All Chapters of The Prince's Mistake, The Alpha King's Heir: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Effie's POVThe washroom felt strangely large without them in it.I stood beneath the spray for what felt like the first time in weeks without a pair of hands already at my waist, or a low voice murmuring something wicked against my ear, and I let the water pour over my shoulders and down my back, hot enough to turn my skin pink.It was quiet. Just the rush of the water and my own slow breathing, and the faint, traitorous warmth that crept up my neck every time my eyes wandered toward the stone wall where, only a few days ago, Alpha Tobias had pinned me with a grin and taken his sweet time proving how little a locked door meant to him.Heat bloomed in my face, and it had nothing to do with the steam.Behave, I told myself, tipping my head back beneath the water. You're a grown woman, not a little child to be swooning over two kings. I repeated this in my head but it didn't help. Everything in that room remembered them.The bench where Alpha Knox had sat me down and washed my hair, the

Effie's Pov They were waiting for me at the foot of the stairs.I'd spent the entire descent telling myself not to look for them, to keep my eyes on my own feet and my hand on the banister and count the steps until it was over. But somewhere around the tenth stair I lifted my head anyway, and the sight of them struck all the air out of me.Alpha Knox stood on the left, tall and severe in black, a dark coat cut close across his shoulders with a high collar and a thin line of silver embroidery tracing the cuffs. Alpha Tobias stood on the right in deep midnight blue, his hair swept back, a gold pin at his throat, the faint curve of his smile gone still and arrested.Neither of them was smiling now.They were looking at me the way a man looks at a sunrise he hadn't expected, with lips parted and eyes dark and full of something so naked I felt my pulse stumble beneath the garnets at my throat. Alpha Knox's hand tightened at his side and alpha Tobias's throat worked once."Breathtaking," a

Effie's Pov For three full heartbeats, the hall didn't breathe.Then it broke.The sound that rose was like nothing I'd ever heard, a swell of gasps and muttering and scraped chairs that rushed through the crowd from the dance floor to the farthest wall. Someone near the fireplace swore aloud. A woman in gold lace clutched her companion's arm and whispered something against his ear. Beyond her, a cluster of older wolves had already begun to stir, heads bent, voices climbing in shock.And through all of it, prince Jasper stood without moving."What?" he said.It came out unbelieving, hardly a word at all. His gaze was fixed on the curve of my stomach beneath the red silk, though there was nothing there yet to see. He looked like a man who'd taken a blow to the head and hadn't yet understood that he was bleeding."What did you say?""You heard us," alpha Knox said."That's not...." Jasper shook his head hard, as if to clear it. "That isn't possible. She's my...." He stopped. His eyes

Effie's POVI'd expected to feel afraid.That was the thing I kept turning over as the quiet stretched out between the three of us. I had said yes. I had agreed to cut the last thread that tied me to Jasper, and by rights the knowledge should have made me happy.Instead I felt nervous. I was about to move on from the son to the fathers officially. Once and for all. This was a very big move. A very big milestone.Then again having their child is even bigger.Neither of them had stopped looking at me. I'd been aware of it for a while now, when I finally lifted my eyes, I found alpha Knox's gaze traveling the length of me from the loosened curls of my hair to the garnets at my throat to the dress across my lap. His eyes had gone dark."You've been wearing that dress all night," he said."You picked it.""I know." Something rough crept into his voice. "I've been trying not to think about it since you came down those stairs.""Thinking about what?" It slipped out before I could catch it.

Third party pov The two guards posted at the head of the east tower stair never saw her coming.They were big men, seasoned warriors who had stood this watch for weeks without incident and when a slim figure in a long gray cloak stepped out of the dark at the end of the corridor, the nearer of the two had barely begun to prepare for a fight before the individual cupped something small and pale in its palm and blew it.A fine, glittering dust swirled up between them. The guard drew breath to shout and tasted it instead. His eyes rolled up, then his knees folded, and he went down heavily against the wall, his companion collapsing a heartbeat after, and the corridor fell silent save for two slow, even breaths.The cloaked figure tilted her head, listening. Nothing stirred in the tower above. Nothing in the stairwell below.She pushed back the hood just far enough to see by, she then crouched to unhook the heavy iron ring of keys from the nearest guard's belt.The stair beneath the east