The next morning, the Lycan deemed Vivian well enough to spend her time outside. He reckoned she must have felt too suffocated and restricted within the room amongst the furs, so it would do her well to escape those confines and stroll outside to enjoy the air.
Naturally, Vivian was quick to agree.
"Why did you call yourself barren before?" Ronan asked, walking in slow steps slightly behind Vivian through the forest, his hand ready at his side to support her if she stumbled over from weakness.
Vivian seemed to be comfortable amongst the trees, reconnecting with her natural surroundings that her wolf half would very much appreciate if she was healthy enough to shift.
Vivian shrugged when she heard Ronan's question, looking away. "It's what I am. Barren."
She stopped walking ahead when she could no longer hear Ronan's footsteps behind her. She slowly pivoted on her heels to face him, and the Lycan had to suppress his eyes from wandering down to her creamy, fair thighs, where his shirt just ended.
"But you're not," Ronan insisted, his jaw shifting. "I can tell from your scent that you're fertile." Just a single whiff of Vivian's delectable scent was enough to convince Ronan she was very much capable of procuring a child.
"I was mated to an Alpha for two years," Vivian revealed, desperately trying to stop her lips from trembling when she mentioned her previous mate. "I was never able to give him a child. If I was fertile, I'd have given Dane a son, like I was supposed to."
Ronan didn't like the submission in her tone, almost as if she held herself accountable... almost as if she believed her sole purpose was to birth Dane an heir, and she failed to do so.
Meanwhile, Vivian couldn't restrain her embarrassment at the admission, her cheeks flushing red. Ronan seemed confused but interested in a topic the she-wolf would have gladly buried deep in memory.
"And when you didn't give him a son?" Ronan questioned further, leaning against a tree bark as he crossed his arms.
"Dane returned me to my father. Father tried to raise interest in another Alpha to mate me to, but they heard from Dane's pack that I couldn't conceive, so none of them wanted to take such a risk," Vivian explained with much pain, fighting back an onslaught of tears.
She was ashamed to reveal the rest of her father's plans to Ronan. In every heat cycle she had, her father would invite a different Alpha to lay with her, on the agreement that if she got pregnant, they'd accept and receive her as their mate and pay her father the traditional recompense for his loss.
Hence, every two months, with each unwanted heat, she'd be forced to share her bed with different Alphas. Yet, she never once got pregnant by any of them.
"But that's what happens when you're an omega who can't fulfill your basic purpose," Vivian continued, her brows furrowing as she sucked her lips inwards to prevent her sobs from escaping. "I guess I'm no better than a whore."
Ronan almost released a beastly growl hearing her degrade herself, but he didn't move forward.
Vivian fought to bury the memories from her mind, raising her fist to slam it into the trunk of the tree in front of her. However, Ronan was within her proximity faster than she could blink or hear his steps, catching her fist before it struck the bark.
The Lycan's grip was firm, and Vivian pivoted on her feet to face him.
Ronan's hand moved to her chin, holding it between his forefingers as he forced her to look up at him.
Vivian gasped, from both fear and surprise. She was foolish. She shouldn't have angered an Alpha, much less a beastly Lycan.
"You are not a whore," he remarked almost angrily, a slight growl to his tone. His piercing amber gaze narrowed, his teeth clenched. "And you are fertile."
"If I was," Vivian began, deciding to speak more boldly despite the Lycan Alpha's tight hold on her chin. She shouldn't let fear emerge. "I would have been able to give Dane a child."
"Dane couldn't have given you a child," Ronan stated firmly. "No Alpha could."
Except him.
Vivian looked up as Ronan spoke, unable to discern the complicated emotions on the Lycan's face.
"None of them were your true mate, so they couldn't possibly have given you a child," Ronan continued, his brows becoming taut. " I am, so only I can give you a child."
Vivian's eyes expanded. Bewildered, she didn't understand how she should process the Lycan's words or what they even meant.
"I...don't understand..." Vivian's voice trailed off, dropping to a whisper. "What's a true mate... and why...would I be yours?"
"True mates are something peculiar to purebred Lycans like me. We only have a single mate in our lifetime," Ronan explained, moving his hand to cup her cheek. "When a Lycan comes of age, which is a long time in human years, their mate is born, and they develop their mating mark. Mine appeared almost twenty-five years ago."
Vivian absorbed each of Ronan's words, regarding them with importance but also a slight inclination of disbelief.
As far as Vivian was knowledgeable, Lycans were differentiated from regular werewolves. Lycans were the dawn of wolf shifters, strong progenitors of the werewolf race.
It was believed they were created from an ancient curse, a divine punishment bestowed upon a group of early humans who sought immense power, which was far greater than they could grasp or handle.
Whatever unholy crimes or offences they'd committed by tampering with forbidden magic, it transformed them into more powerful primal creatures—Lycans.
Their curse was to roam the lands without an end, forever stuck between man and beast, constantly fighting an internal battle to prevent their beastly half from ripping to the fore.
Few of them were fortunate enough to control their shifts by will; others would turn feral and run wildly to devour anything and everything in sight mindlessly.
However, Vivian had never heard anything about Lycans having fated mates.
If they were cursed, why would they have fated mates?
"Twenty years later, I believed I would meet my mate," Ronan rambled on. "When a year passed by with no sign, then a second, I went in search of you, through the whole of our territory. But I never found you."
"Because I wasn't in your territory..." Vivian completed his thought, slowly coming to understand the Lycan's explanation but she still raised questions of her own.
"No, you weren't." Ronan's jaw clenched in anger, and Vivian assumed she knew why.
He wants nothing to do with me.
She thought.