When the Lycan Prince Learned I Bore His Heirs

The rejection landed at 6:47 on a Sunday morning, four hours after I pushed two babies out of my body.

I was still bleeding into the infirmary cot when Kenneth walked in with the whole pack behind him. I saw the shape of it before I heard the words—the way he wouldn't look at me, the way Jasmine hovered at his shoulder in a silk robe that used to hang in my closet.

He stopped three feet from the cot. He did not glance at the twins.

"I, Kenneth Harlow, Alpha of Hollowridge Pack," he said, in the Alpha tone I had learned to flinch from, "reject you, Serena Voss, as my mate and Luna."

The mark on my neck went cold first. Then empty. Like a door slamming shut in a room no one was ever coming back to.

My wolf—already thin from the birth, already curled somewhere small inside my chest—made one sound. Not a growl. A whimper cut off mid-breath. Then nothing. A silence so complete I felt my own body forget her.

My knees went. I gripped the metal edge of the cot with both hands and did not fall.

Behind me, one of the twins started crying. Then the other. Small, thin cries from throats hours old.

Kenneth's jaw worked. He kept his eyes on the wall above my head.

"The pups will remain pack property," he said. "You will recover in the Omega quarters. Effective immediately."

I heard Jasmine breathe out—a quick, satisfied sound she couldn't quite hide. She caught my eye over Kenneth's shoulder and her mouth softened into something that was almost a smile. The kind of smile she used to give me across a kitchen table when we were sixteen and I was slipping her extra food from my own plate.

I did not cry. I did not say his name. I looked at her instead, and I let her see me see her.

Her smile faltered.

"Take her down," Kenneth said, and turned his back.

His hand found Jasmine's before he reached the door. His palm settled over the curve of her belly like it had always belonged there.

Gareth came for me. Kenneth's Gamma—a big man, broad-shouldered, who had taught my hands to hold a knife six years ago when I was still a Luna-in-training. He didn't meet my eyes either. He gathered the twins first, wrapping them in the thin infirmary blanket, and then he lifted me. I was still wearing the hospital gown. Blood had soaked through to the sheet.

We passed pack members in the corridor. I recognized every face. Every face looked away.

On the second-floor landing I saw the trunks. Jasmine's trunks. Being carried up—not down, up—toward the Luna suite. The suite where the pendant used to sit on my nightstand before Kenneth took it. The suite where my mother's scent used to live in a small glass jar.

She had packed for this. She had packed before I went into labor.

Something inside me, buried under the ice of the cold mark, went very still and very clear.

The cellar door opened onto stone stairs. Gareth carried me down. The air dropped ten degrees. There was one oil lamp, one bare cot, one bucket in the corner. He set the twins on the cot first, gently—the only gentle thing anyone had done for them in their four hours of life—and then he set me down beside them.

"I'll send water," he said. Quiet. Not looking at me. "Blankets."

"Gareth."

He stopped at the stairs.

"Tell him the babies aren't his."

My voice came out even. Measured. The way I had learned to speak in that house.

His shoulders locked. He didn't turn.

"Tell him," I said, "or don't. He'll find out either way."

He left. The bolt slid home above.

I pulled the twins against my chest and pressed my fingers to the bare hollow of my throat where the pendant used to sit. Cold skin. Cold scar. Cold everything.

And then—beneath it, under the ice—a heat.

Declan's scent. Still on my skin. Still layered under everything Kenneth had tried to erase. Cedar and something dark and something like a storm at the edge of the trees. Alive. Untouched by any vow spoken in any room.

I closed my eyes.

I had not shifted in six years. I had not opened this door in longer than I could remember. But the bond was still there—thinned by distance, thinned by the cold, but there—and I did not need my wolf to reach it. I only needed to want to.

I pushed. Hard. Past the dormancy, past the ice, past every careful silence I had learned to survive in.

One message. Three words.

*Come get us.*

Something on the other end of the bond went very, very still. Then it moved.

I opened my eyes. In the dark, my wolf stirred—small, wounded, but there. A single low sound in the back of my skull, not language, not yet. Just presence. *I'm here. I'm not gone.*

I did not cry. I pulled a corner of the thin blanket over the twins and I began counting minutes.

Upstairs, I could hear Kenneth's voice through the floorboards. He was in the courtyard now, addressing the pack. I couldn't make out the words. I didn't need to.

His hand was on Jasmine's belly. His Alpha tone was carrying through stone.

And somewhere north of the border, behind the wheel of something armored and moving fast, my mate was already coming.