Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
Nia’s glowing gold eyes meet mine. We grin in gleeful solidarity. We’re so close.
We’ve been angling for the buttons for years. Nia’s tried to lift them a dozen times, but the witch is crafty. She’ll switch tins and spell the buttons to spill from your hands. Like I said, she’s got an asshole’s sense of humor.
Tonight’s the night, though. We deliver this batch of dragon’s tongue, and the blue Danish butter cookie tin is ours.
“Three, two, one—” I count.
“Spoon me.” Nia holds out her hand. I slap the ladle into her palm and shake out my arms. Stirring a pot all night teaches you about muscles you had no idea you had.
I stretch my neck and twist to crack my spine. Sitting on a log all night teaches you that your entire ass can be numb, and yet you still have to pee. I make a quick trip deeper into the woods and work out the kinks in my legs.
When I come back, I steal a sip of Nia’s whiskey to warm my chest. She stirs in silence. I set the glass on the frosted ground and shove my hands up my jacket sleeves to warm my fingers.
It’s a new moon, and the smattering of late November stars fade as we get closer to sunrise. Beyond the fire, black walnut trees loom high overhead, punctuating the stillness of the night with a jarring thump each time the wind knocks an overripe nut free from its moorings.
In the foothills, wolves bay, their howls skidding down across the smooth lake.
“Do you wish you were out with them?” I ask.
Ever since Nia first shifted last year, I feel guilty when she stays with me instead of running with the others.
“Nope,” she says without hesitation. “I do it all for the buttons.”
She grins, her pointy incisors gleaming in the firelight. It’s a lie. I know she does it for me.
“Do you think it’s strange that I want a tin of old buttons so bad?”
It’s an idle question. I don’t much care about being strange. I’m the witch’s apprentice, and the consensus among the scavengers is that I’m not nearly strange enough. I’ve got no natural talent for curses, mischief, or communing with the dead. If it were known I work for buttons, though, my reputation sure as shit wouldn’t improve. The others would think it’s worse than working for pay—all the indignity of labor and none of the cash.
“We, Rosie-cakes. Are we strange for wanting a bunch of old buttons so bad?”
That’s Nia. My girl. My ride or die, as the humans say.
The metronome slows down. I lean over and reset it.
“Just out of curiosity—why do we want ’em?” Nia asks, switching the rough-hewn wooden spoon to her left hand to shake a cramp out of her right.
“You don’t know?” We’ve been after them forever.
Nia shrugs. “Don’t need a reason for a caper.”
That’s true enough.
“It’ll sound weird,” I say.
Nia snorts. “We waited for the night of the new moon, buried quartz at the four directions, poured a pint of liquor on the ground—such a waste,and I had to rub Old Angus’ back for that.”
We both shudder.
“Then we built a fire of cherry wood—and let’s not mention what I had to do for the cherry wood—and stirred this shit at the precisely prescribed tempo since the moment the last sun’s rays set. Rosie. Girlfriend. We’re past weird.”
She has a point.
“Abertha’s been collecting buttons since she was a pup. That’s how scavengers paid her when she was young. Some of the buttons were my mother’s.”
“Oh.” The sound is a soft commiseration. Her mother also went on a walk and didn’t come back. Happens a lot in the Bogs where we live. “We’ll get ’em then. You know I’ll always have your back. Except against a bear shifter. That’s just stupid.”
I sniff. My nose is runny from the cold.
There’s a moment—just a split second—when Nia smiles, lop-sided and earnest, and I can picture her like she was when we were pups—before the piercings, before she cut her black hair short, before she shifted for the first time and her claws never fully retracted again.
I see the girl who wanted to be a ranked wolf when she grew up. The girl who believed that was possible.
We’re grown now.
We know that life in Moon Lake Pack is a game, and it’s rigged, and while we mean our promises, we don’t often get to keep them in the long run.
The gold in Nia’s eyes dims. I’m bringing us down. No call for that. Morning is an hour away, and reality’s gonna take a crap on our day soon enough.
“Okay, I’ve got one.” I clear my throat. “If you had to get stuck half-shifted for the rest of your life, top half wolf or bottom half?”
“Easy. Top half. I’m not giving up human sex or wolf eatin’.”
“Is it really that good?”
“Which?”
“Either.”
“Yeah.” She smirks. “It’s good. Oh! I got one.”
Her eyes are back to shining.
“Cadoc Collins or Brody Hughes?”
My heart goes thump, and without warning, warmth spreads through my chest like spilt tea on a tablecloth. My chilly toes in my boots, the icy tips of my ears—they’re on fire.
Thank goodness I’m sitting in the shadows. I know I’m bright red. I’m the world’s worst blusher. Best blusher? Whichever, it has to be some kind of medical oddity. Skin shouldn’t be able to get the shade of a poppy in full bloom. It’s not natural.
Anyway, I’m not answering the question. “P-Pass.”
“You can’t pass.”
“You don’t make the rules.”
“I literally do.” It’s true. She does. She always has. She’s the shot caller. I go along.
“I couldn’t possibly choose. There’s no difference. Khaki pants. Dress shirt. Boring hair.”
Nia raises the eyebrow with the hoop. She must hear it in my voice—whatever it is that’s making me squirm in my sweater. Is it talking about males in general? Or saying the names of these males in particular, out loud, like they’re the same as Bevan or Pritchard or any other every day, ordinary packmate?
All I know is I was hanging out by an old Airstream trailer in the middle of the woods, making a potion with my best friend and freezing my ass off, but now my face would sizzle if you flicked a drop of water on it.
Maybe it’s the moonshine. I did take a decent-sized gulp, and I’m not a big drinker.
“Pick,” Nia says.
“I decline.”
“Come on.” She squints into the shadows. Yeah, she knows something’s up.
What the heck is up? Indigestion?
“Nope. I can’t do it. They’re the same guy.” I’m lying, and I don’t know why.
Brody and Cadoc are cousins, and that’s pretty much all they have in common.
Brody oozes. Smarm. Entitlement. Human hair product. He won’t make eye contact with a scavenger. If he absolutely must, he’ll address the spot directly above your head.
Cadoc, on the other hand,exudes. Confidence. Innate authority. Strength, command, intelligence. Superiority.
He genuinely doesn’t notice us. He’ll give us a benevolent nod or a casual chin dip when he walks into a room, but I’d bet all the buttons in the tin that he doesn’t actually know a single scavenger’s name. Bet he couldn’t pick any of us out of a line up, either, and we’ve been going to school together for twelve years, fourteen if you count kindergarten and nursery school.
It’s not a complaint. No scavenger wants the future alpha to know him by name.