All Chapters of FAT, BARREN, AND REJECTED: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

ELLA’S POV Two hundred faces, and every single one of them had turned toward our table at once. I felt the color leave my face before I could stop it, felt the water glass slip half an inch in my hand before I caught it, and understood, with total clarity, that I had somewhere between two and three seconds to decide what kind of person I was about to be for the rest of this dinner. “I’m so sorry.” I made myself smile at the woman, made my voice come out light, faintly amused, the exact tone I’d have used a lifetime ago brushing off a servant’s mistake. “I think you have me confused with someone else.” The woman blinked, clearly thrown by my composure, glancing between me and the empty air where her certainty had been standing a moment ago. “Oh — forgive me. You look so much like her, I could have sworn—” “It happens more than you’d think.” I let the smile widen just enough to seem gracious instead of desperate. “I’m told I have one of those faces.” She laughed, a little too rea

ELLA’S POV Jason’s question hung in the air between us, and for a long moment I couldn’t find a single word to answer it with. You’d better explain to me exactly who you are. I’d spent an entire week trying to make him hear that truth, in a study, in a garden, and he’d laughed at me both times. Now the truth had walked through the front door on its own, uninvited and grinning, and I understood with a sick, sinking certainty that whatever I said next would matter far less than whatever Sherwood decided to say for me. “I can explain,” I started. “Oh, let me.” Sherwood’s voice cut across mine, warm and pleasant in the way that had once fooled an entire ceremony hall into applauding my humiliation. He hadn’t changed at all. The same easy charm, the same certainty that whatever room he stood in belonged to him by default. “It’s a wonderful story, actually. I’d hate to deprive you of the details.” “Sherwood.” My voice came out sharper than I intended, though it did nothing to slow hi

ELLA’S POV The room they took me to wasn’t a cell, not exactly, but it wasn’t anything else either. Bare walls. A single table. Two chairs, one of which I sat in and one of which remained empty for the better part of twenty minutes, as if whoever intended to interrogate me wanted my imagination to do the work before they arrived to finish it. I sat with my hands folded in my lap, the same posture I’d worn in the parlor on my first day at Silvermoon, and tried to breathe through the particular kind of fear that came from realizing, with total clarity, that I had no one left in this house who would believe a single word out of my mouth. I thought of the four small heartbeats I was carrying, and pressed a hand flat against my stomach beneath the table, out of sight, and made myself a promise that whatever happened in this room, I would not let panic make my choices for me. I had survived a ceremony hall calling me a fat, barren joke. I had survived a gate closing on the only home I’

ELLA'S POV I had promised myself, standing in that ceremony hall a year ago with my dignity in ruins around me, that I would never again let Sherwood Hawkson see me flinch. I held onto that promise now, even as his voice dropped lower, even as the threat sitting underneath his words grew sharper with every sentence. "Play nice," he said, "or I tell him everything I actually know." "You don't know anything." My voice came out steadier than I felt, though my hands had curled into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms. "You know rumors. Gossip. The same tired story you've been telling since the divorce, dressed up a little differently each time depending on who's listening." "I know enough." His eyes narrowed, the charm from earlier fully gone now, replaced with something colder and more calculating. "I know you disappeared for a year and came back wealthy enough to buy your way into a second Alpha's household. I know a woman doesn't build that kind of fortune waiting table

ELLA’S POVI didn’t sleep much that night.I lay in the unfamiliar bed the staff had assigned me, one hand resting over my stomach the way it had started to rest there without my permission, and replayed the corridor over and over until the memory had worn smooth from handling.Get your hands off her.I hadn’t imagined the certainty in his voice. I hadn’t imagined the speed with which he’d crossed that hallway, the fury in his face when he’d finally taken in what Sherwood had done, the word he’d used — protection — like it was already a settled fact rather than something he’d invented on the spot to justify his own reaction.An hour before that, he’d had me detained for questioning. An hour before that, he’d stood in a marble hall and listened to Sherwood strip away every careful lie I’d been holding together, and he’d chosen, in that moment, to trust the cruelty of a stranger over the truth I’d offered him twice already.And then, without any warning at all, he’d crossed a corridor l