All Chapters of The Kingslayer’s Forbidden Mate: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

AURORA "You're going to have the best dad in the world," I whispered, placing one hand on my stomach. "I promise."I'd said it three times already, just to hear how it sounded out loud. It sounded real. It sounded true. I lay there in bed a little longer, staring at the ceiling, letting the fact settle into my bones. I was pregnant. Me, Aurora Hale, who used to get nervous holding other people's babies, was going to have one of my own.Things with Dylan hadn't been easy lately. There'd been a lot of pack meetings I wasn't invited to, and many nights he came home late and tired, not wanting to talk. I'd even started to feel like a stranger in my own relationship. But none of that mattered now. This would change everything. It had to.I imagined his face when I told him. I pictured him going still for a second, the way he always did when something took him aback, and then that slow grin of his spreading all over his face. He'd pull me in, maybe spin me around like he used to when we we

AURORA The pain didn't stop. If anything, it got worse, like something inside me was being torn apart violently. I dragged myself off the floor, one hand pressed against my stomach, the other clawing at the wall for something to hold onto.I needed help. I needed someone, or anyone really.Willow was screaming inside me now, making a sound I'd never heard from her before, her voice so high and panicked and completely useless because neither of us could do anything to stop what was happening. I could feel her trying to push forward to take over, like maybe the wolf side of me could fix what the human side couldn't. But she couldn't either. We were both just scared, bleeding, and completely alone.I stumbled out into the hallway, my legs barely holding me up, and I called out, or at least I tried to. What actually came out was so thin and broken, not even loud enough for anyone nearby to hear."Please," I whispered. "I need help."But nobody came.What would happen to my baby now? Wou

ROMAN I never usually walked the line myself. Gideon handled the sorting, counting, and all of it. Faces blurred together after a while, and most of them were just numbers on a debt sheet by the time they reached me. But the last shipment came in short, and I wanted to see for myself what these traders thought they could get away with this time. That's the only reason I told myself I was out there in the cold at midnight, watching chained prisoners get unloaded one by one. Gideon fell into step beside me. "You never come out for this." "The numbers were off last time. I want eyes on the count this time." "Sure," he said in a tone that meant he didn't believe me and wasn't going to bother saying so twice. I was three names down the list when one of the guards called out "Hale, Aurora Hale," and something in my chest tightened before I even saw her face. She was near the back, wrapped in a blanket that wasn't doing much against the cold, her head down like she didn't have the stre

AURORAI woke up gasping like I'd been pulled up from underwater.For one horrible second I didn't know where I was, and my whole body reacted before my mind could even catch up to it. I could still feel the cold metal of the chains digging into my wrists, still smell the inside of that truck, still hear the engine grinding on and on for hours with no end anywhere in sight. My whole body still ached in the same places it had ached for days.My hand flew to my stomach before I even opened my eyes all the way."No," I said, and then it wasn't a word anymore, as a scream ripped from my throat. "No, no! Where's my baby?! Someone tell me where my baby is!"I didn't recognize the room around me. But what I noticed was the soft blanket pulled up to my chin, a warm fire crackling somewhere close by, and curtains in a deep green shade I'd never seen before in my entire life. None of it made any sense, and none of it mattered, because all I could think about was the small curve under my hand a

AURORAShe told me her name was Josie when she came in carrying a tray of food like she'd done it a hundred times before, chatting easily the second she stepped through the door like the two of us had known each other for years already instead of mere minutes."You need to eat something," she said, setting the tray down carefully beside the bed. "Doctor's orders, and honestly, my own orders too. You look like you haven't had a real, proper meal in weeks, and don't try telling me otherwise."I hadn't, but I didn't say that part out loud.She was younger than me, maybe, with an easy, open smile that didn't match a single thing I'd expected to find anywhere in Ravenwood. She talked while she moved around the room, laying out clean folded clothes across the chair, fixing the heavy curtains so the light filtered in just right, and filling the silence between us before it could even turn heavy and uncomfortable. For a few minutes, just listening to her go on about nothing in particular—the