Page 103 of Rejected and Pregnant By the Alpha King

Even suggesting that Raine could be sold in such a disrespectful manner is horrible. Breeders were never meant to stay with the pack they were born into, but that didn’t mean they were eventually to be sold like cattle.

Becoming a breeder for another pack was supposed to be honorable, but this letter treats it as anything but.

And whoever is responding to it is clearly just as callous, because the next letter is an original from whomever it was who eventually took Raine. The elegant and loopy handwriting is a little hard to read, but it states that the “condition” of the breeder will be overlooked as long as the price is cut in half, which Daniel clearly ended up agreeing to.

The air in the room is suddenly sucked right out, leaving nothing but a burning feeling in my lungs.

At the bottom of the paper is a name that I never thought I’d see in a million years.

Yours truly,it reads,Nyx Calloway.

47

Raine

Pissing Nyx off is the last thing I ever expected to do.

For the past few weeks, he’s been systematically avoiding me, and while it isn’t so obvious to the people around us, it most certainly is for me. Now, it’s not like I’m used to Nyx blending himself into every facet of my life, but his sudden staunch absence from it is getting to be too noticeable.

Even if Rose thinks I’m crazy.

“He’s a busy alpha, Raine. What do you expect?” she says on our walk through the human town closest to Soleus. She readjusts a few bags looped over her arm. “Besides, isn’t it kind of nice not having a pack alpha breathing down your neck?”

While my first instinct is to tell her that, yes, it is, considering the kind of situation I come from, I’m not exactly in the same boat now as I was back in Andromeda.

Sure, I have freedom here now to do most things, like follow Rose into town to shop with her while she avoids going on a patrol run with her squad. Except that doesn’t make up for the weird want I have to see Nyx.

He’s gone before I get up in the mornings and isn’t back until I’m well in bed. Looking at it from an outsider’s perspective like Rose, I can see how she would see this as normal. Nyx is in fact a busy alpha—a king, no less—so of course he wouldn’t be sticking around to simply hang out with me.

Except for one thing: before all of this, he was constantly seeking me out, whether consciously or subconsciously.

And now he isn’t.

The only logical reason for that was if I pissed him off so badly that he’s taking the time away from me—avoiding me—in order to cool off. But how long is that going to take? Sure, he is under no obligation to talk to me until the baby arrives, and even after that it isn’t exactly necessary.

How am I going to properly apologize to him if he doesn’t fucking let me?

Day by day my frustration is growing into agitation. Soon I’ll be full-blown pissed. Blame it on the hormones or whatever, it doesn’t really matter.

Maybe I’m coming at this all wrong. The trick to getting an alpha to pay attention to you isn’t by demanding their attention, especially one like Nyx who seems to come and go as he pleases. I’ll need to be more cunning than that—trick him into talking tome so that I can actually apologize to him and get him to stop avoiding me.

He is kind of my only life raft in this godforsaken ocean of new beginnings.

“Hey, Rose.”

She turns to me just as we’re passing a small bodega. “What? You want to go in?”

“No…you wouldn’t happen to know what Nyx’s favorite food is, would you?”

***

The key to a male’s heart is through his stomach, right? And what better way to get Nyx to forgive me for tricking him into talking to me than by making his favorite meal and presenting it to him right before he reams me for doing what I’m about to?

Walking through the woods at night with a pack strapped to my back is stupid on too many levels to count, more so than I’m usually allotted.

The problem is that I have no other options. Being new to this pack, and technically the property of the alpha king, give me a certain kind of detachment from the rest of the pack that I can’t exactly use to my advantage.

Everyone tends to treat me as a delicate flower, one that if touched, would get them punished. Involving anyone in my dumbass scheme is the last thing I want to do anyway, considering this issue is between Nyx and me and no one else.

---