After Rejection Divorced Luna Becomes A Famous Doctor (Hailey and Dominic) novel Chapter 10

HAILEY

I bent and picked up my bag, forcing my hands not to tremble.

“You shouldn’t be here. You’ve been discharged.” I said tightly, all business.

“You shouldn’t be hiding,” he said right back.

My jaw clenched. “I’m not hiding. I’m living. There’s a difference.”

We stared at each other for a long, silent moment. His eyes searched mine. He looked like he had

something more to say, but held it back.

He opened his mouth, closed it again, and then sighed. “I’m not here to cause trouble, Hailey.”

But it was too late for that.

Trouble came the moment he stumbled through my ER doors half dead with claw marks down his chest and a silver bullet lodged near his ribs. Trouble started the moment my colleagues couldn’t identify his species, couldn’t get a steady heartbeat, couldn’t stabilize him without me stepping in and doing what only a born werewolf healer could do, shift my energy, tap into old instincts I’d buried, and pull him back from

the brink.

And I had.

Because I was a doctor. Because I took an oath. Because Liam would’ve looked at me with disappointed eyes if I let someone die just to keep my past buried.

But that didn’t mean I wanted him here.

“You were unconscious. You needed medical attention. That’s the only reason you’re not in the morgue.” I stood straighter, tried to bury the shaking in my limbs beneath layers of professionalism. “That debt is

paid.”

Giovanni’s expression didn’t change, but I saw the flicker of something, hurt, maybe, cross his features. He had always been hard to read. Quieter than his brother, Dominic, who ruled every room with a voice like thunder and a temper to match. Giovanni was a man of stillness, of watching from the corners. He never raised his voice, but when he did speak, you listened. Not because he demanded it, but because his words

cut clean through the noise.

“I didn’t come looking for you,” he said, voice low. “This wasn’t planned.”

“Good,” I snapped. “Because I’m not interested in reliving the past. And I’m definitely not interested in being dragged back into your family’s politics.”

He frowned, a crease forming between his brows. “You think this is about Dominic?”

I flinched at the name.

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Don’t say it. Don’t give it breath.

I turned away from him, grabbing a chart from the nurse’s station and flipping it open even though the words blurred together. “If you’re well enough to stand, you’re well enough to leave. I’ll have someone bring you the rest of your things.”

“Hailey.”

Claim

I hated the way my name sounded in his mouth. Not because it was laced with malice. No. Because it was the opposite. Soft. Familiar. Like it still meant something.

I turned slowly. “What?”

His eyes were darker now, the gold rim around the blue more vivid. “I don’t know what Dominic did to you. Not fully. I always suspected, but you disappeared before I could ask. But what I do know is that he’s

miserable without you. He never recovered. Not really.” Giovanni’s voice was steady, but there was an edge

to it. “He’s not the same. He hasn’t been since the divorce.”

I froze. The chart in my hands blurred completely now, the words just black lines on white paper. My grip

tightened, knuckles going white as I tried not to explode. I didn’t want to hear about Dominic’s misery. I

didn’t care how hollow or haunted he’d become without me. That pain, whatever it was, didn’t hold a

candle to mine. He was a fucking cheat who could never be redeemed.

I had survived abandonment, childbirth alone, the betrayal of a pack that watched me bleed and never

reached out a hand. I’d survived being cast out like I was nothing more than a broken vow, a discarded

mate, a shameful secret. I built myself back piece by piece. I clawed my way through grief and rage and

loneliness until there was nothing left but grit and Liam.

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CHAPTER TEN–2

I looked at Giovanni with a calm that bordered on lethal. “He’s miserable?” I echoed, my voice low. “Good.”

That flicker of hurt in his eyes deepened into something sharper, regret, maybe but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.

“Do you know what it’s like to sit in a room, contracting through tears, while the man who promised to love you forever doesn’t even bat and eyelash as he confidently sits with his mistress who he chose over me?” My voice cracked slightly, but I forced it steady again. “Do you know what it felt like when we got into an accident and the man who was supposed to protect me reached for another woman instead and left me for dead in a crashed car, her blood on his hands and her scent still clinging to his clothes?”

I could hear the thunder of my own heartbeat now, rushing in my ears like a tidal wave. Giovanni said

nothing, but I saw the shift in his posture, the stiffening of his shoulders, the way his jaw tensed like my

words had struck somewhere deep and raw. Good. Let them cut. Let them sink into him like silver.

Of course, he didn’t know.

“I died, Giovanni,” I said, voice barely above a whisper but soaked in venom. “Not physically. That would’ve

been a mercy. But everything I believed in, everything I loved, everything I was, he shattered it. He buried me beneath lies and betrayal and then had the audacity to walk away like I never mattered. Like I didn’t

bleed for him.”

I stepped forward slowly, ignoring the burn in my throat and the sting in my eyes. “So don’t stand here and talk to me about Dominic’s pain. Don’t you dare come into my hospital and try to make me feel sympathy for him. I lost everything because of your brother. I built this life from ashes. And I will not let you, or him, or anyone else drag me back into the fire.”

Silence stretched between us, and tension was so thick that it could be sliced with a knife. I made sure to live out the one secret I’d kept for five years. The secret that was growing in my womb when I left the

pack for good.

They didn’t know that I had birthed another King bloodline. Another heir. Another Alpha. Another reason I

could never go back.

We were better off without them. Without living in a pack. I was giving Liam a normal life, one I never got

to have. Because the moment Dominic finds out that he has a son, an heir, he wouldn’t care about his estranged relationship with me, he would tear apart everything I built just to claim him.

Thankfully, Liam was at school, far away from anything related to the Kings, their legacy, and the poison of their politics. That was the entire point. That’s why I worked night shifts, why I lived in the outskirts of the

city, why I enrolled Liam in a human run school where surnames meant nothing and wolfblood meant even less. I wanted my son to grow up free, from expectations, from bloodlines, from the shackles of being born a legacy instead of a boy.

Giovanni looked like he wanted to say something else, but my glare pinned him to the spot. I saw the war behind his eyes, the flicker of recognition, of realization. Maybe he finally understood why I’d run. Why I

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had to. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he never would. Because unless you’ve been crushed by the arrow of

love weaponized against you, you’ll never truly know what it means to survive it.

I turned away before he could speak again.

“I have patients to see,” I said quietly. “If you don’t discharge yourself, I’ll make it official.”

Giovanni didn’t follow. Didn’t call after me. Just stood there, unmoving. Silent.

I walked down the hallway, my heart thundering, my heart thundering like it was trying to break free from my chest.

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