All Chapters of The Ties The Bond Us: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

I woke up to the sound of rustling—things being moved around. Again. I blinked the sleep from my eyes, lifting my head from the pillow to see Levi standing in front of the mirror, combing his hair back like we lived in a damn shampoo commercial. He caught me staring and smiled like he hadn't just turned my life upside down yesterday. "Did you sleep alright, Gorgeous?" he asked. "Fuck, you're still alive," I groaned, letting my face fall back into the pillow. Yesterday really happened. Levi made the choice I couldn't. He chose to keep the baby. His parents took a minute to recover, but then they were excited, doting even. And me? I finally managed to pull together a decent plan to get out. A werewolf pregnancy only lasted six months, which meant I had about two and a half months left to map out every inch of pack territory, find its weakest link, and vanish with my baby. I'd find a witch, maybe get turned fully human, anything to sever the connection. This baby didn't need to grow

I didn’t know who the hell that guy was, but as soon as he snuck up behind me, I was real grateful for the baseball bat I’d been examining out of boredom in the side room. It connected with his side before I even fully processed what I was doing. And then the reality of what I just did hit me. I stared down at him groaning on the floor, still breathing. Thank god. But still—what the fuck was he expecting me to do, honestly? He came in like a creep and was pouring out heat pheromones. If he thought he was being slick, he really needed to take a class in subtlety. Because I felt it, and I hated how my stomach churned from the strength of it. Clamping my hand over my nose, I ran out of the room and onto the front porch to breathe in some clean air. The cold outside stung my lungs, but I welcomed it. I needed to get that stench out of me. After a few minutes, once my stomach stopped trying to flip itself inside out, I walked back inside. The mansion was eerily quiet now. Not the peace

Okay. Yeah. There were definitely feelings here. There had to be, considering the things I’d done with Levi lately—and not during a heat, mind you—and somehow, I hadn’t felt disgusted at all. In fact, it was the opposite. I kept wanting him more. I wanted him with this sort of desperate craving that made my stomach flutter and my head ache. “Yeah, you’ve fallen for him, stupid. But birds of a feather flock together,” Alex rolled his eyes at me after I finished unloading everything. “Do you really think so?” I asked, cautiously hopeful. That’s how far gone I was—I was seeking Alex’s approval. He gave me a tired glare. “Loser, you like him so much that you actually changed your mind about him completely. You sat here for thirty fucking minutes praising him like he invented the sun.” “When I think about it…” I started slowly, trying to piece it all together, “maybe that uncomfortable feeling wasn’t really discomfort. I just didn’t know what it was. I thought it was bad since I’ve ne

I sat down on the icy bench at the park, letting out a long, exhausted breath. For once, despite the cold seeping through my coat and into my bones, it felt good to be outside. My back ached, my feet were swollen, and my ankles hated me, but at least I wasn’t being hovered over for the first time in what felt like forever. Levi had been suffocating. Not in the bad way—but definitely in the overwhelming, “I love you so much I’m going to stare at you for ten hours straight” way. If he wasn’t massaging my feet or monitoring how many bites I took, he was scowling at anyone who even looked at me in public. His obsession with rubbing my belly every three minutes was almost endearing… until it wasn’t. I had to beg his dad to take him to work today. Force him, even. He almost faked a stomach flu just to stay home and hold my ankles or whatever weird thing he felt like doing today. “Look at that guy’s stomach!” I turned my head slowly. Some kids were building a snowman just a few feet awa

I lay back in Alex’s bed, staring up at the ceiling, feeling more exhausted than I had any right to be. Not physically—though pregnancy had me beat most days—but emotionally. I was drained. The room was quiet except for the faint ticking of the wall clock. I was too miserly to actually spend the money on a hotel, not when I’d been slowly building up my secret “escape fund,” but now the lumpy mattress beneath me made me question that decision. I shifted to my side, pulling the blanket tighter around me. The only thing I could really think about was the look on Levi’s face. The way his eyes had looked like glass when I’d shut that taxi door. The rearview mirror had caught the exact moment he broke, and it played over and over in my mind like some twisted loop. He looked like I’d stabbed him. I exhaled, rubbing a hand across my forehead. “I did the right thing, right?” I asked aloud when Alex came in, tossing me an extra pillow like I was some honored guest in his apartment. “You we