REJECTED BY HER MATE, DESIRED BY THE LYCAN KING

Chapter 10

Kael POV

"If she's truly my mate, the right thing would be to walk away before she ever finds out," I said to myself than to anything listening.

I thought of my mother, of the years she spent believing love was something safe to hold onto, right up until it wasn't. I thought of what that cost her, what it cost the pack after, how long it took to rebuild trust in a crown that had once let itself be ruled by feeling instead of duty.

The weight of undoing that damage had fallen to me, and only me. No sibling to share it with. No one else carrying the same inherited debt.

A mate would only be one more thing I couldn't afford to lose control of.

The way she'd looked at me in the woods that first night, proved exactly why I couldn't let this go any further. If she ever learned what she actually was to me, it would only end in her disappointment. I'd only be one more person who failed her.

A knock at the door pulled me out of it.

"Kael. I didn't expect you'd still be up here." Corwin stepped inside the room, a healer trailing behind him. "This is Mira. She's going to examine her properly now. You don't have to stay. I appreciate you keeping watch."

I stood there a moment, searching for the right thing to say. Every instinct told me to leave.

I wasn't sure I actually wanted to.

I glanced back at Wren, still asleep, still unaware of any of this.

I can't let this become what it became for my mother.

"Take care of her," I told Mira, my eyes still on Wren.

"I intend to," Mira said.

I turned to go. At the threshold, I paused beside Corwin.

"She didn't deserve any of this," I said plainly as I glare at gee weak body.

"No," he agreed, "She didn't."

Neither of us said anything else. I left after glaring at her for a while .

Wren POV

"Where is he now?" I asked my father, still processing that Kael had stayed with me half the night.

"He left once Mira arrived."

"Did you ask him to stay with me?" I asked.

My father shook his head, a small frown crossing his face.

"I asked him to guard the door. Nothing more. Sitting with you was his own decision."

He turned to leave, and I felt my face heat instantly. I was relieved he hadn't seen it, because it would have given away exactly how much that answer mattered to me.

He paused at the doorway, not looking back at me.

"Kael isn't like most of the wolves I work with," he said. "Young, serious beyond his years. He doesn't let himself enjoy much of anything. It's like he's carrying something he refuses to set down."

He hesitated, gathering the rest of his thought.

"The reason I pushed for him to take the border post wasn't only because he was the strongest candidate. I thought the responsibility might do him good, give him something outside of grief to focus on. He carries his father's ambition, but none of his father's cruelty. I've made it something of a personal mission to make sure it stays that way."

"You care about him," I said, as I examine my father's face. He looked back at me and nodded once.

"His mother lost everything because of decisions made generations before either of us," he said, and I watched his hand tighten briefly on the doorframe. "I feel it's on me to make sure the weight of that doesn't crush him too."

My father left without saying anything more.

I pressed my fingers to my own lips, remembering the brief, startling press of Kael's mouth against mine in the dark. It hadn't lasted more than a second. It was still the only real kiss I'd ever had.

That wasn't how I'd pictured my first kiss going, and he certainly wasn't who I'd imagined it would be with. It stung, knowing I'd handed something meaningful to a stranger out of anger rather than choice. Kael wasn't someone who could love the way my aunt and uncle loved each other. Kael was someone entirely consumed by duty.

As my father said, he's driven by something bigger than himself, closed off, guarded, careful never to let anything slip. I respected that about him, even as it convinced me he wasn't someone capable of giving his whole self to anyone, least of all me.

He wasn't someone I could picture as a mate. Not really.

A knock at my door pulled me out of the spiral.

"It's just me," Talia said, letting herself in without waiting for an answer.

She dropped into the chair beside my bed instead of the bed itself,with her arms crossed, while glaring me without uttering any words .

"You look like you're spiraling," she said.

"I'm thinking," I corrected.

"That's what I said."

I let out a short breath, half a laugh despite everything. "It's nothing."

"It's clearly not nothing, or you wouldn't be picking at your own lip like that." She reached over and pulled my hand down from my mouth without asking. "Talk to me."

"I don't even know where to start," I admitted.

"Start with why you're blushing every time someone says his name."

I felt my face heat again, and this time there was no hiding it from her.

"It's complicated," I said.

"Everything about the last few weeks has been complicated," she said. "Doesn't mean you get to dodge the question."

I picked at the blanket instead of answering right away.

"I don't understand what he wants from me," I said finally. "One minute he's unreadable, distant, like I'm a problem he's trying to avoid. The next time he's sitting outside my door half the night when nobody asked him to."

"Maybe he doesn't fully understand it either," Talia said.

"Some people don't accept what they feel until they've already acted on it a dozen times without meaning to."

"That's not exactly reassuring."

"It wasn't meant to be reassuring. It was meant to be honest." She tilted her head.

"You're allowed to want something without already knowing how it ends, Wren."

"I don't know if I want anything," I said. "I just got out of five years of certainty that turned out to be nothing. I'm not eager to build a new kind of hope just to have it collapse the same way."

"That's fair," she said. "Doesn't mean you should decide the ending before it's even started, though."

I didn't have an answer for that.

She reached over and squeezed my hand once.

"Whatever this turns into," she said, "you don't have to figure it out today. You survived a rumor built just to break you last night. Give yourself until at least tomorrow before you solve the rest of it."

I managed a small, "You always make it sound simple."

"It's not simple," she said. "I'm just better at pretending than you are."

She stood, smoothing out her skirt, glancing toward the door.

"Rest," she said. "I'll come check on you before I head back out."

"Talia," I said, before she reached the door.

She paused, glancing back.

"Thank you," I told her. "For not making me explain more than I could."

"That's what I'm here for," she said, and left me to the quiet.