Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack novel Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Damon pov

I sat hunched over my desk, phone pressed to my ear for what felt like the hundredth call that week, another tracker on the other end delivering the same frustrating non-answer I’d been getting for months.

“Nothing new, Alpha. Whoever set her up with that vehicle registration did a thorough job scrubbing it. We’ve hit dead ends in three counties now.”

“Keep looking.” My voice came out rougher than I intended, exhaustion and frustration bleeding into every word. “Widen the search radius. She has to have surfaced somewhere by

now.”

I ended the call and dropped the phone onto the desk, dragging both hands down my face. Three months. Three months of dead ends, of favors called in, of trackers combing through neutral territories and human towns with nothing to show for it except my own mounting desperation.

And then, without warning, something shifted in my chest.

A flutter. Faint, strange, entirely unlike anything I’d felt through the bond before-not the raw grief or fury I’d grown accustomed to sensing from Evelyn’s side in those first devastating weeks, and not the heavy, deliberate silence that had settled in since. This was different. Smaller. Fluttering, almost, like something new had entered the connection between

I sat up straight, my whole body going rigid with sudden, disbelieving understanding.

*She’s pregnant.*

I didn’t know how I knew it with such immediate certainty-some deep, instinctive alpha knowledge, maybe, some ancient thread of the bond finally strong enough after months of building to let something through despite everything Evelyn had done to keep it silent. But I knew it, the same way I’d known the moment I first marked her that something profound had shifted between us. This was real. Somewhere out there, Evelyn was carrying my child, and some fragile piece of that truth had finally slipped past whatever walls she’d built to keep me

out.

I stood so fast my chair scraped back hard against the floor.

*I need to find her.* The thought consumed everything else instantly, all the frustration of the last three months crystallizing into something sharper, more urgent. If she was pregnant –if that flutter I’d just felt meant what I thought it meant-then every day I spent failing to locate her was another day my child grew up somewhere I couldn’t protect either of them.

+15 Bonus

I was halfway around my desk, already reaching for my phone to call the head tracker directly,

when my office door burst open.

Marissa stood in the doorway, pale, something clutched tightly in one shaking hand. It took me a moment to register what it was-a-pregnancy test, the little indicator window facing toward me, though I was too far away yet to make out what it showed.

“Damon.” Her voice cracked on my name. need to talk to you.”

Ice flooded through my veins, cold and immediate, an entirely different kind of dread displacing the urgency I’d felt seconds before. “What is that.”

She crossed the room slowly, holding the test out like it burned her to touch it. “It’s positive.”

The words hit me like a physical blow, the room seeming to tilt slightly around me. “This can’t be happening.”

“I know.” Her voice shook badly now, tears welling in her eyes. “I know, Damon, I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to-”

“When?” The question came out sharp, almost accusatory, though even as I asked it some distant, more rational part of my mind was already doing the grim math, already understanding exactly what this meant layered on top of everything else. “How far along?”

“I don’t know exactly. A few weeks, maybe. I only just-” She stopped, pressing a trembling hand against her mouth, and I watched her collect herself with visible effort. “I only just started feeling sick a few days ago. I took the test this morning.”

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