Page 42

Kylie

This couldn’t be happening. Just when I thought I could leave my old life behind, he walked back through the door.

I was ready to raise the baby on my own, but seeing Maximus’s handsome face again threw me off my game.

The pulling in my chest returned with full force, my soul crying out for the bond to be completed again.

The yearning to feel his touch, his kiss, his everything made it that much harder to tell him to walk away.

I ran from him, and he was still telling me he loved me.

Was this all a trick just to bring me back to the pack so he could have an heir to the throne?

That had to be it since he didn’t seem to love me when I was too weak to walk around without his touch.

I felt whole when we were together, but he devastated me with his rejection.

He only loved me for the power I could bring him as a bonded mate.

Yeah. I’m not falling for that again.

It would be difficult, but I needed to keep him at arm’s length. I couldn’t get pulled back into the mess of loving someone who couldn’t love me in return unless I could give him something he wanted.

He is our mate. Max can keep us and our young safe.

No. He only wants us for what we can provide him.

He came back for us.

I highly doubted he came for us because he couldn’t live without us. That didn’t seem to be in Maximus’s repertoire. The man was angry and disappointed that he had a mate whose lycan was weak. It didn’t matter the designation; what mattered was strength.

“I… don’t—”

The door opened, and my nurse came in, holding my reason to breathe in her arms. “He woke up hungry. Are you ready to feed again?”

I nodded and held out my arms to take him.

The nurse smiled at us but seemed to glare at Maximus.

For once, it made me smile to see someone dislike him.

I wasn’t even sure what had transpired for the nurse not to like Maximus, but it brought me far too much delight to see that not every woman fell into the trap of being enamored with him.

When the nurse left, I positioned myself to feed him and stared at this child’s perfect face. It killed me to see how much my child looked like Maximus. No matter where I went, someone would recognize him because of it.

“Have you named him yet?” Maximus asked.

I looked up to see him leaning against the wall across from my bed.

He was keeping his distance but chose the closest spot in the room to me.

His blue eyes were glued to where his son lay on me, and I could see in his expression how badly he wanted to hold him.

Males of our kind loved babies. It was rare to find one who didn’t love them or want to hold them, even if they weren’t theirs.

Pups were cherished as much as females, and it seemed Maximus was no different.

This was going to be hard if I tried to push Maximus away while he looked at us like that.

The yearning I felt was reflected in his eyes.

I didn’t want to care how he felt right now.

I didn’t want to be someone who easily forgave my heart for getting broken, but that face… how could I walk away from that face?

“No, I haven’t named him yet.”

He nodded and crossed his arms over his chest. Maximus didn’t make a move to come closer but continued to watch as his son nursed.

Names hadn’t been on my mind at all since his birth.

I just wanted to survive long enough to be part of his life.

Without much thought, I realized there weren’t any names I wanted for my son.

It’s not like I would choose to name him after my father.

No, that man could rot in hell and didn’t deserve to have a child named after him.

Part of me wondered if he hated me because I wasn’t a boy, though.

Alexander seemed to be someone who always wanted a son and resented that my mother never gave him one.

“I don’t know many male names that I would want to pass down from my family. I’ve only known my father, but I would rather die than name a child after him.”

Maximus nodded. “Fair enough.”

It shocked me that he didn’t throw out names once I said that. Maximus seemed like the type who would want a junior, and I fully expected him to say he would like to name the baby after himself. But no. He didn’t make a move to say anything. He just continued to watch me.

I guess I had to ask if he had any names in mind.

“Is there a name you would like to use?”

A part of me wanted to suggest Nathaniel’s name, but I could tell Maximus was still on edge.

It only took me a moment to sense the tension radiating off him—his muscles were tight.

And his jaw was clenched. Maybe he had walked off some of his anger, but it hadn’t completely left his system.

He was trying like hell to keep it contained.

Suggesting we name his son after a male he had never met—the same I had been living with since I ran away—wouldn’t help.

It might be the one thing that pushed him over the edge.

He shook his head. “The only name I wouldn’t mind is my father’s. He was a good man and king. Not a bad one to go with, if you ask me.”

I remembered hearing about the previous king growing up. I never got the chance to meet him. He usually sent Maximus to handle matters on his behalf, which was why Amara and I had only ever seen Maximus and Eli.

But Maximus was right. King Titan was a good man and king. We could name the baby after him.

“Sounds like one to consider.”

Why was it so difficult for us to even talk right now?

I told him to come back when he wanted to talk like adults, but now everything felt strained.

My lycan paced inside me, urging me to complete the bond with my mate so everything would go back to the way it was.

I didn’t agree with that, and it was harder to lock her in a cage or push her down now that she was roaming completely free.

Establishing the connection between us had made things better, but also harder.

Especially with Maximus in the room.

The cloud of his minty scent made me want to crawl out of this bed and into his arms. The way it settled my nerves and made everything feel like it could fall into place made my head spin.

No. I need to fight this. Forgiving him this easily would show him he could treat me like shit and get away with it. I’m tired of people treating me like I can be tossed aside and just saying sorry will make it all better!

“Kylie, I know you may not want to talk about this, but I need to know something.”

I looked at him with my eyebrow cocked. The desperation in his voice made my heart race. The way his eyes softened when he looked at me made my breath come in ragged gasps.

“What?” My voice shook as I spoke.

His pupils dilated upon hearing my voice like that, and I knew his alpha need to protect those who seemed scared was kicking in. If I didn’t want this conversation to go poorly, I needed to rein this in now.

“Even if you don’t want to work on things between us, I want to be part of his life. You may hate me right now, but he was created out of our love when we were together. He deserves to know where he comes from, and I am as much a part of him as you are.”

Did he think I would keep his pup from him?

Granted, that crossed my mind, but now that Maximus knew about his existence, I realized there wasn’t anywhere on this planet I could run without him finding me.

I carried his future in my arms, and I needed to accept that Maximus would have to be part of my son’s life.

But I couldn’t let him walk in here and demand to be part of his life.

I needed to start standing up for myself, and it began here.

No more allowing someone to dictate how my life would be.

I needed to take charge and show my son what it looked like to have a good man in his life.

If Maximus wanted to be part of his life, then he needed to make up for what he had done.

“You need to show me that you understand how a good mate should be. You now have a son. If you want him to grow up and recognize who the Moon Goddess chose for him to be his mate, and that he was raised right, then you need to fix everything you have broken first. Starting with me.”

The swelling of his power increased, and Maximus’s eyes flickered with the glow of his lycan.

I swallowed hard as I waited for his response.

The feeling that this conversation was going south had my heart racing again, and a layer of sweat broke out across my skin.

Waiting for him to tell me how he felt about my demand was going to send the nurse in here from my blood pressure rising.

“What can I do to show you that?”

There was a twinkle in his eyes, and that was when I noticed they were welling with tears.

What I had said upset him? That was not at all what I expected to happen.

Maximus didn’t seem like the type to be overwhelmed with emotions enough to cry.

He might have been a good king like his father, but I didn’t think he felt anything other than anger and disappointment.

How could he show me what being a good mate was supposed to look like? He was the only mate I’d ever had, and the experience was great—until it wasn’t. My mother was gone, and after she died, I never saw a good relationship from my father either.

Still, there were things I knew I wanted to see from him—the same things I had hoped for when we were first mated. But did he even know what he had done wrong enough to fix it?

“What do you think you need to do?” I asked him.

If he didn’t know what went wrong, then this wasn’t going to go well.

“Are you asking me if I know how to be a good mate?” He looked at me with confusion, and I just wanted to slap him.

“Yes.”

“Wow,” he said as he moved over to a chair in the corner and sat down. I could see his knuckles turning white as he gripped the arms of the chair, and I waited for him to explode again. “I guess I have more work to do than I thought. When we were mates, I was good to you.”

“You were until you noticed I wasn’t getting better.”

He growled, but I couldn’t tell if it was anger at me or himself. “I thought it would be a simple fix with your lycan by bonding us. If being bonded helped a male become stronger, it made sense to me that it would make you stronger, too.”

“Then you got mad when it didn’t work.”

His jaw clenched, and he bowed his head for a moment before looking back up at me. “Yes. I got mad when I couldn’t figure out how to make you better. I didn’t want to look weak to our kingdom. No one ever questioned my father, but I could see them questioning me.”

“Because you had a mate who wasn’t able to connect with her lycan the way she should?”

Maximus narrowed his eyes on me. “It’s different for me. As a king, I need to show my people they are in good hands. I let that dictate far too much, and I lost the love of my life because of it.”

Well, I didn’t expect that. A tear rolled down my cheek at his admission.

“You’re just saying that.”

“No, I’m not. I fucked up, Ky. I didn’t mean for my ego to get the better of me.

I thought it would make me look too weak to have you as a mate when your lycan wasn’t fully connected.

Even if you weren’t my mate, I would have done the same things when I first met you.

There has always been something about you.

How resilient you are, how beautiful… Everything about you is perfection.

” He paused and leaned his head back to take a deep breath.

“Even now, I can feel your lycan at the surface. That wasn’t something I felt before.

When I came back here, it wasn’t because of your lycan finally connecting to you. It was because I fucking missed you.”

My pup wiggled in my arms and stopped nursing.

I looked down to see his mouth slightly open, his eyes still closed.

I focused on him as I tried to stop the tears from coming.

Maximus had never said anything like that to me before.

Part of me wondered if he had heard about my lycan along with the pup and that’s why he was here.

Wait, did he know about me being pregnant?

“Only because you missed me?” I whispered.

He scoffed. “Yes. I didn’t know anything about what you’ve gone through before I came here. I received information about you still getting sick, but it was only after I learned your location that I finally came. I’ve been looking for you since you left.”

The wood of the chair groaned, and I looked to see him gripping it so tightly it was about to snap.

“I can’t stand sitting here and seeing you upset. Can I please hold you?”

I shook my head. “No. That’ll be too much, too fast. No.”

“It’s killing me to see you hurting right now.”

“Too bad.”

“I meant what I said. The only thing that brought me here was realizing my mistake and needing you in my life. If I need to show you that I can be a good mate for you to come back to me, then that’s what I will do.

I promise you won’t regret it.” He stood up and gripped the bar at the bottom of the bed.

I could tell he needed to be closer to me to calm himself, but I needed to make sure he didn’t touch me.

“You two are the most important people in my life. Fuck the rest of the world.”

“Those are just words to me now.”

“I know. It won’t stop me from trying to prove to you that I mean them, though.” He sighed. “I’d burn the world down for you, Kylie. Him, too. Nothing and no one means more to me.”

“Then show it.”

“I will. You will see what your absence has done to me. It wasn’t pretty, but I’m willing to do what it takes to fix it if you are.”

He turned toward the door and left. I didn’t know what to say or do. My soul felt like it was trying to erupt from my chest to beg him to stay, my lycan howling at the loss of his presence in the room.

I didn’t want him to walk away.

But he just left everything in my court.

And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.