Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack (Evelyn and Damon) novel Chapter 282

Marissa pov

The pack house made a sound at night that I was still learning to trust.

It wasn't silence. Silence at my parents' house had always meant someone was waiting. Stormcrest groaned and settled like a big animal asleep, pipes ticking as they cooled, a floorboard creaking when a patrol came in, a murmur of voices from the kitchen where the night shift made coffee. Every sound said the same thing: *people live here, and they are awake so you don't have to be.*

I lay in the bed under the quilt, in Ethan's hoodie, and tried to believe it.

I did feel safe, which was the strange part. For the first time in my life my lungs went all the way down when I breathed. I'd eaten three meals in a row without hurrying. A nine-year-old had told me I smelled like Ethan, and I'd laughed out loud.

But safe and unafraid weren't the same thing. They sat in me side by side, like two people sharing a bench who refused to look at each other.

*They're a mile from the gate,* the fear said, in the calm voice that had kept me alive for six days. *Watching the road, waiting for a patrol to slip.*

*He told the guards to turn them away,* my wolf answered. *He said they can't come in.*

*Gates don't stop my father. He sat outside a supplier's office for nine days. Waiting is what he does best.*

I turned onto my side and stared at the window. The curtain let in a strip of pale moonlight that cut across the floor.

The worst part wasn't that they'd come for me. I'd made peace with that on the bus somewhere in the second state. The worst part was what I'd worked out at dinner, holding Ethan's hand under the table while he told me to eat my pie.

My parents wouldn't care that I had a mate.

They'd never cared about anything of mine unless it could be sold, hidden, or used. If my father learned a man had put himself between me and the contract, he wouldn't back off. He'd look for a way to hurt that man. A lawyer's letter, a smear in the regional council, a quiet word to the two men down the road. Whatever hurt Ethan would hurt me more, and my father knew it. He'd always known which of my fingers to bend.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify