All Chapters of Reborn After Rejection: I Chose the Alpha Everyone Feared: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Grant knew Hallie had made a choice before she told him what it was.She had crossed the yard after speaking to the young Alpha and taken Grant’s hand without hesitation. She had stayed beside him while the visiting party prepared to leave.That could have meant several things. Grant refused to decide which one. He waited until they were away from the others.Hallie found him near the common room after the last travel arrangements had been settled. The young Alpha’s people were still in Cedar Draw, but most of their things had already been carried out.Grant looked at her.“You don’t have to tell me anything before you’re ready.”“I know.”She stopped in front of him.“I told him no.”Relief hit so fast Grant almost hated it.It loosened something in his chest before he could stop it. Beneath that came satisfaction, warmer and sharper.Hallie had been offered the easier life. She had refused it. She had chosen him.For one ugly second, the thought arrived as victory. Grant caught it th

The first page of the report concerned the agreement. Austin read it carefully.Cedar Draw and the visiting pack had signed. The arrangement recognized responsibility by function instead of forcing Cedar Draw into traditional ranks. There were limits for temporary contacts, a review process for disputed changes, and protections for work already underway.Useful. Orderly. The kind of political result Austin would normally have studied for weaknesses before deciding whether it mattered to Bellamy Creek.He turned the page. The next lines stopped him. The young Alpha’s interest in Hallie had been real.Not rumor. Not the easy speculation people made whenever an unmarried Alpha spoke too often to an attractive woman. He had wanted her as his wife if she were ever free to choose.He had been willing to make her Luna. Austin read the paragraph again. His hand tightened on the paper.The mate bond pulled beneath his ribs, immediate and familiar. For months, he had hated that pull because it k

Hallie woke before Grant and stayed still for several seconds.His arm was heavy across her waist. The room was still gray with early light, quiet enough that she could hear his breathing and the faint sounds of Cedar Draw waking beyond the walls.Nothing about the morning looked different. That felt important.Hallie’s name had gained no title overnight. Grant was no easier for other packs to understand, and the mate bond with Austin still existed as a distant pull she could not erase simply because she had chosen something else.And the man beside her was still the man she had chosen. Hallie shifted carefully. Grant’s eyes opened.“You can move,” he said, voice rough with sleep.“I was trying not to wake you.”“Failed.”She smiled. His arm loosened immediately. Hallie noticed that too.Even now, after the night they had shared, he did not assume closeness gave him ownership of the next moment. She stayed anyway. A knock sounded from the outer room later, after they had dressed and se

The meeting that produced Hallie’s letter began with three separate problems. Austin had expected one. By the time the third person finished speaking, he had stopped pretending the failures were unrelated.A work rotation had been changed without the supply schedule changing with it. Two disputes had reached leadership because the people handling them were working from different decisions. A stores adjustment had been approved, but the person arranging the next week’s labor had never been told.None of it was catastrophic. Together, it was becoming a system. Austin stood at the end of the table.“Who is carrying decisions between functions?”No one answered immediately. That answer was worse than any name. One of the older members of Bellamy Creek’s leadership shifted a stack of notes.“We split that work.”“Between whom?”“Whoever owns the problem.”Austin looked at him.“That is not what I asked.”The man exhaled.“Rotations go through one person. Stores changes through another. Pack

Bellamy Creek looked the same from the boundary. That was the first problem. Hallie had expected distance to change it somehow.Instead, the familiar paths still cut between the same buildings. People crossed the yard with the same quick turns she remembered. Two voices rose near the stores entrance, one person walked away before the other finished, and a third stood holding a page no one had apparently told him where to take.Hallie saw the problem before Grant spoke.“The rotation change didn’t reach stores,” she said.Grant glanced at her.“You can tell from here?”“The person with the page came from the work board. The person arguing at stores is pointing toward the south side.”Grant looked again. Hallie wished he hadn’t been able to confirm it that easily. They kept walking.She stayed beside him. Not behind. Not ahead.Beside. The choice became more deliberate with every step.Bellamy Creek had trained her body for this place. She knew where an Alpha would be expected to walk wh