Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack (Evelyn and Damon) novel Chapter 7

Chapter 7

“To *you*, you mean. She spun back around, and now, finally, the hatred cracked just enough to let something rawer bleed through-hurt, exhaustion, grief all tangled together.” That’s what you actually care about, isn’t it? Not the pack. Not tradition. You don’t want me to leave because it would look bad for you. Because your future Luna running off the day after the mating ceremony doesn’t exactly paint you in a flattering light.”

“That’s not “I stopped myself, because some horribly honest part of me recognized that it wasn’t entirely untrue. I’d spent the last hour more worried about pack perception than about the woman standing in front of me, unraveling in real time. The realization sat like a stone in my gut.

“I need you to stay,” I said instead, quieter now, stripped of the authority I’d walked in with. ” Not for the pack. For-” I faltered, searching for the honest version of this sentence, the one that didn’t sound like another hollow excuse. “For me. Because despite everything I’ve done wrong, I don’t want to lose you.”

Something flickered in her eyes at that-not softness, not forgiveness, but a kind of tired disbelief.

“You should have thought about that before you climbed into bed with my best friend,” she said. “Before you told me I should have expected it. Before you walked into this room today and led with an apology *she* deserved instead of one I did.”

I had no response for that. There wasn’t one, not really, not one that wouldn’t sound like exactly the kind of empty justification I’d been offering her since the moment she’d caught us.

“Evelyn.” My voice cracked slightly, and I heard it happen, felt the alpha authority I usually carried crumbling into something much smaller, much more desperate. “Please. Don’t do this.

She zipped the duffel bag closed, the sound unnervingly final in the quiet room.

“You don’t get to ask me for anything right now,” she said. “Not after last night. Not after this morning. You made your choice when you let Marissa into your bed, and you made it again just now when you walked in here more concerned about her feelings than mine.”

I let my hand fall back to my side, my wolf whimpering low in my chest, some deep instinctive part of me screaming that if I let her walk out that door right now, I wasn’t going to get another chance to stop this.

“Where will you even go?” I asked, grasping now, desperate for anything that might slow her down.

She paused in the doorway, just for a moment, and looked back at me with an expression I would replay for weeks afterward, turning it over and over, searching for some sign I might have missed.

“Anywhere but here,” she said. “Anywhere you’re not.”

And then she was gone, her footsteps fading fast down the hallway, and I stood frozen in the wreckage of her room, surrounded by empty hangers and the lingering scent of her, finally understanding-far, far too late-exactly what I stood to lose.