The Rejection-c

Because if I turned around and looked at Mila again, I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave.

And if I stayed, my daughter would grow up watching me love a man who had already chosen someone else.

She would grow up in the shadow of rejection.

That was the one thing I refused to allow.

The southern border of the pack was silent at this hour.

No guards.

No patrols.

I knew this side of the territory better than anyone. I had spent my childhood running through these woods, climbing the rocks near the creek, sneaking past ward markers when I was young enough to think rules were games.

I knew exactly where the protection barriers weakened.

Exactly where I could leave unnoticed.

I stopped beside the final tree at the edge of Ashveil territory.

For a moment, I simply stood there.

Behind me was everything I had ever known.

My home.

The scent of pine trees and smoke drifting from pack chimneys. The warmth of familiar wolves sleeping safely nearby. The invisible connection every pack member shared—a bond that wrapped around you so completely you forgot what loneliness felt like.

And somewhere inside that territory…

Kael.

Ahead of me was only darkness.

An empty road.

An uncertain future.

No mate bond.

No pack.

No Alpha waiting for me.

My hand rested gently over my stomach.

“Looks like it’s just us now,” I whispered softly. “You and me against the world.”

The words hurt more than I expected.

Taking a shaky breath, I stepped across the border.

Immediately, I felt the pack bond weaken.

It faded slowly, like warmth leaving frozen skin.

First came the distant connections—the wolves I barely spoke to. Then the stronger ones followed, until the comforting hum of the pack itself began disappearing from my chest.

The silence that replaced it felt unbearable.

And then…

The final thread snapped.

The last tiny piece of Kael that still lingered inside me vanished completely.

It felt like a light going out.

I stood alone on the dark roadside with a single bag over my shoulder and a child growing inside me, waiting for the grief to destroy me completely.

But it didn’t.

I was still standing.

So I started walking.

At the time, I didn’t know that eleven months later, Kael Drayden would walk into a small diner miles away from Ashveil and find me standing behind the counter.

I didn’t know exhaustion would be written all over his face.

I didn’t know his eyes would pass over me at first, only to stop suddenly on the small basket sitting behind the register.

Or that everything inside him would break the moment he looked inside it.

I didn’t know what expression would cross his face when he realized the little girl sleeping there had his eyes.

And I definitely didn’t know that when he finally looked back at me—after eleven months of silence, pain, and unanswered questions—the first words he would say would be the exact words I had spent almost a year teaching myself not to need.

“I’m sorry."

But that night, none of that existed yet.

There was only the cold road ahead of me.

And the life growing inside me.

So I kept walking.

And this time, I never looked back.