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All Chapters of FAT, BARREN, AND REJECTED: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

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CHAPTER 31

JASON’S POVI didn’t examine the fury that carried me out of that fitting room. I told myself I didn’t need to. It was simple enough, wasn’t it — a woman I’d nearly trusted, nearly kissed, revealed within the space of an afternoon to be pregnant with another man’s child, on a timeline engineered to align perfectly with a story she’d needed me to believe.I repeated that summary to myself several times over the course of the afternoon, in my study, in the hallway, in the quiet of my own room where I sat long after the light had faded, and found that the more I repeated it, the less convincing it actually sounded, even to the audience of one it was intended to persuade.I ignored that particular observation as thoroughly as I could manage.I called Aldric to my study that evening, my decision made, or so I told myself, with the same cold clarity I brought to any political calculation that required decisive action.“I want the wedding called off,” I said, before he’d even fully settled i

Last Updated : 2026-07-19

CHAPTER 32

ELLA’S POVI didn’t learn about Sherwood’s offer from Jason. I learned about it from one of the household maids, who mentioned it in passing while helping me out of the wedding gown I’d been fitted for hours earlier, her voice carrying the particular carelessness of someone who assumed the information had already reached me through more official channels.“Terrible, what Alpha Sherwood tried to arrange,” she said, folding the pale silk carefully over her arm. “Offering to take you back, like you were something to be traded between them. The Alpha refused outright, from what I heard. Told him to leave and not come back with offers like that again.”I sat very still, absorbing the information slowly, feeling something complicated tangle together in my chest at the thought of it. Jason had refused. After everything — the cold fury in the fitting room, the accusation that landed harder than anything Sherwood himself had ever said to me, the wedding he’d apparently considered calling off e

Last Updated : 2026-07-19

CHAPTER 33

JASON’S POV Babies. Plural. The word hung between us for only a moment before exhaustion pulled her back under, her eyes fluttering closed again despite whatever panic had briefly surfaced behind them, the physician moving quickly to check the monitors while I sat frozen beside the bed, turning that single, unguarded word over and over in my mind. “She needs rest,” the physician said, adjusting the IV line with brisk efficiency. “The collapse was serious enough to warrant careful monitoring for the next several hours, at minimum. I’d recommend she not be disturbed until her vitals stabilize further.” “I’m not leaving.” The words came out before I’d fully decided to say them, carrying a certainty that surprised even me, given everything I’d told myself over the past two days about the wisdom of maintaining distance from a woman I no longer trusted. The physician glanced at me, something assessing in her expression, though she said nothing further about it, simply nodding and c

Last Updated : 2026-07-19

CHAPTER 34

ELLA’S POV I woke slowly, the way a person surfaces from very deep water, the sterile smell of the medical room reaching me before my eyes had fully adjusted to the dim light around me. The first thing I noticed was the IV line taped to the back of my hand. The second thing I noticed was Jason, seated beside the bed exactly where he’d been when I’d briefly surfaced hours earlier, though something about him had changed in the interval, some tightness gone from his shoulders that hadn’t been there before. “You’re awake,” he said quietly, and I registered, with quiet disbelief, that his voice carried none of the coldness from the fitting room, none of the fury that had followed me into unconsciousness the last time I’d seen him. “How long was I out?” My voice came out hoarse, my throat dry in a way that suggested it had been quite a while since I’d last spoken. “Most of the night.” He said it simply, without any of the accusatory edge I’d braced myself for. “You collapsed in the

Last Updated : 2026-07-20

CHAPTER 35

JASON’S POVThe door struck the wall hard enough that both of us flinched, the quiet, fragile intimacy of the moment shattering instantly as my grandmother swept into the room, her usual composure noticeably absent, replaced by something close to genuine alarm.“They’re yours,” Ella had started to say, the words hanging unfinished in the air between us, and I felt the loss of whatever she’d been about to say next like a physical thing, a door closing before I’d fully understood what lay behind it.“Grandmother.” My voice came out sharper than I intended, frustration at the interruption bleeding through despite my best efforts to contain it. “This isn’t a convenient time.”“I’m afraid convenience is no longer available to any of us.” My grandmother’s voice carried none of its usual measured calm, something genuinely rattled beneath the words that I’d rarely heard from her in my entire life. “We have a situation, Jason. An urgent one.”“What kind of situation?” I glanced toward Ella, wh

Last Updated : 2026-07-23

CHAPTER 36

ELLA’S POVI recognized her before she’d finished crossing the threshold.Chloe. Not a stranger, not the humble bride Vivienne’s careful lie had built her into over the past two weeks, but my own stepsister, the same one who’d leaned against my bedroom doorway barely a month ago sneering about my “bought body” on my way out the door. Her twin, Claudia, had always been the crueler of the two, but Chloe had never needed cruelty when boredom and disdain worked just as well.She stared at me now with an expression that had nothing bored about it at all.“You.” Her voice shook with a fury I’d rarely seen from her, Chloe having always preferred cool dismissal to open anger. “You’re the one who’s been pretending to be me. Living in my house, wearing my name, marrying the Alpha my own mother arranged for me. Who exactly do you think you are?”“Chloe.” I said her name quietly, some old, tired instinct from years of stepfamily dynamics rising automatically to the surface, the same careful, plac

Last Updated : 2026-07-23

CHAPTER 37

JASON’S POVI sat in that hospital room long after Chloe’s fury had finally burned itself down to sullen, simmering silence, after my grandmother’s admission had settled over the room like something too heavy to fully process all at once, and tried to make sense of exactly how thoroughly I’d allowed myself to be managed by nearly everyone in it.Ella’s name wasn’t Chloe. I’d known that for days now, had heard it confirmed by Sherwood, by Ella herself, by the physician’s diagnosis I’d overheard through a partially open door. I’d told myself, sitting beside her bed through the long hours of the previous night, that I’d finally arrived at something like acceptance of that particular deception, that the softness I’d allowed myself to feel toward her represented genuine progress rather than another lapse in judgment I’d eventually regret.Watching her now, quiet and pale in that bed, flanked by a furious stepsister and a grandmother who’d apparently been managing every piece of this arrang

Last Updated : 2026-07-23

CHAPTER 38

ELLA’S POV “Jason, wait.” He didn’t stop. I watched him turn his chair fully toward the door, his shoulders rigid with a finality that made my chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with the exhaustion still lingering from the collapse the night before. “Please.” My voice cracked, desperation overriding whatever careful composure I’d managed to hold onto through the past several minutes. “Let me finish. You interrupted me before I could say the rest, and you deserve to hear all of it, whatever you decide to do afterward.” He paused at the doorway, his back still to me, and for a long moment I thought he might simply continue through it without another word. Then, slowly, he turned the chair back around, his expression carved from something cold and unreadable. “You have five minutes,” he said. “Then I’m finished listening.” I took a breath, aware of Vivienne and Chloe still watching from the edges of the room, aware that whatever I said next would be witnessed by more p

Last Updated : 2026-07-23

CHAPTER 39

JASON’S POV I told myself, wheeling away from that hospital room, that I’d made the correct decision. I repeated it to myself through the empty corridors, through the quiet of my own study, through an evening meal I barely touched, and found that the more I repeated it, the less conviction the words actually carried. I don’t believe you. I’d said it flatly, deliberately, watching her face crumple with a devastation that had followed me out of that room and settled somewhere behind my ribs, refusing to be dismissed as easily as I’d dismissed her explanation. I sat alone in my study that night, the same stack of papers I’d used as a shield so many times over the past two weeks spread uselessly in front of me, and found I couldn’t focus on a single line of them. The details bothered me. That was the truth I didn’t want to examine too closely, sitting there in the quiet hours after everyone else in the house had finally gone to bed. She’d described the locked door. The heavy, swe

Last Updated : 2026-07-23

CHAPTER 40

ELLA’S POVThey came for me at dawn.I heard the knock before I fully understood what it meant, still half-asleep in the unfamiliar hospital bed, the physician having cleared me to travel late the previous night with a reluctance she hadn’t bothered to hide. A member of the household staff stood in the doorway when I finally sat up, her expression carefully blank in the particular way of someone delivering unwelcome news they’d been specifically instructed not to soften.“The Alpha has arranged transportation,” she said. “You’re to be ready within the hour.”I dressed slowly, my hands unsteady, the events of the previous night settling over me with a weight that made even simple tasks feel monumental. I hadn’t slept, not really, the memory of Jason’s flat, final voice looping endlessly through my mind. I don’t believe you. He’d said it after I’d given him everything, every piece of the truth I’d been so carefully protecting, and it hadn’t been enough.I made my way down to the entranc

Last Updated : 2026-07-23

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