After My Lycan Prince Chose the Ironclaw Heiress

Five months. Five months of tracking, searching, following every whisper of cedar and winter iron across three territories. Five months of carrying his pup and telling myself there had to be a reason. An accident. A curse. Something that kept him from coming back.

I was wrong.

The Crimson Crown territory sprawled before me like something out of a royal portrait — stone walls older than most packs, banners snapping in the evening wind, and everywhere, *everywhere*, the scent of celebration. My wolf stirred weakly inside me, confused by the noise and the crowd and the fact that Boston's scent was threaded through all of it like he belonged here.

Because he did.

I stopped in front of the announcement board near the main gate. My hand moved to my belly without permission, the way it always did now when I needed to steady myself. The pup kicked. I read the words carved into polished wood and gilded in actual gold leaf:

*Boston West, Lycan Prince of the Crimson Crown, to be joined in mate ceremony with Gianna Lawson, Heiress of the Ironclaw Pack.*

Lycan Prince.

Mate ceremony.

Tomorrow.

My wolf made a sound I'd never heard before — something between a whimper and a snarl, confused and hurting in equal measure. I pressed my palm flat against my belly and breathed through my nose the way Rowan had taught me during panic attacks in my first year of training. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.

It didn't help.

I should have left. I should have turned around, walked back through the forest, and never looked back. But I couldn't. Not yet. Not without understanding how the man who had touched me like I was something sacred, who had whispered my name in the dark like a prayer, could be standing in a royal territory preparing to mate someone else.

I slipped through the garden perimeter as the sun set. My Healer training made me good at moving quietly — years of night shifts and sleeping patients had taught me how to make myself small. The hedges were tall and old, thick enough to hide behind. Boston's scent grew stronger as I moved deeper into the grounds, and my wolf rose toward it instinctively before I shoved her back down.

*Not now. Not like this.*

Voices carried across the terrace. I recognized Boston's immediately — that low, assured tone that used to make me feel safe. He was laughing. The sound of it stopped me cold.

I crouched behind the hedge line and peered through the gap in the leaves. He stood on the stone terrace in clothes I'd never seen him wear — tailored, expensive, nothing like the simple shirts and jeans from the rogue-border town. His posture was different too. More commanding. The way an Alpha stands when he knows everyone in the room will obey.

A man stood beside him — tall, broad-shouldered, with the relaxed stance of someone who'd known Boston a long time. His Beta, I realized. Marcus something. I'd heard the name once in passing.

"You're really going through with it," Marcus said, grinning. "Gianna Lawson. I thought you'd find a way out."

Boston shrugged, swirling something amber in a crystal glass. "It's a good match. Ironclaw needs the alliance. We need the border access. Everyone wins."

"What about the she-wolf from the border town?" Marcus asked. His tone was light, almost teasing. "The one with the healing hands. You were gone for months, Boston. Don't tell me that was just reconnaissance."

I stopped breathing.

Boston laughed again. It was a different laugh this time — casual, dismissive, the kind of sound you make when someone brings up something that doesn't matter. "Convenient, not fated," he said. "She was scent-struck and I let it go too far. The pup is a complication — nature usually resolves those on its own."

Marcus laughed too. Loud and easy, like it was the funniest thing he'd heard all week.

My hand was still on my belly. The pup kicked again, harder this time, and I felt something inside me crack so cleanly it didn't even hurt at first. Just a sharp, precise break, like bone snapping under too much weight.

My wolf didn't whimper. Didn't snarl. She just… stopped. Went silent in a way that felt permanent.

I stood slowly, carefully, making sure my movements didn't rustle the hedge. My hands were steady. My breathing was even. I turned and walked back through the garden the same way I'd come, one foot in front of the other, my Healer training holding me together the way it always did when everything else was falling apart.

No one saw me leave. No one knew I'd been there.

By the time I reached the forest edge, the celebration music had started. Strings and drums and the low hum of a pack gathering for something joyful. I didn't look back.

I drove through the night and reached Moonveil just before dawn. Rowan was already at the clinic — she always started early — and when she saw me walk through the door, she stopped mid-sentence in her conversation with the night-shift nurse.

She looked at me. Really looked. Her eyes moved from my face to my belly to the flat, absent quality of my wolf-presence that I couldn't hide anymore.

"Alyssa," she said quietly.

I shook my head. Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

"I need the Crimson Crown bloodline curse files," I said. My voice sounded normal. Professional. Like I was asking for any other research material. "For a case study."

Rowan held my gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded once and turned to the archive clerk. "Pull everything we have. Deliver it to Alyssa's desk."

I went to my office, closed the door, and sat down. My hand moved to my belly one more time. The pup was still now. Resting, probably. I opened my notebook and wrote the date at the top of a blank page.

Then I started working.