Rejected by My Alpha Mate: My Alpha's Regret

The Ultimatum

Marcus summoned Kai to the study before sunrise, and Ivy knew, the moment Elias came to fetch him, that whatever waited in that room had been building since the moment Kai pulled out the chair beside her at dinner.

"Come with me," Kai said, already reaching for her hand.

"He asked for you. Not me."

"I don't care what he asked for." His grip tightened, not painful, just certain. "Whatever this is about, I want you there. I'm done letting him make decisions about my life in rooms I don't let you into."

The study looked exactly as intimidating as Ivy remembered, dark wood and old maps and the particular chill that came from a room where too many hard decisions had been made. Marcus stood by the window, still dressed despite the early hour, like he hadn't slept either.

"I asked to speak with you alone," Marcus said, eyes flicking to Ivy with something colder than mere disapproval.

"She stays." Kai's voice left no room for argument.

Marcus's jaw tightened, but he didn't push it, which told Ivy more about the shifting balance of power in this pack than anything else had since her return. "Fine. Then let's discuss what almost cost us the northern border last night."

"The attack wasn't caused by a dinner seating arrangement."

"Wasn't it?" Marcus crossed to his desk, unhurried, every movement calculated to project control he clearly no longer fully possessed. "The Hale alliance has held our northern border secure for a decade, Kai. The moment word spreads that you're publicly choosing an unranked, unclaimed wolf over that alliance, every rival pack within a hundred miles smells opportunity. Last night wasn't a coincidence. It was a test, and we barely passed it."

"We passed it because our warriors fought well. Not because of an alliance that hasn't been formally renewed in two years."

"An alliance you've been stalling because you can't separate duty from a bond you were never supposed to indulge in the first place." Marcus's composure cracked slightly, temper bleeding through. "I did what was necessary three years ago to protect this pack. I'd hoped, foolishly apparently, that you'd grown enough since then to understand why."

"What you did," Kai said, voice going dangerously low, "was force me to gut a girl who'd never done anything to deserve it, for an alliance that fell apart two years later anyway. Don't stand here and call that wisdom."

Marcus's eyes flicked to Ivy again, calculating in a way that made her skin crawl. "Perhaps we should let her weigh in, since you're so determined to keep her in this conversation. Ivy. Do you understand what you are, under pack law, standing on this territory right now?"

Ivy's stomach tightened. "I know I'm unclaimed. Unprotected."

"Precisely." Marcus's tone turned almost gentle, which was somehow worse than the cold authority he usually wielded. "You crossed our boundary three years ago without an Alpha's blessing. That makes you a guest here, nothing more, regardless of what bond my son insists on indulging. I could have you escorted off this territory within the hour, and there isn't a law in this pack that would call it wrong."

"You wouldn't." Kai's voice had dropped to something closer to a growl than words, the air in the room going sharp with barely restrained fury.

"I would, if it protected this pack." Marcus held his son's gaze, unflinching. "But I'd rather not have to. I'd rather you remembered what's actually at stake here and finished what we started with the Hale alliance before your instincts cost us more than one contested border skirmish."

"And if I refuse."

"Then I'll have to decide whether an Alpha who prioritizes a fated bond over his pack's survival is fit to keep leading it." Marcus's voice stayed level, but the threat underneath it was unmistakable. "I stepped back from full authority a year ago because I believed you'd grown into this role. I can reconsider that belief just as easily as I made it."

The silence that followed was absolute. Ivy watched Kai's hands curl into fists at his sides, watched him war visibly with three years of guilt and duty against something that had only gotten stronger since she'd walked back into the war room.

"You're asking me to reject her again," Kai said finally, quiet and lethal. "In everything but name."

"I'm asking you to remember you're Alpha first." Marcus's expression didn't soften. "The bond doesn't excuse you from that. It never has."

Kai turned to Ivy, and the look on his face, torn open and helpless in a way she'd never once seen on him even during the ceremony three years ago, told her everything about how badly this was tearing him apart.

"I need a moment with my father," he said quietly. "Alone, this time. Please."

Ivy searched his face for a long moment, looking for the answer to a question she wasn't sure she wanted confirmed, and found nothing there but exhaustion and a fear that mirrored her own.

"Okay," she said finally, and left before either of them could see how badly her hands were shaking.

She didn't go far. She stopped just past the study door, back pressed against the cold stone wall, and told herself she wasn't waiting to hear what was said next, even as every instinct strained toward the muffled voices on the other side.

She caught fragments. Marcus's voice, low and insistent, words like duty and survival and you cannot save everyone, Kai, learn that now while it still costs you less. Kai's voice, rougher, angrier, words she couldn't fully make out beneath the pounding of her own pulse in her ears.

Then silence.

The study door opened a few minutes later, and Kai emerged alone, his face carved from stone in a way that made Ivy's stomach drop straight through the floor.

"Kai."

He looked at her, and for one terrible, suspended second, she couldn't read anything in his expression at all.

"We need to talk," he said quietly. "Not here."

Ivy's chest went tight with dread, the ghost of a rejection ceremony three years old rising up cold and familiar under her ribs, and she followed him down the hallway with the sick, certain feeling that whatever he was about to say, she wasn't going to survive hearing it a second time.