Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
The pecking voice sidetracks me for a second. For once, it’s not an order or a warning. Is it bragging on us? Is it agreeing with someone? A male?
I give my head a shake to clear it and then look around to distract myself from the need to answer him. When I fell, we left the trail and landed in the wildflowers. The air around us is sweet from the stalks we crushed, the night air punctuated with honey from the goldenrod, vanilla from the milkweed, and carrot from the Queen Anne’s Lace.
Justus sits alongside me, facing south while I face the opposite direction. We’re surrounded by tall grass and new spring blooms, blue and purple in the dark. Even this close, butt naked and sitting cross-legged, he’s clearly a dangerous dominant male who smells like alpha no matter what he says, with wild hair and tattoos, fearless and assured—in the middle of a bunch of buttercups and bluebells.
He gazes patiently at my profile, waiting for me to say something.
“You were following me,” I say. “You could have caught me at any time.”
“I wasn’t trying to catch you. I was following you wherever you were going. I’d follow you anywhere.”
Is he sweet-talking me? Males don’t talk to me like that, but I’ve overheard Tye with Kennedy, and Ivo with about every unmated female in the pack.
I scrunch my toes in the dewy grass and clutch my gown tighter to my chest, balling the fabric right above my heart. “You say that.”
After we mated by the river, he bolted like his tail was on fire and stayed gone for years. Although that’s not what Diantha said. She said he came back to Quarry Pack to check on me. The thought calms my heart.
Justus reaches to his side and picks a panicle of aster from its peduncle. The only reason I know the scientific terms is because when we were pups, Abertha would call us things like panicle and peduncle and bugbane and warty goblet. I thought they were weird witchy nicknames. I didn’t realize until I was older that they were real words for plant parts.
Why am I thinking about that now? When Justus is reaching over and offering me the aster?
While moonlight is falling on his face, illuminating his expression like a spotlight on a dark stage, and the bond shimmers and flows between us?
He wants, he hopes, but he can’t let on, and he doesn’t—not by the cast of his jaw or set of his mouth or even by the look in his eyes. He has to be above desire like a monk. The stakes are too high to put any skin in this game at all.
I know how that feels.
His longing and mine both thump in my chest, off rhythm, a staccato beat that feels familiar and new and scary and right. I splay my palm flat on the hot skin above the gown.
“Can you feel me there?” he asks.
I nod.
“I feel you, too.” He fists his empty hand and presses it to his chest.
“What’s it like?” I ask.
He takes a breath. Swallows. Lowers his hands to rest on his knees. “Like I’m not alone,” he finally says, eyes lowered, shoulders braced, muscles tensed.
Defenseless.
I don’t want to leave him alone, but Ican’t change. Fate knows I’ve tried, but I can’t—not the past or the voice or who I am. But I don’t have to, do I? He’s not asking me to fix myself. He’s just offering me a flower.
The aster is dangling from his hand like an afterthought. Like I’ve left him with it.
How can I leave him like that? When he’s mine? When all I need to do is reach out my hand?
I get a good grip on the gown with one hand, and careful not to move too quickly—he’s a big male, after all—I reach over and pluck the aster from his fingers.
He glances over, surprised.
I tuck my knees closer to my chest, trying to hide from a sudden feeling of exposure.
A smile like a sunrise breaks across his face.
I delicately sniff the flower because that’s what you’re supposed to do. “Thank you,” I say and smile politely.
“You like that one?” he asks, his whole manner changing, his shoulders relaxing, the furry tips of his pointed wolfish ears perking up.
“I do. I like asters.”
He reaches into tall grasses around us, plucks another flower, and offers it to me, grinning. “How about this one?”
“Queen Anne’s Lace.”
“That’s what it’s called?” he asks as I take it.
I nod. “Sometimes you’ll hear folks call it wild carrot.” That’s the name I learned from Abertha. Queen Anne’s Lace is what the humans in Chapel Bell call it, but I think the name is prettier.
“You can eat it?”
“There’s a little root, and you can, technically, I guess, but I wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Looks too much like poison hemlock, and it doesn’t taste good enough to risk the mistake.”
He growls low and says, “All right. Give that back here.” He takes the Queen Anne’s Lace, tosses it into the field, and picks me a new flower. “What’s this one?”
I take the delicate stem that he nearly crushed to a pulp when plucking it. “That’s Blue-Eyed Mary.”
“Can it kill you?”
I giggle. “No, it’s just pretty to look at.” I pair it with the aster. The blue and purple complement each other well.
“That makes two of you,” he says and holds another flower, a snow trillium, under my nose.
I roll my eyes and take the white bloom with the yellow in the middle. “You’re as silly as your wolf, aren’t you?”
“He’s much worse. He has absolutely no dignity when it comes to you.”
He picks and passes me a bluebell and another aster. I arrange my little bouquet and blush. My skin is hot, the night air is cool, and the heat from Justus’s body warms my left side.
“I like him,” I say softly without looking up from my flowers.
“He likes you, too.” Justus’s voice is tinged with wolf.
I glance over. He’s already looking at me. Our eyes catch.
I feel so small beside him, but not in an intimidated way. More like how it feels to curl up with a book and my lunch at the base of the huge red oak that grows by the greenhouse at Abertha’s cottage.
A wave of mellow warmth washes from my head to my toes. My lower belly twists. This is really happening. I’m going into heat again.
Like he senses my panic gathering, Justus leans over and presses our temples together. I close my eyes and breathe him in.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
“Me, too,” he says.
I draw back so I can see his eyes again. “What are you scared of?” It’s not a challenge; it’s a serious question.
His face darkens, but he doesn’t look away. “I can’t do it—I can’t make you hate me again.”
“I didn’t hate you,” I say. “Neither of us had a choice. I knew that.”
“I would never have chosen that,” he says. The pain and shame, the damage, in his voice are jagged claws, and they snag my heart and slice me open. I wouldn’t have, either. I wish I could have saved us both.
“What do we do?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a moment, wrapping his arms around his knees and staring into the distance. His bicep brushes my upper arm. Some kind of gravity urges me to lean into him, but I don’t dare.
Eventually, he clears his throat and meets my eyes again. “When we scout, we go in pairs,” he says. “We could do that. We could be scouts together.”
I understand what he’s saying. If we’re going to do this—and we have to do this—it can’t be like before. There can’t be a bad guy. So we’ll be in it together. “Okay. How do scouts work?”