Carrying the Alpha’s Heir, Claimed by the Vampire King Chapter 06

Carrying the Alpha’s Heir, Claimed by the Vampire King Chapter 06

I couldn’t sleep that night.

I kept seeing it. Kieran’s broken face Lucien’s stillness. The way my body finally admitted what my pride

refused to.

I was exhausted.

At two in the morning, I found Maeve downstairs in the dark, a shotgun across her knees, watching the

door.

“What are you doing?”

“Keeping watch.”

“With a shotgun?”

“Silver buckshot. It’s Connecticut. Everyone has one.”

We sat together a long time.

“He won’t stop,” I said.

“No. Men like Kieran don’t stop. Not because they love you. Because they can’t stand losing what they think they own.” She paused. “But someone drew a line tonight. And that someone doesn’t lose.”

The next evening, just after sunset, a black sedan pulled up. A silent driver with a thrall’s glassy eyes handed Maeve an envelope sealed in black wax.

Thick ivory paper. Precise script.

Ms. Elara Hale and her unborn son are hereby under the full protection of House Draven. Any wolf of the Blackwood pack found within Hollow Creek will be considered an act of war and answered accordingly. –

Draven
Beneath it, a card with a single phone number.

“Well,” Maeve said, reading it twice. “That’s one way to say hello.”

“He doesn’t even know me. Why would he do this?”

Maeve gave me a look I couldn’t read “Maybe he knows enough.”

By midnight I spotted them. Two figures across the street who never blinked and never cast breath into the cold. Lucien’s guards.

I should have been furious. More walls. More men deciding things for me.

But for the first time since New York, I wasn’t afraid.

Kieran’s wolves stopped coming. The border held like a fortress.

So I started working in the bakery. Maeve taught me bread first, then pastries, then her legendary cannoli.

I was terrible.

But kneading dough at five in the morning, flour in my hair, Maeve humming beside me, was a kind of

healing I hadn’t known I needed.

The sickness eased. My appetite roared back. I wanted cinnamon rolls drowning in icing.

“You’re growing a wolf with a sweet tooth,” Maeve said. “Lord help us.”

I laughed. A real laugh. The kind that surprises you because you’d forgotten you could.

Then one evening a box appeared on the back step.

No return address.

Inside: premium prenatal vitamins, a tin of Italian herbal tea for nausea, and a small moonstone charm on a black cord, warm to the touch, humming with old protective magic.

And a note in sharp, elegant handwriting:

“For your health, and his. The charm will quiet the bond at night so you can rest. Should Blackwood’s wolves return, please don’t use the silver shotgun. Use the number. -L.”

I stared at it.

“How does he know about the shotgun?”

Maeve became deeply interested in her croissant dough.

‘Maeve

“He may have called to check in. Once or twice.”

“Once or twice?”

“Four times. Who’s counting?”

In three years of marriage, not one person had asked about my health. Kieran gave me diamonds. No one had ever handed me vitamins and said, simply, take care of yourself.

I slipped the charm over my head.

The hook in my ribs, the constant pull toward New York, went quiet.

Just like that.

For the first time in weeks, the silence inside me was my own.

I read the note again before bed. Then again.

That night I didn’t cry myself to sleep.

And I didn’t dream of Kieran.

I dreamed of cold hands. Dark eyes. And a voice that said my name like it was something rare.

When I woke, the moonstone was warm against my heart.

And there was a single black rose on my windowsill.

Two stories up.