Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack novel Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Another contraction roHed through me, harder this time, and I forced myself to breathe through it the way the birthing classes I’d taken alone, sitting in the back row of a community center with strangers who all had partners beside them, had taught me to. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Focus on something steady.

I focused on her. On the daughter I’d protected fiercely for eight months, who was, impossibly, about to actually exist in the world outside my body within the next several hours. Whatever fear I had about Damon, whatever complicated tangle of dread and old grief still lived somewhere in my chest when I thought about him, none of it mattered more than getting through the next few hours safely, bringing her into the world healthy and whole.

I could handle Damon later, if it came to that. Right now, I needed to handle this.

I called Pete a little after three, my voice tighter than I wanted it to be as I explained the contractions were close enough together now that I thought it was time. He was at the diner’s back entrance within fifteen minutes, still in pajama pants and a flannel jacket thrown on hastily over them, helping me down the stairs with more gentleness than his gruff exterior usually let on.

“You doing okay?” he asked as he settled me into the passenger seat of his truck, real concern etched into his weathered face.

“I’m scared,” I admitted, because there was no point pretending otherwise anymore, not in the middle of an actual crisis. “Not just about the birth. There’s-” I hesitated, unsure how much to explain, how much made sense to say to a human who had no real understanding of mate bonds or pack politics. “There’s someone who might come looking, once this happens. Someone I really don’t want finding me.”

Pete’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t ask for details, just nodded once, firm and steady. ” Nobody’s getting near you or that baby while I’m around. You just focus on getting through this part.”

I managed a shaky, grateful smile as another contraction rolled through me, hard enough that I gripped the door handle and breathed through gritted teeth until it passed.

The drive to the hospital felt endless, though I knew rationally it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes. I spent most of it with my eyes closed, one hand pressed against my stomach, trying to hold on to whatever fragile control I still had over the bond even as the pain made it increasingly difficult to concentrate on anything except simply surviving the next contraction.

*Please,* I thought, sending the plea inward, toward whatever careful walls I’d built over the months, willing them to hold just a little longer. *Please don’t let him feel this. Not yet. Not until I know she’s safe.*

12

+15 Bonus

I didn’t know if the bond worked that way, if wanting something badly enough could actually influence what slipped through the connection during moments of extremity. But it was the only thing I had left to hold onto as the hospital came into view, its lights bright and clinical against the dark early morning sky, and Pete pulled up to the emergency entrance with a speed that suggested he’d been quietly panicking just as much as I had the entire drive.

A nurse met us at the door with a wheelchair, and as they wheeled me inside, into the sudden bright fluorescent chaos of triage and monitors and someone asking me questions I could barely focus on through the pain, I felt one last, fierce spike of determination cut through the fear.

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