Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack novel Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Evelyn pov

+15 Bghus

Nothing had prepared me for this.

I’d read the books, sat through the birthing classes alone in the back row, listened to Pete’s wife share careful, well -meaning advice over the phone in the weeks leading up to this. None of it had prepared me for the sheer, consuming reality of it-hour after hour of contractions building on top of each other, the exhaustion settling so deep into my bones that I’d stopped being able to track how long I’d actually been in this room, stopped being able to focus on anything beyond the next brutal wave of pain and the doctor’s steady voice telling me I was doing well, almost there, just a little longer.

I didn’t feel like I was doing well. I felt like I was being torn apart from the inside, and somewhere beneath the physical agony, a colder, sharper fear had settled in the bond. I could feel it, open wider than it had been in months, some desperate, uncontrollable current running between Damon and me that I no longer had the strength to smother. I’d tried, in the early hours, to hold onto whatever walls I’d built. By now, deep into the exhausting work of labor, I didn’t have anything left to fight it with.

“You’re doing great, Evelyn,” the nurse said, wiping my forehead with a cool cloth, her voice calm and practiced in a way that should have been comforting and mostly just felt distant, filtered through the haze of pain and exhaustion. “Dr. Reyes says we’re getting close now.”

I nodded, or tried to, another contraction already building low in my back, radiating forward with an intensity that pulled a strangled sound out of me before I could stop it. Pete waited outside, I knew, pacing the hallway the way he’d been doing for hours, refusing to leave despite my insistence that he didn’t have to stay. Some quiet, grateful part of me was glad he’d ignored me.

The door opened.

I registered it distantly at first, some part of my brain assuming it was another nurse, another check from Dr. Reyes, and it wasn’t until I heard the sharp intake of breath from the doctor, until I caught the sudden shift in the room’s energy, that I actually turned my head toward the doorway.

Damon stood there.

For one suspended, disbelieving moment, I thought exhaustion and pain had finally conjured him out of nothing, some cruel hallucination born from months of dreading exactly this. But he didn’t disappear. He stood frozen in the doorway, still in the same clothes he must have been wearing when he first felt the bond flare open, dark circles under his eyes that suggested he hadn’t slept, hadn’t stopped moving since the moment he’d learned

where I was.

“You need to leave,” Dr. Reyes said immediately, moving to block his path toward the bed, professional and firm despite clearly having no idea who this man actually was to me. “Sir, this is a private delivery, you can’t just—”

“I’m the father.” Damon’s voice came out rough, cracking slightly on the words, his eyes never leaving my face even as he addressed the doctor. “Please. I need to be here.”

Tears filled my eyes before I could stop them, spilling over as another contraction seized my body, and I couldn’t have said in that moment whether they came from the pain or from the sheer, overwhelming shock of seeing him standing there after eight months of careful, deliberate distance.

*He shouldn’t be here.*

The thought arrived clear even through the haze of exhaustion, sharp and immediate. I’d spent months building a life specifically designed to keep this exact moment from happening, had felt genuine terror just hours earlier at

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Chapter 21

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