REJECTED AND PREGNANT, I FLED THE PARK

Chapter 1 Adeline POV Even as I was about to open the door, I already heard the fragrance. Sweat. s*x. But beneath it was obvious, Victoria's perfume! The same jasmine and vanilla that she had been using since we were fourteen, licking off the mirror in my mother's vanity cabinet when she wasn't looking, and giggling about boys who were never to talk to us anyway. The notes were more substantial now, more cloying, more clammy-salty, like the tears of a skin, and more musky than ever, which is the musky scent of the alpha claiming somebody, but that's a musky scent I'm familiar with. I knew I was wrong, and I was standing in the hallway outside Sebastian's room with my hand pressing the doorframe. The sense of smell may not be all it's cracked up to be. It is possible for a nose to be confused by grief. It was a fairly recent bond; it was just one day old, and possibly the heat of last night was fooling me. Not a thing, not any thing but this! Then I heard her laugh: the low laugh, the satisfied laughter with which I had been familiar since childhood, and I knew I was not at all wrong. I should have faced the other way. I heard some little silver of myself that said to leave, that said to not come up those stairs, that said to keep that mark on my neck sacred for one more night, that said to keep it there for a week, for a month, a year, I don't know, for as long as you need. Here, the skin still throbbed, a warm pulse; it felt as if it had just belonged hours before. But a part of me that still believes in what we said to each other 24 hours ago is pushing the door open, because I don't want to believe it. It was true. The first night of my life with him I saw his bare back and his head thrown back on his pillows”Victoria, whose legs were wrapped around his waist, and his own head”what a broad, beautiful back it was, with the faint scratches of recent passion, and he whispered that I was his, that he never wanted anyone the way he wanted me. Her pupils dilated and then her eyes opened up. They found me over his shoulder, and she wasn't even looking as if she was. She did not seem to be very interested, as though I had come in on some trivial matter. Her wet face had a strand of black hair clinging to its wetness. The sheet was pulled down to just enough for me to see the curve of her breasts and how her body bent over towards his. “Sebastian.” In my own voice I heard my voice thin and far away. He turned. Which is what I would replay in my mind a thousand times in the months to follow: he did not climb on top of the sheets, he didn't shove her away in horror, and he did none of the things that a man does when he has just been caught doing something that he cannot forgive. It was as if I were the nuisance in this scene; he just looked at me irritated. His dark hair was pulled back into a knot, his mouth was slightly swollen, and the mark I'd branded him with—my mark—was dark and raised against the side of his throat, humming slightly, the bond that connected us. “Adeline.” He replied my name without a doubt, without any apology to say. It's probably best to knock. It made me laugh, it made me go woo, it made me gasp in disbelief, and it makes me take all the air out of my lungs. I scanned the scar I had just marked on his own neck; it was still raised and black. It was not love or heat, but something cold—it just felt like that to me now. Satisfaction. He was proud of himself. It was transmitted in the bond, a smug undercurrent that shook my stomach. I said, “We had s*x last night,” which made my voice c***k on the word "mated," and I hated it and hated that I'm still waiting for him to say it was a mistake or this is a terrible misunderstanding or anything. We drew the line between us, and you said that I was the world that you needed. You said that we were forever connected. You said—” Finally, Victoria was courteous enough to cover herself with the sheet but did not attempt to get out of the bed. She gazed at me; there might be pity in it, but it was masked well. But it was as if Sebastian was breathing out as though it was my fault that I was being unreasonable. There was no doubt that this was bound to happen, Adeline. It was so simple and so straightforward said he, so for a moment I didn't understand. You knew what I was before you agreed to this; Victoria understands that. I assumed you would as well after accepting me. “You marked me.” I heard myself yelling; my voice was splitting at the seams. “It's not like that's just a thing, Sebastian; it's a bond, it's supposed to mean something. You bit me. You let me bite you. You held me while I was all shook up, and you told me that you were mine.” “As per the word, it's as per the word.” It made him sound more like an alpha, one that could just order pain out of me and tell me to take it this way, as he did with the omegas. The new bond got rubbed against by the pressure; it tried to subdue, to soothe. You know nothing needs to change; you'll always be my mate, my Luna, when I become my dad. This does not take anything away from you. This is not to take anything away from you! As if my dignity wasn't on his floor in his bedroom. As if my best friend, the girl who had held my hand during my mother's funeral, who promised to be my maid of honor before she even had a mate, was not currently naked in the bed he had marked me, less than a day after, in the wake of the thunder scaring her, the girl who had slept in my bed every full moon storm. But the aroma of them together was already filling the wood, the sheets, the air with which I was breathing. I stared at Victoria. I really looked her in the eye, searching for even a glimpse of the girl I'd known all my life, the one who would sneak into my room when she heard a thunderclap, the girl who knew every secret that ever came to me, the one on whom I had placed my trust. The one who knew my mum when she died and when she was gone he'd cried with me and said that we had each other, pack or no pack, mates or no mates. “How long?” I wondered her directly, since there seemed to be an injustice about her betrayal that couldn't be fixed through the prism of his. “For how long has this been going on?” She was gracious enough to turn her head away...for at least that. She gripped the edge of the sheet of paper with her fingers. “Adeline, it’s not, it's just—it's nothing that ever happened, I just... since we were kids, I have loved him.” I had known that. I knew of it and thought it was a mere childhood crush that every girl in the pack had at some point in their life with Sebastian because I never thought she'd take action. Never expected that he would let her. Never thought that either would pick such one night after he marked me, after trusting me completely with my life, my future. The night he put his forehead to mine and said that he wouldn't want anything else; that the bond would never let him want anyone else. In the middle of my chest there was a quiet, cold, chill. The quiet that occurs just prior to total collapse. Suddenly, Sebastian said, “Get out,” which I took to mean Victoria, for one baffling moment, I thought they meant Victoria. Then I noticed that he was not, as he seemed to be looking at me. “You are creating a scene, the whole floor is likely to be able to hear you.” I laughed. It came out broken and ugly, not at all a real laugh. I'm making a scene, am I?I'm making a scene, am I? You're in bed with my best friend the day after you marked me and ‘I'm' causing a scene?” “Adeline.” The alpha tone, which he used sparingly with me, the tone that made lesser wolves bow their heads without thought came out of his mouth.This alpha tone which he used sparingly with me, this tone that made lesser wolves bow their heads without thinking, made him say it. I felt it tug at a place in my gut, some primal submission it wanted to feel I’d to offer. It made its way inside of me like a stream of warm oil to calm the sea. I detested the fact that it did work and worked just for a second. Disliked by my wolf, young and newly bound, wanted to take his gaze and await what was to come next. “Back to Bed. We'll talk about this later, when you are more relaxed.” Calmed down. I was like a kid acting up! As if the whole world had split apart right before my eyes. The mark on my neck wasn't just burning with a touch of betrayal that I felt, it was a feeling in every heartbeat. I refused to reply him. I couldn't, no matter how much I wanted to, without the sob rising to my throat and bursting loose in front of both of them and I did not want either of them to see me c***k. I was turning and running, Down the hallway, through a frame of framed photos of the Blackwood line, down the stairs that creaked under my bare feet, through the front doors, and into the cold night air past the pack members who looked up in confusion as I shoved through the front doors, and out into the cold night. The earth on the premises was so soft as to catch my soles in the ground when I walked. As I got in and out of bed, alone, and decided to look for him, the wind blew through the thin shirt I'd tossed on. I heard behind me Sebastian's voice, without turning around to call after me. It was obvious, "You knew this was coming," Maybe I had. Perhaps there was a secret, unspoken little voice in me that always knew that Sebastian Blackwood was never really mine – mark or no mark, bond or no bond. How he used to observe other wolves when they ran in packs. How he's been looking at me for years, and I brushed it off as simply harmless until now. But knowing and experiencing it was two different sorts of pain, and this one was killing me. I had tears on my face and I didn't know if it was him who was hurting me, or me who was fooling myself, that I deserved better.