Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack novel Chapter 25

Chapter 25

*Hold on,* I thought, pushing the words toward the connection as hard as I could, though I had no real way of knowing if anything actually made it through, if she was even in any state to feel me reaching back. *Please just hold on. I’m coming.*

The tracker reports were on my desk within minutes, and I tore through them with a focus I hadn’t managed in weeks, cross-referencing every lead against what little information Reeves –my mole inside her small network of contacts, the one useful thing my father’s resources had managed to secure-had managed to feed us over the past several weeks without Evelyn’s knowledge. A town near the northern border. A diner registered under a slightly altered version of her name. A location that matched almost perfectly with the faint traces of her scent one of my trackers had caught drifting through a gas station three counties over.

*Millbrook Junction.*

I stared at the name on the page, something fierce and desperate cutting through the chaos in my chest. Eight months of dead ends, eight months of failed leads and false hope, and suddenly, colliding directly with the worst possible timing, I finally had something solid.

“Get the car ready,” I called out to Callum, already moving toward the door, jacket half on. Now.”

“Alpha, it’s a four-hour drive. If she’s already in labor-”

“I know.” My voice came out rougher than I intended, fear and urgency tangling together into something sharp. “I know exactly how far it is, Callum. I’m going anyway.”

He didn’t argue further, just fell into step beside me as we moved through the pack house, barking orders to two other warriors to accompany us, my mind already racing four hours ahead to a hospital I didn’t even know for certain existed, praying I’d make it in time for something-anything-though I didn’t fully let myself examine what exactly I was hoping to accomplish once I got there. Would she even let me in the room? Would she see me as anything other than the man who’d driven her out in the first place, showing up now, uninvited, in the most vulnerable moment of her life?

I didn’t know. I climbed into the car anyway, the bond still throbbing faintly in my chest, growing sharper with distance rather than fading, and let Callum pull out of the compound at a speed that would have alarmed me on any other day.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, thoughts of my mother and Marissa lingered-questions I knew I’d have to face eventually, about where they’d gone, about what my mother’s sudden departure meant for everything I thought I understood about my own childhood, about what Marissa leaving meant for a child I still didn’t know the truth about. But none of it could hold my attention right now, not with Evelyn’s pain still pulsing steadily through the bond, not with the very real possibility that I might finally, after eight agonizing months, be close

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enough to actually reach her.

“Four hours,” I muttered, staring out the window as the pack lands blurred past, watching the borders of everything familiar disappear behind us. “Just hold on four more hours.”

The bond gave no response, no reassurance, just that same steady, distant pulse of pain that told me nothing except that she was still out there, still fighting through whatever was happening to her right now without me, exactly the way she’d been fighting through everything alone since the night I’d destroyed the life we were supposed to build together.

I pressed my hand against my chest, over the place where the ache of the bond sat heaviest, and made myself a silent, desperate promise as the car sped north through the gathering dawn.

*Whatever she decides when I get there-whatever she says, however she looks at me–I’m not leaving again without making sure she and my child are safe. Even if that safety means staying away from her for good.*

It was the first time in eight months I’d let myself consider that possibility seriously-that showing up might mean finally letting her go rather than finally winning her back. I didn’t know yet which version of that reunion I was driving toward.

I only knew I couldn’t stop moving toward it.

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