Page 71 of Rejected and Pregnant by the Lycan King

Zephyrine must have spelled her way into the clinic to talk to me. I wasn’t sure why she didn’t just teleport herself into the room since she didn’t leave a trace when she came in. It musthave been her way of flaunting her power to make me even more terrified of her. She didn’t need to. I was plenty afraid of her and what her curse had done to my son.

Those thoughts sent my heart rate through the roof again, and I was given a sedative. While it worked its magic, I settled down into the bed and tried to think of how I could ask Maximus about this. It felt way too fucked up to even be true, but I knew it had to be. Zephyrine didn’t lie to me. I would have smelled it.

The curse must have fused into our child, and that’s what she meant about him being doomed. How could I stop something from taking his life if I didn’t even know what could cause it? I couldn’t fight an invisible force. It would be worse if it was Zephyrine we had to face to keep our son from being taken because of this curse.

One thing I knew for certain… I needed to talk with Maximus to find out everything he knew about this.

***

Several hours passed, and the sedative caused me to take one hell of a nap. When I woke, the nurse had come in to test my vitals, and my blood pressure had returned to normal. I still needed to stay for observation, but now they felt comfortable bringing in my son for me to nurse.

Coming up with a name for this boy had become the bane of my existence. How hard could it be to come up with a boy’s name? There were a bunch of names from my old pack and new ones that I ran through my mind, but when I looked down at my little boy, none of them felt perfect enough to give him that name.

There was Maximus. If he wanted a junior, I could allow for that. With the secret of the curse placed on him, I couldn’t fault him entirely for what happened between us. He could have forgotten about the curse, and that’s why he didn’t tell me about it. If that was the case, we really did need to talk things through.

But if he kept that from me, wereallyneeded to have a conversation.

The baby stirred, and the whimpers he made just before he cried from hunger rang in my ear. I adjusted myself to give him my breast, and he greedily took my nipple into his mouth and began to suck. It still felt a little uncomfortable during this process, but I could block it out while I tried to mull over baby names.

A knock at the door made my heart jump. I hoped it was Charlotte and Nathaniel visiting again, but when Maximus poked his head into the room, I rolled my eyes. Even though I knew we needed to talk about things, I didn’t want to do it while I was breastfeeding. Again. It was as if breastfeeding set off an alarm in Maximus’s head and brought him here. Not that I was uncomfortable with my breast being out; it was more about how I felt too vulnerable in this state.

It also meant I couldn’t yell at him.

Maybe this was the Moon Goddess’s way of forcing us to talk about things. If that was the case, I planned on yelling at the full moon when I could.

Maximus was carrying a bouquet of sunflowers, which were my favorite, in his hands. They were already in a vase, and he set them down on my bedside table and looked at me. “Do you mind if I sit?”

I shook my head since I didn’t trust myself to talk right now. It would likely lead to me screaming. There were too many thoughts rolling through my head and too many things I wanted to say. Calm was not at all how I felt right now, even though I hoped it would be when I saw him. How the hell was I supposed to talk to this man knowing he kept something from meandbroke my heart?

Maximus didn’t look okay, either. His blond hair looked like he had showered but still appeared disheveled. Those blue eyes I used to love to stare into kept flashing with the glow of his lycan, and I could feel his power rolling off him. I normally didn’t feel it—our bond used to make it feel like a gentle current across my skin before—but now it hit me like crashing ocean waves. He was struggling to keep his lycan in check, and I knew if I didn’t tread carefully, he could lose control.

“We need to talk, Kylie, like two adults.”

“I will try my best as long as you do,” I snapped, feeling the anger already bubbling inside me.

“Don’t test me, Kylie. I want to make things right with you, but I’m struggling to contain my lycan from biting you, throwing you over my shoulder, and dragging you home right now.” There was an edge to his tone that I didn’t like. He wasn’t kidding about the struggle, but I didn’t plan on going back to the kingdom with a mate who hadn’t convinced me he made a mistake.

“I’m not trying to test you, Max. I’m trying to make you understand that it won’t be a simple apology and then everything will blow over.”

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. That must be what he was doing before he came here because his hair looked worse after that.

“I’ve tried to explain before—”

“No. I don’t want an explanation. I want an apology. A real apology. It means you take accountability for what you have done to me and accept that it has caused the issues we have now.”

A faint growl emitted from his throat, and I thought this would lead to a full-blown argument. No one here was powerful enough to keep his lycan in check. I did have to tread carefully, but I didn’t want him thinking this conversation would be easy. There was a lot we needed to work through before this would pass.

“I want you to know that I do take accountability for what happened between us. There were a lot of things I was battling against after I brought you home from your pack. There was something inside me that said the wrong things, and I believed it.”

“You mean the curse that you never bothered to tell me about?”

His eyes glowed again, and he gripped the chair until his knuckles were white. I shouldn’t have dropped that into the conversation that way, but I honestly wanted to know if he purposely left out that he had been with a witch before me and that she had put a curse on him.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

He lied. He knew what I was talking about, and that’s why his lycan was fighting for control. The lycan wouldn’t want to lie about anything to me because they didn’t understand what lies even were. They were too literal and would just want to do whatever it took to make things better between us. They wanted their mate. Lying to me would cause me to run again.

“I think you do know what I am talking about, Maximus. Why would you lie about this?”

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