Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack novel Chapter 89

Chapter 89

Damon pov

I’d just stepped out of my father’s room, exhaustion and lingering relief both settling heavy in my chest, when I heard hurried footsteps approaching down the hallway and turned to find my mother rushing toward me, Hazel notably absent, tears already streaming down her face.

“Damon.” Her voice broke on my name, genuine panic evident in every line of her exhausted face. “Is he okay? Callum called me, said something happened, I came as fast as I could-”

“He’s stable,” I said quickly, wanting to ease her visible distress before it escalated further. “Stress-induced cardiac episode, the healers think. Not a heart attack, but serious enough that they’re keeping him for observation.

She let out a shaky breath, one hand pressed against her chest, tears still falling freely despite the reassurance. Can I see him?”

11

I studied her for a moment, taking in the genuine, unguarded fear still visible in her expression, understanding something I probably should have recognized weeks earlier but had somehow managed to avoid fully confronting until this exact moment.

*She still loves him.*

After everything-thirty years of quiet suffering, the separation papers, the hard-won freedom she’d only just begun tasting before circumstances pulled her back here-some part of her clearly still loved him, deeply enough that the possibility of losing him tonight had sent her running through the compound in genuine, visible panic.

I sighed, some complicated mixture of understanding and old, protective wariness settling into my chest. “Go see him, Mom.”

She nodded, already moving past me toward his door, before pausing, turning back with something uncertain in her expression. “Is that alright? I don’t want to intrude if he needs rest, or if you think—”

“He needs rest,” I said gently, “but I think seeing you would probably help more than hurt, honestly. Go. I’ll wait out here.”

She disappeared into his room, and I settled into one of the hallway chairs, processing everything-the fear from earlier, the genuine relief now that he was stable, and this fresh, unexpected complexity of watching my mother’s obvious, unresolved love for a man who’d caused her thirty years of quiet suffering.

I could hear their voices faintly through the door, too muffled to make out actual words, but the tone carried something soft, careful, neither raised nor tense in the way I might have expected given everything unresolved between them.

Evelyn found me there a few minutes later, having apparently gone to check on Willow and returned once she’d confirmed everything was settled with the nanny. “How’s he doing? And your mom, I heard she rushed over.”

“Stable,” I said, gesturing toward the closed door. “She’s in there with him now.”

Evelyn settled into the chair beside me, following my gaze toward the door. “How do you feel about that?”

I considered the question carefully before answering, understanding it deserved genuine reflection rather than a quick, easy response. “Complicated. She filed separation papers, Evelyn. She fought hard for the freedom to actually leave him, and now here she is, rushing to his bedside the moment she thought something serious might have happened.” I dragged a hand down my face, tired in a way that went beyond simple physical exhaustion.”

1/2

Chapter 89

+15 Bohus

Part of me understands it completely. You can want freedom from someone and still genuinely love them, still be terrified of actually losing them. But part of me also worries about what it means for her, if this pulls her back toward reconciliation before she’s actually had the chance to fully heal and decide what she wants independently.”

“That’s a real concern,” Evelyn said thoughtfully. “But it’s also her choice to make, isn’t it? However complicated the timing, however messy the emotions actually are underneath it.”

“I know,” I admitted. “I just don’t want her making that choice out of fear, or gratitude for tonight’s/scare, rather than something more genuinely considered.”

We sat together in the quiet hallway, waiting, and I found myself thinking about everything my father had said to me on the path earlier, about being proud of me, about meaning every word he’d said about actually trying to change. I thought about whether that same genuine transformation might actually extend far enough to make reconciliation with my mother something real and healthy, rather than simply another pattern of her returning to old, familiar suffering out of habit or misplaced loyalty.

The door opened eventually, and my mother stepped out, her eyes red from crying but something calmer, more settled in her expression than the panicked urgency she’d arrived with.

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