All Chapters of Reborn After Rejection: I Chose the Alpha Everyone Feared: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

Hallie was still answering the second question about the neutral contact clause when the door opened. Caleb turned first. The Cedar Draw guard in the doorway looked at Grant, then at Hallie.“Report from the eastern route.”The room changed. Hallie let the pen rest.“What happened?”The guard stayed near the door.“One person came through the disputed stretch asking for safety. They were moving toward Cedar Draw.”The Alpha on Hallie’s left went rigid.“From where?”The guard named the side only by looking toward the other delegation. The second Alpha pushed back his chair.“So this is one of theirs.”The first Alpha snapped, “You don’t know that.” The guard continued before either could build the rest.“People from the territory behind them followed. Another patrol was already moving near the sensitive line.”Hallie raised her hand. Neither stopped immediately. The first Alpha looked at the guard.“Did our people cross?”“I have two reports.”“That was not my question.”“No,” Hallie

Hallie left Grant’s report on the table where everyone could see it. No armed contact. No injuries reported. The person who had crossed for safety was inside Cedar Draw. Both groups had withdrawn. The facts did not become cleaner because the outcome was better. One Alpha read the final message again.“So that proves the stand-down works.”The other gave him a hard look.“It proves we followed it once.”Hallie looked between them.“Yes.”Both men turned toward her. She rested one hand on the unsigned draft.“That is exactly what it proves.”The first Alpha frowned.“You make that sound smaller than it is.”“I am trying to keep it the size it actually is.”The room had changed after Grant’s report. It had not softened, but the tension had lost the edge that came from waiting to hear whether someone had been hurt.Hallie could feel the relief in her own body now. Heavy. Delayed. Her shoulders ached. She wanted to sit down and stay there for an hour. Instead, she looked at the four sectio

Cedar Draw had not finished putting the summit away when another visitor arrived. Hallie was carrying unused pages back toward the meeting building when Caleb stepped into the yard and lifted one hand for attention rather than alarm. Grant looked up from the doorway. A man was approaching along the road alone. Hallie slowed. The first thing she noticed was resemblance.The resemblance was nowhere near enough to mistake him for Grant. Nothing about the way he moved was Grant’s. Grant occupied space even when he did nothing with it. This man drew the eye without asking.He was leaner than Grant, less broad, with dark brown hair worn longer and colder in tone. His face was more symmetrical, his cheekbones sharper, his skin less marked by sun. Even from a distance, his eyes caught bronze.Hallie checked Grant's expression. He had gone still. The stranger stopped several feet away.“Grant.”Grant set his jaw.“Saevren.”Caleb’s gaze moved between them. Saevren smiled slightly.“You could s

Saevren watched Hallie work as if ordinary work were the least ordinary thing in Cedar Draw.That was the first problem.The second was that she had begun to notice when his attention changed.The summit had ended, but the settlement had not become quiet. People still needed shelter assignments corrected, deliveries redirected, and the yard cleared of the things temporary delegations had left behind. Grant was outside checking the proposed Everen passage against Cedar Draw’s actual boundary. Caleb had disappeared toward the storehouse after discovering somebody had returned three borrowed blankets and none of the rope.Hallie stood in the meeting room with a list of practical problems and Saevren at the far end of the table.He had a political reason to remain. The Safe-Passage proposal was unfinished.He also had eyes.Hallie crossed out one shelter assignment.“That family is not moving again.”Caleb, passing the doorway, stopped.“They asked for the quieter room.”“They asked befor

Hallie waited until Saevren looked at her again. It took less than a minute. He was standing near the window with the revised route sheet in one hand. Caleb had gone to check the next boundary marker. Grant was at the far end of the room, comparing two copies of the Safe-Passage proposal. Saevren should have been reading.He was not. Hallie released the pen.“Why do you keep doing that?”Saevren did not pretend confusion.“Looking at you?”“Yes.”He folded the route sheet once.“You know why.”“I know part of why.”His eyebrows lifted. Hallie stood. This was easier than pretending she had not noticed what was in front of her. Saevren was beautiful.Saevren’s beauty worked differently from the rough familiarity Grant had earned through scarred hands, blunt answers, and the way he stayed when staying cost him.Saevren’s beauty was immediate. Sharp cheekbones. Bronze eyes. A face built for other people to notice before he ever spoke. He was twenty-seven. Closer to Hallie’s age than Grant