The Alpha Who Rejected Me

5.

LEO

T

he woman.

She was here.

I had waited for her. Woman was safe. She’d helped. Fed me. Watered me. Used magic plants?

And she’d smelled good. So good. Good enough to eat.

No, not eat.

Help.

I needed help.

She didn’t smell good now.

She smelled… scared.

Why?

Oh. Maybe because I was a wolf, and she was a human.

Wait, human? Humans weren’t safe. I couldn’t remember much, but I knew that much.

And yet… I also knew the woman in front of me was safe, even if that made no sense. The air around her was softer. Kinder.

I had thought I was dead, and maybe I had been. But then she’d stopped the red and chased off the bears who had hurt me. She’d saved me.

Would she save me again?

I didn’t know, and all my instincts were screaming at me to run, to fight. But I didn’t do either. Instead, I lay on my side and did my best to look… what was the word?

My mind churned slowly, so slowly. Thinking was so hard. Was I even supposed to think? I didn’t think so. Thoughts weren’t for animals.

And that’s what I was, right?

Right?

My head was a jumble of things I didn’t understand, so I just ignored it. Either the woman would help me, or I would die. It was as simple as that.

But after what felt like an eternity, she finally approached me. I made sure not to move a muscle, lest I scared her off like the rabbit and deer I hunted.

She was much lovelier than those, though. Softer. Sweeter. But right when it seemed the woman was close enough to reach me, she turned around and walked away.

I was… sad? Was that what I was feeling? Some part of my mind said yes, but another couldn’t comprehend it at all. Animals couldn’t have complex emotions like that.

Could they?

Footsteps drew me from my clouded mind. The woman was placing another bowl of water in front of me.

Was I thirsty? Yes, I was. So thirsty.

As I gratefully lapped at it, she left again.

I missed her presence.

She smelled good. Did I mention that? So good. Honey and chamomile, fresh moss after rain. Perfection.

But she was back before I could even finish drinking, setting a plate loaded with morsels on it.

It smelled almost as good as her. I hadn’t eaten since the scraps she’d given me before, and I was hungry. That was something an animal could definitely feel.

The world quieted as she looked at my side, then went into her clear house. Were houses supposed to clear?

I did not know.

I did not care.

The woman returned as I finished eating. She still smelled scared, but she put more magic plants on my side. Different from last time—it didn’t carry her scent so strongly—but still magic.

It wasn’t long before the pain in my side lessened, and my belly was warm. I let out a little huff and relaxed.

As for the woman, she stared at me for a long time, her dark brown eyes saying so many things I didn’t understand. Though I wanted to.

To understand.

After a while, she left, disappearing into her non-clear home. The idea of that kind of shelter felt vaguely familiar, as if I had had something similar long ago. But that was impossible.

Because animals didn’t have homes like that.

And I was an animal.

At least, I thought I was.

Troubling. All of this was troubling. I walked in through the open door of her clear house and settled in to sleep on a pile of warm pine shavings.

For once, I had no nightmares.

4

VANESSA

I

woke up slowly, certain I’d just had the most vivid dream of my life, because there was no way, literally no way, that the wolf from before had showed up out of nowhere and pretty much asked me to take care of it.

It simply wasn’t possible. Things like that didn’t happen. That was what I kept telling myself as I got dressed and headed downstairs to feed my cats.

I knew I should take the time to feed myself, too, but I needed to know if I’d imagined taking care of the wolf and applying a new poultice to it not even twelve hours earlier. I went to my greenhouse, wondering if I was hoping if I was right or wrong.

Relief flooded me when I didn’t see a large, furry mass outside of my greenhouse, along with a bit of disappointment. Both those feelings turned to pure shock when I reached the door.

“What the f**k,” I whispered, hardly daring to breathe.

There was a wolf in my greenhouse.

I’d never thought I’d have to deal with a situation like this, and it was damn terrifying to boot. In my hurry to get inside the night before, I must have accidentally left the back door of the greenhouse open slightly ajar, and that was how the animal had gotten in. A stupid mistake on my part, yet who could blame me?

The giant, dangerous predator looked almost cute, sprawled out on the pine shavings I’d left on the ground when I’d built the last shelves in my greenhouse. Almost like a dog waiting for his owner to return. Except he was big enough to take up ninety percent of the ground and was a wild animal.

He had no master.

I needed to keep that in mind. Although it had felt like he was literally asking me for my help the previous night, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t happily eat me now. Besides, hadn’t I learned that often, when animals were acting strange, rabies could be involved? Really, I needed to be way more careful.

Deciding to let him rest and then wander off on his own, I turned around and marched inside. I needed to get ready for work, anyway.

It was a bit of a surreal experience trying to ignore the dire-wolf-shaped problem I had hanging out in my greenhouse, but I did my best. It helped that apparently chaos wanted to reign, because while I was gone, Mudpie had decided to bully Goober away from his food bowl. Was the gray cat twice her size? Yes. Did that matter? Absolutely not.

I gave her a quick spritz with the spray bottle to tell her to back off, then coaxed Goober out of the half bath. I put him in front of his bowl and made sure he ate his bigger portion. The other two likely thought it was unfair that he got double their servings, but he needed it.