Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack novel Chapter 4

4 /124

Damon pov

Morning came grey and heavy, the kind of light that made everything look worse than it probably was. I hadn't slept—not really. I'd spent most of the night pacing my room, replaying the look on Evelyn's face on some endless loop, my wolf pacing right alongside me in restless, silent judgment.

By the time the sun fully rose, I'd convinced myself that a clear head and calm explanation would fix what my temper had broken the night before. I told myself I just needed to make her understand—really understand, not the garbled, defensive version I'd thrown at her in the heat of the moment. If I could just get her to see reason, to see that this didn't have to be the end of what we'd built, surely some of that hatred I'd felt through the bond would ease.

I was wrong before I even opened her door.

She was lying on her bed when I walked in, curled on her side facing the window, still in the same clothes from the night before. She didn't move when the door opened. Didn't even flinch. If I hadn't felt the faint, resentful pulse of her still breathing on the other end of our bond, I might have thought she was asleep.

"Evelyn." I kept my voice gentle, aware of how badly I'd mishandled this already. "Can we talk?"

Nothing. Not a word, not a glance in my direction. Just the slow, deliberate rise and fall of her shoulders, her back to me like a wall she'd built out of her own spine.

"I know you're angry." I moved further into the room, stopping a few feet from the bed, unsure how close I was allowed to get anymore. "You have every right to be. I handled everything wrong last night. What I said to you—the way I said it—"

Silence. The kind that pressed against my chest harder than any shouting could have.

"Evelyn, please look at me."

She didn't.

I felt something in me start to fray at the edges, that same defensive instinct from the night before creeping back in, wrapping around the guilt like it was trying to smother it. I hated how easily it happened, how quickly the old excuses rose up in me the moment I felt cornered.

"You know how this works," I said, and even as the words left my mouth I recognized them, recognized the exact shape of my father's voice living inside my own. "Alphas have always had companions alongside their mates. It's not a reflection on you. It doesn't mean I don't—"

"Get out."

Her voice was flat. Hollow. The first words she'd spoken since I entered the room, and they landed like a physical blow, more devastating in their quiet finality than any amount of screaming could have been.

"Evelyn—"

"Get. Out." She still hadn't turned around. Still hadn't given me so much as a glimpse of her face. "I'm not doing this again, Damon. I'm not listening to you explain to me why what you did was normal. Why I should just accept it. I heard you the first time."

My wolf snarled at me from somewhere deep inside, disgusted that I'd walked in here and immediately reached for the same tired justifications instead of the apology I'd promised myself I'd lead with. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to gather myself, trying to find better words than the ones that kept betraying me.