After He Rejected Me, I Became the Lycan Prince’s Mate

Five years is long enough to forget the sound of rain on stone. It is not long enough to forget the sound of my own name in his mouth.

I sat in the waiting corridor of the Silverpine clinic with my hands folded over the curve of my stomach, my collar buttoned high against my throat. The mark underneath — the new one, the one that glowed faint silver when Jayce's thumb traced it in the dark — had healed into something whole. The old scar beneath that, the one shaped like teeth that never finished closing, was quieter now. Most days I forgot it was there at all.

Today was not most days.

Jayce was two floors up, in the private Lycan suite, going over territory reports with Dax. He'd wanted to cancel the meeting. I told him not to be ridiculous. "It's a checkup," I said. "I've had four of them. I know how to sit in a waiting room." He'd kissed my forehead before he left, lingering there a moment too long, the way he always did when he was worried and trying not to show it.

I didn't feel it coming. That was the strange part. No warning prickle at the back of my neck, no scent on the air. Just footsteps, and then a shadow falling over the herbal display across from me, and then his voice.

"You shouldn't be sitting out here alone."

I looked up.

Elijah Morgan had aged in five years, but not kindly. There was a tightness around his eyes that hadn't been there before, a leanness to his face that spoke of a pack tightening its belt. He wore an Alpha's authority the way a man wears a coat two sizes too big — like he was still convincing himself it fit.

He did not recognize me. I watched it happen in real time, watched his gaze slide over my face, my collar, my rounded stomach, and land on some conclusion that had nothing to do with the truth. A rogue. Pregnant. Alone.

"The rogue ward's down the hall," he said, and held out a small cloth pouch. "Take these. It's not much, but it'll ease the strain until your pup drops. Clinic doesn't like turning away wolfless mothers, but they can't spare much either. Times are hard for everyone."

I looked at the pouch. Cheap herbs, low grade, the kind given out of pity rather than skill. I looked at his hand holding it. I looked, finally, at his face.

Nothing in me broke. That was what surprised me most — how still I stayed, how easily the words came.

"I don't need your scraps."

I stood, smoothed my skirt, and walked past him toward the examination room. I didn't look back to see his expression. I didn't need to. I could feel the confusion radiating off him like heat off pavement, a man who had just been refused by someone with nothing, and couldn't understand why it stung.

*

Maren Cole's hands were as gentle as I remembered. She ran the scanner over my stomach and smiled at the strong, steady heartbeat that filled the room. "Healthy. Strong. This one's going to be a fighter, like—"

She stopped.

I watched her eyes lift from the screen to my face, then drop to the collar at my throat, then come back up. Five years hadn't erased her memory any more than mine. She had been the Healer on duty the night they dragged me off Ironclaw land. She had filed the report. Wolfsbane laceration. Miscarriage, twin fetal loss. Alpha rejection, witnessed. No action taken.

She said nothing. But her jaw tightened, and something old and furious moved behind her calm.

I gave her one slight nod. That was all. It was enough.

She nodded back, then turned toward the archive room the moment I stood to leave, her steps quicker than they needed to be.

*

Elijah was waiting in the corridor.

"You need to think about what you're doing," he said, blocking my path, arms crossed. "A rogue, carrying a pup, wandering neutral territory with no pack backing you. Do you understand the danger you're putting that child in? The clinic isn't obligated to—"

His voice dropped, low and resonant, an Alpha's tone sliding beneath his words like a current. I felt something stir deep in my chest — old, sealed, half-asleep — press once against a wall I hadn't known was still standing.

It didn't wake. But it didn't yield, either.

I didn't blink. I didn't look away. I watched him falter, watched his certainty crack at the edges when the compulsion he'd never had to use twice simply broke against me like water against stone.

"You should leave," I said, "before someone sees the Alpha of Ironclaw harassing a pregnant woman in a neutral clinic."

He stepped back. His jaw worked, searching for words that wouldn't come, for an explanation he didn't have.

I walked past him and didn't look back.