Page 54 of Rejected and Pregnant by the Lycan King

He sighed. “Everything.”

This intrigued me. Even my beast wanted to hear what he had to say about this. I walked over to my chair and plopped down into it. It was hard for me to sit for long periods anymore. Sleeping had been difficult for me, too, as I didn’t want to give my lycan the power to shift without me having a grip on him. But if Eli had information I hadn’t considered, I wanted to hear it.

“We didn’t grow up in the conditions Kylie did. At any given moment, she could anger her father and then be physically and mentally beaten into submission.”

The snarl ripped through my throat at being reminded of what she had endured. Eli let out a small growl as well. He liked Kylie, and his mate adored her. He hated the idea of her being abused as much as I did.

“She’s had to retreat so far into her mind to escape the pain he caused her,” Eli continued. “Think about what that does to you. How you would have to retreat into your mind to escape the reality of your life.”

I didn’t want to think about it. My parents would never have done such a thing to me. They treated pups like most lycans did—with care, love, and unwavering priority. Pups were the future of the pack, and they were always protected. Females, too, were valued and treated with respect. But some lycans—those with something twisted in their brains—did horrible things, things that went against everything we were taught. That was another reason I didn’t let Alexander live that day I had visited the pack.

“It messes with people’s psyches.” He pulled something up on the browser and turned the screen toward me. “It damages people to the point of not knowing how to connect with others. They don’t have the self-worth to feel like they could bond with someone.”

The article he found stated those very things. Constant abuse caused damage to so many aspects of a person that they had trouble forming social connections. What was bonding with a lycan other than a social connection? It was a deeper-rooted connection that lived inside of us.

“I think the fact that she can’t connect with her lycan the way she should is causing her body to reject everything our lycan provides us. The blurred lines of our kind regarding these matters mean she may not survive much longer without that connection. She felt stronger with you because it helped her connect with the things she was denied her entire life: a pack, people to count on, and support to get her through life. She only had Amara in her pack. One person isn’t enough when the restof the people who are supposed to love and care for you are all telling you how you aren’t good enough.”

My hand slammed on the desk, my claws lengthening into the wood from the thoughts of what Kylie went through. I never considered this in the way Eli just explained.

“So what you’re trying to tell me”—I struggled to hold in the anger boiling within me—“is that my mate could die because I was too stupid to understand she needed someone to help her through the hell she endured before I found her?”

Eli frowned. I could see he didn’t want to answer that question, but he never let me down. Eli called me out on my shit a million times throughout our lives.

“Yeah. I told you not to do this.”

I surged to my feet and walked toward the door. “Stupid” didn’t even cover what I felt for rejecting Kylie. I didn’t even know if there was a word for that level of stupidity.

“Where are you going?” Eli asked.

“To bring my fucking mate home.”

26

Kylie

Feeling my lycan beneath the surface at any given time of day had become my new favorite experience, second only to feeling my pup hiccuping inside my stomach. A weight I had been carrying for over a year had been lifted, knowing I could feel my lycan as if she were an extension of me. Charlotte and Nathaniel had encouraged me to shift into my furry form every day since I connected with her. They wanted me to become comfortable with accessing her power to shift when I needed her. It took some getting used to, but with practice, I could shift as quickly as others.

It was a relief.

Since that day, the pregnancy had gone smoother, with my connection to my lycan helping to alleviate the side effects. It wasn’t as though they had disappeared completely. There were still days when I couldn’t last an entire day without needing along break. It remained a hit or miss whether I could muster the energy to clean throughout the cabin. No one had an answer as to why it wasn’t normal yet. I should be able to function without assistance because my lycan was integrated into every part of me. We should be one with each other, allowing me to use all of her abilities. Her strength still wasn’t there one hundred percent of the time like it was for everyone else.

It sucked, but at least I had days when I could get through the whole day without collapsing or throwing up.

“When is your due date?” Nathaniel asked as I lay out on the couch.

It was a day when the energy was low, but at least I didn’t feel the need to hurl the entire contents of my stomach. I had been told to take it easy since we were nearing the end of the pregnancy.

“I don’t know. We never could get a grasp on when it would be.”

Sometimes, because of the power we carried, certain things didn’t work on us. Lycans couldn’t rely on technology to tell us much about the pregnancy. That made things especially frustrating for someone like me—someone who needed answers. My anxiety about the pregnancy hadn’t gone away, and without a strong enough connection to my lycan to help prevent complications, I still couldn’t feel excited about the delivery.

Yet I didn’t know if I wanted this to end just yet, either.

Like most females, even though the pregnancy had been miserable—enough to make me wish I wasn’t pregnant at times—the thought of it coming to an end made me feel a bit sad.Soon, I wouldn’t feel the baby moving inside me anymore. Instead, I’d be holding them in my arms.

“When was your last fertile period?”

I bit my lip. So much had happened since then. I wasn’t sure when that was, given everything I went through to get to this point.

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