Sold to the Alpha King, Pregnant by a Stranger Chapter 10

Sold to the Alpha King, Pregnant by a Stranger Chapter 10 – Two Hearts, One Contract

He was kneeling in the middle of a public road. The Alpha King. On his knees, in the gravel, staring at my stomach like

it was the sun coming up.

“How far,” he said.

“Get up.”

“How far, Wren.”

“Eleven weeks.”

“How many.”

“Rune-”

“I can hear two.” His voice cracked straight down the middle. “I can hear two heartbeats, and neither one of them is

yours.”

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

He put a hand over his face. His shoulders shook once. When he lowered his hand, his eyes were wet and blazing.

“Twelve years I’ve been King,” he said. “Twelve years I’ve never signed a mating contract, never taken a Luna, never

touched a woman I wasn’t sober enough to remember. And I have spent six weeks convinced that I drugged myself

into ruining an innocent girl’s life.”

“You didn’t drug yourself.”

“I know that now.”

“Marrick,” I said.

His whole face changed. “How do you know that name?”

“Because he was sitting at that bar buying our drinks and then he wasn’t.” I stepped back as he stood. “And because eight hours ago he walked into my father’s house and shook my father’s hand, and someone sent me a message saying he knows about the twins.”

Rune went very quiet, and the temperature on that road dropped ten degrees.

“Who sent it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I sent it,” he said.

I stared at him.

“Two nights ago at the Bloodmoon I couldn’t get to you before you ran,” he said. “I’ve had eyes on you since. The

photograph at the window was mine – I needed you to know you’d been found so you’d stop being careless.” He took

one step toward me and stopped when I flinched. “Wren. Marrick has been intercepting my searches. He has been

feeding me false leads for six weeks. And four days ago he stood in my war room and recommended I honor the northern treaty by marrying the younger Vale daughter – because, he said, the elder one was unsuitable.”

“Because I’m wolfless,” I said bitterly.

Rune laughed. It came out wrong, jagged.

“Wren,” he said. “You put me on my back in front of fifteen hundred wolves. Do you have the faintest idea what you

are?”

“A defect.”

“A sleeper.” He said it like a curse and a prayer. “It’s in the royal archives. One in a few thousand. A wolf so strong she won’t surface for anything less than a true bond, because nothing else is worth waking up for. My grandmother was one. They called her the Silent Queen and she ruled for sixty years.” His jaw tightened. “Your mother told the entire continent you were broken. She was walking around with the most valuable bloodline in three territories in her house

and she used it as a punching bag.”

I had to look away.

“The papers I signed,” I said. “In the hotel.”

“A royal mating contract. Countersigned, sealed, witnessed, and filed.”

“Can it be undone?”

“No.”

“Rune.”

“It cannot be undone,” he said, “because I did not want it undone. Not that night. Not the morning after. Not one hour

since.” He held out his hand, and on his palm was the second ring, the one from the box, still on its folded card. “You

are my wife. You have been my wife for eleven weeks. And on Sunday I am going to walk into your parents‘ house-”

Headlights swept the road.

Six vehicles. Grey. Fast.

Rune turned, and I watched every human thing leave his face.

“Get in the car,” he said.

“Rune-”

“Wren. Get in the car. Marrick is not supposed to know where I am.”

The lead SUV stopped forty feet away, and Theodore Marrick stepped out smiling, with twelve armed men and a silver–tipped tranquilizer rifle already at his shoulder.

“Your Majesty,” he called pleasantly. “You’ve been very hard to keep track of. And who is this?”