All Chapters of Rejected by My Mate, Desired by His Enemy : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

87 Chapters

CHAPTER 1: Two Pink Lines

“Four minutes is enough.”I say it out loud, to the empty bathroom, like hearing it might make it true.My phone screen glows in my hand. Four minutes and eleven seconds.I have been staring at the clock instead of the test sitting on the edge of the sink. Counting tiles. Following the grout lines. Listening to the house below me.Damon’s voice. Then Clarissa’s laugh.Then Damon again, lower, the tone he uses when he is talking to someone he actually wants to talk to.I exhale.Then I reach for the test.Two lines.My legs give out before I can think about it. I sit on the cold bathroom floor, the impact barely registering, and hold the test in both hands.I stare until the lines stop blurring.Pregnant.The word settles slowly, like something sinking through water.The first feeling is wrong. Warm. Instinctive.It is followed immediately by clarity. What this means. What this house is. What my marriage is. What Damon will say when I tell him.I already know what he will say.I have kn

CHAPTER 2: The Announcement

"I should leave."The thought screams through my head as I stand frozen on the bottom step. Walk back upstairs. Pack a bag. Run as far as my feet will carry me.But my feet have grown roots in the foyer's marble floor.I can't move. Can't breathe. Can't do anything but stand here and watch my husband hold another woman like she's the most precious thing in his world."I'm pregnant, Damon."Clarissa's words hang in the kitchen air between them. Between all three of us, though they don't know I'm here yet.I watch Damon's face change.Shock first. His eyes go wide, his lips parting slightly. Then something shifts underneath the shock. Something warm and unguarded that I haven't seen on his face in years.Tender.He's looking at her the way I used to dream he'd look at me."Are you sure?" His voice comes out gentle. Careful. Like she's something breakable.Clarissa nods, tears spilling freely down her cheeks. "I took three tests. All positive."Three tests. Just like me. The one in my po

CHAPTER 3: Dinner from Hell

"To what do we owe this gathering, son?"Alpha Thornwell's voice fills the dining room like a thunderclap. Deep and commanding, the kind of voice that expects silence to follow it. The kind that gets it.Twenty chairs around the table. I've never felt smaller.I sit near the far end, my hands folded in my lap where no one can see them shaking. The chandelier overhead throws warm gold light across polished mahogany and gleaming silverware. Everything looks expensive. Curated. Perfect.I don't belong here. I've never belonged here. Three years of sitting at this table and I still feel like someone's going to realize the mistake and escort me out.Damon sits near his father at the head. Not beside me. Never beside me at these gatherings. I am placed near the end with the lesser pack members, the ones who are invited out of obligation rather than importance.Alpha Thornwell is a wall of a man. Silver-haired, sharp-eyed, the kind of wolf who has never once doubted his own authority. He bu

CHAPTER 4: The Confrontation

"I'm tired, Iris."The words hit the bedroom air like a door closing. Final. Dismissive. The same tone he uses when I ask too many questions or take up too much of his time.I wait until the house is silent. Until the last guest has left and Clarissa has finally gone to her room, the guest room that's become permanent. Until the sound of Damon pouring another drink downstairs fades into quiet footsteps on the stairs.Midnight. The clock on the nightstand glows green in the darkness. I've been sitting on the edge of our bed for two hours in that awful beige dress, watching the door, listening to the house settle around me.I've rehearsed this conversation so many times that the words have worn grooves in my mind. I know exactly what I want to say. I know exactly how I want to say it. Calm. Clear. Direct.But the moment the bedroom door swings open and Damon walks in, every rehearsed word evaporates.He doesn't look at me. Doesn't acknowledge me sitting here in the lamplight. Just walks

CHAPTER 5: The Beginning

"You have a beautiful smile. Don't hide it."Four years ago, I believed in fairy tales.I was nineteen years old, sitting on a stool in the pack healer's room with a needle and thread in my hands and Damon Thornwell's blood on my gloves, and those seven words changed the entire direction of my life.I hadn't been called beautiful before. Not once. Orphans in Silverpine Pack didn't get called beautiful. We got called useful, or quiet, or well-behaved, or sometimes nothing at all. We learned early that invisibility was safer than visibility. That taking up space was a luxury that belonged to wolves with bloodlines worth mentioning.I had been invisible my whole life.Until that afternoon in the healing room when the newly appointed Beta came in with a gash on his shoulder from training, and made me laugh while I stitched him up, and said those seven words like they cost him nothing.Like they were simply true.I had fumbled the needle. My face had gone so hot I could feel it in my ears

CHAPTER 6: The Wedding Night

"The first time with your mate is magical!"They don't tell you that wedding nights can feel like funerals.I sat in the bridal suite at the pack house, wearing a white nightgown I'd bought three weeks ago from a shop in town. It had cost more than I should have spent, delicate lace at the collar and hem, the kind of thing I imagined a bride should wear. The other mated she-wolves had told me stories while helping me dress earlier. Their eyes had gone soft and dreamy talking about their own wedding nights."You'll feel the bond strengthen," Sara had said, adjusting the flowers in my hair that would be gone in an hour. "It's like nothing else.""He'll be so gentle with you," another had added with a knowing smile. "The first time, they're always so careful."I believed them. Sat on the edge of the bed in that expensive nightgown with candles burning on every surface and believed that this night would be different. Special. That Damon would look at me the way he had three months ago wh

CHAPTER 7: The Marriage

"I'm tired. Not tonight."They say a frog will sit in slowly boiling water until it dies. I was that frog.Six months after the wedding, Alpha Thornwell died in his sleep. Heart attack, the pack doctor said. Quick. Painless. A good death for an Alpha who'd led Silverpine for thirty years.Damon became Alpha at twenty-three.The ceremony was three days later. I stood beside him in the town square while the pack elders bound the Alpha bands around his wrists and pronounced him leader. His face was stone. Grief locked somewhere I couldn't reach.I tried that night. Came to him where he sat in his father's study, now his study, staring at papers he wasn't reading."Do you want to talk?""I'm tired. Not tonight."I left him alone.That became the pattern. I reached out. He pulled away. I gave him space. He took more.The months between us touching went from one to two to three. When it did happen, late at night when he came home smelling like whiskey and couldn't sleep, it felt like charit

CHAPTER 8: The Decision

"He wants me to get rid of you. But you're mine."The locked door stares at me like a challenge. He thinks it will keep me contained. He's wrong.I don't sleep that night. Can't. My mind won't stop moving, circling the same thoughts over and over until they wear grooves in my brain.Get rid of it. His words. Said so casually. Like my baby is a problem to be solved rather than a life growing inside me.I sit on the edge of the bed with my hand pressed against my stomach, talking to someone who can't hear me yet but somehow needs to know."He wants me to get rid of you. But you're mine."The words come out fierce. Certain. Something I haven't felt in three years crystallizing in my chest."You're mine," I say again. Louder. "And I'm keeping you."It's the first act of defiance I've committed since I said I do. The first time I've chosen something for myself instead of choosing whatever makes Damon's life easier.It feels terrifying.It feels right.I watch the sky through the window tur

CHAPTER 9: The Campaign Begins

"Did you hear? She refused to terminate."The pack grapevine moves faster than wildfire. By noon, everyone knows I defied the Alpha.I walk into the healer's office where I've worked for four years, and the conversation dies. Sarah and Emma stand by the supply closet, their heads close together. When they see me, they spring apart like they've been caught doing something wrong.Sarah's face flushes. "Iris. We didn't expect you today.""It's Tuesday. I always work Tuesdays."They exchange a look. The kind of look that says they've been talking about me. The kind that says whatever they were saying wasn't kind.I move to my station and start setting up for the day. Checking supplies. Organizing instruments. The familiar routine that usually settles my nerves does nothing today.Behind me, the whispers start again. Quieter now, but not quiet enough."How dare she? The Alpha commanded it.""Selfish omega. Thinking of herself over the pack.""Two babies at once. The resources..."Each word

CHAPTER 10: The Ally

"Can we talk? Privately?"I'm sorting herbs when Octavia slips into the healing room like a ghost.My hands freeze over the dried lavender I've been separating into bundles. The scent is sharp and clean in the air, almost medicinal. I've been working in here for two hours, grateful for the quiet, for the familiar routine of organizing supplies that nobody's bothered to organize properly in weeks.Octavia stands in the doorway, half in shadow. Damon's other half-sister. The one who doesn't talk much. The one I've seen at pack gatherings sitting in corners, watching everything with those dark, careful eyes.We've barely spoken in three years. Maybe ten words total. She keeps to herself, lives in a small house on the edge of pack territory, works in the pack library cataloging records. She's as close to invisible as I am.Was. Past tense. I'm not invisible anymore. I'm the Luna who defied the Alpha. The one everyone's been whispering about for the past three days."Octavia." I set down t

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