Page 98 of Rejected and Pregnant By the Alpha King

She splashes me. “What, you’ve never snuck out to the woods to have a little fun with someone? The town is always so nosy. We all live on top of each other so it’s hard to get some privacy. You know?”

“I don’t, actually.”

Her eyes widen. “Wait, are you some kind of exhibitionist?”

Oh, Rose. Only she’d jump to that conclusion. “No.”

Her eyes narrow for a second and then realization dawns on her. “Oh shit. I forgot about the breeder thing. My bad.”

Well, okay. I guess that’s kind of the same line of thinking. No one was allowed to touch me back at the pack because theythought I was tainted. But I suppose letting Rose think the reason was little less horrible is fine for now.

It’s not like she has to know whatreallyhappened. Being honest with Nyx is different, anyway. I want him to know everything, even if it’s the dark and ugly secrets of my past.

Funny though how she looks at me, genuinely sorry and not how some people I know would—with pity. It’s kind of a shifter’s rite of passage to be young and free with other shifters your own age.

Settling down is a big deal in our culture, so before any of that happens, we try to make the most of the short bout of freedom we’re given. Or well,mostof us do.

“Have you ever been interested in anyone?” Rose wades over to me. “I know it’s kind of a taboo thing with you being a breeder and all, but you’re still a female. You had to have had a crush on someone at some point.”

“It’s…complicated,” is all I can think to say.

While I never really had much in the way of romance when I was still living in Andromeda, that didn’t mean I wasn’t ever longing for it. Delilah had always been popular among the males in our pack, which had been a surprise to no one—her charming personality and beauty would make any male weak in the knees.

“Shit,” Rose mumbles again. “Sorry. I’m being an ass.”

“Why do you say that?”

She nods to my stomach, just below the water. “Well…”

Oh. Right.

“Yeah,” I sigh. “Like I said. It’s complicated.”

She treads water over to where the watering hole grows deeper. Other than us, there are a few birds chirping overhead, flitting through the canopy of trees quickly enough that it’s hard to catch what species they are.

I wonder if anyone else has discovered this place before and, much like Rose, treats it as their own oasis. She can’t be the first one to have discovered this place.

“What happened to him?” she asks. “The guy who…”

Getting this same question twice in one week must be a record. Not exactly one I want to have under my belt, but here we are. “We had a misunderstanding.”

“What about?”

I hold in a sigh.

Maybe it’s wrong of me to want to air out my dirty laundry, especially to someone like Rose, who barely knows me. Is that really fair to expect her to shoulder all of my emotions while I vomit them out of me? She’s probably only asking to be polite, or is just nosy like my Delilah.

I watch the water’s surface roil under my hand while I drag it through the soft current. My reflection distorts with each pull of my hand. I’m dying to tell someone though—to share the burden of this horrible secret I have to carry.

With Delilah no longer being here to act as my confidant, everything remains trapped in my own head with nowhere else to go.

“He was lied to,” I finally say, my voice quiet. “About me. Someone…who I was supposed to be able to trust told him a bunch of things about me that weren’t true. So he rejected me. Said he wanted nothing to do with me or our baby.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, Raine.”

I shake my head, not wanting to look up just yet to see that pitying expression that I know she must be wearing. It’s what everyone wears whenever I’m honest about what’s gone on in my life.

Today it seems that I’m feeling extra self-deprecating, because after a moment, I say, “You want to know what the worst part is?”

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