All Chapters of Pregnant And Rejected Mate : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The sound of that blade being drawn froze every part of me. I sat in the dark with Lena pressed so tightly against my chest I feared I'd wake her, my whole body strung tight, waiting for the next sound to tell me whether the man I loved was still standing."Put it away, Thorne." Kael's voice again, muffled through the stone but steady, so steady it almost didn't sound like fear held any place in him at all. "You didn't ride two territories to fight me yourself. Men like you don't dirty their own hands unless the alternative is losing everything.""You'd be surprised what I'm willing to dirty my hands with," Thorne said, "when the alternative is watching a compact I spent thirty years building collapse over one man's inability to control his own bond.""Then let's talk about that compact." Kael's voice hadn't wavered. "In front of witnesses. In front of Renner, and the others who'd lose just as much as you if this fell apart the way you're threatening to make it fall apart tonight."A

"I don't." Kael's voice cracked slightly. "I don't believe it, Rowan. But I have to ask it anyway, because the alternative is being blindsided the way I was blindsided by Torvin for weeks before any of us understood what he was capable of. I have to ask everyone. Even you. Especially you, because you've had more unsupervised time with her than almost anyone else in this pack over the last several days."Rowan held his gaze for a long, tense moment, and then, slowly, some of the hurt in his expression gave way to grim understanding."Ask me, then," he said quietly. "Ask me directly, in front of everyone, and I'll answer you honestly.""Did Thorne, or anyone working for him, ever approach you," Kael said, his voice steady despite everything, "with an offer, a threat, anything meant to turn your loyalty against this pack, against Lena?""No." Rowan's answer came without hesitation, his eyes never wavering from Kael's. "Never. And if anyone had tried, I would have brought it to you the mo

Inside, the outpost's healing room was simple but well-stocked, and Ada worked quickly alongside Renner's own healers, examining the mark on Lena's arm with careful, practiced hands while I held my daughter as still as I could manage, murmuring soft, wordless comfort against her hair."This warding should mask any signal that mark might still be transmitting," one of Renner's healers said, drawing careful symbols in a fine, glowing powder around the edges of the room. "It won't remove the mark itself. But it should buy time enough to attempt that safely.""How much time," Kael asked."Hours, at least. Perhaps longer, depending on how sophisticated whoever built that mark actually was."I sat with Lena through the tense, careful hour that followed, watching Ada work with steady, focused precision, my own body finally beginning to feel the full weight of exhaustion I'd been running from since the moment Torvin's blade first arced toward Kael in that great hall.By the time Ada finished

"I found it," she said, breathless, pulling a worn, ancient-looking scroll from her satchel. "Buried deep in the oldest section of the archives, exactly where Ada's lineage of healers would have stored something this significant."Ada took the scroll with trembling hands, unrolling it carefully, her eyes scanning the faded text with growing intensity."This is it," she said finally, her voice tight with a mixture of relief and dread. "The counter-ritual. But Sera, Kael — I need you both to understand something before we attempt this.""What," Kael said.Ada's eyes moved to Lena, sleeping in my arms, before meeting mine directly."The ritual requires blood from both parents," she said. "Freely given, at the exact moment the moon reaches its peak, combined with the child's own blood in a specific binding pattern. If performed correctly, it severs whatever hold Ines's mark was meant to create, replacing it instead with a bond rooted in the parents' own choice rather than the network's fo

"Do you regret it," I asked quietly. "Choosing this. Right now, in this exact moment, with it still fresh enough to actually feel.""No." He didn't hesitate, didn't soften it or dress it up the way he might have eight months ago when silence still felt like protection to him. "I regret every single choice that led us here in the first place. I regret rejecting you in that study, I regret every day you spent alone in Millhaven, I regret every danger she's already had to survive before she could even hold her own head up. But this? Choosing to sever something between us to save her from being bound to people who'd use her as a weapon? No, Sera. I don't regret that at all. I'd make that trade every single time.""So would I." My voice broke on it, tears finally coming now that the adrenaline of the ritual had drained enough to let them. "That's the part that's confusing, Kael. I don't regret it, and it still hurts. Both things are true at once, and I don't know how to hold both of them w