All Chapters of Too Curvy For The Crown: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

Freya I pulled the sheet against my chest, my head still heavy with sleep, and stared at him. Last night this man had held me all night, and now he was looking at me the way strangers looked at me. "What? I don't..." "Whatever scheme you played to get into my bed, it failed." His voice was flat and cold. "I have a woman, I chose her myself, and no bond forced on me by fate will ever make me want someone as weak as you." Every word landed on me and my chest caved in around them. A scheme. He thought I planned this. He thought someone like me had looked at someone like him and dared to want him. "A scheme?" My eyes burned. "Garrett drugged me, he chased me, I never planned any of..." "Enough." He didn't even raise his voice, because he didn't need to. "Get dressed, get out, and if you ever speak of this night to anyone, I will make sure you regret it." He walked out, and the door clicked shut behind him, quietly, and somehow that quiet click hurt worse than shouting would have. I

FreyaVivienne Cole arrived the next morning, and the palace threw her a welcome I could hear from the far side of the grounds.I watched from a window in my wing, high above the courtyard, while the King walked down the steps to meet her car, and when she stepped out, tall and slim and golden-haired in a white coat, he took both her hands in his and smiled at her, and I learned that he could smile. She rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek, and the whole courtyard applauded, and I stepped back from the window and closed the curtain, and my hands stayed pressed against my chest for a long time, because the bond was tearing at me from the inside and there was no one to tell.That was the first day. The months that followed taught me my place better than any chains could have.My maids hated me. They never said it, because saying it could be reported, but they didn't need words. My gowns came back from the seamstress a size too small, every single one, so that I had to stand in fitti

FreyaI woke up in a bed I didn't recognize, in a room that smelled of herbs and dried lavender, and the first thing I felt was the absence.Not pain, not sadness. A hollow space in my chest where the bond used to live, scraped clean, and my whole body felt wrong without it. I pressed my hand flat against my ribs and there was nothing there, no warmth, no pull, no hum. Just me.Sable, I called. Sable, are you there?She didn't answer for a long time. Then I felt her, curled up tight and small somewhere deep inside me, barely breathing.I'm here, she whispered. But he's gone, Freya. I can't feel him anymore.I know, I told her. I know.Merris sat in a wooden chair beside the bed, and her eyes were red and swollen. A younger woman stood behind her near the stove, early twenties, same kind face, watching me with worry. Merris's daughter."Where am I?" My throat was raw."My home," Merris said quietly. "I share it with my daughter Lena on my days off. When you collapsed in his study, I ha

FreyaI gave birth in a one-room apartment above a laundromat with Harper holding one hand and a human midwife holding the other.When he came out screaming, they put him on my chest, and I looked down at him and my whole world changed. He had black hair and pale gray eyes and he looked so much like his father that it hurt, but I kissed his forehead and named him Ezra, and I swore to him out loud that he would never know what it felt like to be unwanted.Sable pressed close. He's ours, she said. Just ours.Just ours, I promised her.Harper stayed two weeks. She slept on the floor beside my bed, cooked for me, took Ezra when I couldn't keep my eyes open. When she had to go back to Blackmoor before anyone started asking questions, she stood in the doorway with her bag on her shoulder and her eyes wet. "Call me if you need anything.""I will," I said, and we both knew I wouldn't, because every call was a risk.Then she was gone and it was just me and my son.The first year nearly broke m