His Rejected Mate, His Hidden Heir

Chapter 22 — Where's My Daddy?

The question came on Family Day.

I should have known. I should have prepared. I'd known it was coming for weeks — the flyer on the preschool bulletin board, the cheerful announcement from Mrs. Patterson, the way Kael had come home talking about how Lily's mom and dad were both coming and wasn't that *cool*, Mommy?

Family Day. The day when every child brings their parents to school for a special celebration. Songs. Crafts. A photo wall where each family gets their picture taken under a hand-painted banner that reads "FAMILY = LOVE."

I should have kept him home.

But I'd already decided to stay. To give him his birthday. To pretend, for just a few more weeks, that we were normal. So I put on my best smile and my cleanest jeans and I walked Kael to school on Family Day, and I told myself it would be fine.

It was not fine.

* * *

The classroom was a riot of construction paper and parental anxiety. Mothers in yoga pants, fathers in work clothes, grandmothers with cameras, grandfathers with suspicious eyes. Kael grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the craft table, where Mrs. Patterson had set out glue sticks and cotton balls and pre-cut shapes for the "family tree" project.

"Look, Mommy! We get to make a tree!"

"Cool, baby."

"Who should I put on it?"

I looked at the pre-cut shapes — mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, pet — and my throat tightened. "Who do you want to put on it?"

"You." He picked up a mom shape and glued it to the tree. "And Mabel." He found a grandma shape. "And Sophie." Another shape. "And Mr. Whiskers." A cat shape, because of course there was a cat shape.

"What about a dad shape?" The voice came from behind me. A little girl — one of Kael's classmates, a redhead with pigtail braids and a gap in her teeth — was peering at his family tree with the casual cruelty of a child who hasn't learned tact yet. "You didn't put a dad."

"I don't have a dad shape," Kael said.

"Everyone has a dad. Where's yours?"

"My daddy lives far away," Kael said, and his voice was steady but his hand — the one not holding the glue stick — found mine and squeezed.

"Does he visit?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because he doesn't know about me."

The redhead considered this. "That's weird."

"It's not weird."

"It's weird. My dad comes to everything. He's over there." She pointed to a man in a plaid shirt who was attempting to help his daughter glue cotton balls to a tree and failing spectacularly. "See? That's what dads do."

"My mom does everything," Kael said, and his voice had an edge I'd never heard before — not anger, exactly, but something close to it. Protective. Fierce. "My mom is enough."

The redhead shrugged and wandered off, her work here done, and Kael went back to gluing shapes to his tree. But his jaw was tight, and his eyes were too bright, and I could feel the Alpha energy radiating off him in waves — not enough to be visible, but enough that the glue stick bent slightly in his grip.

"Baby," I murmured, putting my hand over his. "Gentle hands."

He took a breath. The energy subsided. He straightened the glue stick and kept working.

* * *

That night, he asked the real question.

Not the casual kind. Not the "where do daddies come from" kind. This was different. This came from the place the redhead had cracked open with her casual, thoughtless observation.

"Mommy?"

We were in his room, the lights low, his stuffed wolf tucked under his arm. I was sitting on the edge of his bed, smoothing his hair back, the way I did every night.

"Yeah, baby?"

"Did my daddy not want me?"

The words hit me like a freight train.

"Kael—"

"Lily has a daddy. Emma has a daddy. Even that mean girl has a daddy. Why doesn't my daddy want me?"

"He doesn't know about you, baby. I told you—"

"But *why* doesn't he know? If you're his..." He struggled with the word. The concept. The vast, incomprehensible unfairness of a parent who didn't know you existed. "If you're his *mate*, like you said, then why doesn't he know about me?"

I hadn't told him about mates. Not in those words. He must have overheard something — a conversation with Mabel, maybe, or Sophie asking a question I'd thought he was too young to understand.

"I'm not his mate, baby."

"But the mark—"

Where did he learn about the mark? When did my four-year-old become a detective?

"The mark is... complicated. Grown-up complicated. And your daddy and I... we had a misunderstanding. And I left before I could tell him about you."

"Did he want you to leave?"

The question was simple. The answer was not.

He rejected me in front of the entire pack. He said the mark was a mistake. He said I was nothing. And then he kept my apron in a drawer for four years and dreamed about reaching for me through fire.

"No," I said, and the truth of it surprised me. "I don't think he wanted me to leave. I think... I think he was scared. And scared people do hurtful things sometimes."

"Did he hurt you?"

*Yes. More than you'll ever know.* "He hurt my feelings. And I was scared too. So I left, to keep us safe."

Kael was quiet for a long time. His gray eyes — *his father's eyes* — searched my face, looking for something. An answer, maybe. A permission. A crack in the wall I'd built.

"But does he know about me?" he asked again.

"No," I whispered. "He doesn't."

Another silence. Longer this time. The kind that fills a room and presses against the walls.

"Maybe he should."

* * *

Three words. From a four-year-old.

Maybe he should.

And they unraveled every careful justification I'd built over four years. Was I protecting Kael — or was I punishing Kane? Was I keeping my son safe from a pack that would claim him, or was I keeping his father in the dark because the rejection still burned like a brand on my neck?

Was my fear of Kane finding us really about protecting Kael? Or was it about protecting myself from the moment when I'd have to stand in front of the man who'd rejected me and show him the child he never knew he had?

The question kept me awake until dawn.

And the mark on my neck pulsed, warm and steady, like it was counting down to something I couldn't stop.

"Maybe he should." Three words from a four-year-old, and they unraveled every careful justification I'd built over four years. Was I protecting Kael — or was I punishing Kane? The question kept me awake until dawn.