Chapter 11 Rejected
Rejected
Monte
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d woken up to a state of such blissful comfort and ease. It was like I was being held in the caress of a cloud, soothing all the aches in my body at once.
And then I remembered last night.
My mind said it couldn’t be, but the delicious burn that suffused my entire body knew better.
I should have been alarmed, but instead, the tension melted out of me, and I surrendered to what I now understood to be Felix’s slumbering embrace. He was pressed against my back, yet somehow I felt him everywhere, even in the still air of the cottage.
I rolled quietly to face him, studying the lines of his face softened by sleep. When his defenses were down and the scowling facade had fallen away, this was his true nature. Or maybe it was just the afterglow of my heat, making me see Felix in a new light.
I wanted to stay like this forever, but only a few more seconds passed before Felix stirred.
“I didn’t,” he murmured, still half asleep. But then he bolted upright and turned my head so that I could look into his eyes. “I didn’t,” he repeated.
I swallowed. Did he want me to pretend like we hadn’t mated? It would certainly make sense; it would be in keeping with how he’d always acted before. Still, it was unsettling to hear that there was still such a vast gulf between us.
No, I couldn’t hold it against him. He’d only helped cool the discomfort of my unbearable heat. That was all. I was the fool for expecting more.
But then his fingers brushed against the back of my neck, and I wanted to melt into his touch.
“Good, I didn’t,” he said with a heavy sigh of relief.
I blinked. Even in my bleary, barely out of heat, post-sex state, I could tell that we weren’t on the same page.
Before I could ask, Felix pulled away and rose to his feet. With the heat of his body gone, the rug provided little in the way of softness and warmth.
“I hope you aren’t disappointed,” he said, his back to me as he pulled on his clothes. “I said you would be Hunter’s. Last night didn’t change that.”
His words sliced through my buzzy afterglow. Hunter was the last thing I wanted to think about. My hand moved to the void left by his fingers, tracing the skin of my nape. What could he be talking about? Last night had definitely—
My stomach dropped when my fingers grazed smooth skin.
Thank the Goddess he was still looking away, because my face burned with mortified dismay.
Felix hadn’t sunk his teeth into my nape. He hadn’t marked me.
A fresh and gutting hollow gaped inside my chest as brutal reality sank in. The absence of his marking bite on my body was a clear message shattering whatever illusions I had held onto in my head.
It could only mean one thing: I wasn’t worthy.
But it couldn’t be. Last night couldn’t have been a lie. It couldn’t have.
“It wasn’t my right,” said Felix, as if reading my thoughts from my head. “You belong to Hunter.”
And with that, he finished buttoning his shirt and strode out of the cottage, closing the door behind him.
Great. He couldn’t stand me now that we’d fucked.
I listened with bated breath, but didn’t hear his truck start. At least he wasn’t abandoning me here to find my own way back.
I pushed myself up from the rug and searched for my clothes, but his words echoed in my head.
They hadn’t been harsh, had they? There’d been an undercurrent of something else beneath them, like a torment he carried.
As if he were saying that if it weren’t for his brother, he would have claimed me himself.
I shook the wishful thought away. “Claim me, my ass.”
When my appearance was decent enough, I took one last look around the little cottage. With the scattered morning light trickling in, everything looked so different than it had last night. Gone was the cozy warmth I thought I’d felt. Maybe I’d made that up in my head too.
When I stepped outside, Felix was leaning against his truck and staring off into the distance.
My eyes were drawn to his imposing physique and the quiet power of his stance.
There was raw strength there, yes, but it was tempered by an unexpected gentleness that elevated him from curiously appealing to magnetically addicting.
I opened my mouth, but shut it fast before I said anything foolish. Felix probably didn’t want to hear that I was glad I’d lost my virginity to him rather than anyone else, his brother included.
I knew I’d made the right choice to keep quiet when Felix gave me a cold, tight-lipped stare.
“Last night was only because of your sudden heat. We were both swayed by pheromones, nothing more,” he said gruffly. “Now come.”
Ah, pheromones what now? Well, fuck me.
I didn’t want to admit it, but that stung more than anything he had ever said. It made me never want to speak of my feelings, not before Felix showed that he could answer with anything but cold mockery. His body may have been comforting, but his tongue was still cruel.
“It won’t happen again,” Felix continued. “It can’t happen again.”
He sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than he was me.
Even so, that didn’t dull the sting as much as I’d hoped.
If anything, it made me even more frustrated at his refusal to accept what was growing between us.
He didn’t need to drown out these new feelings before they’d had a chance to take root. Not after the night we’d just had.
My fists balled at my sides. “Of course. That was the only time,” I snapped, forcing my face into a cold mask. “It certainly wasn’t good enough to bear repeating.”
Now it was Felix’s turn to blink, owlishly. Somehow, I’d managed to actually startle him. Just for an instant he looked uncertain, perhaps even wounded. He was on the verge of saying something back, but caught himself, just as I had.
With a ferocious scowl, the old Felix returned.
“Agreed,” he growled, then advanced towards me.
I took a step back, but that didn’t deter him. He reached for my chest and I stiffened when his fingers suddenly took hold of my shirt, undoing the buttons. It took me a stunned second to realize what he was doing. The buttons were misaligned.
“You don’t need to—”
“Quiet.”
He worked brusquely as he fixed up the buttons, but his touch wasn’t cruel. All his focus was on my shirt, never once meeting my eyes. But I wasn't as unaffected as I’d hoped to be when his fingertips grazed my skin.
He was so very close. Almost as close as he had been last night.
My gaze skimmed his face, tracing the hard lines.
I lingered on his mouth, the same mouth that had wrecked me to bits and swallowed every whimper as he showed me how good it could be between an Alpha and an Omega.
I remembered how exquisite his fingers had felt around my cock.
I could still feel his touch, still feel the way those rough hands had roamed my body, gripping possessively, leaving bruises in their wake.
I bit down hard on my lip, fighting the urge to lean in and press my mouth to his.
Fuck him.
It can’t happen again.
He was driving me insane with that attitude. Pulling this act after rejecting me so harshly made it all so confusing. I wished he’d pick a side and either be a cold son of a bitch or the kind, gentle person I’d seen glimpses of when he thought no one was watching.
He took a step back and inspected his handiwork when he was done. “The weather has cleared up.”
Judging by the fact that we weren’t soaking wet, that seemed somewhat self-evident, so I just nodded. Without meeting my eyes, Felix grunted and climbed into the driver’s side of his truck.
I could have pushed back and argued; I could have tried to force Felix to confront his feelings. But I was still feeling off about it all myself. I silently followed him into the truck.
Somehow, I’d managed to forget all about the striking near-miss of yesterday’s journey until we returned to the main road. I shivered at the sight of the fallen tree trunk that could have easily ended our lives. Felix flashed me an inscrutable look before returning his attention to the road.
The drive back to the pack house was much longer than I had expected.
We had to double back past the nursery, then use a different route I wasn’t familiar with.
Not particularly to my surprise, Felix remained silent all the way, except for intermittent rumbling of his stomach.
He grunted a few times in response to my remarks about the beautiful landscapes and the smoking evidence of other lightning strikes.
After a while, I stopped trying so desperately to fill the silence; after that, I found a sort of peculiar serenity to the quiet of the drive.
If circumstances were different, I could almost imagine myself contentedly spending hours in Felix’s quiet companionship.
It was nearly noon by the time we approached the familiar environment of the pack house proper. Felix brought us to a stop at the main entrance, but made no move to get out.
“You aren’t coming in?” I asked, my throat feeling dry from disuse. “Aren’t you hungry?”
Felix frowned off into the distance.
“No, I have to hurry back to the clinic. Find out whether there are any emergencies that need my attention.”
I didn’t point out that he had his phone, so if they truly needed him, they’d be able to easily get in touch. Instead I just nodded and got out of the truck. I’d barely gotten the passenger door shut when he started to drive away.
When I reached the front door, rather than go inside immediately, I stood and watched my husband drive away.
Last night should have clarified so many things, but now I was left with even more questions than before.
Did he find it so abhorrent to spend time with me that he had to flee at the earliest chance?
Or was he fighting his own confused feelings just as much as I was?
Ugh. I wasn’t sure if this was a battle worth fighting, or if I should just leave him to deal with it.
It was probably best to give him some space. That’s what I told myself as I finally opened the front door and found myself immediately instantly bowled over by a cannonball of fur and strangled yelps.
For a single disoriented moment, I thought it was Nena. This exact scene had played out so many times when she was younger and smaller. But then my mind caught up to my surroundings, and I found myself comforting Ara’s wolf, her breathing erratic as she clutched me tight.
“It’s okay, everything’s okay,” I murmured, running my fingers through her thick, brown fur. “I’m sorry, did I alarm you by not coming back last night?”
Her wolf nuzzled the side of my neck before shifting back to her human form.
“I thought…” She gulped back a sob and managed to exhale against me. “Nevermind, I shouldn’t worry you with my silly thoughts.”
“I’m safe now. I was just caught in a storm, so Felix came out to rescue me. We ended up spending the night in a cottage.”
Ara pulled away, and I was impressed at how composed she already looked, as if she hadn’t been nearing a breakdown just a few seconds ago.
She searched my face, then nodded. “That was all? Nothing happened?”
I contemplated whether I should burden her with all the thoughts racing through my mind. She didn’t deserve to hear my incoherent, selfish whining, for that’s surely how it would sound.
“I was scared, but it all worked out in the end,” I fumbled weakly. “Felix is fine too, by the way. He just dropped me off and headed to the clinic to check on things.”
Ara’s nose wrinkled, and she scowled at the door, as if that would summon Felix to appear.
“Our Alpha can be foolish like that, can’t he?”
That startled a laugh out of me, doubly surprising me because I didn’t think I was even capable of laughing under the circumstances.
“He can,” I agreed. “Tell me, if you were in my position, how would you handle him?”
Ara observed me again, her look more calculating and less concerned this time. She must have been satisfied with whatever she saw, because she nodded.
“Let me put on my clothes first. I was so damn worried I couldn’t control the beast from coming out. I tried to call, but couldn't reach you. Wyatt couldn’t reach the Alpha either.”
“Oh, right. I left my phone in the car.”
She turned and beckoned me to follow her to her room.
“I don’t know how much this will help you, but I think there’s one thing you need to keep in mind above all others: Felix doesn’t like being manipulated.
He likes when people speak their minds. So if you do that, even if you do get a scowl or a growl from him, you should know that he’s still pleased.
” She paused and tapped her chin. “Or perhaps not pleased, but he would at least respect it. And that’s what you want, isn’t it? His respect?”
My heart clenched painfully. I hadn’t realized it before, but Ara was right. Above all other things, I just wanted Felix to respect me. If I had that, then everything else would be bearable. I could survive without his love or affection if I knew that, at the very least, he respected me.
“So don’t think so much,” Ara called over her shoulder as we entered her room. She slipped into a dress and rolled her hair up into a bun.
“Don’t try to think about what would make Felix angry or happy, just do what you think is right. That’s the fastest way to earn his respect.”
“But what if my instincts are wrong?”
She raised her brows incredulously. “Wrong? I know you by now, Monte. I know you have a kind heart. I know your instincts are right, your problem is that you always second-guess yourself and worry about how others will judge you.”
I blinked. It was a shocking declaration to hear, not because I’d never heard anything like it before, but because I had. Ara sounded so much like Nena that it made my heart ache.
“Thank you,” I said softly, covering up my words with a tussling hug that could only come from a place of brotherly affection.
She might not have been my sister by blood, but she was family in every way that mattered. As for her advice, I didn’t know if I could take her words and act boldly, but I’d hold them close all the same.