His Rejected Mate, His Hidden Heir

Chapter 19 — Four Years

Time jump.

Kael is four now, and I'm twenty-five, and somewhere between the park incident and the ShadowClaw marks and the bond that won't stop pulsing, I've become something I don't recognize.

A waitress. A mother. A woman with a savings account and a routine and a son who holds the neighbor's cat with one hand and calls it "soft" while the cat purrs like a motorcycle and I wonder if any other four-year-old in the history of the world could hold fifteen pounds of feline indifference aloft without his arm trembling.

I work at Mabel's Kitchen five days a week, sometimes six. I've been promoted from dishwasher to waitress — same pay, more tips, more smiles required — and I've learned the art of the small talk I used to despise. *How are you today? What can I get you? Nice weather we're having.* The words come out smooth and practiced, a costume I put on in the morning and take off at night.

Kael goes to preschool three mornings a week. He loves it. He loves the songs and the finger-painting and the other kids and his teacher, Mrs. Patterson, who thinks he's "spirited" and "advanced for his age" and has no idea that "spirited" means his eyes flash gold when he gets frustrated and "advanced" means he can bench-press a coffee table.

He has a best friend. Lily, from next door, a serious little girl with dark braids and a gap in her teeth who follows Kael around like a shadow and thinks he's the strongest boy in the world. She's not wrong. She just doesn't know why.

He has Mabel, who lets him stir batter after hours and calls him "little man" and once told me, in a voice that was trying very hard to be casual, that he reminded her of someone. She didn't say who. She didn't have to.

He has Sophie, who brings him books from the shop and reads to him in funny voices and once asked if she could take him to the children's museum in the next town over and I said yes before I could think about it because Kael's face lit up like a Christmas tree and I would have said yes to anything that made him look like that.

He has a life. A real, actual life, with people who love him and places that are his and routines that make him feel safe. A life I built from nothing — from $127 and a bus ticket and the desperate, bone-deep certainty that I would give him something better than what I'd had.

And I'm about to take it all away.

* * *

The mark pulses as I get ready for work, a warm throb against my neck, and I press my hand against it and hold it there until it fades.

It's been doing this for three weeks now. Coming and going. Stronger at night, quieter during the day. Like something on the other end is testing the connection, checking the line, making sure the signal is still there.

Stop,* I think. *Stop it. I'm not here. I don't exist. Whatever you think you're feeling is nothing.

The bond doesn't care what I think.

I've developed a system for Kael. Strict rules, enforced gently: "gentle hands" with other kids, "inside voice" when he's excited, "no pushing, ever, no matter what." It works most of the time. When it doesn't — when the wolf in him surges and his eyes flash and I feel the Alpha energy radiating off him like heat from a stove — I pull him close and sing the lullaby, and the wolf settles, and he goes back to being my sweet, impossible boy.

But it's getting harder. He's getting stronger. The wolf is getting louder.

And the mark is getting warmer.

* * *

"Mommy." Kael appears in the kitchen doorway, holding the neighbor's cat — Mr. Whiskers, a fat tabby with the personality of a retired dictator — cradled in one arm like a stuffed animal. The cat is purring so loudly I can hear it from five feet away. "I think I'm getting stronger."

I stare at him. At the cat. At my four-year-old son, holding fifteen pounds of unimpressed feline with one tiny hand, his arm steady and his face serious.

"Mr. Whiskers seems to like you," I say, because what else can I say?

"He's warm." Kael nuzzles his face into the cat's fur. "Can I keep him?"

"He has a home, baby."

"But what if his home is with us?"

The question lands harder than he means it to. What if his home is with us. What if everything could just stay exactly like this — the apartment and the diner and Mabel and Sophie and the cat and the life we've built — forever.

"His home is with Mrs. Chen," I say, taking the cat from him. Mr. Whiskers gives me a look of profound betrayal and leaps from my arms to the floor, where he sits and begins grooming himself with the dignity of a creature who has never been held aloft by a four-year-old wolf-boy. "But you can visit him whenever you want."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

He grins, and the grin is so bright it hurts, and I think *I will burn the world down before I let anything take that grin away.*

* * *

The mark pulses again as I tuck him in that night. Stronger this time. Closer.

I press my hand against it and close my eyes.

Stay away. Whatever you're feeling, wherever you think it's coming from — it's nothing. It's a ghost. A memory. A bond that should have died four years ago and won't stop haunting me.

The bond pulses once more, warm and steady and patient.

I open my eyes. Kael is asleep, his face slack and peaceful, his small body curled around his stuffed wolf — the one Sophie gave him, the irony of which is not lost on me.

The mark on my neck has been quiet for months. Maybe, I think, it was a false alarm. Maybe the surge was just Kael's power spiking, a single flare that faded. Maybe the bond is going back to sleep.

Maybe I can stay.

"Mommy," Kael said, holding up the family cat — all fifteen pounds of it — with one tiny hand, "I think I'm getting stronger." The cat was purring. I was not.