Chapter 156: Fear of Rejection

Adeline’s POV~

"Listen to me, Adeline," Blake murmured, his voice steady and grounding as he forced me to hold his gaze in the dim light of the bedroom.

"It is not nearly as complicated or hopeless as your overthinking mind is trying to make it out to be. Let me break it down for you clearly, piece by single piece, so you can finally let some of this heavy weight go."

"The pain-binding curse that has been torturing you is tied directly to your soul and to Chloe’s soul. She used a dark witch to anchor it, and because of that, it keeps itself alive through your life force. Even if that wretched witch dies, the curse will stubbornly stay right where it is. But the second curse, the one that has been sitting heavily on your wolf’s soul and blocking her out, is the exact reason why your wolf refused to show her face for all these years."

"However, you do not have to carry the sheer terror of that worry all by yourself anymore. Dowager Luna Gwen and the other three princes have already traveled out to meet the witch about a permanent curse breaker. They are handling it, Adeline. You are not alone in this."

"And the mate bond between us is entirely real," he went on, his tone dropping into something intensely serious and low. "Your body threw up the blood of two princes, and it happened right after the healing magic closed your open wounds. That kind of violent physical reaction is never random, Adeline."

"When a true mate bond demands closeness and recognition, your physical body answers instinctively, even if your terrified mind refuses to accept it yet. So of course it feels overwhelming and confusing to you."

I gave him a slow nod, but I couldn’t bring myself to hold his intense, burning gaze any longer.

Without even realizing what I was doing, my fingers curled tightly into the soft fabric of the front of his shirt, my knuckles whitening as I gripped him like he was the only solid, unmoving thing left in the entire room.

Blake noticed every single movement. He saw right through all my defenses.

"There is still something heavy bothering you, isn’t there?" he whispered, his warm fingers sliding up to cup my chin and tilting my face back up to look at him. "Tell me the truth, Adeline. What on earth is going on inside that overthinking head of yours right now?"

For a long second, I didn’t know whether I should actually say the words out loud. Speaking them into the dark would make them entirely real, stripping away the last fragile defense I had left. But those terrifying thoughts had been pressing hard against my ribs for days, suffocating me, and I couldn’t keep them locked inside my chest another second.

"What if it all turns out differently than we think?" I whispered, my voice trembling slightly in the quiet room.

"What if my body rejected their blood for some other completely different reason, and we’re not actually fated mates at all? My omega wolf has finally woken up, but she didn’t sense anything when she should have. When a true wolf finds her fated mates, she is supposed to scream. She’s supposed to go wild and claw at the surface of my mind. And mine... mine just stayed completely calm. She stayed quiet inside me, like she was waiting for something else entirely. So what if we were never meant to be fated mates in the first place?"

To my absolute horror, a faint, knowing smile touched his lips. He actually smiled right in the middle of my worst nightmare.

"There is nothing funny about this!" I snapped, my voice cracking right down the middle as hot tears of frustration pricked the back of my eyes.

"No," he said softly, his smile softening as his hand slid down from my chin, his warm palm settling gently against the side of my neck right over my wildly racing pulse. "There is nothing funny at all. You’re genuinely terrified and worried, aren’t you?"

I forced myself to hold his burning gaze, though my voice came out far weaker and more fragile than I wanted it to. "About what? What could I possibly be worried about when everything in my life is already this messed up?"

"About rejection," he said, his deep voice dropping into an intimately low murmur. "You are completely terrified of being rejected all over again."

For a long, agonizing moment, I couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. That single word hit me like a bucket of ice-cold water dumped over my head, and every single muscle in my body went rigid against his warm frame.

"That’s not... that’s not exactly what I’m—" I started to defend myself, my words stumbling over each other, but he cut me off softly.

"After everything that happened to you back with the Crescent Pack, and after those arrogant twins brutally rejected you and tore your heart to pieces, you barely made it out alive, Adeline," he said softly, his dark eyes darkening with a flash of buried anger as he recalled the past.

"You literally came back from the very brink of death. Do you honestly think I don’t know what that terrible trauma did to your soul? Of course you are terrified right now, Adeline. Anyone in your position would be completely out of their mind with fear. I wonder if someone else was in your shoes, they wouldn’t even made it out alive. But you did."

I stayed entirely silent. I swallowed past the sharp lump rising in my throat, letting out a long, shaky breath before I finally forced the brutal truth out of my chest.

"And is that really such a crazy or wrong way for me to think?" I asked, looking up at him with hot, frustrated tears welling in my eyes.

"It is a completely real possibility that I have to prepare myself for every single day! Why on earth would four grand, powerful Lycan Kings be stuck with an omega wolf like me? I am just an omega. Even regular alphas absolutely despise it when the Moon Goddess ties their precious bloodlines to an omega. I have seen the disgusted looks on their faces with my own eyes, and I have heard the cruel things they whisper behind closed doors when they think nobody is listening! So what on earth makes this situation any different?"