Carrying the Alpha’s Heir, Claimed by the Vampire King Chapter 04

Carrying the Alpha’s Heir, Claimed by the Vampire King Chapter 04

The bond wasn’t broken.

Not completely.

That’s what Rhys told my/aunt at dawn, standing in her bakery doorway with five wolves at his back.

“A rejection only completes when the Alpha accepts it,” he said. “And he will never accept it.”

Which meant, by pack law, I was still Kieran’s Luna.

And the child inside me was still his property.

I watched from the upstairs window, hands over my stomach, as Maeve walked out to meet them in her

apron.

“Store’s not open yet.”

“We’re not here for pastries, Miss Hale.” Rhys sounded almost apologetic. “The Alpha wants his Luna

home.”

“His ex-Luna.”

“She sealed the papers. He didn’t. Half a rejection is no rejection at all.”

My blood turned to ice.

“She’s not going anywhere, Rhys.”

“Maeve, I like you. I don’t want this ugly. But you know what Kieran is. No one takes what belongs to an

Alpha.”

“She’s not his. She’s a person.”

“In our world, those mean the same thing.”

Maeve’s voice dropped low enough to make the windows hum.

“Listen to me, boy. I don’t have fangs or claws or an army. But I have wards on this building older than your grandfather, and I have the direct line of the High Council. You want your Alpha dragged before the Council

for kidnapping a pregnant Luna across vampire territory? One call. That’s all it takes.”

Silence.

“She’s bluffing,” one of the wolves muttered.

“Try me.”

A long, heavy pause.

“I’ll deliver the message,” Rhys said. “But this isn’t over.”

“It’s over for today. Get off my step.”

The SUVS pulled away. Maeve came upstairs pale, jaw set like stone.

“He’ll be back.”

She was right.

For two weeks, Kieran tried everything. Different wolves. A pack lawyer with a summons that Maeve’s

attorney tore to shreds in twenty minutes. Then gifts. A diamond collar. A white fur coat. A check for half a

million dollars with a note: “Come home. Name your price.”

Maeve donated the diamonds to a women’s shelter, mailed back the fur, and framed the check on the

bakery wall under a hand-lettered sign: THE PRICE OF ONE ALPHA’S AUDACITY.

Tourists came just to photograph it.

But the worst part wasn’t Kieran.

It was the messages from pack women I’d once called friends.

“Elara, come back. He isn’t sleeping.”

“He sent Selene away. Doesn’t that prove he loves you?”

He sent her away after I left.

Not before. Not when it mattered.

I deleted every one.

Meanwhile, my body turned against me. Wolf pregnancies are brutal. Some mornings I couldn’t lift my head. Maeve held my hair back, rubbed my shoulders, brewed ginger tea without being asked.

“Your mother was exactly the same,” she said softly.

Every night, the bond tugged. A hook in my ribs, pulling north toward New York. Kieran was reaching for

me across a hundred miles, and it hurt.

One night my phone rang. Unknown number.

I answered without thinking.

“Ms. Hale.” A man’s voice. Low. Unhurried. Old in a way no voice should be. “My name is Luciefi Draven. I understand your former Alpha’s dogs have been barking in my town.”

I stopped breathing.

Lucien Draven. The Vampire King of New England. A name wolves only said in whispers. He’d ruled from

Connecticut to Boston for longer than my pack had existed.

And Maeve’s bakery sat in the heart of his territory.

“Blackwood has no authority here,” he said. “His wolves will not trouble you again.”

“Why do you care?”

A pause.

“Because no one hunts in my territory without my permission.” Then, softer: “And because I can hear two heartbeats in your aunt’s house tonight, Ms. Hale. One of them is very small. And very frightened of wolves.”

The line went dead.

I sat in the dark with my hand on my stomach.

For the first time in weeks, I felt safe.

Which should have terrified me.

Because the man who had just promised to protect my son didn’t have a heartbeat of his own.