4. In the kings bed?

Effie's POV

Neither of them sat right away. They stood there for a long moment, studying me the way you'd study something rare that had wandered into the wrong room, and I stared down at my folded hands because I couldn't hold either of their gazes for more than a second.

I bit my lip. Gosh, were they analyzing my weight? Did they plan on rejecting from being a mother? For crying out loud, how much rejection can one handle before giving up?

The quieter one, Alpha Knox, took the chair directly across from me, close enough that I caught the faint scent of cedar and something warmer underneath it, something that made my chest go tight for reasons I refused to examine. Akpha Tobias took the other chair, angled slightly back, watching more than speaking.

"Effie." Alpha Knox said my name carefully, like he didn't want to get it wrong. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with us. I know it isn't standard."

"It's, um." My voice came out smaller than I meant it to. I cleared my throat and tried again. "It's fine. I don't mind."

"What happened to your mate Effie?" Alpha Tobias questioned, his eyes slowly making its way down my body before making It's way back up.

I blushed feeling scrutinized under his gaze.

"M... my mate rejected me." I whispered, looking at the ground in disappointment.

"Hmm, sounds like an idiot." Alpha Knox responded, making my eyes widened.

If only they knew it was no other than prince Alpha Jasper, one of their own who rejected me. I'm sure they'd be surprised.

"Do you have other children?" Tobias asked.

"No, Your Majesty. This would be my first."

"I guess it'll be the first time for a lot of things." Tobias said smirking, and I glanced up, certain I'd misheard him, but his face gave nothing away.

"You see, Effie, the reason we asked to see you is because if you do end up pregnant, you'll be carrying a high lineage. The heir to the throne. If anyone were to find out, things could go south for you pretty quickly," Alpha Tobias explained.

I bit my lips once again. This was indeed true. How complicated things had become and all I wanted was to have a baby of my own in a quiet community that no one knew about.

Now, I might be carrying the heir of the entire werewolf community. I knew Alpha Knox had a mate who died. However, why was the alpha kings donating their sperm?

It's not as if they were financially in debt, they were rich, even more rich than the entire werewolf community combined. It was estimated that their wealth was in the hundredth of billions.

And why would they want to help others build a family if they knew an heir walking around to the Alpha kings could be used as leverage to their enemies.

Thirdly, they weren't getting a surrogate, so why? Why go through all this trouble to donate their sperm? None of this didn't make any sense.

"Yes, I know it might be dangerous but I won't tell anyone." I tried to assure them even though it had nothing to do with them considering after donating their sperm, they had no say.

Tobias smiled making my heart jump. It was one of the most beautiful thing I'd seen.

"You might not but there's no telling what the doctors here might do," Alpha Knox rebutted.

"Then what do you both suggest?" I asked nervously.

"You'll come stay with us," Knox said, like it was already decided, like the words had been sitting in his mouth since before I ever walked into the room. "At the palace. Under our protection, until the child is born."

My eyes widened in shock. "I..I'm sorry?"

"You heard him," Tobias said, leaning forward, close enough that I caught his scent too, sharper than his brother's, more like winter air than cedar. "A doctor talks. A nurse talks. A single loose word finds its way to the wrong ears, and suddenly a woman carrying royal blood is worth a great deal to a great many dangerous people. We can't allow that."

"I..." My mouth went dry. "I was going to find somewhere quiet. A small town, somewhere nobody knows my face, where I could just, um, disappear for a while and raise—"

"No," Knox said, simply, and something about the flat certainty of it stopped the rest of my sentence in my throat.

"You don't understand," I tried again, my voice shaking. "I can't stay in a palace. I don't belong in a—"

"We're not asking, Effie." Tobias's voice was gentle, but there was a kind of tone I imagined he used on generals who'd made the wrong call. "We won't take no for an answer. Not on this."

My stomach twisted. A palace. Guards. Servants. And somewhere in all of it, undoubtedly, a prince who had rejected me in front of his entire pack one night ago, a prince I would now be forced to see every single day, pregnant with a child that wasn't even his, praying he never worked out whose it actually was.

"This is a bad idea," I said, before I could stop myself. "The baby isn't... it isn't yours to just, to just decide things for. I haven't even—" I stopped, mortified, realizing halfway through that I was arguing with two kings like they were villagers who'd overstepped.

My face burned. Nobody talked to them like this. Nobody talked to them at all, not really, not without a title in front of their own name first.

But neither of them looked offended. If anything, Knox looked faintly amused, his gaze dropping briefly to my mouth before lifting back to my eyes, and Tobias's smirk only deepened.

"You may leave, once the child is born," Knox said quietly, watching me with an intensity I didn't fully understand. "If that's still what you want by then."

That made no sense at all, an offer with an expiration date attached, as if he already suspected something might change my mind before it arrived. I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, then thought better of it and pressed my lips shut instead.

"You'll be protected at all costs," Tobias said, and this time when he leaned forward, his fingers brushed briefly against the back of my hand where it rested on the table, just a graze, gone before I could decide if I'd imagined it. My skin still tingled where he'd touched it.

"And you needn't worry," Alpha Knox added, his voice dropping low, "about anyone laying a hand on you. Not while you're under our roof. Not even," his eyes held mine as a smirk played on his handsome lips, "if it means you end up sleeping in our bed."

My eyes went wide.