All Chapters of Pregnant And Rejected Mate : Chapter 141 - Chapter 150

The road into Millhaven looked exactly the same as it had the night I first walked it alone, terrified and eight months pregnant, except this time I sat beside Kael on a wagon seat with Lena asleep between us, and the fear that used to live in my chest at the sight of that fading gray sign had settled into something else entirely — a kind of tender ache, grateful rather than afraid."There," I said, pointing as the sign came into view. Millhaven — 12 miles.** "That's it. That's the sign."Kael's hand found mine. "How does it feel? Seeing it again."I thought about the question honestly before answering. "Different than I expected," I said. "I thought I'd feel the fear first. Instead I just feel — proud, I think. Of who I was when I first read that sign. She didn't know any of this was waiting for her. She just knew she had to survive one more mile, and then one more after that.""She did more than survive," Kael said quietly. "She built an entire life out of nothing but grit and a lit

I woke before dawn on my wedding day, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, no fear jolted me upright, no reflexive scan of the room for danger. Just soft, gray light through the curtains, and Lena's steady breathing from the small bed Donna had set up beside mine, and the particular stillness of a morning that had nothing terrible waiting inside it.Donna arrived not long after with a tray of coffee and a garment bag over her arm, her face already glowing with the particular delight of a woman who'd waited a long time for exactly this occasion."Up, up," she said, setting the tray down with brisk efficiency. "You've got hair to do, a dress to get into, and a hundred nervous townsfolk downstairs who've been asking after you since sunrise.""A hundred," I said, laughing despite the sudden flutter of nerves in my chest. "Donna, I don't think Millhaven has a hundred people total.""Fine, forty," she said, grinning. "But it feels like a hundred, the way they've been carr

We stayed in Millhaven three more days after the wedding, unwilling to rush the ending of something that had felt, for the first time in this entire story, entirely gentle. It was on the second morning, sitting with coffee on the diner's porch while Lena napped upstairs, that Ada finally said the thing I think she'd been building toward since the wedding itself."I want to talk to you about something," she said, setting down her cup with a careful deliberateness that told me this wasn't going to be a small conversation. "Sera, I've been a healer for close to fifty years. I trained under my own mentor for a decade before that, and I've spent every year since giving everything I have to this pack, to your family, to this entire impossible year.""Ada." Something in her tone made my chest tighten. "What are you telling me?""I'm telling you I'm tired," she said simply, and something in the honesty of it struck me harder than any dramatic announcement could have. "Not sick. Not dying. Jus

I found the ribbon before I found the words to explain it.It was tucked in the back of my healer's satchel, faded pale blue, frayed at one end — the same ribbon Donna had tied around Lena's first blanket the morning we left the hospital, three years and one impossible war ago. I hadn't remembered packing it. I hadn't remembered keeping it at all."What's that," Kael asked, glancing over from where he sat on the nursery floor, currently losing a battle against Lena's insistence that his hair needed "fixing" with a wooden comb three sizes too big for her small hands."Nothing important," I said, though my throat had gone tight. "Just something from Millhaven. From the very beginning."He set Lena's comb-wielding hand gently aside and crossed to me, studying the worn ribbon in my palm. "One year," he said quietly. "It's been a year since the wedding this week. Did you realize that?"I hadn't, not consciously, but the moment he said it, the date settled into place with a weight that made

The morning of Mila's wedding, I woke to the sound of her crying in the next room, and for one terrible half-second, old instinct dragged me upright, heart hammering, before I registered the sound properly and understood — happy tears, not grief. The particular overwhelmed joy of a woman about to marry a man she'd loved quietly for years before either of them found the courage to say it out loud.I found her sitting on the edge of her bed in a half-laced gown, dabbing furiously at her eyes with a handkerchief that had already seen better mornings."You're supposed to be radiant right now," I said, settling beside her. "Not sobbing into a handkerchief.""I am radiant," she said, laughing wetly. "This is radiant crying, Sera, there's a difference.""There is not a difference, you look like you've been crying for an hour.""Maybe I have." She wiped at her eyes again, finally steadying. "I keep thinking about all of it. Everything we survived to get here. The letter you gave me, back befo