Page 29 of Knocked Up By My Fated Alpha
So many lies. Not just from Raven but Elias. His insistence that I keep out of his mating ceremony arrangements suddenly made sense. Ivy hadn’t been his fiancée. Raven had been. Then something happened during their failed mating ceremony that had left the Alpha Heir of the Ivory Moon Pack both without an inheritance and a fugitive.
Raven staggered back away from me as though she could avoid my queries if she moved far away enough. I followed, tucking my hand beneath her chin and making her meet my gaze.
“I did know you.”
Raven stared at me, those emerald eyes ablaze with so much emotion that I couldn’t read them all, and her breathing faltered as I placed my hand on the barely noticeable bump on her lower belly.
My words came out hushed and uncertain, even though I’d already guessed the truth.
“Is it mine?”
“I…” Raven’s voice was thick as molasses, her words as inaudible as her guilty expressions were damning. It was mine. Shock raced through me. A father. I was going to be a father.
Rielle and I had tried for years. The pack doctor came often, running every test, offering the same answers over and over again. Wewere perfectly healthy, but month after month, year after year, there was no child.
And now, impossibly, it was happening, after a drunken, reckless night, with a woman I barely knew yet felt such a maddening desire for. A woman who had never lain with anyone before.
Raven’s breaths came harder, but she didn’t seem capable of speech. Squashing the asinine urge, I had to pull her close and cradle her in my arms until she understood that she was safe here with me.
“Use your words, Raven,” I demanded roughly, and that fire I was used to seeing in her eyes ignited, burning away the panic.
“Let me go,” Raven growled, shoving me away, but I didn’t move an inch.
Rather, I levelled a glare at her.
“How much of this was an act?”
Raven blinked.
“What?”
I chuckled darkly, feeling anything but amused.
“Did you expect me to believe that Elias ditched you at the altar and you just happened to find your way into my bed and my company?”
Suspicion honed from years of being betrayed bit at me, warning me of the dangers of my draw to Raven. Warning me that everything was just too convenient. Even the call from her doctor concerning the cancellation of her appointment that I’d gotten purely by chance just before heading to the anniversary celebration seemed contrived.
Raven stared at me, a look of disbelief and betrayal clouding her gaze.
“You think I orchestrated all of this?” she whispered.
The crack in her voice did something to me. Something I didn’t care to dissect.
“What’s your endgame, Raven?” I growled, my thoughts spiraling. “Money? Power? Fame? To trap me with a baby and claim a position as my Luna?”
The thought that every moment with Raven had been carefully calculated hurt like shards of glass digging beneath my skin. I wanted to believe I knew Raven, but I’d been wrong before, and I’d paid for it.The memory of that past hurt sharpened my words into something dark and cruel.
“If your terms are reasonable, I won’t hand you over to the Ivory Moon Pack.”
At my words, Raven shivered. It wasn’t a shiver of pain or anguish. No, it was pure, unadulterated anger.
“Fuck you, Damien Blackwell,” Raven snarled with such vehemence that the wind went right out of my sails.
“I broke up the engagement, not Elias. You came onto me in that elevator. You bought the company I worked at. You dug up my past. You kissed me in your office, and you claimed me in front of the entire world,” Raven’s index finger stabbed at my chest, her emerald gaze ablaze with rage. “Don’t you dare turn any of this on me.”
I didn’t want to hear the logic in Raven’s words. I didn’t want to hear the truth in them and how it clearly depicted the edge of paranoia I’d nearly spun off into because of my past. A growl ripped from my throat, and I buried my fist in the wall, eliciting a small, shocked gasp from Raven. Raven took a step away from me, a stubborn tilt to her jaw.
“I’ll turn in my resignation letter,” she said quietly, and her words ripped me from the mess that was my mind back to reality. I couldn’t hold in my confusion.
