All Chapters of The Prince's Mistake, The Alpha King's Heir: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Third party povCouncilwoman Vivienne Freemon had barely stepped out of the vehicle before she spotted the two Alpha Kings crossing the courtyard, deep in conversation with one of their guards.She approached with her husband at her side and inclined her head respectfully. "Your Majesties. Forgive the intrusion. We've come to see our daughter."Alpha Knox gave her the briefest nod, his attention already elsewhere. "Councilwoman. Councilman." His eyes passed over them without truly landing. "She's in the east garden, I believe.""Enjoy your visit," Alpha Tobias added, already turning back to whatever the guard had been telling him, the two of them resuming their conversation before the Freemons had even finished their bow.That was all. No further word, no invitation inside, nothing to suggest the Freemons' standing on the council meant anything at all to either king. Vivienne straightened, swallowed whatever she felt about it, and said nothing, because there was nothing to be gained f

Effie's Pov"No."The word came out steadier than I felt saying it.Alpha Knox's hand had gone still against my cheek. Tobias's hold at my waist didn't loosen, exactly, but something in his expression shifted, like he'd expected a different answer and was recalculating in real time."Effie—""No," I said again, pulling back a step, putting just enough air between us that I could finally breathe properly. "I can't."It would have been so easy to say yes. That was the humiliating truth of it, standing there with my whole body still thrumming from how close they'd been, how warm. Some small, starved part of me wanted exactly what they were offering, wanted it so badly my hands were shaking with the effort of refusing it.But I kept seeing those portraits. Gold frames. A dozen smiling, pregnant women who had once stood exactly where I was standing now, hopeful, flattered, maybe even a little in love with the idea of being wanted by kings. None of them had lived to hold what they'd carried

Nadia's pov I remember the exact moment I started hating her.It was the night the Alpha kings came home, the two of them climbing out of that long black car looking the way they always did after a journey, tired around the eyes but still every inch the men half this kingdom would have burned themselves alive just to touch. I'd been waiting by the courtyard doors, the way I always waited whenever they went away, the way I'd waited since I was barely old enough to carry a tray without dropping it. They were mine to adore long before anyone else in this palace understood what that actually meant.Then Knox stepped aside from the car, and I saw what they'd brought home with them.A female wolf. An omega, like me, except where I was slender and quick, she was wide through the hips and shoulders. Fat. There was no kinder word for it, not that I was in any mood to search for one. I stood there in the shadow and felt something ugly in my chest, watching Alpha Tobias help her out of that c

Alpha Knox PovPack business had eaten the entire day. Border patrol reports, pack disputes. I sat through all of it with half my attention somewhere down the hall, in a small room with soft linens and an omega who had no idea how little of my mind had actually been in that council chamber."You're thinking about her again," My brother Tobias said, the moment the last of the betas finally left us alone."So are you."He didn't bother denying it. "I keep thinking about those thighs. The weight of her in my hands. I want to leave marks on her that last for days, brother. I want her gasping my name into a pillow before I even let her catch her breath enough to say yours.""You'll get your turn," I said, and meant it. "I intend to take mine slow. I want to hear every single sound she tries to swallow back before I'm through with her.""Slow." Tobias snorted. "You say that now."We'd never once done this before, not like this, not over the same woman at the same time, and it should have bo

Effie's Pov I woke up to rope biting into my wrists and the smell of mildew thick enough to taste.For a long moment I didn't move at all, I just laid there on my side on a floor that felt like packed dirt under a thin layer of rotted wood, listening to my own heartbeat and trying to piece together where the last version of myself had gone. The hood. The hand over my mouth. The jolt of being carried like a sack of grain, through what felt like hours of being dropped, jostled, dropped again. After that, nothing. A gap in my memory with a ragged, chemical edge to it that told me whatever had been pressed over my nose in that moment hadn't been an accident.I blinked against the gray light leaking through a window with no glass left in it, just a square hole in warped wood, and took stock. Wrists tied in front of me, rope rough enough to have already rubbed the skin raw. Ankles the same. A single chair in the corner of what might once have been someone's kitchen, long since abandoned t