After My Mate Rejected Our Lycan Heir

Three days is a long time when your body is running on grief and stream water.

I slept in the hollows of old oaks, back pressed against the damp wood, arms wrapped around my stomach like I could hold everything together by sheer force. The first night I cried until I couldn't, then stopped, because crying cost warmth I didn't have. The second night I just lay there and listened to the forest breathe.

The pup kept me moving.

*Left at the split oak,* it would say, that small clear voice threading through the mind-link like a compass needle finding north. *That stream runs clean. Drink from it.*

I stopped questioning how it knew. By the second day I just listened.

On the second night, though, I sat down beneath a wide oak and couldn't make myself stand back up right away. The rejection-scar on my neck had gone from burning to a dull, hollow ache, like a tooth socket after an extraction. I pressed two fingers against it through my scarf and stared up at the branches.

"Why can you talk?" I asked aloud. My voice came out rougher than I expected. "Most pups can't do this. Not before they're born."

A pause. Then: *Lycan royal wolves develop awareness early. I can feel the blood. It's different from a regular wolf's. Older, somehow.*

I sat with that. The trees dripped somewhere nearby.

"Did you know?" I asked. "Before I did. Did you know what Conner was doing to us?"

*I knew something was wrong with what the healer gave you. It tasted like burning.* Another pause, shorter this time. *I'm sorry I couldn't tell you sooner. I wasn't strong enough yet.*

My throat tightened. I pressed my palm flat against my stomach instead of answering.

After a moment I asked: "What's your name?"

*I haven't chosen one.*

"That's okay." I leaned my head back against the bark. "We'll choose it together. When this is over."

The warmth that moved through the link then was small and steady, like a single candle in a very dark room. I held onto it and eventually slept.

---

The Silvercrest compound appeared through the tree line on the afternoon of the third day—stone walls the color of winter granite, guard towers at each corner, the Silvercrest banner hanging still in cold air. It was larger than I'd imagined. More fortress than home.

I looked down at myself. Dirt on my coat, mud caked to my boots, hair pulled back in a knot that had stopped being neat two days ago. The dead mark sat above my scarf like a brand everyone here would read immediately.

Packless. Rejected. Rogue.

*Walk straight,* the pup said. *Don't let them see you hesitate.*

I walked straight.

The gate warriors saw me coming from fifty yards out. Four of them, built like the compound walls, their auras pressing outward in a wall of controlled dominance that made the air feel thick. One stepped forward before I reached the gate, palm raised.

"State your pack and purpose."

"No pack." I kept my voice level. "My purpose is an audience with the Lycan King. My business is his."

The warrior's eyes dropped to my stomach, then to my neck, then back to my face. His expression didn't change but his hand moved toward my arm.

"Rogues don't get audiences. Turn around and—"

The main hall door opened.

I don't know what made me look up at that exact moment. Maybe the shift in the warriors' posture, the way they all straightened half an inch at once. Maybe something the pup felt before I did.

He was tall. Dark coat, no crown, no regalia—just a man walking out of a doorway who made every other person in the yard feel smaller by existing. He moved like someone who had never once needed to prove what he was.

Then the wind shifted.

He stopped.

Not slowed. Stopped—like something had stepped in front of him that he hadn't seen coming. His head turned toward me, and for a moment the absolute control on his face cracked open, just slightly, just enough.

I felt it too. A warmth that moved through the cold hollow in my chest where Conner's mark used to live. Not fire. Not the desperate pull I'd felt when I first met Conner. Something steadier. Like a hand extended in a dark room.

I did not reach for it.

I pulled my spine straight, lifted my chin, and met his dark, stilled eyes across the yard.

"I'm Amiyah West," I said, loud enough to carry, steady enough to mean it. "Daughter of the late Alpha of Ironwood territory. My unborn pup carries Silvercrest royal blood, and I have documentation to prove it." I held his gaze. "I'm not asking for charity. I'm requesting an audience."

The yard was very quiet.

Kael Silvercrest looked at me for a long moment—at the dead mark, at the mud on my boots, at my hand resting against my stomach—and something moved behind his eyes that I couldn't name yet.

He stepped aside and held the door open.

"Come in," he said.