5. Thornwick by night.

Effie's POV

The car that pulled up outside the clinic was longer and glossier than any vehicle I'd ever seen in Hollowmoon, black as wet stone, with windows so dark I couldn't see my own reflection in them.

A driver in a fitted gray suit held the door open without a word, his eyes forward, like he'd been trained not to look at whoever climbed inside.

"Shouldn't we wait?" I asked, hovering at the edge of the curb with my one bag clutched to my chest. "To find out if I'm even pregnant first, I mean. What if none of this is even necessary?"

"No," Alpha Knox said simply, already holding the door for me.

"The doctors won't have your results for another week," Alpha Tobias added, coming around from the other side. "And we're not waiting a week with your name already sitting in a clinic's system, Effie. Word travels faster than you think, especially about a woman two kings walked in to meet personally."

I hadn't thought of it that way. I supposed that was rather the point, that I hadn't thought of any of this the way men who ran a kingdom thought of it, and the realization settled uneasily in my stomach as I climbed into the car.

I ended up seated between them, which I hadn't quite planned on and didn't know how to avoid without it looking strange. My eyes went wide the moment I realized there was truly nowhere else to sit, and my heart gave a stupid, traitorous little leap even as my stomach twisted with nerves.

Tobias slid in on my left, Alpha Knox on my right, and the car door shut with a soft, expensive click that sealed the three of us into a warm, dim quiet smelling faintly of leather and cedar. I could feel the heat coming off both of them, pressed so close on either side, and I had to remind myself to breathe.

Why were there scents so freaking addictive?! And why was there suddenly a feeling between my legs not for one but for both Alphas?

I mean why was my body behaving this naughty?! It has never reacted this way before.

The car pulled away from the clinic, from the city, out onto a long dark road, and I watched the lights thin out into trees through the tinted window, my hands twisted together in my lap, my face already far too warm for the cool air blowing softly from the vents.

"You're shaking," Alpha Knox observed after a while.

"I don't know what to expect," I admitted, my voice small. "I've never been anywhere like this. I don't know your pack, I don't know your rules, I don't know what happens to someone like me in a place like that."

"Nothing happens to you," Alpha Tobias said, "except that you're kept safe. That's all."

It didn't make the knot in my chest loosen much. We drove for what felt like an hour, the trees eventually giving way to hills, the hills giving way to high stone walls lit with torches that flickered orange against the dark, and somewhere in that stretch of road, without any warning at all, I felt a warm hand settle over my knee.

I froze.

Alpha Knox's hand moved in slow, absent circles against my leg, the way you'd calm a spooked animal, his eyes fixed ahead on the road like the touch cost him nothing at all. "It'll be alright, Effie," he said quietly. "Nothing in that pack will hurt you. Not while I'm breathing."

Heat crawled up my neck and into my face. I didn't move his hand. I told myself it was because I didn't want to seem rude, and I didn't examine that excuse any further than that.

"There are a few things you should know," Tobias said, his voice turning businesslike, though I noticed he didn't look away from me the whole time he said it. "You won't leave our private quarters without one of us, or someone we trust, at your side. Not for a walk, not for air, not for anything. You won't take meals in the main hall until we decide it's safe. And you'll keep your distance from the other wolves in the pack, particularly the unmated males. No cozy conversations. Do you understand?"

My eyebrows went up despite myself. "Y... you want me to just, not speak to anyone?"

"We want you protected," Knox said, his hand still warm on my knee. "And we'll take very good care of you in return. Better than you've likely ever been taken care of in your life. You'll want for nothing, Effie. Not food, not comfort, not anything at all." His voice dropped, low. "You'll simply belong to us for a while."

I could tell my whole face went red. I felt it happen, felt the heat climb from my chest to the roots of my hair, and I pressed my knees together and stared fixedly at my own twisting fingers because I did not trust my expression not to give away exactly how those words had landed.

'Belong to us.'

I didn't know what to do with a sentence like that, so I said nothing at all, and stared very hard out the window at the torches drawing closer, my whole body entirely too warm for the cool night air outside.

When the car finally stopped inside a courtyard I couldn't fully take in, all stone archways and lanterns and a fountain I barely glimpsed before Tobias was already opening my door, Knox came around and lifted me straight out of the car himself, one arm under my knees and the other around my back, like I weighed nothing at all, like carrying a woman my size cost him no more effort than lifting a folded blanket.

My eyes went wide. A small, undignified sound escaped me, somewhere between a gasp and a squeak, and my hands flew up to grip his shoulders on instinct, my whole body rigid with the shock of being lifted so easily, so casually, like it was nothing at all to him.

"I can walk," I said, mortified, my face burning so hot I was certain steam should have been coming off my skin.

"I know," Knox said, and didn't put me down until we were through the front doors.

They led me up a wide staircase and down a long hallway lined with tall windows, quiet at this hour, the whole palace hushed like it was holding its breath around me.

At the end of the hall, a set of heavy double doors opened into a bedroom bigger than my entire house in Hollowmoon, a bed piled high with soft linens, a fireplace already lit, tall windows looking out over dark hills.

"You're just here," Knox said, nodding to a smaller door set into the far wall, "beside our own rooms. If you need anything in the night, we'll hear you."

I looked around at all of it, the size of the bed, the fire, the thick carpet under my bare feet, and felt smaller than I had in that whole square back home.

"Thank you," I managed.

They left me to settle in, and I showered in a bathroom with more marble than I'd seen in my whole life, and dressed in a soft nightgown someone had already laid out for me, and climbed into a bed so large I could have stretched out sideways across it. I lay there in the dark, listening to the unfamiliar quiet of the palace settling around me, and at some point, without ever quite deciding to, I slipped under.

The door to my room opened without a sound.

"You're still awake," Knox murmured, though I hadn't heard him cross the floor, and somehow he was already sitting on the edge of the bed, his weight dipping the mattress toward him.

"I couldn't sleep," I whispered back, though that wasn't true either, was it, because I could feel the sheets against my skin and his hand settling warm over my hip at the very same time, both of them true at once.

"Let me help with that," he said, and then Tobias's voice came from the other side, closer than it should have been, low against my ear.

"He's not the only one who wants to take care of you tonight."

I made some small, breathless sound that didn't feel like a word at all. Alpha Knox's mouth found my throat, slowly messaging the area with his lips, while Tobias's hand slid slow along my waist, and I arched up into both of them without meaning to, without deciding to, my whole body answering a question neither of them had even asked out loud.

"Say it," Knox said against my skin. "Tell us what you want."

"I don't—" My voice broke apart before I could finish it.

"You do," Tobias murmured. "You just haven't let yourself yet."

I woke with a gasp, my whole body jolting upright in the dark.

The room was empty. The fire had burned down to embers. My heart was slamming so hard against my chest I could hear it in my own ears, and it took me a long, disoriented moment to understand where I was, whose bed, whose place, why my nightgown was twisted halfway up my thigh.

I shifted, and went still.

I was soaked between my legs, embarrassingly, unmistakably so, the sheets damp beneath me in a way that made my whole face flood with heat even alone in the dark with no one to see it. My hands were shaking as I pressed them over my face.

It had felt so real. Every second of it, his hand, his mouth, Tobias's voice at my ear, all of it had felt so real that I lay there afterward struggling to convince my own body it hadn't actually happened, my pulse refusing to slow no matter how many times I told myself it had only been a dream.