REJECTED AND PREGNANT, I FLED THE PARK

CHAPTER 003

ADELINE'S POV

I can't stand to be here.

The thought came like a flash, and it was unavoidable, much like when my wolf would run away when he felt danger near it was instinctual. And, danger was near. Not with claws or teeth but with a more subtle, insidious approach, a pack that would expect me to smile through this. To take my hand and Victoria's and let that be the way it was when an Alpha chose to have more than one woman. I've seen it before, in other pairings, others pairing politics as tradition. The subdued omegas with lowered eyes and space made. When it came to “understanding a male's needs” the older females talked in a different way. I never thought I would meet someone like him. My nausea intensified again in my stomach when I imagined waking up the following day and walking those same halls, smelling jasmine and vanilla on his skin when I was eating breakfast, and imagining that the mark on my throat still had what he had said it had—the nausea clawed at my stomach.

I spent awhile on my knees on the bathroom floor before I was able to get my strength back to stand up, holding on to the edge of the sink. I felt like I was going to fall over and off my feet. Looking in the mirror, I saw myself look like a stranger – eyes swollen, eyes with red rings around them, cheeks dry lips with dirt and dirt from the forest, the hair still running through the trees, streaked with dirt. The thin red scratch, across one cheek bone, was a low branch, from a thin branch. Still shivering with shivering fingers I opened the tap. The water temperature was cold and then it got warmer. I took my toothbrush out of my mouth, as if I could scrub some of that bile and heartbreak away from my mouth, as if there was one thing I could do that was normal, as if there was one thing that was right. The mint paste touched my raw throat and burned.

The door opened behind me as I was trying to get the toothbrush to my lips.

I need not have turned around. I could smell him, cedar and rain; the fragrance of the man, and the fragrance I used to feel in my chest, but now my stomach churned again. Laced with a subtle hint of Victoria's perfume and a subtle tang of recent s*x. Sebastian was standing in my doorway as if it were his, as if it wasn't a violation enough enter the space of my room after all those things weren't off the list. The air was still with him, its weight increased, it was energized, alpha dominant, as if he were entering a room or space, and the pressure was always there, but barely felt.

“You ran!,” he said with his arms crossed over his bare chest. At least he had on sweatpants, if nothing else, but I commented with an eye-rolling remark that he hadn't showered. The black mark on his throat, above the line of his collar bone was still visible, though it was swollen a little bit. He still smelled like her to this day. “In front of half the pack,” means in front of half the herd.

I placed the toothbrush gently on the rim of the sink, my knuckles resting on the rim, in a white grip. The bristles let water run off the bristles onto the porcelain. The night after you marked me, you cheated on me, and you are angry that you were seen running?

I'm angry that you made such a big deal of this issue when it really should have been kept to yourself. There was an infuriating calmness to his voice; as if he was simply telling me of a simple miscalculation on my part, not the destruction of all things I once believed about him. The light of the bathroom struck him on the jawbone. Do you know what you've done?” he asked her. About half of the pack is already on their guard. Let's say that my mate sobs and runs around the compound the day after our mating ceremony. What would that do to my position?”

Then I made eye contact with him and looked him square in the face and I think he was surprised, but only for a split second, by what I said and/or what I looked like. There was an undertone of my frustration and an undercurrent of my feeling like I was going to buckle—that it was my obligation to buckle—that was in the bond between us. I could feel it pressing on the edges of the frayed control that I had.

“Yes, sir, your position,” I repeated. The taste was very bitter. That's what you're afraid of: that I've been broken by you tonight that I can't fix. That I put you on public display, and I'm embarrassed of you and the one person I trusted more that I think I can trust than you. That's my position.”

“Adeline.” He came further into the bathroom and I couldn't help but want to run back towards the sink. Suddenly, there was not enough room, the air was too lush for him. With the wind of the rain and cedar, her. You're an omega, I'm going to be alpha. This is what happens to wolves like me. You know this, you grew up in this pack just like I did. Having a companion with my mate doesn't take away anything from you or me.”

It's not what we agreed to,” I said, my voice now trembling not just with the sadness, but with the fury, the hot sudden rise of the burning fire in the midst of my grief. My fingers clutched the edge of the sink as my hands shook. Sebastian, you told me, “You were my only one, you were, and you told me—you were my only one. You didn't want anybody else, you told me; you said you didn't. I believe you, Sebastian, I let you mark me, because I believed you.” The mark on my neck thrummed back at me, a feverish reminder of the connection that lit my eyes with fire again.

It crossed his face for a split second – a feeling he could only imagine as guilt. There and it went in a flash, I almost said I dreamed it up, there was a softening around his eyes, a tightening around his mouth. Afterwards, the alpha-mask resumed its normal position.

Now I heard his voice and he put his hand on my arm, “I want you.” The movement was deliberate, almost gentle – as it was the night before when I was his first and the bond was new and bright. He rejected me out of reaction without me flinching, it was a very natural thing. Alpha pride was bruised by something in his eyes hardening, as he saw some slight movement. There was a feeling of tension in the air between us. “I want you both. That's impossible that you don't understand?”

“Go away; I won't let you in.”

“Adeline”

“Get out.” I felt my own little and small glimmer of pride surge with the words, some instinctive insistence by my wolf even in her hurt, even in her wounded state. It was only, it wasn't enough to stop him, not against an alpha, not against the weight of the bond that was still reaching out to soothe and claim him, but it was enough. All of a sudden, the bathroom became colder. My heart raced, just under his mark on my throat.

He looked at me for a long time, and before he looked, he saw something in his eyes which calculated, as if he was changing his strategy. There was a bit of frustration in the bond, followed by a more analytical and thoughtful opinion. He then returned, back to the door. His footsteps could be heard on the wooden floors.

“You must be sleeping,” he said, as if he were giving me mercy. His voice had once again fallen into that placid, patient voice that was all I wanted to hear, just screaming. “In the morning, when you can think clearly, we will speak with each other properly,” I say, and I don't want it to be the end of anything, Adeline.”

He simply walked out the door without waiting for any reply and the door closed quietly behind him. The fragrance of him, the rain and the ghostly jasmine lingered in the air long after he was gone. Then, for a long time in my bathroom, I stood with my mouth agape, taking it all in and listening to the quiet of the compound fall about me, where he had been.

It's not the end of the world!

But it was. There was a part of me that, in the midst of the heartbreak, nausea and the low churn in my stomach, knew it for certain. Either what I'd thought we'd been constructing together has perished tonight in his bedroom, or it never existed, either way, it won't come back.It seems what I thought was a plan for me and Sebastian to build together died tonight in his bedroom; not even alpha reassurance can bring it back. With each exhalation, the scar on my neck seemed to grow heavier. I was now silent inside me, my wolf, no more whimpering, just waiting.

I took another look at myself – hollow-eyed, mark still dark on my throat, the scratch on my cheek just starting to scab, and decided that it was not a choice, but rather an unalterable fact.

I had to leave; no way I was staying here. Not tomorrow. Not ever again.