Page 75 of Rejected and Pregnant By the Alpha King

My eyes squeeze shut, a few tears pearling out from the corners as I heave in a few shallow breaths. Of course…of all fucking people to have caught me drowning in a goddamn pond…it justhadto be my new alpha.

He pats my back with a few solid hits. “You need to cough hard to get it all out. Breathe in deeply and then cough.”

I struggle to do as he says, but finally after a few tries, I pull in a lungful of air and then heave out a wet cough, choking up the last of the water I swallowed.

“There’s a good girl,” he murmurs.

A thread of heat zings through me, sending me jolting back from him on instinct. He’s kneeling on the grass next to the spot I’d just been occupying, his hand still outstretched from where he’d been patting me. He eyes me curiously with a rather bemused expression.

Ripping my gaze away from him, I look back over my shoulder to the pond, where the water still ripples. I can’t believe I fell in like a fucking idiot, but aside from that, how deep is it? When I’d been flailing around, I hadn’t felt the bottom at all.

The ground had simply dropped off into what felt like a steep five feet down with no gradual decline. From here, the pond doesn’t seem that wide, maybe fifty feet all the way around.

Nyx standing suddenly catches my attention.

He wanders over to the side of the pond and lowers himself again down onto one knee. He reaches a hand out over the still-rippling surface, just barely grazing over it. Something under the water moves, and then another, until I realize that what touched me while I’d been drowning was a bunch of fish.

“Look how upset you’ve made my poor koi,” he says.

His tone doesn’t sound upset. In fact, he sounds as bemused as he looked when getting me to finally breathe again.

I lift myself up farther onto my hands, twisting at my waist to get a better look. “I never considered you a fish person.”

He throws a look over his shoulder at me, his long hair curling slightly at the ends from getting wet when rescuing me. Even from here, I can tell that what I said has amused him even more.

“Oh? And what sort of person did you consider me?”

I’m stunned for a second, mostly because how in the world am I supposed to answer that? Tell the truth about all of the rumors I’ve heard about him over the years, or lie and say that he seems like the complete opposite of whatever it is I’ve come to know.

Either way, neither of those personalities strikes me as a “fish guy.”

“Arethey your fish?” I ask instead.

“Who else’s would they be?”

Slowly, I push myself up onto my feet again and wander over to him. My clothes stick to me like a second skin and I don’t miss the way he eyes me, mostly focusing on my belly, which has just only begun to grow slightly swollen. If these clothes weren’t wet, no one would know.

I stand next to him, looking down into the water where over a dozen fish—koi—move around. They’re quick, their colors flashing in the blink of an eye before disappearing into the murky depths once more.

“Did I disturb some kind of fish ecosystem or something?” I ask.

A soft sound draws my attention back to him once more, surprise tingling in my veins at his full-blown smirk. With it, the twin black hoops in his lips become more pronounced.

“Yes, you have.”

Fuck me.My teeth gnaw at the inside of my cheek.

He lifts himself up to his full height again, close enough that he nearly brushes his hand with mine. “There is a way to make it up to them, though.”

I raise a brow. “How?”

Making it up to fish…now that’s a first.

He nods for me to follow him, careful to not stray too close to the side of the pond while heading over to the greenhouse. When we approach it, he unlatches the handle and pushes the door open, moist heat hitting both of us in the face.

I follow him in, the scent of dark earth tickling my nose. Plants surround the entire greenhouse from top to bottom, making it hard to see the back of it or where the sides even arch up.

Nyx moves through the plants easily, as if he’s done this a million times. And perhaps he has. It’s just another thing about him that I really didn’t expect at all. I’m not a fool who thinks that any of this means he has a soft heart.

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