All Chapters of After Divorce; I Married My Husband’s Brother : Chapter 41 - Chapter 45

Xavier’s povJessica had been in my office for eleven minutes and I had spent nine of them regretting agreeing to this meeting.She had arrived in a dress that was making a statement she had not been asked to make, it was cut low enough that the first thing you registered when she walked in was not her face then she had settled into the chair across from my desk.If her father wasn’t an Alpha I would have thrown her out of my office for putting up such a disgusting act.I kept my eyes on the documents between us and my voice on the business at hand because that was the only thing we were here for regardless of what she had decided."The Sterling Group aviation contract needs one amendment before I can sign off" I muttered."The liability clause on page fourteen needs to reflect shared responsibility and not…”"Xavier." She mentioned my name like it was something she was trying on.I looked up.She was already moving around the side of the desk with the confidence of someone who had ne

Gwen’s pov The courtroom smelled like old wood with a hint of citrus and lavender, it had this institutional chill of a room where people's lives got decided by people who didn't know them. I sat beside Graham with my hands folded on the table, my back straight and my face giving nothing away as I watched Cole's lawyer stand up and begin dismantling me with the smooth confidence of someone who had done this many times and found it easy. "Your Honor." His voice filled the room without effort. "Miss Rivers is an omega, she is a rank that within the Hallow Pack carries specific designations regarding stability and capacity and we are not here to be unkind about that; however we are here to be honest." He paused for weight. "Miss Rivers has demonstrated a consistent pattern of instability even as we speak, her child is currently hospitalized with an unidentified substance in her system and the question this court must ask is simple. That question is how does something like that

Gwen’s povThe door clicked shut and my legs simply stopped working.I went down slowly. It wasn’t a fall, just a slow descent with my back against the side of the bed.I pulled my knees to my chest as I felt the cold of the floor through my clothes then I sat there in the quiet of the room and let everything I had been holding all day come apart at once.The crying came from somewhere deep and old, it wasn’t the clean kind that released something and left you lighter. My tears were the kind that came from a place that had been sealed for a long time and had finally found a crack.And then the memories came the way they always came when I was too tired to keep them out.I had been seventeen and mopping the floor of the pack house corridor when he turned the corner and stopped.I remembered looking up and finding him watching me and my first instinct had been to apologize for being in the way, for existing in a corridor he needed to use because that was what omegas without families di