Lahat ng Kabanata ng Reborn After Rejection: I Chose the Alpha Everyone Feared: Kabanata 251 - Kabanata 260

Grant and Caleb took the pending route notice into the next room. Hallie stayed with Saevren.He kept several feet between them, enough that neither could pretend the conversation was casual.Hallie appreciated the distance more now that she knew he was looking for something inside her emotional field.“The bond is still active,” she said.Saevren nodded once.“With Austin.”“Yes.”“It still reacts?”“Yes.” Hallie did not soften the answer for Grant, even with him out of the room.The mate bond existed. Her marriage existed. One truth did not need the other diminished.Saevren looked at the table rather than at her for a moment.Then he said, “That makes the echo more plausible.”“Plausible.”“Not certain.”Hallie folded her arms.“You keep making that distinction.”

Austin came to Cedar Draw because Bellamy needed to know how close defensive movement could come to the safe-passage system before both stopped working.That was the reason. He repeated it once before he crossed the boundary. It had not changed. Hallie was somewhere inside.The mate bond had known that before Austin saw her. It tightened through him the moment Cedar Draw opened around the road. A pull under his ribs.Recognition without permission. Austin kept walking. Bellamy’s current position was folded in his coat.Boundary watch increased. Civilian passage still separate from military movement.If Bellamy could no longer keep civilians safe, Austin would close the road before anyone entered it.Those were the decisions he had come to coordinate. Not Hallie. He found Grant first.Grant stood near the main room with Caleb and Saevren.Austin stopped for half a beat at the sight of the full Vael.Again.Sa

“Can you feed on it?” Hallie asked.Saevren did not pretend to misunderstand. Austin was gone now; the mate bond had quieted with distance, but it no longer felt invisible.Hallie stayed several feet away. No contact. No reason to move closer.A full Vael could perceive emotion and absorb it. Saevren had just confirmed he could perceive the current between Hallie and Austin.The connection formed before she wanted it to. Saevren’s face changed—not hunger, something more careful.“Yes,” he said. The answer went through Hallie colder than the bond had.She folded her arms tighter.“On the mate bond.”“On the emotions moving through it.”“That is not the same answer.”“No.” Saevren stayed where he was.Hallie appreciated the distance because the question had already made the room feel too intimate.“The bond is the

Grant waited until Hallie left the room before he spoke to Saevren.He did not want her excluded. This question simply belonged to him first.Saevren remained by the far side of the table. Same distance he had kept from Hallie. Grant noticed.He did not thank him for it.“How weak?”Saevren looked at him. Grant’s patience thinned immediately.“You told her you could weaken the bond.”“It would.”“How weak?”Saevren’s expression changed by almost nothing.“I do not know what one time would do.”“That is not what I asked.”“It is the answer I have.”Grant stepped closer to the table. Not to Saevren. The distinction mattered more than he wanted it to.“Can you weaken it a little?”“A little, yes.”“More than a little?”“I can.”

Hallie carried the unanswered question into the hallway. The hallway outside felt too quiet after the conversation.For a few steps, Hallie let herself imagine what the answer might mean.No pull when Austin entered a room. No sudden heat under her skin because his body was close. No awareness tightening across distance when the bond decided proximity mattered.No part of her nervous system insisting on a connection she had already refused to build her life around.The thought stopped her. She was not imagining loneliness.She was imagining silence, and the word made her put one hand against the wall.Her pulse had accelerated. Hope. She knew it immediately.Hope rose hard enough to frighten her.The mate bond had been part of her reality for so long that imagining its absence felt almost indecent.She had rejected Austin. Left Bellamy. Married Grant.Chosen Cedar Draw. Said I love you. None of that had removed th