Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
What music does Cadoc listen to?
Brody Hughes and his guys drive around with their systems blaring, so I know their taste. Loud and vulgar. Cadoc obeys all traffic laws, and he and his crew keep it low key.
Nia and I hustle through the empty gym. We like to duck into the ladies’ room on our way to the library for study hall. Nia takes the time to fix her face without Brynn and her gang hassling us, and I keep her company. Bevan usually meets us.
When we get there today, he’s already slumped in a stall, toilet paper shoved up his nostrils. One eye is puffed shut. Both are purple. His lip’s split. He’s still wearing his gym uniform, a sleeve ripped off his shirt. His gray fur is brown with drying blood.
“Wow. This is going easy on him?” I drop my backpack. It clunks against the tile. I tense. Hope I didn’t bust my loot before I can play with it.
“Yup. He walked here under his own steam, didn’t he?” Nia answers. She’s already at the sink, wielding an eyelash curler.
I bend over and grab Bevan’s head in both my palms, tilting it up toward the light.
“Do I need stitches?” he asks.
For a second, a memory flashes into my mind—we’re pups, monkeying around on the boards, and he slips into the marsh. The water’s deep, and he’s scrawny, and his legs get tangled in the weeds. I hold him tight under the arms, and I fight to keep hold of him as he flails his legs until they’re free. I don’t let go until I’ve got him safe on the walkway again.
My eyes prickle. Why am I misting up? What’s wrong with me? I’m acting like my sister when she’s got a pup in the oven.
“Shit, cuz. Is it that bad?” Bevan cranes his neck to get a glimpse of himself in a mirror.
I shake it off and focus. His shifter healing has already kicked into gear, and the cuts don’t go too deep. Cadoc did restrain himself. The injuries are mostly cosmetic.
“No. You’re okay.” I feel his scalp, and he yelps, ducking his head. He’s got a big ol’ goose egg. “After school, come with me to Abertha’s. I’ll make you a poultice. It’ll speed things up.”
“No way. I ain’t going to the witch’s.”
“She’s not a witch. She’s a wise woman.” Our alpha, Madog Collins, declared a few years back that Abertha is to be referred to as a wise woman. I guess “witch” is bad branding.
Bevan snorts. “Black cat? No mate? Shit in glass bottles that smokes and ain’t hot?” He ticks each item off on his fingers. “That’s a witch.”
“She won’t be there.”
I’m not gonna argue the point too much. Abertha calls herself a witch. Sometimes she swaps out the “w” for a “b.”
“Will her cat be there?” Bevan asks.
“Probably.”
“Definitely not going.” Bevan folds his arms and hikes his scraped chin. His pointy ears twitch.
“How come you did it?” I squish his cheeks to check the damage to his teeth. He only lost a back molar. His grills protected his incisors.
Bevan shrugs and his expression goes even more mulish. “Had my reasons.”
“It was stupid.” Not that I have room to talk with Cadoc’s shit in my bag.
“It was a rush.” Bevan grins and waggles his thick wolfy eyebrows.
“It’s gonna come back to bite you.”
“Nah. Cadoc don’t carry a grudge.” Bevan spits a pink gob onto the linoleum floor.
Gross. I unroll a wad of toilet paper and hand it to him, staring meaningfully at the floor.
“Who are you, my dam?” he asks.
“I’m the female who might bring you a poultice back from the witch’s.”
“Yeah? You’d do that for me?” Bevan smiles, his wet, black nose quivering, and my chest warms.
He’s my favorite cousin. Most scavengers can’t bear to be entirely in their human skin, but since he first shifted, he gets more wolfish every day. His snout, his ears, the fur, the fangs and claws. He’s going feral in front of our eyes, slowly but surely.
I tousle his hair. “Don’t ever go for a walk and not come back, Bevan.”
His blue eyes soften. “Never. You neither.”
“Never.” I give the tuft of gray fur sticking out from behind his ear a quick scratch. It’s not a promise either of us can really make, but we mean it all the same.
At the mirror, Nia smacks her crimson lips and tilts her fedora just so. “You two ready, or should I tell Mrs. Dee that you went to the nurse?”
“Nah, we’re coming,” Bevan says, hoisting himself upright by the bars on the sides of the stall. I back up and sling my backpack over my shoulders.
A thrum of excitement starts purring low in my belly.
What if I can guess Cadoc Collin’s passcode? It’s not impossible. What if I could read his text messages?
I bet he has a whole bunch from Brynn Owen. My stomach goes queasy. She’s always hanging on him like sheer proximity and persistence might nudge Fate.
Fate does what she wants. Brynn’s wasting her time.
I hope.
I don’t want Brynn Owen as our alpha female. She pays too much attention to us scavengers. Although I bet she’d make it so we don’t have to go to school. That could be a bright side.
Still, the idea makes me cranky.
Maybe I’m hungry. I skipped lunch. I haven’t had much appetite lately, and then I get starving and nauseous at the same time. My sister Drona says I’m getting ready for my first shift—and, therefore, my first heat—but I can’t handle that mentally, so I don’t dwell.
I don’t want a mate.
I want a snack.
I’ll get cookies at Abertha’s. I know where she hides the mint thins in her freezer.
Nia leads the way to study hall. We sandwich Bevan between us. Thankfully, his temporary insanity has passed, and he’s keeping his head down. There’s nothing Brody Hughes’ crew likes more than kicking a scavenger when he’s down.
As we enter the library, Mrs. Dee makes a point not to look in our direction. We return the favor and hustle for our table at the back in the 700-799 section—arts and recreation. After he plops down, Bevan reaches behind his chair and nabs a tin flask from our hidey hole behind
Spiritual Landscaping.
I tuck my backpack under my chair. Nia grabs three books from a shelf and passes them around. You can do whatever you want in study hall as long as you remain seated, look occupied, and leave Mrs. Dee alone to flirt with the high-ranking male postgrads.
I check out the spine of today’s book.
Edible Gardens. Cool. I’m into it.
The first thing Abertha and I discovered when she took me on is that I’m not magical. Not in the slightest. Not magically inclined. Not magically receptive. I pretty much repel magic. For a while, I was hopeful that Abertha would give up, and I could go back to hanging with my cousins in the woods.
But, alas, like all scavengers, I am hella good at finding things, and apparently, I have a green thumb. All was not lost.
Abertha stopped trying to teach me prognostication and spellcraft, and we focused on growing shit and foraging for the big three.
Basically, there are tons of useful plants, but there are three that are worth their weight in gold—dragon tongue, wolf’s bane, and ashbalm. Dragon tongue is like a drug, similar to steroids, and it grows under very specific conditions—like when the moon is in the seventh house and there’s a red sky in morning. It’s a hassle to harvest, but it funds Abertha’s extravagant and mysterious lifestyle.
Wolf’s Bane is used in a truth serum. Abertha has me stomp it into the ground whenever we find it.
Ashbalm is the holy grail. It can cure wasting sickness, and even with all their money and human connections, Moon Lake hasn’t been able to reproduce it synthetically.
It’s super-rare, and I haven’t found any on my own yet, but when I do, I’m set for life. No more donation box. No more allotment basket. If I want a phone, I can get a phone. A sparkly pink case. A watch that plays music and a different colored band for every day of the week.
The whole nine yards as the humans say.
I’m lost in thought, imagining it, when there’s a disturbance at the front of the library. My guilty heart jumps. Cadoc Collins is standing at his table, patting his pockets, frowning.