After My Mate Rejected Our Lycan Heir

They brought me to a room with no throne in it, which surprised me. Just a long table, tall windows, and a healer with steady hands and older eyes than his face suggested. Elias Silvercrest sat at the head of the table like the weight of a crown he no longer wore still pressed down on his shoulders. His mate sat beside him, spine straight, hands folded so tightly her knuckles had gone pale.

"This will only take a moment," the healer said, and drew three drops of my blood into a shallow silver dish. He added a second vial—something dark, viscous, marked with a small crest I didn't recognize. "Preserved sample. Prince Landon's."

The room went very still.

The two liquids met in the dish and turned the color of moonlight on water, glowing faint silver-blue, then steadying into a soft, unmistakable shimmer. The healer exhaled through his nose. "Positive. Direct paternal match. This child carries Prince Landon Silvercrest's blood."

No one spoke for three full seconds.

Then the former Luna made a sound I will never forget—not quite a sob, not quite a cry, something older than both. She crossed the room in four steps and took my hands in hers, and her fingers were shaking.

"Landon," she whispered, staring at my stomach like she could see through skin and muscle to the pup underneath. "Landon, my boy—" Her composure, whatever careful thing had been holding her together for months, cracked wide open. Tears ran freely down her face and she didn't wipe them away.

Elias rose from his chair slowly, like a man twice his age. He looked at me for a long moment, and I watched grief and disbelief and something fiercer than both move across his face.

"This child," he said, and his voice carried through the room without needing to be raised, "is our grandchild. Our son's legacy." He turned to the healer, to the guards by the door, to every silent witness in that room. "The full weight of this house stands behind his mother. Let that be known to everyone under this roof."

I looked across the room and found Kael already watching me. The ice that had lived behind his eyes since the gate had cracked clean through—I could see it, the way his jaw worked, the way his hands, usually so still, curled slightly at his sides.

He crossed to me. "The Crown extends its full protection to you and your pup," he said, quiet enough that it was only for me. "Whatever you need."

"I accept the protection," I said. "But I want to be clear about something." I straightened, ignoring the ache still living in my legs. "I want justice. I want my father's territory returned through proper legal channels. I want Conner destroyed the right way, in front of everyone who watched him do this to me." I met his eyes. "I'm not here to be anyone's ward."

Something shifted in his expression—not offense. Respect, maybe. "Understood," he said simply.

---

That evening he came to my door himself, a tray balanced in one hand though I hadn't asked for food. I opened it halfway, one hand still resting on the frame.

"You should eat," he said.

"I know how to feed myself."

"I didn't say you didn't." A pause. "I wanted an excuse to knock."

We stood there, the door half-open between us, and he told me about Landon—the way he used to sneak out through the kitchen window even though the front door was never locked, the reckless laugh he had, the ambush that took him in under ten minutes on a patrol he shouldn't have led alone. His voice stayed even the whole time, but his hands didn't.

I didn't interrupt. When he finished, I said, "My pup will know where his father's blood came from. I'll make sure of it."

Kael's jaw tightened. He nodded once, and left without touching me. But his scent—winter pine, sharp ozone—stayed behind in the room long after the door clicked shut, and through the mind-link I felt the pup settle, warm and quiet, recognizing something in it that I couldn't name yet myself.

---

The week that followed blurred into ledgers and maps. Silvercrest intelligence gave me access to surveillance records I never could have gathered alone—grain shipments diverted from Ironwood storehouses, border taxes collected and never reported, infrastructure left to rot while Conner funneled the difference into Nightshade accounts. I cross-referenced every page against my father's old records until the pattern stood out clear as a wound.

Kael passed through once, said nothing, just looked at the files stacked and labeled across the table. I felt his eyes linger longer than they needed to.

"You've organized this better than my Beta manages a war room," he said finally.

I didn't look up. My hand moved to the cold scar at my throat without my permission. "I had motivation," I said, and kept working.