All Chapters of MARRIED TO AN ALPHA, CLAIMED BY THE LYCAN KING : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Bella's POVThe word sat in the air between us.I heard it landing and felt my eyes go wide before I could manage them.I had just used that word at the Lycan King.In his private suite.To his face."Your Maje…""Call me Ethan, Arabell," he said.Like I hadn't just yelled at him. Like I hadn't cussed at him. Like none of the last thirty seconds had registered as anything requiring a different response than his name said quietly in that voice.He was not getting angry.The most feared man in the territory, the powerful Lycan King, was sitting in his armchair watching me lose composure at him and was not getting angry and I genuinely could not locate why and it was making everything harder to manage."I addressed you formally because of your father," he said. "No one knows about our relationship, Arabell. Your father cannot know you've been coming here.""As if we're in a relationship," I said, rolling my eyes again, and this time I felt it happening and let it go anyway because appare

Ethan's POVArabell doesn't know what the fuck she's doing to me right now. Every move she makes is twisting me up tighter, and I'm sitting here gripping these damn chair arms so hard the wood might splinter. My blood is pounding hot through my veins, straight down to my cock that's straining against my pants like it has its own heartbeat. I forced myself to stay seated even when every instinct screamed at me to grab her.Asking Matthew to walk her out when she first entered without knocking was actually a performance. That was the fastest way to get her out of a room where her father was discussing things she could not know yet, in a way that protected her from information that would have made her do something that got her hurt. I don't do performances. Never have. But for Arabell, there's not a single damn thing I wouldn't do to keep her safe. The way she corrected me when I called her Luna, rejecting that title with that sharp look in her eyes, was sexy in a powerful way that hit

Bella's POVThe carriage moved through the south wing road and I sat back and let the tiredness have me properly for the first time all day.The blood therapy had ended an hour ago. Matthew had appeared with the herbal tea exactly when he always did and I had sat in the chair nearest the window and drunk it slowly while Ethan slept in his armchair, which was becoming its own kind of familiar, the quietness of that room after the transfusion, his face finally unguarded, the cursor poison quieter in him and the room carrying that specific stillness that came after something significant had been done.I had watched him sleep for an hour and not examined why I found it easy to sit there.Before he went under he had told Matthew to hold Andrew in the waiting hall until he was ready to receive him. He had said it without looking at me, just the instruction delivered in that flat certain voice, and I had understood what it meant, I would be back at the packhouse before Andrew left the palace

Ethan's POVI was fighting with Slade not to kill Andrew, or that's what I'm telling myself. I left him on his knees.That was the only thing that saved Andrew today, the fact that killing him would have created a problem I wasn't ready to manage yet. Not sentiment. Not restraint in any noble sense of the word. Pure calculation, which is the only thing that has ever kept me from doing exactly what I want to do in rooms where what I want to do would be inconvenient afterward.Slade was not operating from calculation.He had been making noise from the moment Andrew opened his mouth and said my wife in that flat proprietary tone, and the noise had gotten progressively less manageable as the audience went on. By the time Andrew dropped to his knees and started explaining the mate bond to me like I needed the education, Slade had moved from noise into something that required active containment."Kill him," he said, so simply and directly. No argument attached, no reasoning, just the instr

Bella's POV"Speak up, Julie."She was standing at the wardrobe pulling out options for the day with her back to me and her shoulders carrying that particular tension they got when she had something sitting in her head that she hadn't decided what to do with yet. I had learned to read her silences the same way she had learned to read mine."It's nothing, Luna," she said, not turning around."You're doing the eyes again." I sat up straighter on the edge of the bed. "I can feel them from here. Do you want me to replace you?"She spun around. "No no, Luna.""Then what is it?"She held the dress she had pulled out against herself like a shield and took a small breath. "It's the mistress, Luna. It seems she's pregnant. And if she bears the heir of this pack," she paused…"things won't go easily for you."I looked at her for a second.Then I laughed."Leave that drama doll alone, Julie, let her act…"The door opened.Andrew walked through it like it was his room and not mine, like the concep