Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
“In the kitchen cupboard.” Kennedy tosses her head to get her shaggy bangs out of her eye.
“What games do you have?”
“God of War. Uncharted 4. Cage Fight Takedown. Horizon Zero Dawn.” She narrows her eyes. “Want me to keep going?”
“I’ll get the TV. Let’s play Cage Fight Takedown.” It was worth it to see how big their eyeballs popped.
I like being unpredictable. Once in a blue moon.
I hop up, find the TV stowed under a nice stash of girly liquor, and I carry it back to the living room. Mari jumps to move the candle back to a shelf that has the rest of the set. Kennedy rigs the machine up in no time, and we actually get to play for ten minutes or so before Una rejoins us.
Kennedy shows no mercy. She also calls me a “bitch-ass fuckboy” under her breath. I ask Mari to crack a window, and by the time Una joins us, the place smells like nothing but wholesome competition.
Una wanders into the room tentatively, keeping her distance. She took a shower, rinsed our scent off. My wolf growls. I don’t like it either. She’s folded my hoodie, and it’s draped over her forearm.
I dig her outfit. A long corduroy skirt with buttons down the front that I can picture myself slipping one by one through the slits. Or popping all at once with a quick rip.
She’s got a scoop neck white T-shirt on, and my bite mark is visible, red and jagged against her smooth skin. She fingers it self-consciously, tucking her chin, but it’s too vivid to hide. It draws the eye.
I shift in the chair, hard again. The wolf is riding me. What am I doing? I need to take her home.
Hell, why bother? I could take her twenty feet down the hall and fuck her until she can’t deny who she belongs to.
My wolf is all over that idea, but he doesn’t know females in human form.
Neither do I, but I’m not stupid.
Una’s wary, taking it all in. She sees the TV and the controller in Kennedy’s hand. I can tell the second when she decides not to say one word about it.
She’s got discretion. That’s a good quality to have. Half of being alpha is dialing shit down when everyone around you is cranking it up.
When she can’t avoid it any longer, Una crosses over to me and holds out my hoodie.
“Here.” She sets it on the armrest when I don’t reach for it immediately.
I stand. Her eyes drop to where my cock has popped my zipper. I can hear the glug as she swallows. The flesh under my bite hollows and smooths. I want to lick her. It’s so natural, I have to consciously draw my tongue behind my teeth.
“Arms up,” I tell her, stepping close.
She shivers, and her sweet scent thickens. She raises her arms begrudgingly. I slip my hoodie back over her shoulders, and I zip her up, but not all the way. I leave my bite mark showing.
“Your girls have been sticking up for you,” I say quietly. The others are already making themselves busy elsewhere. I guess now that they know I mean their leader no harm, they’ve decided to give us a little privacy.
“I told you. It was all me. Don’t listen to them. They had nothing to do with it.”
“Do you play, too?” I hold up a controller.
She glares at me. “All of it was my idea.”
“Now, that I believe.”
“What are you going to do to us?” There’s a tremor in her voice, and it’s like nails on a chalkboard.
“You said it. I’m not going to do anything. And you’re gonna convince me I don’t have to ’cause you’ve all learned your lesson, and I don’t need to ground your girls.”
“How?” Her eyes narrow. What will they look like when she comes on my cock? I bet they’ll blow wide open.
“You’re gonna be a good mate,” I say, guiding her toward the door. My phone buzzed several times already. It’s Tye. I should’ve been at his place a half hour ago.
“I’m not your mate.”
“You can make my lunch all the same.” I don’t wait for her to navigate the stairs. I gently lift her down, ignoring her prune face. She’s gonna need to get used to it. Until I get those ramps built, I’m her elevator. “Wash my laundry,” I go on. “Clean my cabin.”
She’s scowling. “That’s what you think a mate is for?”
I stop her at the crest of the hill leading down to the commons, and I tug her close. She stumbles, but I’ve got her. I hold her flush so she can feel how hard I am for her. How my body knows her. Needs her.
For a moment, I let myself have what I crave. Her in my arms. Her chest rising and falling against mine. She shivers like a fawn, and she smells like heaven.
“No.” I bend to whisper in her ear. “What I really want to do is take you back to my den and eat your pussy until you come, squeezing my head with those sweet thighs. And then I want to hear you wail my name while I tap that delicious, plump ass.”
Yeah. Her eyes blow wide when she’s astonished.
I keep going. “You’re gonna come on my cock so hard, you’re gonna forget everything but that you belong to me, and I was put on this earth to pleasure you and put pups in that little round belly.” I rest my palm over her womb. “That’s what I think a mate is for.”
I bump noses with her and then I step back. “But I didn’t figure you’d be down for that quite yet.”
Her arousal teases my nose. It’s faint, but it’s there. I step back.
She tries to shove her hands in her pockets, but her skirt doesn’t have any. She forgets the hoodie does and starts wiping her palms on the corduroy.
I know that was a lot. Frankly, I didn’t know I had it in me. Usually, with females, I don’t have to lay it out like that. They come on to me.
I’m willing to drop it-for now-but she exhales a long sigh, and her eyebrows gather, creasing her forehead.
“That’s the whole thing, though. That’s why I sell things at the market. I don’t want to be just a female. Or a mate, or whatever.” She says it slowly, as if she’s working it out in her head as she speaks. “I want my own thing.”
There are responses on the tip of my tongue. Of course she feels this way. She thought she was mateless. She had to make peace with her lot. She doesn’t need mushrooms anymore. She’s my mate.
Or I could remind her that mated females are happy. Satisfied. Complete. And she’ll be happy, too, once she settles in. I believe that’s true. I’m gonna work to make it so.
I know my pack thinks I’m a tyrant. When it comes to training for the circuit, I am. But I’m also a smart alpha. Coming up, I had the perfect example of what a ‘dumb as shit’ alpha does. I molded myself as alpha by thinking about what Declan Kelly would do or say, and then I did the opposite.
A smart alpha doesn’t take something shared from the heart and say, “You don’t feel what you feel. You don’t think what you think.”
That’s how you teach folks to lie to your face.
So I say, “Okay.”
And I offer Una my hand as we walk down the hill.
Of course, she doesn’t take it, but I grab hers. And she leaves it be all the way to Tye’s cabin.
I will take my victories where I find them.
And it is shaping up to be a glorious day. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and in their wisdom, Fate has given me a headstrong mate.
It’s gonna be a sweet victory when I change her mind.
UNA
I don’t understand Killian Kelly.
I thought I did, but now I don’t know. We’re heading back to the commons. Killian’s slowed his pace to match mine, and he has a hold of my hand and won’t let go.
Everyone is staring. Some folks are running to get other people so they can stare, too.
I guess I’ve never seen Killian Kelly hold a female’s hand before. Not many males in our pack do. You’re more likely to see a male striding somewhere oblivious to his mate hustling to keep up.
Holding hands is a human thing.
Killian’s palm is rough. Calloused. It completely envelops mine.
When we pass the commissary, there’s a rock in our path, and his foot darts out, kicking it aside before I have the chance to step over it.