After My Mate Rejected Me, the Lycan Claimed Me

I had rehearsed what I would say a hundred times on the walk over.

My name is Alexis Watson. I am the fated mate of Alpha Bowen Adams. My mother is dying, and I am asking—not for myself, but for her. For the woman who has healed this pack's wounded for twenty years. Please.

I knocked twice, then pushed the office door open without waiting for an answer. I didn't have time to wait.

Bowen was behind his desk, and Harmony was perched on the edge of it like she belonged there. Like she had always belonged there. She looked up when I entered, and something moved across her face—not surprise. Satisfaction.

'Alexis.' Bowen's voice was flat. 'I don't recall scheduling anything with you.'

'You didn't.' I kept my eyes on him and not on her. 'My mother's condition has worsened overnight. The pack healer says she needs the emergency medical reserves—the ones in the eastern storage. I'm asking you to release them.'

A pause. Harmony leaned close to Bowen and murmured something I wasn't meant to hear, but I did. Wolfless gold-digger. Probably faking it for sympathy.

Bowen's expression didn't change. That was almost the worst part—how unchanged he was.

'The pack's emergency resources,' he said, 'exist for pack members who contribute to this pack's strength.' His Alpha tone settled over the room like a physical weight, pressing down on my shoulders, my chest, the back of my knees. 'Your mother's situation does not meet that threshold. I won't authorize the release.'

I heard the words. I understood them. But some part of me kept waiting for the rest of the sentence—the part where he reconsidered, where twenty years of her service to this pack meant something, where being his fated mate meant I was allowed to ask for one thing.

That part never came.

'She has healed every warrior in this pack,' I said. My voice was steady. I had learned, a long time ago, that losing my composure only gave him more reason to dismiss me. 'She has healed your Beta. Your Gamma. She sat with your father when he was dying and held his hand through the night. She—'

'Alexis.' The Alpha tone again, harder this time. Final. 'We're done here.'

I walked back to the healer quarters with empty hands.

The hallway smelled like antiseptic and dried herbs, the same smell it had always had, the smell I associated with safety when I was small. My mother's hands. Her voice telling me to breathe. I pushed open the door to her room and she was still there, still breathing, but the breathing had changed—shallow and uneven, with long pauses between that made my own lungs seize.

I sat beside her and took her hand.

I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the light through the window to shift from afternoon gold to the flat gray of early evening. She didn't speak again after I arrived. I think some part of her