Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack novel Chapter 72

Chapter 72

“I don’t know what I’d even say to him, if he did show up,” she admitted quietly. “Part of me is grateful for the distance. Part of me still keeps waiting for him to try something, some version of the manipulation he’s always used whenever he sensed he was actually losing control of a situation.”

“I don’t think this is manipulation,” I said carefully, thinking of the rogue attack, of his genuine, dangerous intervention on my behalf. “Something’s shifted in him, Mom. I don’t fully trust it yet, not completely, but it feels different than anything I’ve seen from him before.”

“Different how,” she asked, genuine curiosity beneath the wariness.

I told her about the ambush, about his fighting alongside me against the rogues, about the quiet, genuine vulnerability in his voice afterward when he’d talked about needing to actually prove something instead of just talking about change. She listened carefully, processing it with visible difficulty, old skepticism warring with something that looked, cautiously, like the possibility of hope.

“Thirty years is a long time to build distrust,” she said finally, “I don’t know if a single dangerous night undoes that, however genuine it might have felt in the moment.”

“I don’t think it does either,” I agreed. “I think that’s exactly why he’s staying away right now, actually. Giving you space, rather than immediately trying to insert himself back into things the moment you arrived.”

“That would be new,” she admitted, something almost surprised in her voice. “Thirty years, and I don’t think he’s ever once given me space when I actually needed it, rather than pushing for exactly what he wanted regardless of my own feelings on the matter.”

We sat quietly for a while longer, the conversation gradually settling into something softer, more domestic, discussing Hazel’s feeding schedule, the nannies’ arrangements, small practical details that felt easier to manage than the larger, more complicated emotional questions still hovering beneath everything else.

Eventually, one of the nannies approached quietly, letting my mother know Hazel had woken and was ready to be fed, and I watched her rise, exhaustion still evident but softened slightly now by the practiced, gentle rhythm of caring for the newborn, disappearing into the nursery to tend to her.

I stepped outside for a moment, needing air, processing everything-my mother’s genuine, complicated grief at being forced back here, my father’s continued absence, the strange, unresolved tangle of gratitude and lingering distrust still sitting heavy in my own chest from the ambush two nights earlier.

Callum found me there a few minutes later, his expression carrying the same cautious, thoughtful attention he’d been carrying through most of these past uncertain weeks.

“How’s she settling in,” he asked.

“As well as can be expected, given everything,” I said. “She didn’t want to come back here. I think that’s weighing on her almost as much as everything with Marissa.”

“Understandable,” Callum said. “Any word from your father?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Which honestly might be the right call, given everything. She needs space right now, not another complication to manage on top of everything else.”

“Do you think he’ll actually keep his distance,” Callum asked carefully, “or is this just him waiting for the right moment?”

I considered the question seriously, thinking of everything that had shifted over these past two weeks-the

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council ruling, the doorstep apology, the rogue attack, and now this careful, deliberate absence rather than immediate insertion into my mother’s arrival.

“I don’t know,” I admitted honestly. “I want to believe it’s genuine restraint, actual understanding that she needs space rather than pressure right now. But I’ve been wrong about trusting him before, more times than I want to count.”

“Fair enough,” Callum said. “Guess we just keep watching, same as we have been.”

“Same as we have been,” I agreed, looking back toward the apartment where my mother was settling into whatever fragile, uncertain peace she could manage, surrounded by careful, hired support rather than the genuine freedom she’d actually wanted, pulled back into exactly the compound she’d fought so hard to escape by circumstances entirely outside her control.

I didn’t know what came next-whether my father’s continued absence represented genuine growth or simply careful, patient strategy, whether my mother would ever manage to find her way back toward the freedom she’d briefly tasted, whether Marissa’s fragile stability would hold long enough for genuine healing to actually take root.

But standing there in the quiet morning light, watching Callum head back toward his own duties, I understood that whatever answers eventually emerged, they’d come slowly, carefully, the same patient, uncertain way everything else about these past several weeks had unfolded-one complicated day at a time, with no guarantees about what waited on the other side of any of it.

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