Rejected by My Alpha Mate: My Alpha's Regret

The Reunion

The pack house hadn't changed. That was the first thing Ivy noticed, and it unsettled her more than any renovation could have, the same stone steps worn pale in the middle, the same iron-banded doors, the same carved wolf crest over the entrance that she used to avoid looking at because it felt like it was watching her.

A young beta she didn't recognize led her through the front hall, throwing glances at her like she was something that might bite. Word traveled fast in a pack this size. By now, everyone from the kitchen staff to the border guards probably knew exactly who'd walked back onto Blackwood land.

"Alpha's in the war room," the beta said, stopping outside a set of double doors Ivy remembered as the old council chamber. "He's, uh. He's been in there since Elias radioed that you crossed the boundary."

"How long ago was that?"

"Forty minutes." The beta's ears actually reddened. "He hasn't come out."

Ivy didn't ask what that meant. She was fairly sure she already knew, and she didn't have the emotional bandwidth to examine it before she'd even seen his face again.

She pushed the doors open herself.

The war room was exactly as imposing as she remembered: a long table scarred with claw marks going back generations, territory maps pinned across one wall, the smell of old wood and older power. And standing at the head of the table, back to her, shoulders set in a way that made every line of him look carved rather than grown, was Kai.

He turned before she said a word. Of course he did. He would have scented her the second she stepped through the doors, the same way she'd scented him from half a mile out.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Three years had changed him too. He was broader now, harder in a way that came from carrying more weight than one man should — full Alpha authority sat on him differently than it had at eighteen, less like a crown and more like armor he hadn't taken off in years. There were shadows under his eyes that hadn't been there before. His jaw was still the same sharp line she remembered hating herself for noticing at the rejection ceremony, three years and a lifetime ago.

His eyes found hers, and Ivy felt the bond slam back into place like something had been holding a door shut for three years and finally lost its grip.

Kai made a sound low in his throat; not quite a word, more animal than that, and she watched him grip the edge of the table hard enough that the old wood groaned in protest.

"Ivy." Her name came out rough, stripped down, nothing like the cold voice that had rejected her in front of the whole pack. "You came."

"I didn't come for you." The words came out sharper than she'd planned, a reflex, armor snapping into place before he could see how badly her own pulse had betrayed her the second their eyes met.

"I know." He didn't look away. He didn't seem capable of it. "I know that. I still—" He stopped himself, visibly, jaw tightening like he was physically reeling something back in. "Elias said you'd help with the healers. Thank you for coming, regardless of the reason."

It was polite. Careful. It was also a lie, or at least an incomplete one, because Ivy could see it in the way his hands hadn't unclenched from the table, in the way his eyes kept dropping to her mouth and dragging back up like he was disciplining himself in real time.

The bond didn't care about politeness. It sat heavy and insistent under her ribs, pulling toward him with a force she'd forgotten was even possible, three years of careful numbness undone in under a minute.

She hated how much she wanted to cross the room. She hated it so much her hands curled into fists at her sides just to keep them still.

"Where are the wounded," she said instead, flat, businesslike, because if she let herself say one true thing right now she wasn't sure what would come out instead.

Kai's throat worked. For a second — just a second — something raw and unguarded crossed his face, something that looked almost like relief that she'd given him a task instead of a reckoning.

"This way." He came around the table, and Ivy's whole body went taut as he drew close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him, could smell him properly now instead of just catching it on the wind: pine and leather and something underneath that was just him, unchanged despite everything.

He stopped a foot away. Close enough that neither of them could pretend the air between them wasn't charged. Close enough that Ivy's breath caught audibly, and she watched his nostrils flare in response, watched the gold bleed hotter into his eyes as his control frayed at the edges.

"Ivy." Her name again, quieter this time, almost helpless. "I need you to know—"

"Don't." She stepped back, putting air between them before the bond could do something neither of them had agreed to. "Whatever it is. Don't. I'm here for your wolves, not for an apology three years too late."

Something flickered across his face: hurt, or maybe just the recognition of a wound he'd earned and had no right to resent. He nodded once, tight, and some of the raw want in his expression locked itself back behind the Alpha mask she remembered from the ceremony.

"This way," he said again, rougher now, and turned before she could see whatever else was still fighting to surface underneath that composure.

Ivy followed him out of the war room, close enough to feel the pull of him with every step, far enough to pretend she wasn't feeling it at all.

Neither of them was fooling anyone. She could hear it in the low murmur of the betas they passed in the hallway, could feel a dozen sets of eyes tracking the space between their bodies like it was the most interesting thing that had happened on Blackwood territory in three years.

Maybe it was.