Todos os capítulos de Reborn After Rejection: I Chose the Alpha Everyone Feared: Capítulo 271 - Capítulo 280

The room was dark except for the lamp Grant had left burning beside the bed.Hallie stood near the window with both hands wrapped around the sill, watching nothing outside.She had already told herself the marriage would remain hers if the bond disappeared. She had believed it. She still did.That had not stopped the fear.Grant closed the door behind him and did not ask why she had been standing there long enough for the glass to cool her fingers.“You’re doing that thing again,” he said.Hallie looked over her shoulder. “What thing?”“Trying to solve something before you admit it hurts.”She almost denied it. Instead, she released the sill.“I know the bond doesn’t make our marriage real.”Grant’s expression sharpened, but he waited.“I married you before I knew there was any way to change it. I stayed because I wanted to stay. None o

“I need to return to Everen soon,” Saevren said as he closed the last folder.Grant looked up from the other end of the table. Hallie did too.Nothing in Saevren’s voice made the statement dramatic. He was an heir with responsibilities that had existed before Cedar Draw, before Hallie, before any of them had known he could change a mate bond.Grant should have been relieved.Instead, all he felt was the weight of a problem that would remain after Saevren left.“How soon?” Hallie asked.“Soon enough that anything unfinished here stays unfinished for now.”Saevren’s gaze shifted briefly to Grant, then back to Hallie. He did not add anything about the bond. Grant noticed that.He noticed too much where Saevren was concerned.A few days ago, he would have called the whole possibility impossible and meant it as an argument. A mate bond was not something a third person consumed u

“Yesterday, you told me there would be conditions,” Hallie said before Saevren could leave the main building.He stopped. Hallie had spent the night with Grant’s shoulder warm against hers and one sentence repeating beneath everything else.No one had priced it aloud. She was done letting that remain true.Saevren turned toward her. “Yes.”“What are they?”His expression did not change, but Hallie felt the question land.Hallie folded her arms. “I know what the process does and what it could cost you. I want the terms you would require from me before you agreed.”Saevren was quiet for several seconds. Then he let go of the door.“You want the price.”“I want you to stop making me guess whether there is one.”“There is.”The answer hit harder because he gave it without apology.Hallie held his gaze. “Say it.”Saevren’s bronze-amber eyes stayed on hers.“I would not free you from Austin and accept the hunger that could follow unless you chose a continuing intimate relationship with me.”

“Saevren gave me his condition,” Hallie said before she could talk herself into waiting for a better moment.Grant set the Cedar Draw route report aside. His cup had gone cold beside it.There was no better moment.“I didn’t accept. I told him I wasn’t answering today.”Grant’s expression changed. “All right.”Grant nodded once. Hallie remained standing across from him.She could have started with the parts that made Saevren sound careful. That would have been easier.It would also have softened the thing Grant needed to hear.“He won’t do it unless I choose an ongoing relationship with him.”Grant’s hand closed around the edge of the table.“Not one night. Not sex as payment. He wants to be my intimate partner. Romantic. Continuing.”Grant’s attention dropped to the table. For several seconds, the only sound was paper shifting under his hand.“And he said that before anything starts?”“Yes.”“No process first. No condition afterward.”“Yes.” Grant rubbed his thumb over the edge of th

Hallie was halfway through correcting a route notation when the bond pulled. Not hard. That almost made it worse.Her pencil stopped above the page.The sensation came from somewhere beneath thought, a brief tightening low in her body followed by the familiar awareness of Austin existing beyond her reach. No words. No image. Nothing she could use.Just him. Hallie waited for it to pass. Her pulse had already changed.That involuntary response was what Hallie hated most. Knowing the bond was not love did nothing to stop her body from answering it.She set the pencil down.Outside the window, Cedar Draw moved through an ordinary morning. Someone crossed the yard carrying a crate. A door opened and shut. Farther off, a hammer struck wood twice and went quiet.Hallie listened until the small sounds separated from one another. Then she tried to imagine one missing thing. The bond.No sudden pull under her ribs.No involuntary pause when Austin felt something strongly enough to cross the di