All Chapters of Rejected by My Mate, Desired by His Enemy : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

"Four tests, Iris. You've taken four tests." I say it to my reflection like she has answers I don't. She doesn't. She just stares back at me, pale and hollow-eyed, holding a piece of plastic that has already decided my future. Two pink lines. The same two pink lines that appeared yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. I set the test on the edge of the sink and grip the counter. A baby. I am carrying Damon's baby, and I have no idea how to tell him that without watching his face go carefully blank the way it does when I say things he doesn't want to hear. I rehearse anyway. "Damon, we need to talk." He'll check his phone. He always checks his phone. "I have something to tell you." Too vague. He'll assume I've done something wrong. "I'm pregnant." Clean. Direct. Three words that will either save this marriage or finish it. My hand drifts to my stomach before I can stop it. Something is alive in there. Something that is half me and half the man sleeping down th

"To what do we owe this gathering, son?" Alpha Thornwell's voice fills the dining room like a thunderclap. Deep and commanding. The kind of voice that expects silence to follow it. Twenty chairs around the table. I've never felt smaller. I sit near the far end, hands folded in my lap where no one can see them shaking. The chandelier throws warm gold light across polished mahogany and gleaming silverware. Everything looks expensive. Curated. Perfect. I don't belong here. Three years of sitting at this table and I still feel like someone's about to realize the mistake and escort me out. Damon sits near his father at the head. Not beside me. Never beside me at these gatherings. Clarissa sweeps in three minutes late. The room shifts when she enters. She's wearing red, deep and rich, a dress that fits like it was made for her specifically. Blonde hair down in waves. She smells like expensive perfume and something warmer underneath. She takes the seat beside Damon. He pulls her chair

"You have a beautiful smile. Don't hide it." I am nineteen years old, sitting on a stool in the pack healer's room with a needle and thread in my hands and Damon Thornwell's blood on my gloves when those words change the direction of my life. I haven't been called beautiful before. Not once. Orphans in Silverpine Pack don't get called beautiful. We get called useful, or quiet, or well-behaved, or sometimes nothing at all. We learn early that invisibility is safer than visibility. I have been invisible my whole life. Until this afternoon, when the newly appointed Beta walks in with a gash on his shoulder from training, makes me laugh while I stitch him up, and says those words to me like they cost him nothing. I fumble the needle. My face goes so hot I feel it in my ears. He watches me recover with an easy half-smile and says nothing else, just lets me work. I finish the stitches in shaking silence and tell myself it means nothing. He is Damon Thornwell. His father is the Alpha. H

"I'm tired. Not tonight."They say a frog will sit in slowly boiling water until it dies. I was that frog.Six months after the wedding, Alpha Thornwell died in his sleep. Heart attack, the pack doctor said. Quick. Painless. A good death for an Alpha who'd led Silverpine for thirty years.Damon became Alpha at twenty-three.The ceremony was three days later. I stood beside him in the town square while the pack elders bound the Alpha bands around his wrists and pronounced him leader. His face was stone. Grief locked somewhere I couldn't reach.I tried that night. Came to him where he sat in his father's study, now his study, staring at papers he wasn't reading."Do you want to talk?""I'm tired. Not tonight."I left him alone.That became the pattern. I reached out. He pulled away. I gave him space. He took more.The months between us touching went from one to two to three. When it did happen, late at night when he came home smelling like whiskey and couldn't sleep, it felt like charit

"Did you hear? She refused to terminate."The pack grapevine moves faster than wildfire. By noon, everyone knows I defied the Alpha.I walk into the healer's office where I've worked for four years, and the conversation dies. Sarah and Emma stand by the supply closet, their heads close together. When they see me, they spring apart like they've been caught doing something wrong.Sarah's face flushes. "Iris. We didn't expect you today.""It's Tuesday. I always work Tuesdays."They exchange a look. The kind of look that says they've been talking about me. The kind that says whatever they were saying wasn't kind.I move to my station and start setting up for the day. Checking supplies. Organizing instruments. The familiar routine that usually settles my nerves does nothing today.Behind me, the whispers start again. Quieter now, but not quiet enough."How dare she? The Alpha commanded it.""Selfish omega. Thinking of herself over the pack.""Two babies at once. The resources..."Each word