Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack novel Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Even now, months later, Lstill felt the occasional faint pulse against the edges of the bond- fainter than it used to be, but not entirely gone, like Damon refused to let it fade completely no matter how thoroughly I tried to smother my end of it. I’d gotten better at ignoring it, better at building walls around that part of myself so the sensation barely registered most days. But every so often, usually late at night when my defenses were lowest, I’d feel it flicker to life again, some distant echo of longing or desperation threading through the connection, and I’d have to remind myself, deliberately, why I’d left in the first place.

I didn’t want his desperation. I didn’t want his apologies, his excuses, his slow, grinding realization of everything he’d broken. I’d heard enough of that in the weeks before I finally stopped reading his texts, enough to know that whatever guilt he was drowning in wasn’t the same as him actually understanding what he’d cost me. Guilt was easy. Guilt didn’t require him to change anything about the world he’d been raised to believe in-the same world that had taught him companions were a birthright, that a mate’s pain was simply the cost of alpha privilege.

I wanted him to let go. To accept that I was gone, that whatever bond still lingered between us was a formality now rather than a promise, and to finally, mercifully, stop reaching for something I had no intention of ever giving back.

*I hope he doesn’t find me.*

This was the fear that kept me up most nights, the one I hadn’t fully admitted to myself until recently, when the diner’s grand opening had started to feel real enough that I’d had to think seriously about the risks of putting my name-Evelyn’s-on a sign above the door for anyone with pack resources to potentially find.

I told myself Millbrook Junction was neutral territory, that pack law held no authority here, that Damon would have no legal claim to drag me back even if he did somehow track me down. I told myself I’d built a life here entirely separate from anything traceable to my old pack, that I’d been careful, that three months of near-constant movement before settling here had probably scrubbed away any trail he might have tried to follow.

But some quiet, persistent instinct-the same one that had warned me, deep down, long before I ever caught him with Marissa, that something wasn’t right-refused to let me feel fully safe. Alphas had resources. Trackers. Connections that stretched far beyond pack borders when they were determined enough to use them. And Damon, for all his faults, had never struck me as a man who gave up easily on something he considered his.

I splashed one more handful of water against my face and made myself straighten, made myself breathe through the low simmer of anxiety still sitting in my chest.

Even if he did find me—even if, somehow, months of careful distance and deliberate silence weren’t enough to keep him away-I reminded myself that I wasn’t the same woman who’d

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stood frozen in his bedroom doorway, too shocked to do anything but run. I’d built something here. Calluses, yes, but also strength, a stubborn, hard-won independence that hadn’t existed in me before I’d been forced to discover it.

If he found me, I would face him. Not as his mate, not as some Luna-in-waiting hoping for his approval, but as Evelyn-diner owner, soon-to-be mother, a woman who’d rebuilt an entire life out of the wreckage he’d left behind.

I dried my face with a rough paper towel and walked back out into the dining room, where the late afternoon light was slanting gold across the half-sanded counters, illuminating dust motes floating lazily in the air. My diner. My future. My daughter, growing steadily beneath my ribs, entirely unaware of the storm that might still be gathering somewhere beyond the edges of this quiet, careful life I’d built.

I pressed a hand against my stomach one more time, and made myself a promise I intended to keep no matter what came next.

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