All Chapters of I Rejected My Mate To Protect The Pack: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Blood and Revelations Hunter pov I stumbled down the narrow stairs from the apartment, each step feeling like a descent into hell. Behind me, the echo of Tara's final words rang in my ears: *Love doesn't destroy. Whatever you felt for me, it wasn't love.* The evening air hit my face like a slap, carrying with it the scents of motor oil, cooling asphalt, and the distant promise of rain. I walked mechanically to my SUV, my hands shaking as I reached for the door handle, then stopped. The simple act of driving away felt like giving up, like accepting that I had truly lost her forever. Instead, I turned and leaned against the vehicle, tilting my head back to look up at the second-story windows of the apartment. A warm yellow light glowed behind the curtains—the light of the home Tara had built without me, the life she'd created from the ashes of what I had destroyed. *I love you,* I had said, and she'd looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. Maybe I was. Maybe the wo

Waiting for News Tara pov The fluorescent lights in the Silver Creek General Hospital waiting room hummed with the kind of persistent buzz that seemed designed to fray already raw nerves. I sat in a plastic chair that had seen better decades, my hands still stained with Hunter's blood despite multiple trips to the bathroom to scrub them clean. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to get the metallic smell out of my nostrils or stop my hands from shaking. It had been three hours since the ambulance had rushed Hunter away, three hours since I had last seen his pale face disappearing behind a wall of medical professionals shouting terms like "arterial damage" and "severe blood loss" and "prep for emergency surgery." Three hours of sitting in this sterile waiting room, staring at the same motivational posters and wondering why I felt like my world was ending all over again. I shouldn't care this much. I had told myself that a hundred times since we had arrived at the hospita

Fighting Back to the Surface Tara pov I splashed cold water on my face in the small bathroom adjacent to Hunter's ICU room, trying to wash away the exhaustion that had settled into my bones after eighteen hours of sitting vigil. I had barely left his bedside since arriving, sustained only by terrible hospital coffee and the sandwiches my father kept bringing from the cafeteria. The mirror above the sink reflected a stranger back at me—someone with hollow eyes and tear-stained cheeks, someone who looked like she has been through a war. Which, I supposed, I had. The war between duty and love, between anger and forgiveness, between the woman I had become and the girl I used to be. I dried my hands on the rough paper towels, preparing to return to my bedside vigil, when the sound of alarms pierced the relative quiet of the ICU. Not the steady beeping of Hunter's monitors that I had grown accustomed to, but sharp, urgent warnings that made my blood freeze in my veins. The sound of

Healing Hearts Hunter pov Three days had passed since I had regained consciousness, and I was finally strong enough to sit up in bed without feeling like the world was spinning around me. The doctors were pleased with my progress, and there was talk of moving me to a regular room tomorrow if my blood work continued to improve. But my attention wasn't on my medical recovery. It was entirely focused on the woman moving quietly around my hospital room, straightening things that didn't need straightening and organizing items that were already perfectly organized. Tara had barely left my side since I had woken up, sleeping in the uncomfortable chair when exhaustion finally overtook her, eating meals from the hospital cafeteria, and maintaining a constant, gentle presence that felt like both a blessing and a torment. She was close enough to touch, close enough that I could catch her scent when she leaned over to adjust my pillows or check my water pitcher, but there was an invisible wal

Unraveling Control Lydia pov I paced the length of my guest suite in the Silverstone pack house, my perfectly manicured nails clicking against my phone screen as I tried Hunter's number for the fifteenth time that day. The call went straight to voicemail again, just as it had for the past week. "This is Hunter. Leave a message." The sound of his voice, recorded before he'd left on his foolish quest to find that pathetic girl, made my chest tighten with frustrated rage. I ended the call without leaving another message—I had already filled his voicemail with increasingly desperate attempts to reach him. I haven't even seen his dad around until this morning and he looked exhausted like he drove all night. I watched who came and left from my bedroom window. He left one day in a hurry and no one told me anything about where he went. Where the hell was he? I threw my phone onto the silk bedspread and moved to the window, staring out at the pack grounds where wolves went about th