All Chapters of MY MATE REJECTED ME ON OUR WEDDING NIGHT. NINE MONTHS...: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

They moved me out of the family wing three days later. Nobody said it directly, nobody in this pack ever said anything directly if they could help it, but I came back from a walk to find my things already boxed and sitting outside a smaller room near the servants' quarters, and I understood the message well enough without anyone spelling it out.I didn't argue. There didn't seem to be a point.The room was fine, actually. Smaller, colder, but fine. What wasn't fine was the way people looked at me now, or didn't look at me, which was worse. I'd walk into the kitchen for water and conversations would just stop, mid-sentence, like someone had reached over and turned down a dial. Once I would have found that humiliating. By day three I mostly just found it tiring, the way a headache that won't quit is tiring.Kane, at least, had the decency to stay away from me entirely. I heard about him secondhand, a wedding date being set with Selene for the following month, a formal announcement pendi

Roman gave me a room on the east side of the pack house, away from the main hall, close to the healer's wing. I didn't ask if that was deliberate. I already suspected it was.The first few days I mostly slept, the running and the fear finally catching up with me all at once. Ivy, Roman's healer, an older woman who didn't ask questions I didn't want to answer, told me that was normal enough for early pregnancy stacked on top of grief and shock."Your body's been running on adrenaline for a week," she said, pressing gentle fingers along my stomach. "It's allowed to stop now."Roman checked on me himself every few days, always some practical reason attached, whether I needed anything, whether Ivy had cleared me for solid food yet. It would have been easy enough to send someone else. He never did."You don't have to keep checking on me yourself," I told him, maybe ten days in. "You have a pack to run.""I'm aware." He leaned against the doorframe, not quite entering, the way he always see

Roman found me on the terrace again the next morning, before I'd fully decided whether I was still angry at him for the council or grateful he'd stood in front of that room and made a promise he hadn't asked me if I wanted. He set a cup of tea down in front of me, not the one Ivy usually brought, something different, and sat across from me without waiting for permission. "You're upset with me," he said. "I'm upset that you keep deciding things about my life in rooms I'm not invited into." I wrapped both hands around the cup, more for something to hold onto than for the warmth. "Even when you decide the right thing." "That's fair." He didn't argue it, which surprised me more than if he had. "I'll try to do better." "Try." "I said I'd try. I didn't say I'd succeed." Something almost like humor moved behind his eyes, gone quickly. "I've spent my whole life being the person who decides things in rooms other people aren't invited into. It's a hard habit to break, especially when t

Elder Corinne lived apart from the main pack house, in a smaller stone cottage at the edge of the training grounds, and Roman knocked on her door himself rather than sending someone ahead to announce us."I wondered how long it would take you," she said, opening the door before he'd finished knocking, her eyes moving past him to me before he could speak. "Come in, then. Both of you."The cottage was small and warm, lined with more books than I expected, stacked in uneven towers along every wall. Corinne moved through it like she'd long since stopped noticing the clutter, clearing two chairs by simply relocating the books on top of them to the floor."Sit," she said. "This isn't a short conversation."I sat. Roman stayed standing near the door, arms crossed, watching Corinne with an expression I couldn't quite read, something between respect and old, careful patience."You already know it's connected to the attack," Corinne said, settling into her own chair across from us. "Roman would

Roman brought me to the training grounds just after sunrise, when the air was still cold enough to see my breath, and Ivy trailing a careful distance behind with a blanket she clearly expected me to need before this was over."We're not fighting today," Roman said, before I could ask. "You're seven months pregnant. I'm not reckless enough to spar with you, whatever point you might try to make about needing to catch up.""Then what are we doing.""Listening." He gestured toward the open grass, empty except for the two of us and Ivy hovering near the treeline. "Whatever this power is, Corinne's fragments all agree on one thing. It doesn't come from strength. It comes from will. And will starts with hearing your own wolf clearly instead of fighting her into silence."I hadn't expected that. I'd expected drills, forms, something physical I could throw myself into. This felt slower, and in its own way harder."I don't know how to do that," I admitted. "Half the time I'm fighting her just t