Page 89 of Rejected and Pregnant By the Alpha King

“That was the female we tossed out,” Camden murmurs.

I nod. “What else was I supposed to do when her alpha was claiming one thing and her another? Who was I supposed to trust in that situation after not hearing from her for weeks?”

Constance sighs. “So, what made you second-guess everything? The shifter who came to Pollis after her?”

I nod again. “Her name is Delilah. She claims to be my mate’s best friend and was there when everything happened, including at the ball where we first met. She says that everything Daniel’s said is false and that the letter was forged. However, the pregnancy is real.”

I watch as both of their faces fall.

“You believe it’s your child, then,” she says.

I shrug. “I don’t knowwhatto believe.”

“Where is your mate now?” Camden asks. “Surely if she’s here, we can just ask her ourselves.”

“Apparently the pack from the South that visited here had actually come to buy her as a breeder. I didn’t know until after you both left and Delilah showed up.”

“And you believe Delilah?” Constance asks.

I shrug. “Again, I don’t know what to believe. The only thing that I know is one hundred percent true is that Raine is my mate. Everything else, I have no way of proving who is lying and who isn’t.”

“Where is Delilah?” she asks.

“She brought me here. I told her to take cover in the woods just outside of the border. Tonight we can go meet with her and you can both speak with her to see if you believe she’s telling the truth or not.”

Camden slides off the couch’s arm. “I can go now.”

I shake my head. “Not with the entirety of Andromeda on high alert right now. We’ll go when everyone’s asleep. I can’t risk messing this up. Delilah’s told me she had to escape imprisonment to get to Pollis.”

Camden swears under his breath. “What the hell kind of pack is this?”

“I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.”

40

Raine

“Well, that went better than expected.”

Nyx throws me an amused look over his shoulder. “Were you expecting something less?”

Do I want to admit to him that I was ready for him to be wrong about his own elders, and that they wouldn’t be as welcoming as he’d suspected them to be? No matter how I frame it, it would come across as me doubting him.

But Ihadbeen pleasantly surprised by all of their really mild reactions to me. With us being in such close proximity to each other, all of the elders had to know that I was pregnant by now, if Nyx hadn’t already informed them ahead of time.

And yet instead of them casting me away like I’d been tainted, they simply asked a few questions before shooing Nyx and I along for the day.

“I wouldn’t say ‘less,’ so much as…I don’t know,” I admit.

Nyx stops just past the gate outside of the elders’ dwelling and tilts his head at me curiously. “You seem to have many complicated feelings when it comes to my pack.”

Well, he’s not wrong.

I hate that I keep unintentionally expecting the worst in him and his pack. It’s not his fault that Soleus’s reputation up in the North is foul regardless of what the truth actually is. We’d been made to be scared of what we didn’t know, including our neighbors to the South.

Now that I’m here, I see how unfair it was for me to prejudge everything. Even if a few of the rumors have some truth to them, I can’t exactly pinpoint where the lies start until I see them with my own two eyes.

“Can I ask you something?” I say, stepping through the gate and closer to him.

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