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Raven's POV Lord Thorne offered his estate for the ceremony and we said yes because neutral territory felt right, peaceful, safe, and perfectly ours. Neither of us wanted anything that looked like a pack event with all the weight we carried after everything we had been through inside pack halls and council chambers. We kept the guest list small on purpose and by small I mean thirty people. Even that felt like a lot to me, but Alaric said thirty was already small and I said fine. We settled on it and moved on. Sable was not on the list yet because we had not met her. Lord Thorne's closest allies were there, along with the warriors who had stayed loyal to Alaric through the expulsion. Dara was not there yet either because that came later. The people who were there had earned the right to be in the room, and that mattered to me more than numbers. I wore something simple because elaborate felt wrong and I had spent enough of my life being told I needed to present myself in a certain w

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Alaric's POV I started making inquiries the morning after the ceremony. I was careful about how I did it because I did not have a name or a clear description beyond what the warrior had given me. It was an older woman with dark hair going grey, well-dressed and calm. Like someone who had been planning to come for a long time and knew what she was going to find when she got there. Something about that did not sit right with me. I called my father first and described what the warrior had told me. My father was quiet for a moment, long enough for me to know he was already taking it seriously. Then he said he would put his contact network on it and get back to me before the end of the day. I thanked him, hung up, and went to find the warrior who had spoken to her directly. His name was Corren. He had been one of the eleven who stayed loyal through the expulsion. I trusted his read on people, so I sat across from him and asked him to tell me everything he remembered about the woman. He

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Raven's POV Alaric drove me to the meeting location, which was a small neutral territory building about forty minutes from the estate. He pulled up outside and looked at me. He said, "I will be right here." "I know," I said. "If anything feels wrong," he started. "I'll come straight out," I said. He nodded and I got out of the car. I stood on the pavement for a moment and looked at the building. Then I walked to the door, pushed it open, and went inside. The room was small and clean with a table, two chairs, and a window that looked out onto a quiet street. Maren Vale was already sitting at the table and she looked up when I came in. We both went still at the same moment because we were doing the same thing, which was looking at each other's faces and trying to find something familiar in them. She had blue eyes and I had blue eyes. Her hair had gone mostly grey, but underneath the grey, it was the same strawberry blonde that mine was. I stood in the doorway and felt something s

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Raven's POV I sat with the information about Dara for two full days before I said anything to Alaric about it. It was not fair to him, but I needed to turn it over in my own head first before I could talk about it with someone else, even someone I trusted completely. On the third morning, I told him everything while Cael was at the small pack nursery Lord Thorne had arranged nearby. Alaric sat across from me at the kitchen table without interrupting until I finished, and then he was quiet for a moment before he said, "Your father was Aldric Coas?" "That's what she said," I said. "The Alpha Lord from the eastern border?" he said. "Yes," I said. "Raven, that changes your standing significantly," he said. "I know," I said. "But I don't want to think about standing right now. That is not what matters to me about it. What matters to me is that there is a woman named Dara who has known about me for years and was stopped from finding me. I want to know who she is before I decide what

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Raven's POV I waited four days before reaching out to Dara because I needed those days to figure out what I actually wanted from the conversation before I walked into it. I had learned by now that going into something important without knowing what you wanted from it was how you ended up agreeing to things you had not decided on yet. I wrote the message through Lord Thorne's office the way Alaric suggested, because it gave it the right weight. I made it clear that this was not an impulsive reach out, but something considered and deliberate. I kept it short by writing just my name, a brief acknowledgment that I had spoken with Maren, and a request to meet at a neutral location at a time that suited her. Her response came back within six hours, which told me she had been waiting for it. She suggested a small building in neutral territory two days from then. I confirmed it and told Alaric. He said he would arrange a warrior to be positioned nearby, and I said fine, as long as they

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Raven's POV We packed everything into the car on a Saturday morning. There was more of it than either of us had planned for because packing for a baby meant packing for three people regardless of how efficiently you tried to approach it. By the time the car was loaded, Alaric looked at the back seat and said, "We need a bigger car." "You said we needed bigger bags," I said. "Both," he said. "We need both." The drive to Elderwick took over two hours and Cael slept for most of it. It was a relief because the one time he woke up briefly, he made his feelings about being in the car seat very clear, then went back to sleep as abruptly as he had woken up. Elderwick Elite University sat on the edge of a town that was bigger than anywhere I had lived before. It was not a pack territory with defined borders, but an actual open town with streets going in multiple directions and buildings that had nothing to do with pack hierarchy or council politics. I sat in the passenger seat looking o

All Chapters of The Rejected Plump Mate Was Pregnant : Chapter 121 - Chapter 126

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