I Accepted My Alpha’s Rejection While Carrying His Pup Chapter 09

I Accepted My Alpha’s Rejection While Carrying His Pup Chapter 09

Three days later, Caspian showed up at closing time.

Not for coffee. Not for shelves. He just stood at the counter watching me wipe down tables.

“Have dinner with me.”

Not a question. Not an order. Something in between.

“Why?”

“Because you’ve eaten pie for dinner four nights in a row. My guards report to me. I have nutritional

concerns.”

“Your guards are watching what I eat?”

“Monitoring. There’s a difference.”

“There is absolutely not.”

“Dinner. My house. Eight o’clock. I’ll cook something with actual vegetables in it.”

He left before I could say no.

At seven forty-five, I was trying on my second dress.

Grandma leaned in the doorway. “The green one.”

“I’m not trying to impress anybody.”

“Baby, you’ve changed twice. You’re impressing somebody.”

I wore the green one.

I expected a castle. Stone walls, iron gates, guards with swords. The home of a man who ruled every wolf

in the northern territories.

Instead, his house was a big log lodge on a hill in the woods. Warm wood floors. A crackling fireplace. And books. Everywhere. On shelves, on chairs, stacked on the kitchen counter.

“You read” I said.

“Constantly.”

“I didn’t picture that.”

“What did you picture?”

“Someone who rips out throats for fun.”

“I delegate that.” A pause. “Mostly.”

Dinner was simple. Homemade pasta, roasted vegetables, fresh bread. He’d made all of it himself.

“My mother taught me,” he said. “She believed a king who couldn’t feed himself had no business feeding a kingdom.”

“I like your mother.”

“She would have liked you.”

Would have. Past tense. I didn’t ask.

Halfway through dinner, I told him about Lydia’s call. Victor Crane. The rogues. My parents.

He didn’t interrupt. But the wine glass in his hand cracked straight down the middle.

“Sorry,” he said calmly, setting it down. “Go on.”

When I finished, he was quiet for a long moment.

“Victor Crane will not touch you,” he said. “Or her, That’s not a promise, Ivy. It’s a fact.”

Then, like a switch flipped, he asked me what my favorite book was.

We talked for two more hours. Books. Music. The absurd politics of a small town.

“The mayor tried to ban Grandma’s pie from the fall festival,” I told him. “Called it an unfair advantage.”

“Was it?”

“Absolutely. She added extra butter out of spite.

He almost laughed. I saw it-his chest moving, his eyes crinkling-before he caught himself.

“What would you do,” I asked, “if you weren’t a king?”

He thought about it like nobody had ever asked him before.

“Teach history. At some tiny college nobody’s heard of.”

“That’s the most boring answer a Lycan King has ever given.

“Boring is underrated.”

Then he looked at me. Really looked.

And the air between us changed.

Not slowly. Instantly. Like a key turning in a lock I didn’t know I had.

My heart slammed. My skin went hot. Nova howled so loud inside my head I almost covered my ears.

And from the way his gold eyes flared-pupils blown wide, breath catching, knuckles white against the

table-

He felt it too.

I stood up. “I should go.”

He walked me to the door. Opened it. But as I passed him, he spoke, barely above a whisper.

“I knew in the forest.”

I stopped.

“The night Blackridge dragged you into the snow. I smelled you on the wind from two miles away, and my wolf stopped pacing for the first time in thirty-four years.” He swallowed. “You’re my second-chance mate Ivy. The Moon Goddess doesn’t give many of those.”

“Caspian-”

“I won’t mark you. I won’t claim you. I won’t send men or lawyers or crowns. But you need to know that Whatever this is, it’s real. And I’ll wait.”

“For how long?”

“However long it takes.”

I drove home with tears running down my face

Not from sadness.

From the terrifying realization that someone could want me-without trying to own me.