Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack novel Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Evelyn pov

I made it maybe ten miles past the pack border before my body betrayed me again.

The nausea hit sudden and vicious, cramping through my stomach with no warning at all, and I barely managed to swerve onto the shoulder of the empty road before flinging the door open and losing what little I’d managed to eat that morning. I knelt there in the gravel, one hand braced against the car for balance, and let my body finish what it needed to, tears streaming down my face somewhere in the middle of it all, though I couldn’t have said anymore whether I was crying from the physical sickness or the emotional wreckage still throbbing beneath it.

When it finally passed, I sat back against the car door, breathing hard, staring out at the empty stretch of road ahead of me. Trees on either side, no pack lands in sight anymore, no compound, no Damon. Just me, alone, further from everything I’d ever known than I’d been in my entire life.

*Even if I’m pregnant, I’m not going back.*

The thought arrived clear and unshakeable, cutting through the fog of exhaustion and grief. I pressed a hand flat against my stomach, still uncertain, still weeks away from knowing anything for sure, but something in me-some quiet, instinctive certainty-had already started preparing for the possibility. The timing lined up. The nausea, the exhaustion that went beyond simple heartbreak, the way certain scents had started turning my stomach in ways they hadn’t before.

I didn’t know for certain. But some part of me already suspected.

And it didn’t matter. That was the strange, steadying thought that settled over me as I sat there on the gravel shoulder, dust already sticking to my knees. Whether or not I was carrying Damon’s child changed nothing about my decision. If anything, it solidified it. I wasn’t raising a baby-if there was one-in a pack that would teach it the same lessons Damon had learned from his father. I wasn’t going to let my child grow up watching companions parade through its parent’s life like it was simply how things were done.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, faint but insistent, I felt the pull of the bond.

Damon.

He was trying to reach through it-I could feel the shape of his desperation even without words, a raw, aching pressure pushing against my side of the connection, some wordless plea threading through the distance between us. My wolf stirred at the sensation, some old instinct wanting to respond, to soothe, to close the gap he was so clearly trying to bridge.

I shoved it down.

Chapter

+15 Bonus

I didn’t know if I even could block a mate bond fully–I’d never had reason to learn, never imagined I’d need that particular skill just two days after marking someone I thought I’d spend the rest of my life beside. But I could ignore it. I could refuse to send anything back through it, could let my side of the connection go as quiet and unresponsive as I could manage, and for now, that would have to be enough.

I hauled myself back into the driver’s seat, wiped my face with the back of my hand, and pulled back onto the road.

I didn’t have a plan beyond *away*. I had some savings tucked into a bag beneath my seat, money I’d been putting aside for months without really knowing why, some quiet instinct apparently having prepared for this long before I consciously understood I might need it. I had the car, half a tank of gas, and the vague, directionless intention of putting as many miles between myself and the pack as I could manage before I had to stop and actually think about

what came next.

The bond pulsed again, stronger this time, and I felt something that might have been Damon’s voice trying to push through it—not words exactly, bonds didn’t work quite like that, but an impression, a feeling, something that resembled *please* and *I’m sorry* and * come back* all tangled together into one desperate wave of emotion.

My hands tightened on the steering wheel.

Some small, traitorous piece of me-the piece that had loved him, that had trusted him enough to let him mark me, that had spent months imagining a future built beside him- wanted to answer. Wanted to feel that connection open back up, wanted the comfort of knowing someone was reaching for me even now, even after everything.

I ignored it.

Because I knew, with a clarity that felt almost frightening in its coldness, that if I let that bond pull me back even an inch, I would end up right back where I started. Standing in some hallway while Damon explained, again, why what he’d done was normal. Watching him defend Marissa’s feelings before he ever considered mine. Raising a child, if there was one, in the shadow of a mate who would always choose tradition over me the moment it became inconvenient not to.

I drove for another hour before the gas gauge convinced me to stop.

The small town I pulled into wasn’t anything remarkable-a gas station, a diner, a scattering of houses along a single main road, the kind of place that probably didn’t see much traffic beyond people passing through exactly like I was. I filled the tank with hands that had finally stopped shaking quite so badly, and something about the mundane normalcy of it-paying for gas, checking the tire pressure, buying a bottle of water and a package of crackers from inside the station—helped settle something in my chest that had been in free fall since the night before.

Chanten

+15 Bonus

This was what my life was going to look like now. Small, unfamiliar towns. Decisions made entirely on my own, without pack politics or alpha authority hovering over every choice. It should have terrified me more than it did. Instead, sitting in my car in that gas station parking lot, slowly eating crackers because my stomach still felt fragile and uncertain, I felt something unexpected creep in alongside the grief.

Something that might have been the smallest, most fragile thread of relief.

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