Page 27 of Knocked Up By My Fated Alpha
My blood pounded faintly in my ear, and my gaze flew to Elias unbidden. His gaze met mine for a moment too brief for me to register, and then his attention was back on Ivy.
“Of course not,” Elias rolled his eyes, his lips tightening in displeasure. “The press is taking pictures of us. You can’t just make a scene at my uncle’s business event, or have you forgotten the current state of things?”
Whatever the “current state of things” was, it was enough to make Ivy pale. But that wasn’t my concern.
Elias’s words thrust me back into reality. Now that I wasn’t lost in the horror of my impending death, I heard the flashes of the cameras in the distance, the soft whispers I shouldn’t have been able to catch with the distance between me and the speakers.
“Isn’t that Damien Blackwell’s nephew?”
“Is that his fiancée?”
“...seems like a confrontation to me…”
I almost slapped myself for my earlier almost-concession to beg Ivy. My cousin was ruthless. There was no way she’d spare my life, even for the sake of my child, after all she’d done to end it.
I ducked my head instinctively, letting the sheet of my hair shield my face from the cameras. I could figure a way out of this duel. A loophole. Anything. But first, I had to leave before I ended up in headlines that would make it significantly harder for me to run away, if it ever came to that.
I turned away from Elias and Ivy, heading towards the exit, but I didn’t get far. Ivy shoved me to the ground, yanking my hair hard and forcing my head back to look at her.
“Did I say you could leave?” She quizzed, her earlier reluctance to cause a scene completely gone. “You seem to have forgotten your place in your time away from the Ivory Moon Pack.”
Her grip on my hair tightened, and I sucked in a pained breath, unwilling to give Ivy the satisfaction of hearing my gasp of pain. Ivy’s expression darkened.
“Don’t worry, I’ll remind you—”
One minute, she was there, and the next, she was gone. Alpha Damien Blackwell stood next to me, cold fury radiating off him like a second skin, the resonance of his dominance threatening to swallow the entire hall whole.
Baring her neck, Ivy backed down, nearly as pale as Elias, who tried to intercede on her behalf.
“Uncle—” Elias began, but Alpha Damien’s furious gaze never left Ivy.
“Touch my fiancée again, and it will be the last thing you do,” Alpha Damien said in a deadly quiet tone that sent a chill up my spine. Wait a minute. What fiancée? Alpha Damien turned to me, his expression uncharacteristically gentle as he helped me up to my feet, sparks igniting across my body at his touch.
“Are you alright?” Alpha Damien asked in a soft yet surprisingly intimate tone, and I found myself tongue-tied, unable to look away from his mesmerizing golden gaze.
“Your fiancée?” Ivy’s shrill voice penetrated the haze that had fallen over me. “How is that even possible?”
I broke eye contact with Alpha Damien, casting a surreptitious glance around us for his alleged fiancée, only to let out a soft gasp as Alpha Damien’s arm settled on my waist, tucking me possessively to his side.
His enthralling scent of cedar and citrus hit me so hard that for a couple of seconds, I forgot to be confused, to even think. Goddess, if his scent could be bottled, I’d get it and douse everything I owned in it. It was that good.
Elias shrugged off Ivy’s hold, his anxious gaze moving from Alpha Damien and me.
Oh. It seemed Alpha Damien helping me up had given Elias and pretty much anyone close enough to catch his earlier words the wrong idea that I was the fiancée in question.
I began to shift out of Alpha Damien’s hold, unwilling to be wrongfully attacked by whoever was dumb enough to have agreed to be his fiancée, but Alpha Damien’s hold on me only tightened, his next words coming out as a growl.
“Raven is under my protection as my fiancée and future Luna of the Shadow Thorn Pack. Anyone who dares cross her will face my wrath.”
I froze. What the hell? Ivy paled even further, but it was Elias who reacted first with an explosion of outrage.
“You can’t be engaged to her. Raven is mine,” Elias bit out, reaching out to touch me. “Raven, tell him—”
I flinched away from Elias’s touch reflexively, and Alpha Damientugged me closer, his arms encircling my waist, a growl rumbling to life in his chest. I stood stiffly in Alpha Damien’s arms, unable to fully process or understand what was going on.
Elias stared at me, cradled in Alpha Damien’s arms, and the pained expression on his face was as though he’d been punched in the gut.
“How long has this been going on?” Elias demanded, his gaze hard as flints. “Was he the reason you never let me even kiss you? You bitch. Were you screwing my uncle this entire time?”
