Rejected in Labor: The Lycan King's Stolen Daughter novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Alpha at the Gate

Dalton had been standing at the Highcrown gate since sunrise.

A guard told me at breakfast, with the twins asleep beside me and my body aching in every place a body can ache.

"He won't leave," the guard said. "We told him the king's orders. He says he'll stand there until you tell him to go."

"Is it snowing?" I asked.

"Yes, Miss."

I let that sit for one cup of tea, which was only tea, from a kettle the healer had filled in front of me.

Then I put on a coat and went down.

The king offered to come.

I told him no.

Torren walked me to the gate and stopped fifty feet back, where he could see everything and hear nothing.

Dalton stood outside the iron bars with snow on his hair and his shoulders.

His eyes were red, and there was a split in his lip.

When he saw me he started forward, and the guard put a hand across his chest.

"Let him through," I said.

The guard opened the small side gate.

Dalton came in and stopped three feet from me.

He didn't touch me.

I noticed that.

"I get one conversation," I said. "Out here, in the garden, where my brother can watch. You don't touch me, and you don't touch my children unless I say so. If you break any of that, you don't come back."

"Agreed," he said hoarsely.

"You may come to this gate once a day. If I'm not here, you leave. Those are my terms."

"Anything," he said.

I walked into the winter garden, and he followed.

It was a square of dead hedges and frozen paths, with a stone bench in the middle under a layer of ice.

I stopped beside it and turned around.

"You asked me why I didn't tell you about the man at the border," I said. "I did tell you. Do you remember what you said?"

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