Page 2 of Rejected and Pregnant by the Lycan King

“Amara, thank the goddess you are here.”

She gasped as she took in the sight of me. I turned to face her, and she stared at my back, her steely gray eyes wide. “What the hell happened to you?” she asked, pulling a hair tie from her wrist and gathering her wavy brown hair into a messy bun. “It looks like Ivy came in here and did her worst just for the hell of it.”

My lycan whined at the memory of what Ivy had done. She hated that she couldn’t help me more.If we could evergrow strong enough, she would be the first on my list.It felt great knowing my lycan wanted to kill for me, but I doubted that could ever happen.

I winced as I turned my body to get a better look at Amara. “More like because I didn’t clean my father’s bathroom toherliking.”

That’s why my father said nothing when I told him that. It wasn’t because the room wasn’t clean to his standards. Ivy just wanted a reason to complain and torture me.

Amara growled. She hated Ivy as much as I did. The female was supposed to help around the pack like us. She might not have been an omega, but she also wasn’t skilled enough in hand-to-hand combat to be much use elsewhere. So far, she had been no one’s fated mate in the pack or in any of the neighboring packs, so we were stuck with her. I was pretty sure the only reason my father kept her around was that he enjoyed the sex without attachment.

“If only she would find her damn mate, so she could be shipped off to be another pack’s problem.” Amara grabbed something out of her pocket that looked like a small container filled with a white liquid. “Face away from me. I’ve got something to help with those wounds.”

Amara was best friends with the pack doctor because she wanted to be trained as his assistant. So far, she hadn’t been selected for that role, though another nurse would be retiring soon. Amara had received some creams and other supplies to help with wounds from him. They helped with some of the injuries the pups got from playing. Their lycans not having emerged yet meant they didn’t have the rapid healing. The salve Amara carried was the only thing that could rival having a lycan. She did her best not to hurt me during her gentle application of the salve, but I still stifled growls and winced as she worked.

That’s when I went to my happy place inside my mind. There was a field near the pack territory that I liked to visit on the rare off days I received. During times of high stress or pain, I escaped to that field in my mind. It was a gorgeous patch of softgreen grass, feeling like a bed to lie on, surrounded by trees and secluded. There were patches of tulips of various colors toward the back, and when the breeze blew at the right angle, it brought the fresh scent of their pollen to my nose. I loved that smell. It brought me peace.

There were times I even dreamed of this place. Each time I did, a tall, broad male would always be there with me. He had blond hair and blue eyes I could stare into for days because I’d get so lost in them. The power that radiated from him always made me feel safe, as if nothing and no one would ever hurt me again as long as he was around. That feeling alone made me not want to wake up, especially when he’d wrap his arms around me, kiss me on the forehead, and tell me he’d kill anyone who would hurt me from that day on.

If only dreams came true.

2

Maximus

As I stared at myself in the mirror while fixing my tie, I could see an exhausted wraith looking back at me. I had dark, nearly black circles under my eyes from years of little to no sleep piling up against me. It had been a long five years since I took the throne from my father, and there was still so much left to do. There was always something to address. For every item I crossed off my list to build the pack in the way I envisioned, fresh new hellish problems emerged that I had to deal with—problems that haunted me every night, issues that plagued my thoughts on repeat, attacking my weary mind. For me, sleep meant worry, not dreams.

Between creating the patrol charts, organizing the schedules, and overseeing every other detail while running the pack, my job never seemed finished. Yet, the urge to find my mate grew. I tried to dismiss it, as finding a mate felt like a distraction from getting the real work done, but I could never fully suppress theurge of the beast inside me. So, I made time to look. I visited many packs throughout the kingdom over the last five years in search of her. My lycan constantly paced within me, making me feel like a caged animal desperate to find her.

A mate could ease the growing tension between my lycan and me. As much as I understood the need to find my mate, I didn’t want to feel chained to someone for the rest of my life just yet or to burden someone else with my mountain of problems. My father always said it was better to be with a mate than with other females, but I was still young. Thirty is young for a lycan. It isn’t until someone reaches over one hundred that anyone starts to call a lycan old. I still had time to find her.

Maybe I should take a break from this distraction and refocus on my work. I needed to get into a better headspace to find a mate.

My eyes flashed blue as my lycan surged to the surface to confront me.No. Find mate now. End the curse.

It always annoyed me when my lycan chose to do this. The constant push to find my mate only frustrated me. My lycan acted like one of my annoying advisors or needy subjects, but I couldn’t shut myself away from something that could boil up inside me. I could see the redness of my skin creeping up my neck as I contemplated throwing my lycan into a mental cage just to make him stop. Unfortunately, most of the time, that didn’t work either.

The anger grew as I realized what my lycan had mentioned: the curse. That fucking curse.

Following my father’s sudden death and my subsequent ascension to the throne, I began casually dating to find a mate.Nothing ever serious, but at least a few months to find someone to choose as my luna, in case I never found my mate. Not everyone finds their fated mate in this world, and I refused to believe I would find mine. It was only a year or so ago that the other alphas in the neighboring kingdoms found their mates. Alaric’s mate, Tala, turned out to be a white lycan, bringing peace to their kingdom like nothing I had ever seen before. If only there were more females like her, then I would be on the hunt daily to find mine. But alas, there is only one white lycan. Even Talon found his mate, but that’s only recently been solidified. It took them a few years to find theirs, so I knew there wasn’t much of a chance I’d find mine within a short time frame.

So casual dating it became, and it led me to being cursed.

Witches weren’t common throughout the kingdoms, but they existed. There were far fewer witches than lycans, and sightings were rare. Some didn’t even believe they existed. Yet I found one at a tavern during one of my trips to visit a pack. That woman must have bewitched me because I couldn’t stop myself from taking her to my bed. I heard rumors that witches were wild in the bedroom, and those rumors were true. I spent two months with the witch before I realized it was nothing more than sex and that it distracted me from my pack duties. I called off the relationship.

She was a witch, not a lycan. I couldn’t mark her even if I wanted to.

And then the bitch turned around and cursed me in a language I didn’t understand. Whatever details there were about what she did to me were known only to her.

Since then, my hunt for a mate and my sex life had become painfully slow. Every female I met felt off-putting. Grating. Nothing about them made me want to bring them to my bed for some fun after realizing they weren’t my mate. It frustrated me to no end, with the witch’s laugh echoing in my mind each time I turned down a female.

I pulled out the hair product to slick back my dark blond hair when I caught the sound of approaching footsteps inside my room. The growl ripped through me, as everyone in the pack knew I preferred my privacy. The outline of my beta’s lean build came into view first before his citrusy scent hit my nose. I tapered down my growl and returned to looking in the mirror.

“What do you want, Eli?”

He chuckled. “Looks like not getting any lately has really messed with you. Maybe you should apologize to that sexy witch of yours so you can get laid.”

Another growl emitted from my throat as I sprayed the mousse into my hand and threaded my fingers through my hair. “Zephyrine is long gone. Not sure if that hag is even lurking around in our kingdom anymore. She knows I’ve sent scouts out to find her.”

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