear it to you on my dam’s grave.
Diantha pauses, but no one answers her. They don’t interrupt her, either. I’m going to be sick.
“His sire was already gone. How many days was Justus alone up there? No one remembers, do they?” She pins the others with her stare. No one will meet her eyes. “How long did he stay alone in that den before Max finally got well enough to go up and check on him?”
“Max had to drag Justus out,” Elspeth says quietly. “He didn’t want to leave her nest.” Her cheeks are wet with tears.
Nessa is crying, too. And Lelia. Mabli. All the females are tense, weeping, staring at me, blaming me.
They love him, and I rejected him, but they don’t want my blood. They want to tell me who he is. They want me to hear them, to see the pup who refused to come out of his dam’s nest.
Come on, Annie. We’ve got to get out of here.
You’ve got to come now. What if they come back?
Please, Annie. Please.
My chest balloons with guilt and grief and regret and rage. I didn’t ask for this—any of it. They don’t know me. Do they think this is what I wanted?
I want to shout that at them, but the muscles in my throat don’t work—they’ve never worked—and besides, it’s not them that I want to shout at, is it? These weeping mothers and daughters and sisters?
What do I do?
Where is the pecking voice now? Doesn’t my wolf want to bark at me to run and hide?
I grasp for the fear—the familiar, reliable, insistent fear that doesn’t leave room for anything else—and it’s not there. All I have left is me.
And them.
And the blue sky overhead.
The pups yipping and yapping over in the sycamore tree.
The scent of woodsmoke and fur on the breeze.
For the first time in my life, it is crystal clear in my mind that—in this moment, at least—I have a choice. I can shrink down. Wrap my arms around myself. Or I can straighten up. Open my hand.
I did it once before, didn’t I? I let go of the slat. Crawled out from my hiding place. Reached for the knife.
Inside me, close to the boundary between us, my wolf sits, quiet and watchful.
I meet Diantha’s eyes. “We lost so many,” I say. “So much.” And even though it is very, very hard, I don’t look away.
It’s not a defense or excuse or platitude. It’s the truth. No more, no less. It’s all I’ve got.
“We did,” Diantha says, her chin high. Her whiskers quiver. She’s not crying, but her diamond eyes shine.
It isn’t enough, but what else do we have?
Diantha sniffs and settles back down to her loom. She throws the little wooden boat through the threads and pulls the shaft firmly forward with a clunk. Slowly, as if she’s waking up from some spell, Elspeth begins to rock her chair again. Griff, who’d been making himself invisible, stirs the coals with his stick.
Nessa ducks into the tent and reemerges with a yawning toddler with puffy black curls. The pup plasters herself to her dam’s front and promptly falls asleep again, her head nestled in the crook of Nessa’s neck.
A pup rushes over from the sycamore with a scraped knee.
A male drops by with a bucket of water to refill our kettle.
The moment passes.
I’m not sure if I said the right thing. My hands shake as I take up my yarn again. Actually, all of me is shaking.
The voice still doesn’t have anything to say, though.
I didn’t run. I didn’t hide. I didn’t close my eyes and keep my mouth shut. And the world didn’t end.
The sun is still shining as I knit beside a fire, surrounded by this strange pack. They don’t know me. I don’t know them. But the same breeze dries our cheeks.
And when a pup shrieks in the sycamore, all our eyes flick over for a second, to reassure ourselves that everyone is safe. Everyone is well.
11
ANNIE
Justus still isn’t back when the sun begins to sink behind the hills to the north. Most of the females ventured to the tables by the bonfire for dinner, but Griff brought a tray for Elspeth and me at the female camp. Nessa’s youngest, the sleepy curly-headed toddler, kicked a fuss when the cowbell rang that summons the pack to eat, so she’s here with us, too, picking off my plate.
Her name is Efa, and for some reason, she’s as interested in me as her wolf. She’s the cutest pup I’ve ever seen with her big round eyes and delicate tan whiskers contrasting with her warm brown skin.
She’s been talking to me nonstop since she fully woke up from her afternoon nap, but she’s still sporting baby fangs, so I can’t understand a word. She doesn’t seem to notice or mind. She babbles a few words in her raspy little growly voice, and I’ll say, “Is that right?” Or “Oh. Is that so?” And she’s happy. I wish all people were this easy.
She grabs a handful of mashed potatoes from the plate balanced on my knees. I glance around. Elspeth is messing around with the kettle. No one else is around to see my terrible babysitting. I wait until Efa licks her hands clean and then I gently wipe them on the skirt of my gown.
“How about we use the spoon?” I say, offering her another bite. She scoops the potato off the spoon with two fingers and sticks them in her mouth.
Elspeth chuckles over by the fire. “Usually, that one will only eat as her wolf. Count yourself lucky she’s not licking the plate.”
“Is that true?” I ask Efa. She’s balancing herself with a chubby hand on each of my knees. She bares her tiny fangs in a shameless grin and yips.
I spear a hunk of beef with my fork and hold it up. She plucks the bite off, pops it into her mouth, and then before I can stop her, she licks the tines with her long wolfish tongue.
I’m not used to spending time with pups her age. At Quarry Pack, they stay close to their dams, and despite the changes Killian has made, the mated females still stick together and steer clear of lone females like me. The only little one I have experience with is Una’s babe, Raff, but he isn’t walking or talking yet.
Efa is the most nonsensical person I’ve ever met. She’ll go running straight toward the fire on her thin wobbly legs to give Elspeth a piece of beef, but when an owl hoots overhead, she yelps and huddles close to me, hiding her face in my side. I don’t get the fearlessness, but I understand about the owl. I startled, too.
Despite the good company, as the shadows grow longer, I’m getting anxious again.
Where is he? He left you here. He’s dead. They’ll blame you.
He’s dead.
And he’s your mate, and you don’t even know him.
I distract myself from my dread—and Efa from her infatuation with the fire—by playing peek-a-boo with the rectangular tablecloth-wrap-runner that I made today. When Istarted this morning, I was too nervous to make a conscious plan, so I started a second row both too late and too soon for a scarf, and then, hours later, when I was calm enough to take stock of what I was doing, I realized I’d already stitched too many rows for a placemat or doll’s blanket. It’s not my best work, obviously, just rows upon rows of garter stitches.
It makes for a good prop for peek-a-boo, though. Efa stands in front of my knees, and I raise it between us so she can’t see my face. Her wolf growls. It’s adorable, about as loud as a tummy grumble. I say, “Peek-a-boo!” and drop the knitting in my lap. She squeals, and her whiskers quiver.
No matter how many times I do it, she doesn’t get bored. When I try a variation, covering my head with the knitting and then raising it to peek out at her, she dissolves in giggles and yips. I’m a comedic genius.