5: Pregnant!

Jasmine 

“Is this what you’re doing now, Jasmine?!” Garrett stepped closer, chest heaving, powerful aura flaring until the air itself felt toxic.

“Garrett, what are you talking about?” Tears welled in my eyes, mixing with the cold spray of the downpour.

“You’re whoring yourself about?” he spat, lip curling into a sneer of pure disgust. “You must think I’m stupid! That’s it? That’s the someone else?!” He leaned into my face, breath hot and ragged.

Whoring? 

“You were pleading with me, begging me to reject you so you could go whore yourself off to the highest bidder! I never thought being a slut could be genetic—”

I froze. The words carved into my chest like jagged glass, leaving me breathless, numb, and entirely paralyzed.

Is this really what he thinks of me? After everything?

“That’s enough.” Anthony’s smooth voice cut in, cold and sharp as he stepped between us. “You are out of line, young man. Step back and let the lady speak.”

Garrett turned his lethal glare fully onto Anthony, lip rising over bared teeth. “Stay out of this if you know what’s good for you.”

Anthony didn’t flinch. “I don’t care who you are in your pack, boy. This is neutral central territory, and you don’t talk to a woman like that in front of my establishment.”

“A woman?” Garrett sneered, a dark, vicious chuckle bursting from his chest as he towered over him. “She belongs to my pack. She belongs to me. Do you really want to drag your polished little establishment into a war with my lineage over a maid, old man? You should have a bit of shame—”

“Garrett, stop it!” I gasped, snapping out of my trance. I threw myself between them, slamming my trembling hands against Garrett’s wet coat. “Garrett, don’t! Please! Leave him out of this!”

Garrett froze under my touch, blacked-out eyes pinning me to the spot.

“Why?” he growled, voice trembling with bruised pride. “Why? Is he that important to you?”

“Garrett, please don’t do this…” I cried, pulling frantically at his sleeves.

“Why are you protecting him?!” Garrett roared, turning his paranoid fury back onto Anthony. “You think because you wear a tailor-made suit you can take what’s mine?!”

Before Anthony could even raise his hands, Garrett moved like a striking snake. His heavy fist cracked straight into Anthony’s jaw. The older Alpha stumbled back violently, shoulder crashing against the vehicle as blood sprayed across his cheek.

I gasped in pure horror. “Garrett, enough!” I tried to shove him off the man. “Garrett, stop! You’re hurting him!”

He turned back to look at me, face a mask of absolute rage. “We’re leaving.”

“What? No! No, I can’t!” I screamed, shrinking back against the car. “Garrett, stop it! This is crazy!”

“Jasmine!” he yelled.

“I can’t—please don’t do this to me, Garrett!” I begged, my panic over my destroyed future making me wriggle desperately. But to Garrett’s twisted mind, my reluctance to leave looked like I was desperate to stay with Anthony.

“What? You’re so worried I’d ruin your chances with him? That I’ll ruin your own plans to be a whore, Jasmine?!” Garrett snarled. In one swift motion, he hauled me over his shoulder.

I pounded my fists against his back, screaming at the top of my lungs, but he threw open his car door and dropped me roughly into the passenger seat.

“Garrett, don’t do this…”

“Or what?” he snapped, leaning over the console. “You want to go with him? The moment you do, just forget about coming back to Blackstone.”

I froze.

What was the use of anything? The man who could have helped me had just taken a punch for me, and my entire life was burning to ashes.

Garrett slammed the door, rounded the hood in two giant strides, and threw himself into the driver’s seat. He slammed the gear shift and roared out onto the main road, the tires screaming violently against the wet pavement.

The sports car surged to a terrifying speed, and nausea began clawing at my throat.

“Garrett…” I whispered, clutching the seat edge. “Garrett, please…”

The whole street was blurring past us. He wasn’t listening. His eyes were bloodshot with rage, knuckles bone-white on the wheel.

“Slow down!” I reached out to grab his arm. “Garrett, please slow down. My head is starting to spin…”

Garrett swerved dangerously around a bend,narrowly missing another car and I screamed. He slammed on the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a violent halt on the empty shoulder of the road.

I sat there, heaving for air. “Garrett, please… I have to go back,” I whispered.

“No!” he roared furiously.

“You’re not being reasonable!” I yelled, despair bursting into raw anger. “So it’s okay for you to do whatever you want, but I can’t?! You get to marry Giselle and have your respectable life, but I can’t even have a life of my own?!”

“You understand my situation!” Garrett roared.

“And you’re misunderstanding this one!” I shrieked back, voice cracking. “He was just helping me! You beat him up like some crazy animal! He was helping me!”

“Helping you?” Garrett sneered, a horrific, bitter laugh escaping his throat. “Helping you, and what do you give him in exchange? A blowjob in his luxurious car? A quickie?!”

“Garrett…” My heart shattered into a million pieces.

That’s what this is, isn’t it? That’s what it’s always about to him. A way to climb.

My chest went ice-cold.

“Don’t I give you enough, Jasmine?!” he demanded, voice shaking with toxic possessiveness, jealousy, and rage.

 “I give you money! And clothes! And a fucking shelter! You don’t take any of it! But you throw all of it away the second another Alpha looks at you!”

“I don’t need anything from you!” I yelled back at the top of my lungs, the heartbreak turning into raw, desperate fury. “I never asked for your charity! Why don’t you just leave me alone?!”

“Because you are MINE!” he roared, slamming his heavy palm against the dashboard so hard the plastic cracked. “My mate! And you are NEVER to step foot back there again!”

“I was trying to take an exam—”

“I don’t care about your pathetic excuses! There’s always going to be something!” Garrett cut me off, voice dripping with venom. “There’s always going to be something, won’t there? You’ll use your pretty face, your body…”

I stared at him, paralyzed by his words.

“The pack was right after all about what you are.”

“Garrett!”

“My mom was right,” his voice laced with pure venom. “You are just like your mother. A low-born mistress who can’t keep her legs shut, looking for any Alpha willing to pay a price for.. ”

I saw red.

Before the last word could even leave his lips, my hand flew across the console. The sharp, loud crack of my palm striking his cheek echoed through the car.

I stared at him, breathing hard and fast, chest heaving. I had done absolutely nothing wrong.

“You have no right,” I whispered, voice dropping into a deadly, flat murmur. “You have no right to speak that way to me, Garrett. Not after you just ruined my life.”

Garrett’s head was turned to the side from the blow. His chest was heaving, jaw clenched so tightly the bone looked ready to snap. The red mark of my hand burned against his skin, contrasting violently with his dark, furious eyes.

“Ruined your life, because I ruined your chances with some big-shot Alpha,” he chuckled bitterly, turning back slowly. “Are you that fucking shameless, Jasmine? What, are you that starved?!”

“Garrett—”

“That horny, that desperate? What? Don’t I satisfy you enough?!” he demanded, reaching across the console and brutally yanking me against his chest.

“Fuck, you even smell like him!” he roared, pressing a hard, punishing kiss onto my collarbone, heavy hands gripping my legs roughly through the cream fabric, tearing away my space.

“Garrett, let go!” I cried, kicking and fighting against his hold with everything I had left.

“You are mine,” he warned into my skin, eyes flashing with lethal anger. “Never forget that.”

---

He pulled over a few miles later and ordered me out.

“Walk the rest of the way,” he said, voice flat and final.

I stumbled out into the rain without another word. My legs trembled with every step. 

By the time I reached the cottage, my body ached everywhere. I didn’t bother turning on the light. I just crawled onto the bed and lay there in the dark, the ruined dress still stuck to me.

A slut.

That was what my mate had called me.

Just like her mother.

Hearing those words from his mouth had torn me open. He hadn’t even wanted to listen. He hadn’t given me a single second to explain. In his eyes I was already guilty, awhore who spread her legs, a climber, a body that existed only to satiate his needs.

He wasn’t different from the others.

What he saw wasn’t a mate. Just a body. Sex. That was all I was good for.

Shame crawled up my throat, thick and bitter. Then the nausea hit sudden, violent, sharp.

I scrambled off the bed and barely made it to the small bathroom before I threw myself over the basin and retched until nothing was left. I leaned against the cold porcelain, panting, wiping my mouth with a shaking hand.

Then I froze.

No.

Please, God, no.

I counted the days in my head. The unprotected nights. The way he had driven into me with reckless abandon, never once thinking about consequences.

Panic seized my lungs.

I washed my face, pulled a dark hoodie over the torn dress, and slipped out into the night. I ran through the outer grounds until I reached the small twenty-four-hour store just past the boundary line. My fingers shook so badly I could barely pick up the small cardboard box. I paid with a few crumpled bills, head bowed low under the hood.

Back in the quiet of the old dispensary, the minutes stretched into hours. I sat on the edge of a wooden stool and stared at the plastic stick resting on the counter.

Slowly, the liquid seeped across the window.

Two dark, unyielding pink lines bled through the plastic.

Positive.

The room tilted. I stared at the test, breath catching in my throat as the world went completely silent around me.

A baby.

I was carrying his child. The child of the future Alpha who was set to marry my sister next week. The man who had just called me a slut and ordered me to walk home in the rain.

I was stupid. So helplessly, pathetically stupid.

A sharp, pathetic laugh tore from my throat. It started as a bitter, breathless chuckle and cracked almost immediately into a ragged gasp. I laughed at my own foolishness, at the absolute disaster my life had become, the sound echoing hollowly against the jars of dried herbs.

Then the laughter broke completely.

I cried for the wolf-less girl who had loved a monster through his worst tempers. I cried for the innocent life now growing inside me, trapped in a world that already considered its mother to be dirt.

I was a complete wreck.

And I couldn’t even tell him.