Page 22 of Pregnant, Rejected and Exiled By the Lycan King (Forbidden Alpha Kings #45)

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Damon

The outback visitor center had all the charm of a prison medical ward.

Industrial disinfectant fought a losing battle against the underlying smell of human desperation, creating a cocktail that made my already rebellious stomach consider full revolt.

I stood behind one-way glass that probably hadn’t been cleaned since the facility opened, watching two people who used to matter in my world.

Magnus and Neva Thornback sat at a metal table that had seen better decades.

Three months in the outbacks had done what twenty years of pack politics couldn’t, broken them down to component parts.

Magnus’s hair had gone gray in patches, the kind of aging that happens all at once when stress finally wins.

His spokesperson badge was long gone, replaced by the universal uniform of the exiled: cheap cotton that bagged where muscle used to be.

Neva held herself differently now. The woman who’d once glided through galas with perfect posture had developed a defensive hunch, shoulders curved inward to protect vital organs.

Prey behavior. The outbacks taught that quickly or you didn’t survive to learn it slowly.

This might have been a prison, but they still had access to the outside.

Only those convicted of heinous crimes were completely cut off.

“They’ve been model exiles,” Carlton said beside me, scrolling through his tablet with the efficiency of someone who’d rather be anywhere else. “No contact attempts with their daughter that we’ve detected.”

The head of security had insisted on coming personally, probably to document my descent into whatever this was. Hunting the parents of the woman I’d exiled. Definitely not standard Lycan King behavior.

Carlton’s report continued with the bland thoroughness of someone covering his ass.

Food rations collected on schedule. Work assignments completed without complaint.

No altercations with other exiles. The Thornbacks had folded into their punishment with the quiet acceptance of people who’d run out of fight. Or people biding their time.

I knew which one my money was on. Omegas didn’t survive pack politics for two decades without learning patience that would make saints weep.

Magnus had built his career on waiting for the perfect moment, and his daughter had inherited that particular talent.

The question was whether he’d already used it to help her disappear.

Through the glass, I catalogued the damage three months had done.

Magnus’s hands shook with a tremor that spoke of malnutrition or stress or both.

Neva’s wedding ring hung loose on her finger, the gold band sliding toward her knuckle with every gesture.

They’d lost weight they couldn’t afford to lose, muscle mass replaced by the kind of lean that came from never quite having enough.

The observation room reeked of old coffee and older regrets.

Ren stood by the door, ostensibly checking his phone but really watching me for signs of total breakdown.

My beta had gotten good at reading the warning signals, the way my hands clenched before claws emerged, the particular stillness that preceded violence. Today I gave him plenty to worry about.

My wolf stirred restlessly, recognizing scents that belonged to our mate’s bloodline.

Even diluted by distance and time, the Thornback family markers were unmistakable.

They smelled of the lavender sachets Neva had always favored, of the pine ink Magnus preferred for official documents, and underneath it all, the ghost of Rhea herself. Pack, my wolf insisted. Protect.

But I’d already failed at protection, hadn’t I? Failed so spectacularly that the people who’d raised my mate now sat in exile because of crimes they hadn’t committed. The irony tasted worse than the bile that had become my constant companion.

“Ready?” Carlton asked, though we all knew the answer. Ready implied preparation, stability, some kind of plan beyond desperate fumbling for truth I’d ignored three months ago.

I pushed through the door anyway.

The temperature in the interrogation room dropped further when I entered, and not from the struggling HVAC system.

Both Thornbacks went rigid, that particular stillness prey animals adopted when predators appeared.

Magnus’s jaw worked silently before he forced words past what must have been significant pride.

“Lycan King.” Not ‘Your Majesty’ or any of the other honorifics he’d once used. Just the bare minimum acknowledgment of rank.

“Where is she?” No preamble seemed necessary. We all knew why I’d come to this bureaucratic hellhole.

“Dead, for all you care.” Magnus delivered the words with bitter precision, each syllable aimed to wound.

The response hit exactly where he’d intended. My wolf snarled at the suggestion, but what right did I have to deny it? I’d carved her from my life, sent her into exile, chosen my brother’s corpse over my mate’s pleas. If she was dead, the blood was on my hands.

Neva’s laugh cracked through the room, sharp enough to draw blood. “Now you ask? Three months after you threw her away? Did your bed finally get too cold, or did you just run out of other omegas to terrorize?”

The accusation shouldn’t have landed, I hadn’t touched another woman, let alone an omega since Rhea, couldn’t even imagine it, but the implication stung anyway. They thought I’d replaced their daughter already, moved on to a new plaything while she rotted in whatever hole exile had forced her into.

“I need to find her.” The words emerged without my permission, raw honesty where I’d planned cold interrogation.

“Need.” Neva tasted the word, rolling it around before spitting it back. “You needed to believe her that night. You needed to investigate before condemning. You needed to be her mate instead of her judge. Your needs come too late.”

Magnus leaned back in his chair, studying me with eyes that had watched years of political maneuvering.

Whatever he saw made his mouth twist with something between pity and contempt.

“You condemned her for a crime she didn’t commit.

We all know Laziel’s death wasn’t her doing.

But the great Alpha needed a scapegoat, and an omega in heat made a convenient one. ”

“That’s a serious accusation.” Carlton shifted behind me, hand moving to his weapon. Always ready to defend his king, even from grieving parents armed with nothing but words.

“Is it?” Neva’s eyes burned with maternal fury that three months of hardship hadn’t dimmed. “Tell me, Lycan King, did you even run basic forensics? Check the claw patterns against known samples? Or did you see what you wanted to see because the alternative was too hard to face?”

Each question landed with surgical precision. No, we hadn’t run detailed forensics. The scene had seemed obvious, the guilty party literally caught red-handed. Or so we’d assumed.

“Your security footage from that night. Someone deleted it.” I tried to regain control of the interrogation, though we all knew who really held power here. The person with nothing left to lose always did.

“Many things disappeared that night. Including justice.” Neva’s response came quickly and bitter.

Carlton pulled up files on his tablet, frowning at whatever he found. Or didn’t find. “The deletion was professional. Not just erased but overwritten multiple times. Whoever did it knew our system intimately.”

An inside job, then. Someone with security clearance and technical knowledge. The list of suspects narrowed considerably.

“Leave her be.” Magnus spoke quietly, but his words carried the weight of command that twenty years in politics had taught him. “Haven’t you taken enough? Her life, her future, her…”

Neva’s hand shot out, gripping his wrist in warning. But the damage was done. That unfinished sentence hung between us, pregnant with possibilities that made my chest tighten.

“Her what?” My voice came out rougher than intended.

They exchanged a look, twenty-five years of marriage compressed into a single glance. Whatever they decided, it wasn’t in my favor. Neva’s mouth pressed into a thin line while Magnus suddenly found the table’s scarred surface fascinating.

“Nothing that matters now.” Neva’s tone suggested the opposite. “She’s gone. Let her stay that way.”

But my wolf had caught something in their scents. Fear, yes, and anger. But underneath? Protective instincts cranked to maximum. They weren’t just hiding Rhea’s location. They were hiding something about Rhea herself.

The interrogation continued for another hour, but I’d already lost. They gave me nothing but contempt and carefully worded deflections.

Every question about their daughter met the same stone wall of parental protection.

Even threats, implied, never stated outright, bounced off their determination.

They’d already lost everything. What more could I take?

By the time we left, the sun had started its early descent toward the horizon.

The outback visitor center looked even more depressing in the fading light, all concrete and razor wire and broken dreams. I watched the building shrink in the rearview mirror and wondered if I’d just missed my only chance at answers.

Carlton drove while Ren typed notes on his phone, probably documenting my descent into obsession for future reference.

The silence in the SUV felt suffocating, full of questions nobody wanted to voice.

Like why the Lycan King was personally hunting his brother’s killer.

Like why that killer’s parents seemed more afraid for her than of me.

“Pull up everything from my brother’s death.” The words emerged without conscious decision. “Every file, every photo, every witness statement.”

“Sir…we have already done that…Ren asked…” Carlton started to protest, but I cut him off with a look that probably showed too much of the wolf.

“Everything. Again. And a thousand times over if I ask for it.”

Back at the compound, the security office had transformed into a war room. Screens covered every wall, displaying footage from the night that had destroyed everything. Carlton’s team worked with grim efficiency, pulling files that should have been sealed forever.

The security chief stood before a massive display showing the compound’s layout.

Red markers indicated camera positions, each one numbered and time-stamped.

“Every camera in the residential wing went dark between midnight and roughly until after we presented her at court. Professional work, because it was not just deleted but overwritten with blank feeds.”

Those timestamps made my blood freeze. The exact window my nightmares always took place in. The hours I supposedly spent sleeping off the exhaustion of claiming my mate, dead to the world while my brother died.

“How?” Ren studied the footage, his expression troubled. “Our security system has multiple redundancies. It would take someone with administrator access...”

My hands shook as I clicked through the files. Crime scene photos I’d avoided for three months now filled the screens. Laziel’s body from every angle, the wounds mapped and measured. The blood spatter patterns. The claw marks that had torn through flesh and bone with terrifying efficiency.

“The angle’s wrong.” The observation came from one of Carlton’s technicians, a young woman who probably wished she’d called in sick today. “These wounds... the attacker was taller than the victim. Ms. Thornback is five-four. Laziel was six-one.”

Physics. Simple, undeniable physics that we’d ignored in our rush to judgment. An omega Rhea’s size would have had to attack from below, leaving distinctly different wound patterns. Unless she’d been levitating, these strikes came from someone at least a few inches taller.

I gripped the desk hard enough to leave indentations in the wood, fighting the surge of nausea that accompanied realization.

Every piece of evidence that had seemed so damning three months ago now pointed in a different direction.

Toward someone with the height, the strength, the access, and the motive to kill a prince.

“I need air.” The words came out strangled.

I made it to my office before the change ripped through me. Clothes shredded as my body shifted, bones breaking and reforming in the space between heartbeats. The wolf emerged ragged and desperate, immediately howling for its lost mate.

Screw protocols. Screw dignity. I burst through the office doors and ran.

The compound’s grounds blurred past as I pushed my wolf body to its limits. Other pack members scattered from my path, recognizing an alpha on the edge of feral. My wolf didn’t care about their fear or respect. He wanted answers. He wanted her.

Her old room at the Thornback house had been sealed since that night, yellow tape crisscrossing the door. I shifted back to human form, not bothering with clothes as I tore through the barriers. The space still smelled of death and violence, but underneath...

Fresh scent. Recent. Maybe a week old at most.

I prowled the room on all fours, nose to the ground despite my human form. There, by the window. The scent was stronger here, mixed with something else. Desperation. And... tears? Someone had been here, someone who’d cried while looking out at grounds they could never properly return to.

My fingers found grooves in the windowsill. Claw marks, but not from that night. These were fresh, the wood still pale where it had been gouged. I compared them to my own hand, extended my claws to match. Too small to be mine. Too delicate to be Laziel’s.

The implications crashed over me in waves. If Rhea was innocent, and every instinct now screamed she was, then I’d destroyed us both for nothing. Worse than nothing. For a lie that had protected the real killer.

But who? Who had the access, the motive, the ability to stage such a perfect frame job?

I stared out the window Rhea had touched, trying to imagine what she had been thinking the night of the murder. She was out there somewhere, bearing scars I’d carved into her throat, living with the knowledge that her mate had chosen everyone else over her. If she was even still alive.

The Thornbacks’ careful deflection suggested she was, but strange territories didn’t forgive weakness. And a scarred omega without pack protection? That was the definition of vulnerable.

I shifted back to wolf form and ran deeper into the woods, following phantom scents and chasing shadows. Somewhere out there, Rhea was hiding. From me, from the pack, from the truth neither of us could escape. But I’d find her. I had to.