Alpha's Impostor Bride

40

Leanna Avery

His anger is startling, and I take another step back. “What’s it to—”

“Watch your tone, Cedric!” Erik’s voice comes from behind me, and he sounds irked. “Leanna, take Finn and go inside!”

I’ve never heard him sound so pissed. I start to walk away, but Cedric blocks my path, his eyes flashing. “I don’t think so. I’m not letting you leave my sight again.”

“Watch it, King Raine,” Erik says coldly. “I won’t tolerate my son and his mother being threatened.”

“Your—Your son?” Cedric goes pale, and my wolf strains inside me, not liking this turn of events.

“Yes.” Erik comes to stand beside me, taking Finn from my arms and holding him. “My son and heir.”

“Your son,” Cedric breathes, looking dazed. He looks like someone has punched him in the stomach. “You and Leanna. Do you even know who she is?”

Erik stares at him silently, and I flinch inwardly.

Even now, he’s going to try to sabotage me? Erik knows what happened, or at least part of it. If Cedric really decides to—

“She’s my fated mate!” Cedric snarls.

I go still. That wasn’t what I expected.

“Your fated mate?” Erik sneers back at him. “But you’re mated to Princess Vivian from the Eastern Wolf Kingdom. Do you really expect me to believe that you are mated to another woman and have a fated mate? You do know that once you give a female your mating mark, your bond with your fated mate disappears. You have no claim to this woman.”

Cedric glowers at him. “Vivian does not bear my mating mark!”

Erik scoffs. “So what? You refused to mark your queen, and now Leanna should serve as your mistress? Is that what you’re trying to imply?”

Erik’s absurd conclusion has my head whipping around so I can gape at him. Cedric didn’t say anything remotely like that!

However, the king of the Human Wolf Kingdom has his eyes on the Northern king. He doesn’t even glance in my direction.

“That’s not what I meant,” Cedric snarls. “When did this happen? When did you and Leanna—” He can’t seem to form the words, apparently too enraged by the idea.

Erik smirks. “Around eight years ago. I found her on the palace grounds, badly injured. She and I are old acquaintances, you know.”

Cedric struggles to speak, and when he looks at me, I see a strange emotion in his eyes. A look of betrayal.

I tear my gaze away. It hurts to look at him. But how dare he act like I’ve done something horrible when he was the one who betrayed me?!

“You had a child together?” Cedric asks, his voice heavy and filled with something that has my wolf lurching inside my mind.

“Yes, we did.” Erik puts his arm around my waist.

“So, you’re his mate?” Cedric looks at me. Why does he looks so anguished, like I have done him a terrible wrong?

I finally summon the strength to speak. “Did you expect me to come back to you? So you could finish me off?”

He flinches. “No. No, I would never have—Leanna, I never ordered your execution.”

My chest tightens, and I want to cover my ears. I don’t want to hear about the past from him. I don’t want to be faced with those memories. The last time I saw Cedric and talked to him was in his office when I gave him the small snack I had made for him. I still remember how I felt, the tight, pained sensation in my chest at his words to Bella about how I was just a tool.

A tool that missed him every night waiting for him to come home.

A tool that was meant to be discarded when he finally got the real thing.

A tool that believed in him till the bitter end.

I was so foolish back then, so desperate to survive, that I had clung to the idea of him, to the hope that he might care for me.

My body feels cold as I’m sent spiraling into the past.

Even in my wolf form, I wasn’t strong enough to fight the monsters that circled me in the Misty Forest. So, I ran. Injured, bleeding, I crawled to the edge of the Veil, a shimmering tower of light. I could hear the monsters gaining on me, and I had no reason to live—except for the possibility of the existence of a baby inside me.

I just wanted a chance. One more chance at life, with my child.

“Erik”—I hold out my hands—“give Finn to me. I’m going to go wait inside.”

“No!” Cedric snaps. “I’m not done talking to you.”

“Enough!” Erik looks really angry now. “You’re crossing a line, King Raine. Go inside, Leanna. I’ll meet you there.”

“Leanna!” Cedric roars my name as I take Finn and begin walking away. Each step is heavy on the ground, and my heart is beating wildly. My mind is a tangled mess, but the weight of the quiet son in my arms is all I need to keep going.

Erik protected me.

He protected me from Cedric, and I feel beyond grateful. I don’t know what I expected if it ever ultimately came down to it, but he had my back. I want to collapse to the ground, the relief is so immense.

The butler is waiting at the entrance, and he ushers me indoors. “I’ll fetch a healer for Master Finn.”

A healer?

I look down at Finn and realize, to my dismay, that he’s unconscious.

Panic is my first reaction, but his breathing is deep, and he seems fine. An assessment that the royal healer echoes when he finds us in a bedroom a couple of minutes later.

“Just passed out from the excitement and shock.” He gives me a meaningful look.

“Thank you, Jerry,” I reply, smiling shyly at him.

Jerry is Erik’s personal healer. He’s the one Erik brought me to when he found me bleeding and half dead in the forest. Healer Jerry is also the one who confirmed my pregnancy at the time. He was supposed to help me give birth, and when he found out I had opted for a home birth without his assistance, he was beyond pissed, scolding me about safety and health hazards. My ears still burn when I’m reminded of the lecture I received from him. He sometimes reminds me of Harriet.

For a moment, a pang of grief clogs my throat at the thought of the older woman who cared for me in my short time at the castle. My parting words to her were true. I’d never had a mother or experienced what having one could be like. With the way Harriet treated me, I sometimes wondered if that was what it felt like.

“Give him something sweet to eat when he wakes up,” Jerry advises before running his eyes over my form with a critical gaze. “What about you? Have you been taking care of yourself? You look weak.”

“I’m fine,” I assure him. “I’ve been eating plenty of meat like you told me to.”

He gives me a dubious look but sighs. “Very well. You should come in more frequently for checkups. You’re very careless with your health.”

“I will, Jerry,” I lie, knowing he’s going to keep nagging me until he’s satisfied.

I wait till he’s gone to stroke Finn’s fur. He must have heard what Erik said about being his father. Is that what shocked him? Or was it how Cedric treated him? I won’t find out before he wakes up, and when he does, I have a feeling he is going to have a lot of questions that I won’t be able to answer.

In all of his seven years, Finn has only asked me once about his father. When I told him I didn’t remember, he accepted that as the truth and moved on. I hoped he would never raise the topic again until he was at an age where I could explain a better version of events to him. As I run my fingers through his fur, I wonder if lying to him will be the right decision.

What is Cedric even doing here? Why did Erik tell me to come if he knew Cedric was also going to be here? Is this another one of Erik’s tricks?

I really do not understand this enigmatic king.

I press a kiss to Finn’s nose and wait. My excitable son isn’t easily scared, so his passing out tells me exactly how terrified he must have been.

I’m trying not to think about Cedric. About how pained he looked to see me with Erik, how devastated, almost as if the idea physically hurt him.

Fury washes through me. The nerve! My fingers dig into the sheets of the bed Finn is lying in. How dare Cedric look at me like that?

The anger is followed by a wave of fear. He found me. He knows I’m alive. What if he decides to use some unscrupulous means to get rid of me? What if he tells Bella and Vivian that I’m alive and they—What if they decide to sow seeds of distrust in the elders of the Human Wolf Kingdom? What if the past repeats itself?