Page 34 of Betrayed Knocked-Up Mate

Please don't leave me here.

"She's my sister." Rafael's voice seems to come from very far away, echoing like footsteps in an empty room. "You don't get to make these decisions for her. Not after everything. Not after you broke her so completely she ran halfway across the world trying to put herself back together. She willnevertrust you again, Marcus. Not until the day she dies. I hope you understand that.”

Marcus's laugh sounds like broken glass, like shattered promises. "I don’t know why you think I don’t know that. You don’t know the whole story, Rafael. There are lots of things you don’t understand.”

Rafael’s voice sharpens overhead. "You hurt my family. And if you take her now, you’ll hurt her again. You know it’s true just as well as I know it.”

Silence falls like a guillotine between them.

I see a thousand moments, flicking like pieces of film across a camera lens. Marcus's face in shadows as he said no. The careful distance in his eyes hiding something that looked like drowning. The way his hands shook even as his voice stayed steady.

"This isn't working. We're not—I can't. I’m sorry. I can't be what you need, Camila. I don’t want you.”

Nearby, Marcus says something I can’t make out through the haze. The rumbling of his voice has once again become a familiar rhythm, I realize. Just as I was finally starting to convince myself I’d forgotten it.

"If I let you take her." Rafael's voice, softer now but heavy with meaning. "I swear to whatever gods you believe in, Marcus, if anything happens to her—"

"With my life." Marcus's voice rings with Alpha authority, with something deeper that makes my wolf keen. "I swear it on everything I am. On everything I've lost. On everything I—" He stops, swallows hard. "I won't let him hurt her.”

“It’s not him I’m worried about.”

“You should be.”

The light splinters one final time. Present and past blur together, strange and indistinct: Marcus turning away five years ago, shoulders rigid with something I couldn't understand. Marcus's hands are gentle on my face now, checking for injuries with terrible tenderness.

Darkness rises like a tide, and I let it take me under.

The last thing I hear is Marcus's voice, soft as memory: "I'm sorry, Camila. I'm so sorry. For everything. For all of it."

***

"Dawn's coming. We need to move, soon."

"The pack will protect your team, but she needs to go with you. It's the only way."

"I'll keep her safe this time. I swear it. I swear—"

Chapter 14 - Marcus

Dawn bleeds through the clinic windows far too soon, and I haven’t slept, but I know I will need to drive. I've been watching light creep across the floor for hours, marking time in inches of sun while my team tries to piece together what's left of our plans. The antiseptic smell has long since burned out my sense of anything else, though every now and then, I catch traces of Camila's scent—gunmetal and sandalwood underneath the sharp bite of medical supplies.

She’s perfectly still even now.

"Kane's people have fallen back to the old lumber mill, ten miles out," Elena reports, her voice rough from lack of sleep. The bandage on her head stands out stark against her dark hair. "But they're not leaving. Just... waiting. And as far as we can tell, Kane lived.”

"They’re waiting on reinforcements, probably," Asher adds from his position by the door. He hasn't moved from guard stance in hours, though his wounds must be aching. None of us are healing right after yesterday's fight. "They know we were here. They’ll expect us to run.”

Unspoken:only some of us will.

James doesn't look up from where he's checking his own bandages. His face is pinched with pain, but he doesn’t complain.

"You’re going," Elena says quietly. "I knew we might end up separated, but I didn’t think…”

The words hang in the air like smoke. Through the pack bonds, I feel the weight of memory—our compound burning, Fiona screaming as the serum took her shift, Michael's silence afterward. All of it is my fault. All of it because I wasn't careful enough, wasn't fast enough, wasn't—

Movement from the bed draws my attention. Camila stirs, her eyes fluttering open.

For a moment, she looks younger somehow, vulnerable in a way that makes my wolf snarl with protective fury. Then awareness floods back, and with it comes that familiar steel I've come to associate with this new version of her.

---