The Messenger( Iva) novel Chapter 249

Don’t Shut Me Out-1

Attia had been trapped in the budget meeting for nearly two hours.

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Numbers blurred before his eyes. Department heads droned on about allocations and resources, their voices blending into a monotonous hum that grated against his already frayed nerves. He had signed off on proposals, rejected others, and mediated disputes with the patience of a man who had learned long ago that bureaucracy was a battlefield like any other.

Then his phone buzzed.

He glanced at the screen.

Brentley: *Miss Monica Zarg is here. She insists on seeing you.*

Attia’s blood turned to ice.

For a second, he forgot to breathe. The pen in his hand stopped moving. The voices around him faded to

static.

*Fuck.*

Monica was like a pest-one that refused to be swatted away no matter how many times he tried. He had expected her to react to the broken engagement. Phone calls. Angry messages. Perhaps a letter from her father’s lawyers.

But he had not expected her to show up at the academy

Not here. Not now.

Not when he was finally making progress with Lori.

He excused himself from the meeting, ignoring the curious looks of the department heads. His strides were long, purposeful, his jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached.

The engagement had been a mistake from the start.

He had called his father at the beginning of the week. The conversation had been brief, brutal, and exactly as expected.

*I’m ending the engagement.*

Silence on the other end. Then his father’s voice, cold and cutting: *Impossible. Explain yourself.*

*I have found my fated mate.*

Another silence. Longer this time. Attia could picture his father’s face-the narrowing eyes, the tightening jaw, the way his lips pressed into a thin line of disapproval.

“Which family?”

“No one from your circles.”

< Don’t ShuLMeDat-1

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You are throwing away a strategic alliance for… what? Some girl you barely know from a no name family?*

*She is my fated mate.*

*Fated mates can be rejected Contracts cannot.*

*I will not reject her.*

*Then you are a fool.*

The call had ended shortly after. But not before his father had delivered the final blow-the one he always

used when words failed.

*You were never the same after the injury. I had hoped… but clearly, I hoped for too much.*

Attia had heard those words a hundred times. In different forms. Different contexts. But the meaning was always the same.

*You are damaged. You are less than you were. You are a disappointment.*

His father had never hidden his disappointment. For years-decades-Attia had been the perfect heir. Powerful. Smart. Ambitious. A rising star who made the Scott family name burn bright.

Then the curse had shattered his knee.

And he had become damaged goods.

His father could not accept less than perfection. Could not look at his son without seeing what might have been. Every meeting, every conversation, every phone call was laced with reminders of Attia’s fall from

grace.

It was the reason Attia rarely visited his pack. The reason he preferred to stay at the academy, surrounded by students who didn’t know his past, who saw only the headmaster and not the broken soldier.

But he had never escaped his father’s plots.

The engagement to Monica Zarg had been orchestrated with surgical precision. His father had pushed every button he could-guilt, duty, family obligation-until Attia had agreed just to stop/the endless

pressure.

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