Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack novel Chapter 41

Chapter 41

+15 Bohus

Chapter 41

Damon pov

Leaving her apartment the next morning was one of the harder things I’d done in eight months, and that included every single dead-end tracker report, every sleepless night spent staring at maps trying to guess where she might have run.

Evelyn stood in the doorway with Willow against her shoulder, and I lingered on the small landing qutside longer than I needed to, some reluctant part of me refusing to fully turn away.

“You don’t have to look so grim,” she said, a thin attempt at lightness that didn’t quite mask the tension underneath it. “You’re coming back either way, right?”

“I am.” I met her eyes, needing her to hear the certainty in it. “Whatever happens in that council room, I’m coming back here. To you and Willow. That’s not negotiable, no matter how the vote goes.

“Good.” She adjusted Willow slightly, who stirred but didn’t wake. “Because I meant what I said. I’m not bringing her anywhere near that pack until I actually trust it’s safe. Not for a title, not for legacy, not for anything.”

“I know.” I reached out, hesitant, and brushed my knuckles gently against Willow’s small hand where it had worked free of her swaddle, feeling that same fierce ache settle into my chest that had lived there since the moment I first held her. “I’ll call you the second it’s over. Whatever happens.”

Evelyn nodded, and for one brief moment, something passed between us that felt almost like the ease we used to have, before everything, before Marissa, before eight months of wreckage stood between us. It didn’t last, but it was there, and I carried it with me the entire drive back to the pack lands, four hours of empty highway giving me far too much time to turn over everything that could go wrong the next day.

I hated leaving her. Genuinely hated it, in a way that surprised me with its intensity-not just protective instinct, not just the residual guilt still living permanently in my chest, but something that felt, uncomfortably, like missing her. Like the specific ache of walking away from exactly where I wanted to be.

I didn’t have the luxury of sitting with that feeling for long. The moment I crossed back onto pack lands, the reality of what waited for me the next day crowded out everything else.

Callum met me at the pack house, a folder of notes already prepared, his expression grim in a way that told me he hadn’t found much comfort to offer since our last call.

“Council convenes at ten tomorrow,” he said, falling into step beside me as I made my way toward my office. ” Your father’s had two days to build his case. I’ve spent that same time trying to figure out exactly how strong it actually is.”

“And?”

“Stronger than I’d like.” He set the folder down on my desk, and I flipped it open, scanning through pages of formal language, procedural citations, testimony statements from council members who’d apparently already been quietly courted over the past several weeks. “He’s framing it entirely around stability and precedent. An heir born outside pack structure, raised without proper pack integration, represents unprecedented risk to succession continuity. He’s got testimony lined up from at least four council members supporting that framing.”

I scanned through the names, my stomach tightening at two in particular-old allies of my father’s, wolves who’d served on council since before I was born, exactly the kind of entrenched, tradition-bound voices that would find his argument instinctively compelling.

“What do I have,” I asked, closing the folder.

1/2

Chapter 41

+15 8ghus

“Less than I’d like, honestly.” Callum’s jaw tightened. “You have your own testimony, obviously. You have the fact that you personally intervened when he sent enforcers to the hospital, which several council members already know about-that’s not playing in his favor, for what it’s worth. Overreach like that makes people nervous, even the ones inclined to support him otherwise.”

“That’s something.”

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