Page 54 of Rejected Wolf's Secret Baby (Rejected Moons 4)

But she doesn’t want to tell me that she wants to stay. She doesn’t want me tomakeher tell me.

I can’t make her do anything.

I watch her quietly instead.

“I can’t raise Emmy here,” she says. “Not with Lonnie coming into power. It’s not a fit place for her to grow up. I can’t be around a pack that doesn’t respect me, especially not once my brother is in charge. Once he’s alpha, Deidre won’t have to go to the Boneyard to get high. She’ll be around here full time. And now that she’s unmarried and with her son in charge, she’ll have nothing to do but make me miserable and torment my daughter.”

I close my eyes. It’s really not about me. She doesn’t want to be here, but it’s not because she doesn’t want me.

Shedoeswant me.

For the first time, I really feel in my gut that Alicia’s rejection of me was about something else entirely. I just happened to be the man standing opposite her when she decided to run away from this place. But if it hadn’t been me, the outcome would have been the same. She would have run away from anyone.

She wasn’t rejecting me. At least, that’s not the biggest thing she was doing. I wasn’t enough to make her want to stay, but the bottom line is that she was rejecting the pack as a whole.

She was rejecting this life. I was only a part of that.

I’m so in love with her that I’m ready to do whatever it takes to make things work between us this time.

32

ALICIA

“So,you’regoingoutwith Brandon again?” Kayla says knowingly.

“You must be getting so tired of babysitting.” I’m dressing Emmy in a new outfit, one of several that Pat dropped off for her. The clothes belonged to David’s sister’s children, who are all over the age of ten now, and Pat acted like it was no big deal to give them to me because there was no established place for them to go. There are no more children on David’s side of the family. Still, I appreciate the effort. Every little thing my family does makes me more and more aware of the fact that I haven’t had a support system for most of Emmy’s life, and that now I do.

Fuck, I shouldn’t have stayed away so long. Not just because I could have used the help, but seeing them again is making it blatantly clear to me just how much they care about me. Just how much they’ve missed me too. It isn’t right the way I’ve left my family behind—they deserved better from me. They deserved to know Emmy.

The moment I get Emmy’s clothes on her, Kayla reaches out to scoop her up.

“Kayla!” Emmy flings her arms around her.

Kayla laughs. “Emmy! Ready to hang out with me again tonight?”

“Yes, andcolor.”

“We’ve been digging the crayons,” Kayla explains.

I’ve never seen Emmy have a good relationship with anyone who wasn’t me. It’s something she’s been robbed of by not having a father—and by not having a pack.

Honestly, the longer we’re here, the more I wish we could stay.

“I don’t have to go,” I tell Kayla. “I know watching Emmy isn’t your job. I can tell Brandon no tonight.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kayla says firmly. “You want to go out with him. And I want you to go. Are you two official yet?”

I groan. “I have no idea what that means.”

“Well, is he your mate? He keeps coming around,” Kayla says. “I don’t think he minds that you rejected him. I think he’s over that and he’s ready to start fresh with you.”

I can’t even argue with that, because Brandon has made it so abundantly clear that that’s how he feels. “Even if that were true,” I say, “how could I possibly get into a relationship with someone when I’m lying to him about the fact that I had his baby?”

“There’s a really simple solution to that problem, you know,” Kayla says gently.

“I can’t tell him, Kay.”

“Well, it’s up to you. But don’t you think your life would be easier if he knew?”

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