The Alpha King's Surrogate

Chapter 13: You Cannot Deny A Mate Bond

Davian's POV

I was only in the medical wing because Alyssa had requested I come

I walked through the door and saw Kyra already seated on the examination table, pale, her hands folded tightly in her lap, dark circles under her eyes that hadn't been there four days ago.

She looked up the moment I crossed the threshold and her green eyes met mine across the short distance and held for one sharp second too long.

Neither of us spoke.

The last time we had been alone in a room the air had changed and my wolf had named her in a single violent word. That memory sat between us now, heavy and unspoken. I deliberately stopped several paces from the bed and kept my gaze on the far wall, the monitors, anywhere except the soft line of her mouth or the way her braid had come half undone from another morning of sickness.

This is for the heir, I told myself. Nothing else.

"Your Majesty." Alyssa nodded toward me, her tablet in hand. "Thank you for coming.We’ll begin.”

She turned to Kyra. “How many times have you been sick since last night?”

“Four,” Her voice was steady, but quieter than I remembered. “Twice before dawn. Once after trying water. Once on the way here.”

“Are you sleep?” she asked.

“A little, in pieces." She answered. "An hour here. Forty minutes there.”

“Have you managed to keep anything down?” Alyssa tapped her screen.

“A little broth." She said. "It doesn’t stay long.”

“Any sharp pain?" Alyssa asked. "Cramping?”

“No." Kyra shook her head slightly. "Just the nausea and the tiredness.”

"Okay then," Alyssa said, already pulling on a fresh pair of glovee. "Please, lie back."

Kyra did as instructed, and Alyssa began the examination, checking pulse, blood pressure, laying both palms flat against Kyra's stomach to read the pup's aura, the faint magical pulse every royal physician learned to sense in an unborn heir.v I stayed where I was, arms crossed, watching the process with the same detached attention I gave border reports. My wolf disagreed. It paced in tight circles, focused entirely on the pale omega sitting three steps away.

Alyssa frowned at the tablet. She adjusted a sensor near Kyra’s lower abdomen, waited, then frowned harder.

“That’s odd.” Her brow furrowed almost immediately.

I looked at her. “What is?”

She didn’t answer immediately. She repeated the scan. The soft pulse of the reading filled the quiet room for a few seconds. Alyssa’s mouth tightened.

“Have you been under unusual stress, Miss Sinclair?” she asked.

Kyra’s gaze flicked to me for the briefest instant, then away. “Yes.”

Alyssa moved to the other side of the bed, adjusted another setting, and watched the numbers again. The pup’s early aura, or whatever the instruments measured at this stage, kept shifting, unsettled, almost agitated.

I stepped closer without thinking, just enough to see the chart over her shoulder.

The readings changed and it made Alyssa’s hand stilled on the tablet. She looked up at me, then at the screen, then back at me. Her expression was carefully blank.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

Instead of answering she walked several paces toward the far wall, putting clear distance between us and the bed.

“Your Majesty,” she said quietly, “would you mind remaining where you are for a moment?”

Confused, I stayed put. The readings on the tablet grew restless again, same unsettled pattern as before.

"Come closer, please." Alyssa walked back to the bedside. “The same distance as a moment ago.”

I did and the pattern settled almost immediately.

Silence filled the room. No one said a word.

Kyra had gone very still on the bed. One of her hands rested lightly against her own stomach, as if she could feel the difference from the inside. When I stood close the tight line of her shoulders eased by a fraction. When I moved away it returned.

Alyssa finally set the tablet down and removed her gloves one finger at a time. Her movements were precise, almost too controlled. She looked disturbed. .

“No,” she said under her breath. “That isn’t possible.”

I frowned. “What isn't possible?'

She stared at the chart again, then at Kyra, then at me.

“A royal pup shouldn’t even be capable of responding to its parents this early." She said. "Infact any pup shouldn't be able to respond, not at this stage. Its wolf hasn’t developed enough.The connection simply isn’t there yet. I’ve delivered three generations of Alpha heirs in this family. I have never, not once, seen an unborn pup react to a parent’s presence like this.”

Kyra’s face had lost what little color it still had. My own body had gone stiff. The wolf inside me had stopped pacing entirely. It stood silent and certain, as if it had been waiting for someone else to finally say the words aloud.

"Okay, what does that mean?" Kyra's hand pressed harder against her stomach, her breathing gone shallow and quick. "Is something wrong with the baby?"

"No," Alyssa said quietly. "Nothing is wrong, Miss Sinclair, quite the opposite. The pup is healthy, strong, developing exactly as expected in every measurable way. This isn't a complication." She paused, choosing her next words with visible care. "This is something else entirely."

"Then explain it," I said, my voice harder than I intended, my wolf pacing again beneath my ribs, restless in a different way now, something closer to dread.

"There's only one explanation I've ever encountered that would explain this kind of early recognition," Alyssa looked directly at both of us.

Kyra’s eyes were wide, the green of them almost too bright against her pale skin.

“You may deny the Moon Goddess all you like," she said slowly. "but you cannot deny a mate bond forever.”

The room went completely still.

I couldn’t move or speak. Neither of us had told this woman a single word about what had happened in the observation room days ago. Neither of us had spoken the truth even to each other since that moment and yet she stood there saying it like she had simply read it off the screen.