Page 18 of Pregnant, Rejected and Exiled By the Lycan King (Forbidden Alpha Kings #45)

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Damon

The conference room at Kildare Industries could’ve stored meat.

January had turned the city into a frozen wasteland, but somehow the conference room managed to be even colder.

I sat across from Carter Chen, pretending to give a damn about water rights while my body staged its daily revolt against existence.

Chen looked good. Healthy. Fed. Probably fucked on the regular. There was no hiding that he loved his mate, and I didn’t realize I had never noticed the shine in his eyes since being mated.

The bastard probably slept eight hours a night too. His suit fit properly instead of hanging off a frame that had given up on muscle mass. Everything I used to be before my wolf decided to throw the world’s longest temper tantrum over a rejected mate.

“The Thompson River access remains contested,” Chen slid a stack of documents across the mahogany table. The papers might as well have been written in ancient Greek for all I comprehended. “But that’s not really why I’m here.”

Of course it wasn’t. Nobody drove three hours to discuss water they’d been arguing about for decades. Beside me, Ren’s pen scratched against paper, taking notes I’d never read. My beta had gotten good at running meetings while I sat there impersonating furniture.

Chen’s dark eyes studied me with the kind of intensity that made my skin crawl. “I was there that night, at your ceremony. I saw Rhea Thornback. I have met her before, her father was a close ally of our family when we started to reform our omega factions.”

He waited for me to say something, but I didn’t. Her name punched through my chest cavity. My hands clenched under the table, claws sliding out just enough to pierce my palms. The pain helped. Physical damage I could handle. It was the other kind that was killing me.

“Damon, I saw her that night. In heat, before you went all alpha on me.” Chen’s voice dripped with sarcasm, but it was also laced with caution.

“I also knew your brother.” Chen continued, either missing or ignoring my reaction. “Laziel was strong, but he was also reckless. Always pushing boundaries.”

“Your point?” My voice came out level. Amazing what you could manage when your options were control or public breakdown.

He leaned forward, elbows on the table in a way that would’ve made my etiquette teachers faint. “My point is that an omega in heat couldn’t have overpowered him. Not without help. Or unless he wanted her to.”

The words hung there while my brain tried to process them through three months of sleepless nights and bond sickness.

Chen was suggesting... what? That Laziel had gone to Rhea’s room willingly?

That someone else had been involved? That the scenario I watched every night in my dreams wasn’t what actually happened?

“The evidence was clear. She was found with his body.” The party line tasted stale in my mouth, rehearsed and hollow.

“Evidence can be manufactured. Scenes can be staged.” Chen’s tone stayed conversational, but his eyes bored into mine. “In my territory, we’d investigate more thoroughly before condemning a mate.”

The criticism landed exactly where he’d aimed it. Right in the guilt that lived between my ribs. Ren shifted beside me, probably remembering his own questions that night. Questions I’d shut down because looking at my brother’s corpse had murdered any capacity for logic.

“Are you suggesting someone framed her?” The words emerged before I could stop them.

“I’m suggesting that grief makes terrible detectives.” Chen stood, straightening his jacket with the kind of precision that spoke of old money and older power. “And that living with those decisions seems to be killing you faster than any investigation would have.”

He paused at the door, one hand on the handle. “For what it’s worth, I’ve seen alphas in territorial rages. The damage patterns are distinctive. Your brother’s wounds...” He shook his head. “Think about it, Kildare. While you still can.”

After he left, I made it to my private bathroom before my legs gave out.

The shaking had gotten worse lately, these tremors that started in my core and radiated outward until standing became optional.

I stripped mechanically, dropping clothes wherever they fell.

The shower spray hit my skin at temperatures that should’ve hurt but barely registered.

Physical sensation had become muted, everything filtered through the static of a dying bond.

I braced one palm against the tile and tried not to think. But Chen’s words had cracked open a door I’d nailed shut three months ago. What if he was right? What if I had missed the truth that was staring right in front of me? What if…

No. I’d held Laziel’s body. Seen the claw marks. Scented Rhea all over the crime scene. The evidence had been overwhelming.

Except her scent would’ve been everywhere in her own room. And claw marks could come from any shifted wolf. And the investigation had been rushed because my mother had demanded immediate justice, and I’d been too destroyed to argue.

My traitorous mind conjured her face that night.

Not the mask of political calculation my mother had painted, but genuine shock.

Terror. The way she’d begged me to believe her, tears streaming down the same cheeks I’d kissed hours before.

The bond between us screaming her innocence while I carved it out of her neck.

My body responded to the memories without permission.

Three months of nothing, and suddenly I was seventeen again, hormones overriding higher brain function.

The shower water traced paths down my chest, and I remembered her hands following similar routes.

The way she’d touched me with curiosity and hunger, trusting me to guide her through her first heat.

She’d been virgin-tight and fever-hot, taking me with little cries that drove my wolf insane.

Every sound she made, every clench of her body, branded itself into my memory.

The way she’d submitted completely, then clawed my back in passion that left scars I still carried.

How she’d begged for more even when her body shook from overstimulation.

My hand moved with the vicious rhythm of a man possessed, rough and unforgiving, punishing the erection that throbbed angrily in my grip.

I tried to think of anything else, board meetings, spreadsheets, dry tax law, but the images of her flooded in, unrelenting.

Rhea, flushed and wrecked beneath me, her body slick and trembling, green eyes wide and trusting even as she shattered on my cock.

Those memories surged like gasoline through my veins, rushing blood to my dick until it pulsed painfully in my fist. I pictured the way she’d opened for me, tight and desperate, begging for more with every trembling breath.

My knuckles whitened with the force of each stroke.

I fucked into my own hand like it was punishment, like pain would erase the need clawing at my gut.

Skin slapping skin, the sharp drag of calloused fingers only feeding the spiral.

I tugged harder. Rougher. Each pull a reminder of what I no longer had.

I wrapped my fingers tighter, digging nails into the base, veins standing out along the shaft as I worked myself like a man trying to scrape out sin.

I thumbed over the leaking head, smearing precum down the underside until it made the glide sickeningly slick, obscene.

My hips bucked into my own hand, desperate for friction and mercy, finding neither.

I changed angles, twisted my wrist at the top of each stroke just to drag the edge closer with more brutality.

The noise of it, wet and furious, echoed off the tile.

I bit down on my own lip, hard enough to taste blood, trying to channel the pain somewhere, anywhere but the throbbing between my legs.

I pumped faster, punishing myself for remembering, for wanting, for needing her like this.

The stretch of her inner walls around me, the desperate arch of her body, her voice cracking on my name, it all lit up behind my eyes, each flash of memory another nail driven into my restraint.

My breath hitched. My balls drew tight. I wasn’t just chasing orgasm; I was barreling toward it, wrecking myself on the memory of her.

The ache built, coiled low and cruel. And still I kept going, chasing the edge like it might bring absolution.

My hand slid slick over my length, stroking, jerking, twisting until my thighs tensed and my vision blurred.

The burn of friction was exquisite, raw and red and real.

I grunted through gritted teeth, eyes squeezed shut, as if shutting out the sight of my hand might make it less pathetic.

“Rhea... fuck...” Her name ripped from my throat, hoarse and broken, as I came with a violence that left me shaking.

One hand kept jerking my cock through every agonized pulse, while the other cupped and reached for my balls, squeezing with brutal force.

I needed the pain, needed the reminder that I was still flesh and not just hunger.

I rolled them roughly in my palm, fingers clamping and twisting like I could crush the ache out of me.

Hot ribbons of cum streaked the tile, rope after rope, evidence of the shame I couldn’t bury, the desire I couldn’t kill.

My arm trembled, my legs buckled, and still my cock twitched in my grip, throbbing with brutal satisfaction.

I stood there, breathing like I’d run a warpath, hand still slick and twitching, my soul no closer to peace.

I stood there afterwards, water streaming over me, self-disgust so acute it nearly doubled me over. I was jerking off to my brother’s killer. Getting off on memories of the woman who’d destroyed my family. What kind of brother did that? What kind of man?

The shower couldn’t wash away that particular shame, but I tried anyway, staying under the spray until the water ran cold and my skin pruned.

Sleep came eventually because even insomnia had limits. But rest? That was for people whose subconscious didn’t moonlight as a torture chamber.

The nightmare started differently this time.

Instead of watching through Rhea’s eyes, I inhabited my own body.

I stood in her childhood bedroom, taking in the feminine touches that spoke of a life before me.

Stuffed animals on a shelf. Books organized by color rather than subject.

The kind of details that built a person, layer by careful layer.

Laziel stood by her bathroom door, his hand on the knob. My brother, the man I had seen grow up from a baby.

But in the dream, all I saw was the threat.

“What are you doing here?” My voice came out wrong. Distorted. More growl than words.

He turned, surprise flickering across features I’d known since birth. “Damon? I was just checking on her. She seemed upset earlier…”

“She’s MINE.”

The shift happened without transition. One second I stood on human legs, the next I was airborne, claws extended. Laziel’s eyes widened with the kind of shock that came from betrayal by someone you trusted absolutely.

“Brother? What are you doing?”

But I was beyond words. Beyond reason. He’d touched what was mine. Been in her space. Breathed her air. My wolf didn’t understand family or loyalty or anything beyond the mate bond screaming for protection. For elimination of threats.

My claws found his throat with the precision of an apex predator.

Blood painted the white walls in arterial sprays.

Laziel tried to speak, tried to plead, but I’d destroyed his voice box in the first strike.

He reached for me, not to fight but to understand.

Baby brother to the end, looking for the why behind the violence.

I gave him none. Just rage and claws and the systematic destruction of anything that might threaten my mate. When he stopped moving, stopped breathing, stopped existing, I stood over his corpse and felt nothing but satisfaction.

Mine. Safe. Protected.

I woke up gasping in sheets soaked with sweat. My hands shook as I checked them for blood that wasn’t there. Couldn’t be there. Because I’d been at the estate that night. I had been asleep in my bed when Laziel died.

The dream memories felt too real, too detailed. The way the blood had been warm on my claws. The satisfied rumble in my chest as I’d marked territory with violence.

I stumbled to the bathroom and emptied my stomach until nothing remained but bile and questions. What if the reason I couldn’t find Rhea’s guilt convincing wasn’t because of the mate bond? What if it was because some part of me knew the truth?

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. A text from my mother: Have you made a decision about finding her?

I stared at the words until they blurred. Finding Rhea was not a question anymore. I was going to hunt down my mate, but not to finish what I had started. But to demand answers, actual answers.

Because if Chen was right, then there was more to my brother’s death than any of us knew. Except for maybe my mate.

I typed back: Yes.

My mother’s response came immediately: Good. I’ve already dispatched scouts to likely territories. The omega can’t hide forever.

I set the phone down with numb fingers. She thought I meant to kill Rhea. To finish the job of destroying my mate for a crime she might not have committed.

The tremors started again as I reached for my phone to call Ren. My beta answered on the second ring, because of course he did. The man hadn’t slept properly since taking on the job of managing a slowly dying Lycan King.

“I need everything from that night,” I said without preamble. “Every report, every photo, every witness statement. And I need it quietly.”

“Damon.”

“Just do it.” I ended the call before he could voice the questions I heard in his tone. Questions about why I wanted to revisit a closed case. About what had changed.

Everything had changed. If those dreams were memories or distortions, if another wolf had killed my brother, then I’d condemned my mate for someone else’s crime. I’d carved her out of my life, sent her into exile, nearly killed us both with the severed bond, all because I couldn’t face the truth.

I knew the dream was only a variation of the doubts Chen had put in my head.

His accusation had been clear. It could not have been Rhea.

Even in heat, she was not stronger than Laziel and he had felt it when he held her that night.

Which only meant it was another wolf, probably an alpha like myself.

The possibility should have destroyed me. But it didn’t. Not this time. For the first time in three months, I felt the faintest flutter of hope. Because if Rhea was innocent, then the bond’s screaming agony made sense. If she was innocent, then maybe, somehow, I could find a way to fix this.

First, I had to find her. And then I had to find the courage to apologize and only hope to the moon Gods that she forgave me.