REJECTED AND PREGNANT, I FLED THE PARK

CHAPTER 002

ADELINE'S POV

My arms were swatted with the branches. I caught some roots at my ankles. The forest had a cool, fresh, clean, sharp, pine smell to it, and that smoke from the compound fires was also thick and ruined, but still more sharp and clean than the damp earth smell of the forest. I ran, until the pack lands were out of sight behind me, until the lights of the compound had faded into the trees, until my legs failed me and I fell to my knees at the base of an old oak tree and cried, still smelling, faintly, of him.

One of the marks on my neck pulsed, confused and weak, a memory of the bond. I pushed my hand over it so much, I hurt my hand to try to push the feeling out of existence. The voice of an owl can be heard somewhere in the woods. The breeze of the night blew through the leaves above. But, beneath the sadness and the anger and the feeling of emptiness and abject embarrassment, something else was happening, minute, subtle, a slow stirring in the middle of me that I couldn't articulate.

I did not realize at the time that I already had something of his in me, something that would compel me to make a choice in the coming weeks between the pack that raised me and the life which I would have to create for myself.

I don't recall going back to my room on the walk. I was on my knees in the dirt underneath that oak tree, and then I was fumbling with my own door knob and my hands shook so bad it took me three times to open my door. There was a roughness to the wood that I felt in my palms. I got off the floorboards with my clean shoes, leaving light muddy footprints on them. The familiar odors of my own room—avocado peel, lavender soap, the faint smell of cedar that clung to anything after the pack runs, old books—just came through the heavier, more intense aromas that were still there in my nose: sweat, s*x, jasmine and vanilla.

I just brushed the last bit of time on the bathroom floor.

I began to feel my stomach ripping apart and I held on to the rim of the toilet as if it were the only thing I could trust in the world. The porcelain was hard, and cool. It was between the vomit and the crying, when I couldn't remember anymore which made me more ill; the image of Victoria's legs wrapped around him; the way her head had thrown back on my pillows; or the effect of the jasmine and vanilla smell that lingered on the inside of my nose despite my gagging over and over. It covered my throat as far back as my neck. Sneak, sweet and wrong, it came up on every heave.

The phrase "this was inevitable" was a common one that was repeated.

He was like a wild animal, his voice gnawing at my remaining calm, roaring in my ears. It wasn't as though I had anything else to lift, and my body didn't want to let go of the horror that had been its witness. I dug a spit connecting my lips to the water. I was very tight in my belly, and my muscles hurt. The sweat dripped down my forehead and down my temples and mixed with the salt of my tears that never ceased.

I could hear my wolf whimpering in my chest, a sound much like a whimper, but it was more in my head than out of my mouth. She'd trusted him, too. Earlier that night, she'd rushed over to me with excitement when he bit down on my pulse point, making herself appear like a personification of beauty and grace beneath the mark, making it sacred and permanent. His mouth was hot against my throat, the sharp bright pain that blossomed into heat, the way our wolves had reached for each other—all my memories of that moment came back in full force, and I gagged again. Now she only whined, small and confused, not understanding how you could look at me hours later, as though you're an inconvenience to you, the same man who claimed me with reverence. The bond was broken in faint, broken pulses which only hardened her distress, only worsened her nausea.

How could he.

It was the first time I loud it, my voice cracking against the bathroom tile, echoing at me, in the empty room. The sound of the words was weak and ineffective. How could he have bound my soul to his and in a day gone into another woman's bed? How can Victoria get into that bed for free, who braided my hair before my mom died, who held my hand as the fire burned, who promised me that she'd never do anything to me like her mother did to her? There were no answers to the questions. They simply kept on turning round and round, quick and unending.

I pulled my knees to my chest, sat along the cold surface of the tub and allowed myself to shake. This tile flooring a bit into my buttocks. My thin shirt clung to me, clinging to my spine in a damp way. A faint pulse was beating in the mark on my neck, as if it were to be my comfort, and it was. A faint pulse beat in the mark on my neck, a comfort I should have felt, and comfort I did. This is a reminder of how stupid I can be, tattooed on my skin. I touched it with my fingers, half hoping it would be more painful, that something would feel like it had physically been passing through the link of the bond as I felt it, that it would show itself, and that I would have a sense of betrayal. It didn’t. It was warm and steadfast and just stood there and chided me for its stasis. I could still hear his ghostly delight, hear a slight irritated unease, an itchiness in his mind that said he was still there somewhere in the compound. The wisdom gave me the heeby jeeby feeling.