All Chapters of His Rejected Mate, Her Secret Twins : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

POV: Imogen Cooper arrived at eight-fifteen with a container of pasta from the place two streets over that she liked and he had never needed to be told about. He knocked twice, paused, then knocked once more. His knock. She had the door open before he finished.He looked at her face, then past her to the kitchen table, where the emergency bag sat open with its contents partially visible. His jaw tightened fractionally."Tell me you're not packing," he said."I'm organizing.""Imogen.""Come in or don't," she said, stepping back. "But I'm not having this conversation on the doorstep."He came in, set the pasta on the counter without looking at it, then faced her with his arms crossed and the expression he wore when he'd decided to say what she didn't want to hear and had already accepted the consequences.Cooper Ashford was not a complicated man. That wasn't an insult. He was thirty years old and knew exactly who he was, what he valued, and how he wanted to move through the world. Imo

POV: LachlanSilvercrest's territorial boundary was marked the way most coastal packs marked theirs, not with fences or signs humans could read but with scent markers woven into the landscape at intervals precise enough to be unmistakable to any wolf with functioning senses.The SUV slowed as Rhys approached the checkpoint, a pull-off on the coastal road where two vehicles were parked and three figures stood in the headlights.Lachlan got out.He did it deliberately. Arriving at a border and remaining in your vehicle communicated either caution or discomfort, and he felt neither. He crossed to the boundary line and stopped there, following protocol. An alpha did not cross another pack's territorial marker without an explicit invitation from someone authorized to give one.Two of the sentries were wolves he didn't recognize. Young, well-trained, standing with the alert stillness of those who took their positions seriously. The third was someone he had not expected to find on border dut

POV: Lachlan Lachlan opened the door.He had followed the rogue trail from the coastal reserve along the academy's eastern fence line and into the building through the side entrance, where a staff member had been posted to grant him access.The trail had thinned inside, layered beneath foot traffic, but it hadn't disappeared. He tracked it through the main corridor with the methodical patience he applied to anything requiring sustained attention, and it led him to the administrative wing.His wolf stopped being methodical somewhere around the junction outside Blake's office.The pressure from the bond, building since last night's territorial boundary, shifted completely. No longer directional. Immediate. Specific. Concentrated on the closed door at the end of the corridor with an intensity that had nothing to do with the rogue activity and everything to do with what his wolf had apparently recognized from the moment the plane landed.He walked to the door. Put his hand on the handle.

POV: Lachlan They looked at each other across the doorway.Close enough that the mate bond was almost unbearable. He could feel it trying to close the remaining space between them with the physical insistence of something that did not understand obstruction. He suspected she felt it just as strongly; her jaw tightened with the effort of containing the pain without letting it show."Move," she said."Not yet.""My children need to leave this room.""Our children," he said. Not a correction. A statement of what had just become permanently and irrevocably true, regardless of how either of them felt about it.Her eyes flashed. "You don't get to say that yet.""I don't need your permission to state what's true.""You need far more than permission before you have any claim to those words." She held his gaze. "You need five years you don't have, a relationship you haven't built, and trust you have done nothing to earn. So yes. Move."Blake rose from behind his desk. At fifty-one, he had sp

POV: ImogenShe opened the door, and Cooper took one look at her face and came inside without being invited, which was the correct response to what her expression was apparently communicating.He checked on the twins first, which she noted and appreciated. He appeared in the living room doorway, said a few words to Declan about the football on screen that made the boy laugh, exchanged a quiet look with Hayley that lasted three seconds and conveyed more than most adults managed in a full conversation, then returned to the kitchen and sat across from Imogen at the table.He placed a container of food on the table. She hadn't noticed him carrying it."From the place on Mercer Street," he said. "Eat.""I'm not hungry.""That wasn't a question."She looked at the container. Her stomach, too tense to register hunger since the school, made a sound that disagreed with her position.She opened the container.Cooper watched her eat three forkfuls before he said, "Tell me what happened."She set