Denying the Alpha: Manlove Edition

by 5 Author Anthology

  Sorrel threw himself into every task, the best alternative to pacing.

  In his mind, he arranged words in various pleasing shapes that might mend things, or nudge them back to before they slept together, or maybe even, miraculously, convince Ari it wasn’t a mistake, that he wasn’t a mistake.

  Some of those words were for Sorrel himself, convincing himself that he could overcome Ari’s fears, that he might not even need allum after all.

  But every time he looked up at Ari and saw the tense line of his mouth and the worried crease on his brow, all of those words fell apart. Ari, he sensed, didn’t want to hear any of them.

  When evening began to stretch through the shop windows, drawing out the many shadows, Sorrel had perched against the wall near Ari. He balanced a giant bowl in his lap, half-full already with flower petals. He methodically stripped a plant of all of its value into the bowl, placing the spent stalk on his other side.

  Ari sat half-curled on his stool, poring over his bookkeeping, flexing his calloused hand. The evening sun gilded his high cheekbones, caught the hidden fires in his dark hair. Even slumped and tired, he was the most beautiful thing Sorrel had ever seen.

  “You’re staring,” Ari said, not looking up.

  Sorrel’s hands slowed, then plucked off another petal. “Do you mind?”

  He sent Sorrel an annoyed look, mouth growing thinner. “If you stared more quietly, I wouldn’t.”

  He had to chew on that for a moment, all plants in his lap forgotten. “How do I stare more quietly?”

  “Maybe try blinking once in a while,” Ari muttered, scribbling something out in his ledger.

  “I’ll try.”

  Now Ari fully looked at him, a question or distrust sparkling in the full sunset glow. A moment later, he peered over the edge of the counter at the bowl. “Practice blinking at those.”

  Sorrel automatically plucked off a few more petals, still watching Ari, before letting them slide back through his fingers again.

  Ari bristled sharply enough to cut, and Sorrel couldn’t deny those cuts hurt. But still, Sorrel’s foolish heart never shut up, still hungering for traces of warmth, clinging to what could easily be imaginary, like Ari’s intense awareness of him. Signs that maybe he hadn’t given up.

  “You’re staring again.”

  “Sorry.”

  Ari said nothing, just tapped his pen, but Sorrel caught the ghost of a smile, aimed down at ledgers and nearly hidden in shadow.

  As Sorrel picked up the next plant stalk with sore fingers, he began arranging words dedicated to Ari again.

  The shadows grew longer, fuller, taking up residence in the little shop before Ari turned on the overhead light. They cleaned up from the day in silence, the sound of the broom whisking across the floor dragging across his nerves. At least Sorrel didn’t bang it against his feet anymore.

  Sorrel opened the front door and swept the day’s twigs and dirt outside. Evening stretched its fingers around his skin, cooling his neck. The air smelled of—he tipped his head back, sampling it—pine, fresh water, but also fried foods and metal, traces of the town just down the hill. Its lights already glowed on the horizon and painted their touch across the low-hanging clouds.

  It all felt so far away, like he was still standing on his mountaintop with the sun warming his back while he looked down at the many tiny beacons.

  He heard the soft step behind him right before Ari slipped next to him, dark arms folded against the breeze. They watched as the last colors of the sunset drained from the sky and the town’s colors took over, growing brighter against each shade of darkness.

  Sorrel’s heart sat in his mouth the entire time, every carefully composed speech pushing up for attention.

  “I just checked,” Ari murmured, voice low. “The allum’ll be ready tomorrow.”

  His heart gave a painful lurch. “Tomorrow,” he repeated.

  “That’s what I said.” Ari tugged restlessly at his shirt and rubbed his arms.

  Ari was a man who didn’t waste time with useless things, especially not fidgeting. Sorrel glanced over at his fidgeting hands, fascinated.

  “So.” Ari cleared his throat. “You know where you’re going after?”

  Sorrel opened his mouth, breath caught on those less and less composed speeches. “Um.” Ari turned his gaze to him, piercing through him in the low light. “I thought I’d, um, stay here. I could keep helping out.”

  Ari squeezed his eyes shut, all fidgeting stilling. “Sorrel—”

  “You wouldn’t have to pay me,” he rushed on. “I still have money in a bank—somewhere—so I could pay my food and clothes.” Even as he said that, picturing it was a struggle, simple numbers seeming complicated and alien to his own split mind. Animals didn’t have bank accounts.

  The wind buffeted around them, gently rocking Ari’s rigid body. His jaw clenched and unclenched as if he were saying a prayer or counting. When he finally opened his eyes, his face was a smudged blur in the darkness. “I told you, I can’t take that chance on you.”

  “Please, listen—” Sorrel cut himself off, hearing the desperation in his own voice. He was begging and he knew it. Shame burned somewhere in him, an emotion he fought down as he wrangled with the rest of himself.

  Ari had always been a part of him, a constant in his life ever since they met, an ember in his chest. The idea of losing him forever terrified him more deeply than going feral did, and it took kissing Ari’s angry mouth to finally know it, like finally understanding a part of himself.

  And he had to somehow put all of that out into the world for Ari to hear, at the risk of it all being ruthlessly slapped away.

  “I don’t—get along with people.” There was a soft sound that might have been a ‘tsk’ from Ari. “And I’m not good at … staying still. I shift because … I have no reason to stay. Had. But you…” He took a step closer to Ari’s dark shape, peering into his blurry lines. “You are my reason. You make … humanity easier. I would stay anywhere if you were there.”

  Ari took a half of a step away from him, back into the small frame of light from the open door. His face remained in shadow, unreadable. “I don’t believe you. You left before, and never said anything like this.”

  “I didn’t know. I was too scared.” Steeling himself, Sorrel followed him into that patch of light. Ari’s eyes were flint, sparking with danger.

  But still, Ari’s voice betrayed him in its little tremble. “And what, now you’re not?”

  He leaned in closer, not close enough to push his luck, only close enough to feel the gentle heat from Ari’s body. “I’m very scared. But,” he said and he swallowed, “I’m more scared of losing you.”

  Ari whispered, so low and hoarse to be almost inaudible, “Feeling’s mutual.” With his usual cue of ‘conversation is over,’ Ari spun around and stormed inside.

  No, not this time. Sorrel wouldn’t let it just end like this.

  Sorrel ran after him as Ari rushed through the shop. Ari expertly wound his way through the aisles to the counter, dried herbs fluttering in his wake. As Sorrel stumbled after him, Ari slammed his ledger shut, slammed the register and its rune locks, rushing through routine.

  Before Sorrel reached him, Ari threw down everything in his hands. “I’m scared too, Sorrel! You think I don’t want this?” He flung a deity’s name like a curse at the ceiling. “You think I didn’t want last night to happen?”

  “No—”

  “Right now, you’re only thinking about yourself.” And there, Ari finally stopped his stomping and whirling, all fury condensed into a rigid stillness, somehow worse than the flung-about rage. He let his accusation sink in as he glared at Sorrel. “I told you,” he whispered, “if you go feral, I’d be the one losing you.”

  Sorrel laced his fingers behind his own neck in his agitation, his pain. Everything hurt, everything howled. “But I want to stay human for you,” he whispered back, though it was hard to be convincing when even now he felt how the animal side snarle
d and paced inside, all claws and teeth, how even after cleaning and scraping off stubble and wildlife, he looked like he was only trying to pass as human.

  And Ari smiled, not disdainful or mocking or wry as normal, all sharpness—but the saddest smile, his edges worn off. “You love being wild too much. I see it in your eyes. It’s one of the things I—” He clamped his lips over the rest of that sentence, refusing to let it out.

  Sorrel stood there, stunned to silence, blindly grasping at the hundreds of traitorous words he’d conjured up in the last—how few hours?

  Hours were just as traitorous as words, hours and human clocks ticking away how much longer they had until the allum was ready and Ari cut him off for good. Words, time, words, words, how he cursed them all and his own inability to handle either.

  Ari’s hand, callused and delicate, slid across Sorrel’s cheek. “It’ll always be a part of you, and I know that.”

  “You’re always a part of me,” he said, hoarse.

  Ari’s entire face wrenched with something very complicated and human.

  Energy flooded the room, the goosebump prickle of lightning about to strike, the cracks of a dam about to burst. The charms overhead flapped and spun, some smoking.

  Ari’s hand still on Sorrel’s cheek, they looked at each other in silent question.

  A horrendous crash thundered throughout the entire shop, things falling off shelves and bundled herbs dropping from the ceiling. There was a sensation of everything being sucked, rushing out, a broken dam dumping everything it held back. The doorframe burst into flames. Small explosions came from just outside in rapid succession of pop pop pop.

  All happened in an instant.

  Then from the greenhouse— “Ah, fuck, man!”

  They ran for the greenhouse. Ari reached it first. The window in the door had shattered, broken glass glittering underfoot.

  Ari wrenched the door open to a blizzard.

  Winter howled in the little room, snow hard as ice pelting everything, spinning and spiraling in dizzying patterns of white, coating plants, tools, and shelves. Wind cut their cheeks and stung their eyes as they stepped into the storm.

  A bottle crashed down, bleeding its contents onto the snow, the sound of it breaking a distant thing in the raging blizzard. Darryl, shivering and dripping wet, was pawing frantically through the cabinets, dropping bottles and prying other jars open.

  “I just want the allum!” Darryl bellowed at sight of them. The winds threatened to snatch his voice away. His shaking hands fumbled at another jar, dropping this too.

  Sorrel and Ari bolted forward, bumping into each other in the narrow space, but Darryl stumbled out of the way, half-fell, slipping on a snowdrift, and clawed his way out of reach.

  “I’m sorry, Ari!” he shouted again, barely audible. “I didn’t mean to!”

  “You motherfucker!” Ari yelled back, practically climbing over one of his poor plants, which already looked beaten and stripped in the winds. Ari looked almost wild, his long dark hair whipping around and streaking through the white.

  Sorrel circled the aisle, coming around Darryl’s other side as carefully as possible, but Darryl had already spotted him and began scrambling away on his backside, scooting backward, his pale skin growing pink from the cold.

  One moment, a man was there, the next a raven, flailing against the harsh winds, his flight path a stuttered thing as he swooped toward the cabinets.

  Ari grabbed at him but got talons instead, opening bright red across his hand. “Fuck!”

  Darryl hopped around the many scattered bottles, pecking and scratching, wings flapping anxiously, feathers flipping many wrong directions—then a shudder, and human-Darryl spilled over the counter with a gasp the same moment Ari grabbed the back of his collar.

  “Sorrel!” Ari shouted. “Hold him!”

  And Sorrel was already halfway there, even as his body grew numb from the cold. Leaves laced the white, slicing across his skin like razors. The once-lush greenhouse looked less and less like summer every moment, the blizzard stripping its season away.

  Sorrel reached them and practically fell onto Darryl, who was rocking and moaning in misery, eyes watering and looking like one half-dead already.

  “Just hold him!” Ari repeated as Sorrel put his full weight onto Darryl. The second Sorrel had him secured, Ari shot up, arms braced against the winds, in search of something along the outer walls.

  “You know I didn’t mean to,” Darryl creaked underneath him, a piteous cry.

  “Shut up.”

  “But he doesn’t understand us, doesn’t understand.” He began rocking his head hard enough to injure, shaking it, lost in his private agony. “He doesn’t understand why we need it.”

  Sorrel said nothing, keeping half an eye on Ari as he dug through a pile of snow and scratched at something on the doorframe.

  “My life is ruined.” Darryl cried, more tears running down his face, mixing with wet snow and snot, skin glistening. “My life is ruined.”

  Meanwhile, Ari had grabbed nearby shears and began hacking away at the doorframe, squinting against his wet hair, wood splinters and sparks cascading down.

  The snow suddenly eased up, the winds became a whisper, and the last few flakes drifted down gently. Ari slumped down with a visible sigh, letting the tool slip from his fingers.

  Everything inside was in ruins.

  In breaking the heavy wards, Ari’s protection, every single window had shattered. Snow piled on every surface, coated the bushes and the plants. Little slices of color peeked in the middle of the white, choking under the weight of it. But looking around, Sorrel could see how littered the floor was with the body parts of the plants, shining among the broken glass and spilled soil.

  Ari fished in the little pile of snow and wood for something, palming it before he staggered upright. “You did a very foolish thing,” he called, wiping his face.

  Only now did Sorrel realize Darryl had stopped talking.

  He looked down and saw the man straining his arm, slowly and carefully, for a single, small vial that glowed like a drop of blood under a table near them. In that split second, Sorrel saw, in Ari’s neat, looping handwriting: allum.

  “No—”

  Darryl’s fingers closed over it.

  There was suddenly no more body underneath him, just a raven flapping and cawing madly as it struggled to clutch the vial in his claws. Sorrel’s hands were still closed over a leg, but raven-Darryl pecked, squeaking in pain as Sorrel grabbed a wing—then he broke free.

  Sorrel pounced, but Darryl flew up, wings beating against his hands.

  “He’s got it!” Sorrel yelled, voice overly loud in the still room. Darryl screeched, diving for an open window.

  Sorrel threw himself over tables and plants and snow piles, but wasn’t fast enough. All he heard was beating wings, Darryl already melting into the darkness.

  “The idiot is going to kill himself,” Ari said, panting as he came up next to Sorrel. He clutched his bleeding hand still, peering up at the darkness. And Sorrel heard the panic in his voice, knew that Ari was thinking the same thing he was—that was the last of the allum, his last thread to humanity.

  And Darryl, the distorted mirror of who Sorrel could be, was going to kill himself for it.

  There was no time to think. No time to think of other options, of the consequences, anything.

  “I’m going after him.”

  “How the hell are you going to—” Understanding dawned as he stared at Sorrel. “Don’t, you idiot—”

  Sorrel grabbed Ari’s shoulders, cupped the back of Ari’s head, hugging him. He could feel a heartbeat hammering wildly against his chest, whose, he couldn’t tell.

  “It’s not worth it,” Ari hissed into his neck.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Sorrel hesitated a moment longer, feeling with each beat how much farther Darryl and the precious allum got.

  Too many words to say. I’m sorry, I might not come back. You’ll always be th
e only one for me. Please don’t give up hope. But too little time. What was a word that could put all of that in a single breath before he lost his chance?

  “I love you,” he breathed against Ari’s lips, barely a kiss.

  Then, climbing over broken glass, smoldering wood, and dripping snow, he flung himself outside.

  And he reached deep down to the gnarled knot inside of himself that had been hounding every moment, every waking thought, and let it go.

  And with a familiar but unfamiliar body and smaller chest and rejuvenated senses, he heard an echo in his twitching ears—

  “You better come back!”

  Chapter Eight

  Joy at the hunt flooded him, unraveling every sense as he drank in the world around him. Night no longer shrouded everything smudgy darkness. He could see the trees and the stars and the grass and could smell the grass. Oh, he could smell it.

  He almost took off running without direction, feeling his muscles tremble with power as he inhaled deeply—grass, leaves, snow, sweat, blood—

  Ari.

  Ari’s blood, not just behind but in front, unspooling through the air in nearly visible traces, already fading by the sweep of breeze that brought a glorious rush of more smells—

  Allum.

  Hunt. His ears pricked up, his tail twitched, and he stalked through brush and grass with a sinuous slink.

  Crackling branches, bird overhead—bird? Owl. Not the right one.

  Blood traced through the air, new and old, leading him forward.

  His heartbeat quickened, breath grew shallow. He heard the beat of an injured wing and a clink on glass ahead.

  Crashing rustling leaves, underbrush stirred.

  Darryl—

  A shudder ripped through him, thoughts too big for his brain and instincts.

  I am Sorrel, he told himself, stalking up to the raven jumping on the forest floor. The raven pecked furiously at the vial, contents so dark to almost be black.

  Raven became man, bald and sweating and naked, covered in marks and tugging at a vial, whimpering.

  Sorrel surged out of the bush, pinning him, claws digging marks in his chest, pricks of blood, the whiff of blood from man’s chin, of something cloying and earthy.