All Chapters of The Alpha King’s Secret Heir: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Amma's Point of ViewI know her fear. She's never once said it aloud. But I've seen it. In the way she changed the subject when I talked about bonds. In the way her smile went thin and polite when someone at a hospital party mentioned fated pairs. In the way she'd laugh, too bright, when I said, Don’t you ever wonder?‘I don't need a stranger telling me who I belong to,’ she told me once. ‘I'd rather choose.’She's standing in the headlights with her hands locked on my shoulders and her face gone white as paper, and I watch her as she looks at me pleadingly.I turn my head. Noah hasn't moved. He's standing in the rain with the radio dangling from his fingers, and I see him take a step toward her, an involuntary shift of weight, the way a drowning man's body leans toward air.“Don't,” I say.He stops.His eyes come to mine. I don't know what he sees in my face. I only know that I think of every night I've watched him not talk about it, every offhand remark, ‘I haven't gotten that lucky

Mirabel's Point of ViewThe floor tilts. I grab the wall before I can lose my shit.‘No. Not now. You're a doctor. Look.’I make myself look. Entry wound low on the back, left of the spine. Exit anterior, above the lung. No sucking. Pulse thready. A face turned to the side with the mouth slack and a long smear of blood across the cheek.Evander is beside the table. He's got one of her hands in both of his. I've never seen a man look like this. His shoulders are bowed, his head is down, and his lips are moving, silently, over and over.Somewhere to my left, a small voice cries.“Mummy.”I turn my head towards the voice.In the corner, by the cabinet, a woman in a gray apron is holding a child. A little girl in pajamas with her hair in tangles, her face streaked, her small hands outstretched toward the table, fighting to be put down. The woman has her around the waist.“No, sweetheart, no, you can’t. Stay here.”“Mummy! I want Mummy!”I'm across the room before I've decided to move.“Gi

Evander's Point of ViewEleven steps to the end of the corridor. Eleven back.I've counted them. The floor is pale green linoleum with a crack running through the fourth tile from the doors, and each time I pass it, I look down, as though the crack might have changed. It hasn't. Nothing here changes. The clock above the nurses' station says ten past two, and it said ten past two when I last looked, and I'm beginning to think it's broken.Behind the double doors at the end, they have my mate on a table.I wasn't allowed in. I tried. A surgeon with a gray braid and a voice like a closing gate stood in front of me and said, ‘Alpha, I will let you in the moment you're not a danger to my staff,’ and I looked at her and understood that I wasn't.I had blood to the elbows. Not mine. I'd carried Amma out of that clearing myself, with the shaft still through her, and I hadn't set her down until a stranger's hands took her weight.I've washed. The sink in the corridor bathroom ran pink for a lo

Amma's Point of ViewPain wakes me before anything else does. It's a hot, bright wire drawn tight through my chest, starting under the left collarbone and running out through my back, and when I try to take a breath, it pulls.A small noise comes out of me. I clench my teeth around it, and my whole body tries to curl away from the wire, which only drags it tighter.‘Breathe,’ a voice, thin and far off, says. It is like a radio left on in another room. ‘Short ones. Shallow. Don’t fight it.’‘It hurts,’ I complain.‘I know. I'm here.’I breathe short. The wire eases, a fraction. Behind my eyelids the dark is warm and red, and underneath the pain I feel the weight of blankets, the cool stiffness of a hospital sheet, the sting of a needle taped in the crook of my arm. Somewhere to my left, a machine beeps in a slow, steady rhythm.I'm alive.Then something shifts in the air around me, and I know I'm not alone.A shadow crosses the red behind my lids. Someone is standing over the bed. I ca

Amma's Point of View“What do you want, Evander?”He doesn't answer straight away. He pushes both hands into his trouser pockets, and I watch his shoulders square under the crumpled shirt, and his face close over like a lid. The jaw sets. The mouth flattens. Whatever was open in it a moment ago. The roughness in the doorway, the long look from my face to my feet, is shut away, and what's left is the Alpha, hard-featured and unreadable, standing at the end of my bed.The monitor beeps. Once, twice, three times.“I'm sorry,” he says.I blink.It's the last thing I expect. I was expecting him to scold me for moving away and not following his order. My eyebrows climb before I can stop them. He's never said it. Not in the hall, not in the library, not on the tarmac with his palm against that glass. Not once in all the years I've known him.“What for?” I ask.“For this.”“You don't have to apologize for anything.”“I do.”“Evander. I walked into those woods on my own. You told me to stay be