His Rejected Mate, His Hidden Heir

Chapter 14 — Questions Without Answers

Kael was three when he started asking about his father.

Not the casual questions — the "where do babies come from" kind that I could deflect with a half-truth about love and storks and the mysterious ways of the universe. These were different. These came from a place I couldn't see, a need I couldn't name, and they landed like stones in my chest every single time.

It started at the park.

We were at the little playground behind the library — the one with the cracked rubber surface and the rusty swing set and the wooden climbing structure that had seen better decades. Kael was on the swings, pumping his legs with more force than any three-year-old should have, and I was on the bench nearby, watching him and pretending to read a library book I'd already finished.

"Mommy!" he called, mid-swing. "Look at me!"

"I see you, baby."

"Look how high!"

He was too high. The chains were straining, the frame groaning, and I was calculating how much it would cost to replace the swing set if my son launched himself into orbit. But his face was pure joy — wind-flushed, gap-toothed, eyes bright — and I couldn't bring myself to tell him to slow down.

A woman sat down next to me on the bench. Another mother — I'd seen her before, dropping off a girl about Kael's age with dark braids and a gap in her front teeth. The woman smiled at me. I smiled back, the careful, practiced smile I'd learned to give strangers.

"That your boy?" she asked.

"Yep."

"He's got a lot of energy."

"He's got a *motor*," I said, and she laughed.

"Mine's the same. Her father says she gets it from him." A pause. "Does your husband ever bring Kael to the park?"

The question was casual. Normal. The kind of thing mothers asked each other a hundred times a day — small talk, community building, the connective tissue of shared experience.

But I wasn't a normal mother, and my tissue was made of secrets.

"He's not around," I said.

The woman nodded, and I saw the flash of — something. Not pity, exactly. Recognition. "Mine either. For a while." She didn't push. I was grateful.

That night, Kael asked the question I'd been dreading.

* * *

"Mommy?" His voice was small in the dark, drifting from his bedroom like smoke. I was in the kitchen, scrubbing a pot I'd already scrubbed twice, avoiding sleep the way I always did — by finding things to clean.

"Yeah, baby?"

"Where's my daddy?"

The pot slipped from my hands and hit the sink with a clang. I stood there, water dripping between my fingers, my heart beating in my ears.

Don't lie to him. Don't lie. He deserves better than lies.

You can't tell him the truth. The truth will break him.

"Your daddy is far away," I said. It wasn't a lie. Not exactly.

"How far?"

"Very far."

"Is he coming back?"

*No. Yes. I don't know.* "I don't think so, baby."

"Why?"

Because he rejected me. Because he didn't know you existed. Because if he found out about you, his pack would take you away from me, and I would burn the world down before I let that happen.

"He's a very important person," I said instead. "He has very important work to do, and he doesn't know about you."

The silence that followed was the worst sound I'd ever heard. Worse than the howling. Worse than the rejection. Worse than the sound of my own heartbeat in an empty room.

"Doesn't know about me?" Kael's voice was tiny. Incredulous. The way only a three-year-old could be incredulous — pure, unfiltered, heartbroken.

"Not yet."

"Why not?"

Because I ran. Because I hid. Because I was scared, and I'm still scared, and I will never stop being scared as long as there's a bond in my chest connecting me to a man who looked at me like I was nothing.

"Because I haven't told him yet."

Another silence. Then: "Why?"

I closed my eyes. Pressed my wet hands against the counter. Breathed.

"Because sometimes, baby, mamas have to make hard choices to keep their little ones safe. And I chose to keep you safe. That's all you need to know right now."

It was the most honest I'd been with him. It was also a dodge, and we both knew it.

Kael didn't ask again that night. He said "okay" in the small, unconvinced way that children say okay when they don't mean it, and he went to sleep with his back to me, which was a new and terrible thing.

I sat on the floor outside his door until my legs went numb.

* * *

The nightmares started that week.

Not his. Mine.

I dreamed of Kane.

In the dreams, he was always just out of reach — standing in a room I couldn't enter, his back to me, his hand pressed against the mark on his own chest. I could feel the bond pulsing between us, a silver thread stretched tight across darkness, and I wanted to cut it more than I'd ever wanted anything.

But I couldn't. Because in the dream, the thread wasn't just connecting us. It was holding something up. Something that would fall if I severed it.

I didn't know what.

I woke from these dreams drenched in sweat, my mark burning, my heart racing, and I'd lie in the dark and listen to Kael breathe and tell myself it was just a dream. Just a dream.

The mark pulsed once — faint, distant — and went quiet.

"Mommy?" Kael's small voice drifted through the dark. "Do you think my daddy would like me?" I couldn't answer. Because the truth was, I didn't know — and that uncertainty was the most terrifying thing of all.