Sold to the Alpha King, Pregnant by a Stranger Chapter 11

Sold to the Alpha King, Pregnant by a Stranger Chapter 11 – Silver

Everything after that happened in about nine seconds.

Rune moved. Marrick fired. Not at Rune.

At me.

I felt the dart before I heard the shot a hot punch just under my collarbone, and then cold spreading out from it like

ice water in my veins. Silver. My knees went first. The road came up.

Rune caught me before I hit it and I heard a sound come out of him that I will hear in my nightmares for the rest of my

life.

“Twins,” Marrick said conversationally, lowering the rifle. “The healer in the hills has been very talkative for very little

money. Congratulations, sire. Royal heirs, conceived out of contract with a wolfless mongrel – do you know what the

Council will do with that? They’ll have your crown by Friday. I’ll be regent by Christmas.”

I couldn’t move. I could hear everything.

“You put silver in my mate,” Rune said.

“Half a dose. She’ll live. Probably.” Marrick shrugged. “The pups won’t.”

The last thing I saw clearly was Rune laying me down on the asphalt, very gently, and standing up.

The last thing I heard was screaming, and it wasn’t mine.

I woke up in white.

Machines. Sunlight. Something warm and heavy holding my right hand.

Rune was asleep in a chair pulled up to the bed, still in the same clothes, blood dried black on his sleeve, his fingers

wrapped through mine like he’d been afraid I’d float away.

I moved and he was awake instantly.

“Don’t,” he said, half up. “Don’t move, the line’s in your arm-”

“The babies.”

“Alive.” His voice broke on it. “Both. Alive. Orla got the silver out in fourteen minutes and the healers have had you

under since. There’s damage. They said-” He stopped. Swallowed. “They said carrying twins with a silver injury will be

dangerous. Bed rest. Monitoring. It’s going to be a hard six months.”

“But they’re alive.”

“They’re alive.”

I started crying and he came out of that chair and onto the bed and held me, carefully, like I was made of glass, which under normal circumstances I’d have fought him about.

“Marrick,” I said into his shoulder.

“In a cell under the palace.”

“Alive?”

Rune was quiet a moment. “For now. There’ll be a trial. The Council needs to see it.” His hand moved slowly over my hair. “He confessed. All of it. He spiked us both at that bar and he chose that bar because he knew who you were – he’d been managing the treaty file for two years. He thought he’d humiliate me into abdication. Instead-”

“Instead you married the girl on the contract anyway,” I said. “By accident.”

“There was no accident,” Rune said. “Drugs don’t make a wolf mark someone, Wren. They lower the door. I marked you because my wolf recognized you the second your hand touched mine, and nothing on this earth could have stopped me after that.” He pulled back to look at me. “I’d have found you at the treaty dinner in three weeks and it would have happened exactly the same way. Just with better lighting.”

I laughed. It hurt.

Then I remembered.

“Rune. What day is it?”

He glanced at the window. “Sunday.”

I sat up so fast the machines shrieked.

“Sunday,” I said. “You’re supposed to be marrying my sister in four hours.”

Rune Draven smiled, and it was not a nice smile at all.

“Yes,” he said. “I am so looking forward to that.”