Todos los capítulos de Rejected and Pregnant I Fled The Pack: Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 20

Evelyn pov The nausea hit without warning, same as it always did lately, twisting through my stomach hard enough that I barely made it to the small bathroom at the back of the diner before I was sick. I knelt there on the cold tile, one hand braced against the wall, waiting for the worst of it to pass. It had been like this for weeks now—not constant, not predictable, just sudden and vicious whenever it decided to strike, usually at the worst possible moments. Halfway through inventory. In the middle of a conversation with Pete about kitchen tile. Now, apparently, at the end of a long day of sanding down the old counter, exhaustion catching up with my body in the cruelest way possible. When it finally passed, I sat back against the wall, breathing hard, one hand instinctively finding its way to the curve of my stomach. *A cheater's pup.* The thought arrived unbidden, ugly and unwelcome, and I hated myself a little for thinking it even as it settled into my chest like a stone. It

Damon pov I didn't sleep that night. Didn't try to. Instead, I sat at my desk long after the pack house had gone quiet, staring at a stack of tracker reports I'd already memorized, turning over the same impossible math again and again. Evelyn was out there, pregnant, and I had no idea where. Marissa was down the hall, pregnant too, and increasingly certain of what she believed that entitled her to. She has been trying to sleep with me and touch me, but I push her away each time. I can't even get hard around her now. I needed Evelyn back. Not just for the pack, not just for whatever political mess my father was already maneuvering around — I needed her back because three months of silence had stripped away every excuse I'd been hiding behind, and what was left underneath was simple: I'd loved her before I ever touched Marissa, and I'd thrown it away for something that meant nothing next to it. My child deserved a father who fought for that, not one who settled for succession math.

Evelyn pov The contractions started just after midnight, low and dull at first, easy enough to dismiss as the same Braxton Hicks tightening I'd been feeling on and off for the last few weeks. I lay in the dark of my small apartment above the diner, one hand pressed against my stomach, breathing through it, telling myself it would pass the way the others had. By two in the morning, I understood it wasn't going to pass. The pain came in earnest now, sharper, closer together, and somewhere beneath the physical intensity of it, a different kind of fear began creeping in—one that had nothing to do with the labor itself and everything to do with what I knew instinctively might happen because of it. *The bond.* I'd spent eight months building walls around it, smothering every instinct that wanted to reach back toward Damon, keeping my end of the connection as quiet and unresponsive as I possibly could. It had worked, mostly. The faint pulses I still occasionally felt from his side had g

Evelyn pov Nothing had prepared me for this. I'd read the books, sat through the birthing classes alone in the back row, listened to Pete's wife share careful, well-meaning advice over the phone in the weeks leading up to this. None of it had prepared me for the sheer, consuming reality of it—hour after hour of contractions building on top of each other, the exhaustion settling so deep into my bones that I'd stopped being able to track how long I'd actually been in this room, stopped being able to focus on anything beyond the next brutal wave of pain and the doctor's steady voice telling me I was doing well, almost there, just a little longer. I didn't feel like I was doing well. I felt like I was being torn apart from the inside, and somewhere beneath the physical agony, a colder, sharper fear had settled in—the bond. I could feel it, open wider than it had been in months, some desperate, uncontrollable current running between Damon and me that I no longer had the strength to smot

Damon pov I'd been sitting beside Evelyn's bed for nearly an hour, Willow finally settled into the small hospital bassinet beside the bed, when my phone buzzed against my thigh. I almost ignored it. Everything about this room—the quiet, the exhausted peace that had settled over Evelyn as she drifted in and out of sleep, the soft, even sound of Willow's breathing—felt too fragile to interrupt with pack business. But the buzzing continued, insistent, and I finally pulled the phone from my pocket, glancing at the screen. *Dad.* I stepped as quietly as I could toward the small window at the far side of the room before answering, not wanting to risk waking either of them. "What," I said, keeping my voice low. "Where are you." My father's voice came through clipped, sharp with an authority I'd spent my entire life deferring to without question. "Callum tells me you drove north with half the guard and didn't bother explaining why." "I found Evelyn." I kept my eyes on the window, on th