REJECTED BY MY MATE, CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA KING

CHAPTER 3: THE PARK

Seraphine's POV

I did not sleep that night.

Rosita had not touched me. She had simply smiled, stepped over the unconscious warrior like he was furniture, and walked back into the pack house with the unhurried ease of someone who had done nothing wrong and would never be accused of it. By the time two of Xander's men came to check the courtyard she was already inside and the warrior was already stirring and there was no version of the story I could tell that would not make me look like the problem.

So I said nothing. I went back to my room. I sat on the cot and stared at the crack in the wall until light started coming through the narrow window.

Three days had passed since Xander looked me in the face and told me I was nothing. Three days of Elisa's voice carrying through the hallways like she had already learned which rooms had the best echo. Three days of warriors looking past me in corridors and maids going quiet when I walked into rooms they were cleaning. And now Rosita, standing ten feet away in the dark, looking at me like she had been waiting for this specific moment.

I pressed my palm flat against my stomach and made myself breathe.

I had been avoiding thinking about the pregnancy directly since I found out. I could feel it now though, a quiet insistence underneath all the noise of the last three days, reminding me that I was not the only one at risk anymore. Whatever choices I made from here, I was not making them alone. That thought sat heavy and strange and more real than anything else I had felt since the test came back positive. There was a life in me that had not asked for any of this. That had not asked to be conceived in a park at midnight between two people who were supposed to be enemies. That did not know yet what kind of world it was coming into or who was already trying to make sure it never arrived.

I pressed my hand a little firmer against my stomach and made a silent promise I intended to keep.

A knock rattled the door.

"Get up." A kitchen girl. Not unkind, not gentle. "Elisa wants the east hall swept before the midday meal."

I took the broom and went.

Elisa was already in the east hall when I arrived, standing near the tall windows with one hand resting on her stomach the way she always did. The bump was still small. She made sure it was never invisible.

"There you are," she said pleasantly. "The floor is a disgrace. Have it done before the elders arrive."

I started sweeping. Elisa watched me with that calm, satisfied expression she had been wearing since the night she sat beside Xander and said my name like it tasted like something she had waited a long time to say.

"You look tired," she said. "Trouble sleeping?"

"I am fine."

"Of course you are." She tilted her head. "Rosita mentioned she saw you last night. Out by the eastern courtyard quite late." A small pause, perfectly timed. "It is not really safe out there after dark. For someone in your condition."

My hands went still on the broom handle.

She knew. Or Rosita had told her. Either way the word condition landed like a blade between my ribs and Elisa's expression told me it was placed there deliberately.

I did not give her a reaction. I went back to sweeping.

She watched me for another moment with that pleasant smile of hers, then turned and left in that light, measured way that made every exit feel like a small victory. I finished the hall alone. My back ached and my head had been spinning on and off since morning. I slipped out through the side gate during the guard change and walked to the park without letting myself think too hard about whether it was a good idea.

The grass was wet from the night before. The air smelled like pine and rain and something else underneath, something green and alive that made the tightness in my chest ease just slightly. I sat on the fallen log near the edge of the clearing and pressed my hand against my stomach and tried to think clearly for the first time in three days.

Rosita knew I was here. Elisa was already using it. Someone in that pack had told them both enough to make me vulnerable. And I was running out of time to pretend I could do this alone.

A twig snapped behind me.

I turned fast. Too fast. The world tilted sideways.

Ryder stood at the tree line. Same dark clothes. Same stillness. Green eyes fixed on me like he had been there for a while and was not particularly surprised to be caught.

"You should not be here alone," he said.

"You keep saying that."

"You keep giving me reason to." He stepped closer. Just one step. His eyes moved across my face, reading something I had not offered to show him. "You look worse than two nights ago."

"I did not sleep."

"I know. I saw your light on."

That stopped me. "You were watching the pack house?"

"I was watching the park." A beat. "Your window faces the park."

I did not have an answer for that. The pull between us was doing that low humming thing again, the same thing it had done the night we first spoke, the same thing it had done every time I was within twenty feet of him. I was getting worse at ignoring it.

"Rosita knows I am here," I said.

Something changed in his face. Fast and controlled. "When?"

"Two nights ago. She was in the eastern courtyard when I came back from this park. She was standing over one of Xander's men."

"Was he alive?"

"Yes. Barely." I held his gaze. "She just looked at me and walked inside. Like she wanted me to see her."

Ryder was quiet for a moment. The quiet of someone who already understands what they are hearing and is deciding what to do about it. "She was sending a message."

"I know."

"Then you know you cannot stay in that pack house."

The words hit something in my chest I was not ready for. Not because they were wrong. Because they were right and I had been trying not to admit it since the moment I walked back to my room in the dark with Rosita's pleasant smile still sitting behind my eyes.

"Where would I go?" I said, quietly enough that it was almost not a question at all.

He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes. Careful. Deliberate. Like a decision being made in real time.

"I have a better question," he said. "How much do you trust me?"

Before I could answer, the world tilted again. Harder this time. My legs went soft under me and I reached for the log and missed it completely.

He crossed the distance in two steps and caught me before I finished falling, one arm around my back, one hand at my arm, holding me up with the steady certainty of someone who had already decided he was not going to let me hit the ground.

"Seraphine."

"I am fine," I said automatically.

"You are not fine." His voice was low and very close. "And I think we both know why."

I looked up at him. His face was right there. Green eyes that saw entirely too much. And the secret I had been carrying alone for two weeks sat between us like something that had already decided it was done waiting.

Everything went dark.