All Chapters of Pregnant And Rejected Mate : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

I stood frozen beside the table, my hand still resting on Lena's small chest, feeling her breathe under my palm while Ada's words hung in the air between us."This one isn't meant to bind her to the network," Ada said again, slower this time, like she needed to say it twice to believe it herself. "It's not a network marking at all, Sera. I don't recognize the pattern. It's not from any tradition Ines or Mireille described to us."Kael's hand found my shoulder, gripping tight. "Then whose is it."Ada hesitated, and I watched her weigh something before she spoke, the careful, deliberate pause of a healer about to say something that couldn't be unsaid once it left her mouth."It's old," she said. "Older than the compact system. Older, I think, than the founding pact Wren mentioned in passing when she first explained the regional council's history to us. I've only ever seen this pattern once before, Sera. In a book my own mentor kept locked away, one she told me never to open unless I had

We left the following morning, a smaller party this time, Rowan and two of Renner's most trusted guards accompanying us while Ada remained behind with Lena, Wren and Ines staying to help maintain the outpost's fragile security in our absence. Leaving Lena behind again ached in a way I'd grown almost accustomed to, but this journey felt different from the desperate flights of the past several days — deliberate, purposeful, chosen rather than forced upon us by immediate danger.The ride north took the better part of three days, the terrain growing wilder and more remote with each passing mile, and I watched Kael grow increasingly quiet as we traveled, some old grief and apprehension building visibly beneath his usual composure."Tell me about her," I said, on the evening of the second day, the two of us sitting close beside a small campfire while Rowan and the guards kept watch at the perimeter. "Your grandmother. What do you actually remember, from before the exile?"Kael was quiet for

"Then help us stop it now," I said. "Not the vow itself, maybe that can't be undone. But whatever comes next. If your grandson arrives believing he has to give everything to protect Lena, help us find another way before that becomes the only answer left."She looked at me for a long moment, tears finally falling freely down her lined face."I don't know if there is another way," she said. "I've spent thirty years searching for one and found nothing. But I'll try. For you. For her. For the grandson I've never even met, who deserves better than what this family has already cost him without his consent."Kael turned back from the window, his face carrying the same devastated resolve I'd seen in him the night he stood before the council and admitted everything he'd done to me."What's his name," he asked quietly. "My cousin. Do you even know?"His grandmother's face crumpled, and for the first time since we'd arrived, I watched her composure fully break."Marek," she said, her voice barel

Marek let out a short, bitter laugh, dragging a hand down his face. "Of course. Of course it's that simple. Give up my entire life indefinitely, for a family that let my father die and then hid the truth from me for thirty years.""You don't have to give up anything," Kael said, stepping forward. "Marek, listen to me. Whatever this vow demands eventually, we're not going to simply accept that cost the way my father apparently accepted losing your father. We're already searching for a way to sever these bindings without sacrifice. We found one for Lena's second mark, through someone willing to give up something of her own instead. There has to be an equivalent answer for this.""And if there isn't," Marek said, his voice sharp. "If the only way to satisfy this vow is exactly what it demanded from my father — are you willing to let it take from me the same way your family let it take from him?"The question hung in the room, brutal and honest, and I watched Kael struggle to answer it, h

His face crumpled, grief and fear tangled together so completely I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice breaking. "Sera, I'm so sorry, I didn't choose this, I would never choose to lose something that mattered to you—""I know," I said quickly, gripping his hand tighter, even as something cold and devastating settled into my chest. "I know you didn't choose it. This isn't your fault."But even as I said it, even as I meant every word, I felt a fresh, quiet horror building beneath the grief — because if the binding had already taken this much without warning, without asking, what was to stop it from taking more? What was to stop it from reaching deeper, further back, into the memories that had actually rebuilt trust between us this past week? What happened if it kept eating away at exactly the fragile, hard-won foundation we'd only just begun to stand on?"Ada." My voice had gone hard, urgent. "Is there a way to stop this. To keep it from t