Carrying the Alpha’s Heir, Claimed by the Vampire King Chapter 08

Carrying the Alpha’s Heir, Claimed by the Vampire King Chapter 08

At eighteen weeks, I had my second scan.

Dr. Wren, the town’s witch-midwife, turned the screen toward me.

“Hear that?”

A fast, steady drumbeat filled the room. My baby’s heart.

I pressed my hand to my mouth. The tears came anyway.

“Strong,” she said. “Strong as an Alpha. Do you want to know?”

I nodded.

“A boy.”

A boy. My son.

Maeve cried beside me. “Your mother would be so proud.”

Walking out of the clinic, the world felt bigger. Brighter. More real than it had in years.

Then my phone rang.

Unknown number. I answered without thinking.

“Elara.”

My blood froze.

Selene.

“Don’t hang up. I need to tell you something about Kieran.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Then just listen. Two minutes.”

Every instinct screamed at me to end the call. But her voice shook. Something raw lived in it. Almost like

shame

“Talk.”

“I never slept with him.”

Silence.

“What?”

“I know what it looked like. I know what I let you believe. But Kieran never touched me. Not once in your entire marriage.”

“You were with him every night-”

“Pack business. Real business. I made sure it looked like more.” She took a breath. “The perfume you

smelled on his collar? A scent charm. Witch-made. My father paid for it. I wore it every time I was near him

so you’d smell me on him when he came home. The ball, the silver dress, answering his phone when you called. All of it was planned.”

My knuckles went white around the phone.

“Why?”

A bitter laugh. “Because my father ordered me to.”

“Your father.”

“The Ashford alliance was real. My father wanted to merge our packs. Kieran refused unless it stayed a trade treaty. So my father decided to remove the obstacle.”

“Me.”

“You. If I drove you away, Kieran would have no Luna and no reason to refuse. A single Alpha is a flexible

Alpha.”

The cruelty of it took my breath.

“Kieran never knew,” she said. “He’s a fool. Blind, selfish, careless. But the affair was manufactured.”

“Why tell me now?”

Because my father’s dead. Challenged and killed by his own Beta three weeks ago. With him gone, there’s no one left to lie for.” A pause. “I’m not asking you to forgive me. You deserved the truth three years ago.”

The line went dead.

I stood frozen in the parking lot.

She never slept with him.

The picture I’d carried for three years, the two of them laughing at me, tangled together, wasn’t real.

But did it matter?

He still let her orbit grow while mine shrank. He still couldn’t spare me sixty seconds on a dance floor. He still left me eating alone, night after night, in a house full of everything except him.

The affair was a lie.

The loneliness was real.

Every empty chair. Every unanswered call. Every morning waking alone in a bed built for two.

That was real.

I deleted the number and drove back to the bakery.

I didn’t tell Maeve.

But that night, even with the moonstone warm against my chest, I couldn’t sleep.

At two in the morning, I gave up and went to the window.

The street was empty. Snow fell soft and silent under the lamps.

Except for one figure.

Lucien Draven stood beneath the streetlight across the road, coat dark against the white, looking straight

up at my window.

Not watching the street. Not guarding the door.

Looking at me.

As if he’d heard my heart breaking from across town, and come.