Rejected While Carrying His Pup

Cillian didn't mention the bond.

Not the next morning when he showed up at my cottage with a folder of Moonhaven's border maps. Not the afternoon after that when he asked me to sit in on a resource allocation meeting with his Gamma. Not once in the two weeks that followed, when he incorporated me into governance discussions like I was a consultant he'd hired rather than a rejected Luna whose wolf had gone silent.

He was careful. Deliberate. He showed up at the same times—mid-morning for strategy, late afternoon for updates—and he never stayed longer than the work required. He didn't lean into my space. He didn't touch me unless it was to steady a chair or hand me a pen I'd dropped. And he never, not once, looked at me the way Cameron used to look at Livia.

It should have been a relief. It was a relief. But some nights I lay awake in the cottage and wondered if the bond I'd felt in his study had been real at all, or if grief had finally cracked something permanent inside me.

Zara noticed. She always noticed.

"He's different," she said one evening, leaning against the porch railing with her arms crossed. The sun was setting over the water, turning the sky pink and gold. "The Lycan Prince."

I didn't look up from the map I was annotating. "Different how?"

"He doesn't push. Cameron would've pushed."

My pen stilled. I set it down slowly. "Cameron's not the standard I'm measuring anyone against."

"I know." Zara's voice softened. "I'm just saying. Cillian could. He's got the authority. He's got the bond. But he doesn't."

I picked the pen back up. "There's no bond, Zara."

"Alina—"

"There's no bond." I said it louder this time. Sharper. "My wolf is dormant. Whatever I felt in that study was just... residual. A phantom. Like the way amputees still feel their missing limbs."

Zara looked at me for a long moment. Then she pushed off the railing and went inside without another word.

I sat alone on the porch until the stars came out. My mother's pendant was cold against my collarbone. I touched it without thinking, the way I always did when I was trying to decide something I didn't want to decide.

The bond was real. I knew it was real. I'd felt it the same way I'd felt Cameron's bond snap—that cedar-and-sea-salt collision that bypassed every rational defense and went straight to the part of me that still remembered what it meant to be chosen.

But my wolf hadn't stirred. Not once. Not even a flicker.

And if my wolf couldn't feel it, then what did it matter?

Cillian showed up the next morning with a crate in his arms.

I opened the door and stared. "What is that?"

"A wolf." He set the crate down gently on the porch. Inside, a juvenile gray wolf with one torn ear and nervous amber eyes pressed itself against the back corner. "His name is Buster. He was caught in a snare on the northern border. The healer patched him up but he won't settle in the kennels."

I crouched down slowly. The wolf—Buster—watched me without blinking. His breathing was fast and shallow.

"Why are you giving him to me?" I asked.

Cillian was quiet for a moment. When I glanced up, his expression was unreadable. "You heal faster when you have something to tend."

I blinked. "You don't know that."

"I do." He said it simply. Like it was a fact he'd observed and filed away. "You've been annotating maps for two weeks. Your handwriting gets steadier when there's a problem to solve. You sleep better on nights when Zara asks you to cook dinner. You need something that needs you back."

My throat tightened. I looked back at Buster. He was still pressed against the corner of the crate, but his ears had swiveled toward me.

"He's not a gift," Cillian added. "He's a project. If you don't want him, I'll find someone else."

I reached for the crate latch. Buster flinched when I opened it, but he didn't bolt. I held my hand out, palm up, and waited.

It took three full minutes. Then Buster crept forward, sniffed my fingers, and pressed his muzzle into my palm.

Something in my chest loosened.

"I'll keep him," I said quietly.

Cillian nodded. He didn't smile, but something in his eyes softened. "Good."

He left without asking for anything in return. I sat on the porch with Buster curled at my feet and watched him walk back up the cliff path.

Zara appeared in the doorway behind me. She looked at Buster. She looked at me. She didn't say a word.

She didn't have to.

Three weeks after I arrived in Moonhaven, Zara stopped sharpening her claws in Cillian's direction. I noticed it during a border negotiation meeting when he handed me a folder and his fingers brushed mine by accident. Zara's eyes tracked the movement, but she didn't tense. She didn't step forward. She just leaned back in her chair and kept listening.

Afterward, I asked her about it.

"He's not Cameron," she said simply. "He doesn't take up all the air in the room. He doesn't make you smaller."

I didn't know what to say to that. So I didn't say anything.

Buster followed me everywhere. Down the cliff paths in the mornings. Across the cottage floor while I cooked. Out onto the porch at night when I couldn't sleep. He didn't bark. He didn't demand. He just stayed close, his warm weight against my leg a constant reminder that something still needed me.

Cillian kept showing up. Same times. Same steady presence. He never mentioned the bond. He never asked why my wolf was silent. He just worked beside me like it didn't matter, like I was enough exactly as I was.

And some part of me—the part that had spent seven years being invisible—didn't know what to do with that.

So I did what I always did. I worked. I annotated maps. I solved problems. I tended Buster. And I tried not to think about the scent of cedar and sea salt that lingered in my cottage long after Cillian left.

My wolf stayed silent.

But I was starting to wonder if silence was the same thing as gone.