Pregnant With The Tyrant King's Heira

Fane's POV Weddings were supposed to feel like the beginning of something beautiful. Mine felt like a goodbye. I had not told anyone that. I had swallowed it every morning for two weeks and dressed it up as nerves because that was what brides were supposed to feel. Not this quiet, formless dread sitting at the bottom of my chest like a stone I could not remove. I was still standing at the bridal chamber window when the door opened. "You do know," I said without turning, "it's bad luck for the groom to see his bride before she walks down the aisle." Kai crossed the room and pulled me between his legs, hands settling on my waist like they already knew their way there. Five years of muscle memory. He pressed a slow kiss to my stomach through the fabric of my dress. "First of all," he murmured, "you look breathtaking." His eyes lifted to mine. "But I still prefer you without the dress." "Kai!" I shoved his shoulder but he only laughed and dragged me onto his lap. "And secondly…" his lips brushed mine, "there's no bad luck when it comes to you, Fane." I searched his face the way I sometimes did without knowing why, looking for something I could never quite identify. He always looked back with that same steady warmth and I always told myself I was being foolish. "Nothing in this world could make me abandon you," he said softly. "Not war. Not death. Not even the Moon Goddess herself." Something moved through me at those words. It was something quieter. Somehow it felt like a warning without it meaning to. I pushed it down. "Because of you," I whispered, "my family will finally be safe. The Larva Pack and their tyrant king are going to fall." He kissed me gently. "Yes. And we're going to rule for a very long time together, Fane." He brushed his thumb against my cheek and I leaned into it, storing the warmth like something I wanted to keep. "Now go," he murmured. "I'll see you at the altar." At the doorway I paused and looked back at him. He was already watching me… his chin tipped, one arm across his knee, steady as always. I almost said something but I shut my mouth and the feeling passed quickly. I left. ************** The mating hall glowed beneath a thousand candles. Both packs filled every seat, their voices echoing between the flower-wrapped columns in waves of warmth and celebration. My younger siblings scattered petals down the aisle, giggling. My youngest brother tripped on his robe and my sister caught him before he fell. My throat tightened. I'd do anything for them, my family Beside me, my father settled his hand over mine. "You look just like your mother," he said quietly. I had dreamed about this moment my entire life. Not the dress or the flowers but what it meant. Just Kai beside me as my mate. Our packs joined. The Larva Pack's shadow finally lifted from everyone I loved. This marriage was not only love, it was survival. When the music started I stepped forward. Kai stood at the mating stone and the moment his eyes found mine across the hall, his expression softened and something fluttered nervously in my chest. The ceremony passed like water. I barely heard the elder's words. My whole world had narrowed to Kai's hands holding mine and the ceremonial flames and the vows we had practiced until I could say them while sleeping. "Until death," Kai murmured, stroking my skin, "do us part." The hall erupted. I pressed my lips to our joined hands. "Even death," I whispered, "could never separate us." Then the doors exploded open and the sound swallowed every voice in the hall. Men flooded in wearing grey fur cloaks, carrying blood-soaked spears and severed heads I recognized; our pack guards, the men who had stood at the gates this morning. Screams tore through the hall and we heard the sound of bodies hit the marble. A spear flew toward me and I froze as it struck the man running past instead. Warm blood splashed across my wedding dress. Run, something screamed inside me. RUN. My father fought two attackers near the altar. My siblings huddled trembling beneath a banquet table at the far end of the hall. Kai pressed close, cutting down wolves reaching for us, but for every one that fell two more stepped in and our guards were dropping and the ground was slick and red and there were too many. Oh Venus, help me. Then the hall went still. The invaders split apart down the center aisle and through the silence walked a man. He moved with a quiet stride so deliberate it made my skin tighten. He was tall, broad, dark fur cloak, walking through blood and bodies with the ease of someone in his own hall on an ordinary morning. Destruction was probably a room he had lived in long enough to find comfortable. The candles were somehow still burning. Their light crossed his face and I saw blue eyes, cold and searching until they landed on me. It lasted less than a second but something happened in that second that I had no language for. It wasn't only fear or hatred. No it was something else, sitting between both of them. There was this recognition for a person I had never met before. Somehow I knew him but couldn't place it. Then his gaze moved on as though I were nothing worth pausing or looking for. And I hated him, instantly and completely, for making me feel like I had imagined it. "A wedding," he drawled quietly. I could hear the sarcasm underneath it. "How touching." I recognized him now. Valek. The Tyrant King of the Larva Pack. Children in my pack learned his name before they learned to shift. Not as a lesson but as a warning. My father raised his sword. "Only a coward starts a war during a wedding ceremony!" Valek tilted his head. "Alpha Kael. Good to see you too." "Don't!" I grabbed my father's arm. He turned sharply to Kai instead. "Get her out. He won't let anyone survive. Protect my daughter." Kai grabbed my wrist and pulled. I fought him, twisting back toward my father, toward my siblings still hiding beneath that table, toward the hall I was being torn out of and the last thing I saw before the tunnel swallowed us was Valek standing motionless in the candlelight, not even watching us leave. Like he had this confidence, that we'd already lost. We reached the hidden chamber and Kai finally stopped. "He killed them," I whispered. "Kai… he killed them…" "Fane." His voice was flat and too careful. "I can't stay here with you anymore." The ground left me. "What?" "I need to go back," he said. "And to do that… I have to hurt you." "No." I stepped toward him. "We fight together, that was always the plan—" "This marriage was never about love, Fane." I stared at the face I had memorized over five years. At the hands that had held mine at the mating stone twenty minutes ago. "Your pack is gone," he said coldly. "Without them, you're worthless to me." "Kai." My voice had gone very small. "Please." Something crossed his face briefly and it was quickly buried, replaced with something so cold. "I reject you as my mate, Fane. And I sever every tie between us." The bond broke. It felt so terrible like something structural and huge collapsing, something that was irreplaceable, and the pain was so much I could only scream. I heard his footsteps as I fell. The door opened then closed and I sat there in the silence clutching my chest with tears flowing down my face. Kai… what… what had he just done? The door opened and an ominous aura filled the room, making the hair on the back of my neck stand on its end.