Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack novel Chapter 45

Chapter 45

+15 Bgnus

Chapter 45

Damon pov

The hour stretched into something that felt like it lasted days.

Callum and I waited in a small antechamber just off the main council hall, the kind of sparse, formal room meant. for exactly this purpose-pacing, waiting, letting the anxious tension of pending decisions settle over whoever occupied it. I’d sat in silence for the first twenty minutes, running through everything I’d said, everything my father had said, trying to guess which version had actually landed harder with twelve wolves whose individual loyalties I couldn’t fully predict.

“You did well in there,” Callum said finally, breaking the silence, his own composure clearly strained despite the reassurance. “Better than I expected, honestly. You made them uncomfortable. That’s not nothing.”

“Uncomfortable isn’t the same as convinced.” I dragged both hands down my face, exhaustion from the sleepless night finally catching up with the adrenaline crash of the hearing. “He’s had thirty years to build loyalty in that room. I had one speech and eight months of evidence I only fully assembled two days ago.”

“You had the truth,” Callum said. “Sometimes that actually counts for something.”

I wanted to believe him. I sat with the desire to believe him for a long moment, staring at the plain wooden floor of the antechamber, thinking of Evelyn back in that small apartment above the diner, waiting for a call I still didn’t know how to make if this went badly.

*If they force her back, I may never get her back.*

The thought arrived with a cold, sinking certainty that settled deep into my chest. I understood, sitting there in the antechamber’s uncomfortable silence, exactly what a ruling against me would actually mean in practice. Not simply losing succession, though that alone would upend everything I’d been raised to expect from my own life. It would mean handing my father legal grounds to attempt exactly what he’d tried at the hospital-except this time with actual council authority behind it, actual enforcement power I wouldn’t be able to stand against alone.

And if that happened, if enforcers showed up at Evelyn’s door with formal council backing instead of my father’s unilateral overreach, I didn’t think she’d wait around to find out how far they were willing to go. She’d run. She’d take Willow and disappear somewhere far more thoroughly hidden than Millbrook Junction, somewhere I might never manage to track down again, not with eight months of failed searching already behind me as evidence of exactly how good she was at staying lost when she needed to be.

I might genuinely never see either of them again.

The thought sat so heavy in my chest that I had to stand, pacing the small room in an attempt to physically shake it loose, my wolf pacing right alongside me in matching agitation.

“She won’t just accept it,” I said out loud, mostly to myself. “If the council rules against me, she won’t wait to see what happens next. She’ll run.”

“Then we make sure that doesn’t happen,” Callum said, though his voice carried less certainty than I wanted to hear. “Damon, whatever the council decides, you’re not obligated to simply accept it lying down. You made that clear enough in there already.”

“I know.” I stopped pacing, forcing myself to breathe through the mounting anxiety. “I just don’t know what fighting it actually looks like, practically, if they rule against me. I don’t have thirty years of loyalty built up to draw on. I don’t have half the resources my father does.”

“You have people who believe you’re right,” Callum said quietly. “Marcus and the other enforcer who refused the

1/2

Chapter 45

+15 Bohus

hospital order. Me. Probably more than you realize, honestly-people who’ve watched your father operate for years and quietly resented it without ever having the standing to say so themselves. That’s not nothing either.”

I sat back down, some of the pacing finally burning itself out, though the anxious energy still hummed beneath my skin, refusing to fully settle. I thought of Evelyn’s message that morning-*Willow says good luck too*-and felt something in my chest ache with how badly I wanted to simply be back there already, away from all of this away from council chambers and formal petitions and my father’s cold, calculating authority.

My phone buzzed against the small table beside me, and I nearly knocked it to the floor grabbing for it, heart lurching before I registered it wasn’t Evelyn’s name on the screen. A message from an unknown number instead.

*Council’s called it faster than usual. Something’s happening. Be ready.*

I frowned at the message, showing it to Callum, neither of us recognizing the number. “Someone inside the chamber, maybe. A council aide.”

“Or someone trying to rattle you before the actual verdict,” Callum said carefully, “I wouldn’t put it past your father to try something like that.”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify