After My Mate Rejected Me Before the Lycan King

Sera found me in the infirmary on the fifth morning before the ceremony.

I'd brought Zoe in for her weight check. Sera had weighed her, listened to her heart, checked her latch. Everything routine. Everything fine. But when she handed my daughter back to me, her hands were shaking.

I noticed and said nothing.

She turned to the counter and pretended to write something in her chart. The pen didn't move. She stood there with her back to me for a long moment. Then she said, quietly, "Luna. Can I speak with you? Alone."

I looked at the closed door. The infirmary was empty. "We are alone, Sera."

She turned. Her face had gone pale in a way I hadn't seen since the delivery — since the hours she'd spent trying to keep me alive while I bled onto her table.

"I noticed things," she said.

I held Zoe closer. Waited.

"Leona." Sera swallowed. "The way she hovered over your milk supply. The hours she chose to be in the kitchen. The direction she walked when she left the pack house. I noticed. I didn't — I didn't know what I was seeing. Not at first. But I saw enough."

Her voice broke a little on the last word.

"I should have said something. I know that. But she was the Alpha's mother, and I was — I am — just the pack healer, and I didn't know how to bring it to you without…" She trailed off.

"Without her hearing it first," I said.

Sera nodded. Once. Then her eyes filled.

I let her cry for a moment. I didn't move to comfort her. I didn't have that in me anymore, not for anyone but Zoe.

When her breathing steadied, I said, "Sera. Look at me."

She looked up.

"I'm going to need your testimony. In four days. Before the Lycan King, in front of the entire pack. The Accord requires corroboration, and you are what I have. Can you do it?"

Her face went a shade paler. But she didn't hesitate long.

"Yes," she whispered.

"You won't stand alone," I said. "There will be others. There will be evidence. You are one voice in a chorus. But I need you in the chorus."

She closed her eyes. A tear slipped down her cheek. "Yes, Luna."

I nodded. Adjusted Zoe against my chest. And walked out of the infirmary with my daughter, leaving Sera to compose herself alone.

---

Tyler changed on the fourth day.

At dinner that night, his hand rested on the small of my back as we walked into the dining hall. He pulled my chair out. He poured my wine himself, then remembered I was nursing and switched it for water without being asked, smiling ruefully at the pack members closest to us. They chuckled. He kissed my temple.

"To my Luna," he said, lifting his glass halfway through the meal. "And to my beautiful daughter. Amelia, my love — you gave me the greatest gift of my life."

The pack cheered. Someone thumped the table. I smiled with just the right tremble in my lower lip, ducked my head, let a hand rest on my chest as though overwhelmed.

A junior Omega dabbed her eyes. Ford's mate whispered how sweet.

Tyler squeezed my knee under the table.

I squeezed his hand back.

Later, in the Alpha suite, I opened my journal.

*He is building witnesses to a happy marriage so the rejection appears to come after genuine effort. He is manufacturing the narrative. Let him. It won't matter in four days.*

I closed the journal and slid it back under the mattress.

---

The night before the ceremony, I let myself feel it.

Just once.

I held Zoe in the rocking chair by the window and I let it all come in. The stolen milk. The mark on my neck that had never once felt like a promise, only a tether. The wolf I had grieved for thirteen years without knowing that was what the ache was. The labor that had almost killed me — twenty-two hours of it, my body splitting for a man who had already picked out the woman who would replace me before my water broke.

My face was wet before I realized I was crying.

I didn't sob. I didn't wail. I just cried, silently, with Zoe warm against my chest and her small hand curled around my finger. The tears came steadily and then they slowed and then they stopped.

I wiped my face on my sleeve.

I stood up.

I laid the white ceremony dress across the foot of the bed, smoothing the fabric with careful hands. I lifted the mattress and checked the locked case beneath it — three evidence crystals, sealed and cold. I set them back and lowered the mattress.

Then I sat down in the rocking chair one more time and I nursed my daughter.

I paid attention to every part of it. The weight of her in my arms. The faint whistle of her breath through her nose. The way her tiny fist opened and closed against my collarbone. The pull of her mouth, the letdown, the specific sacred warmth of what my body was giving her.

Mine. Not Leona's. Not stolen. Mine.

When she was full, I laid her in the bassinet and I went to sleep.

---

Leona came at dawn.

"Let me help you, dear," she said, moving through the suite like she owned it. "A Luna shouldn't dress herself on a day like this."

I stood in the center of the room in my slip and let her lift the white dress over my head.

She fastened the buttons at my spine, one by one. Her fingers were cool and precise.

"You're a little pale, Amelia," she murmured, coming around to face me. She smoothed the neckline. "You must eat something before we go down."

"I will," I said.

She reached up and touched the chosen mark on my neck. Just a small pat. A blessing gesture, warm on the surface, empty underneath. Her mouth curved.

I stood perfectly still.

"Thank you, Leona," I said softly. "For everything."

Her smile widened.

She did not hear what I meant.

She never had.