Page 1 of Pregnant at the Palace Altar

CHAPTER ONE

ASFARASKing Diamandis Agonas was concerned, royal weddings were a royal pain. His only comfort in being involved in the planning of this one was that it was not his own wedding.

That would be a disaster.

But being the king while his sister—the long-lost princess who’d only been returned to them earlier this year—got married was proving more challenging than he would have preferred.

In any other circumstances, he would have labeled the whole affair a debacle. First, Zandra and her betrothed had run off to Athens to get married months ago and then the announcement of her pregnancy had brought about the need to move up the date of the royal wedding ceremony, and Diamandis had found himself uncharacteristically bending over backward for his sister.

He blamed it on the fact he’d considered her dead for nearly twenty years. What man wouldn’t want to make up for lost time? What king wouldn’t want to give his sister, the princess, all she desired, and all that was befitting a Kalyvan princess?

He eyed her now, moving around his office. She was not asitter, this woman. Not the placid, obedient princess she might have been if she’d grown up in the palace. If their family had not been murdered in a bloody attempt at a political coup twenty years ago.

Instead, the monarchy had managed to withstand the attack and Diamandis had been proclaimed king in the wake of his parents’ and brothers’ deaths.

Zandra, with the help of a servant boy, had somehow escaped, lost her memory in the process, and grown up on the streets of Athens as an orphan. That same servant boy—Lysias Balaskas, who was now a billionaire and Zandra’s husband—had returned her to Kalyva earlier this year.

So Zandra was home where she belonged. She was his sister, proven by DNA tests, and yet it was like his sister was two different people to him: the toddler he’d known for the first four years of her life, and now this woman, whom he didn’t understand and couldn’t begin to make sense of. So open and sweet, with a backbone that was giving him a headache.

Yet she was his sister—he knew this elementally—and he loved her.

No matter how she puzzled, irritated and defied him.

Because her eyes were the same—whether she was the four-year-old poking him in the throat, or this woman saying things that nearly knocked him off his feet.

“When I was in Athens, you’ll never guess who I saw.” Luckily, she did not pause and make him guess. “Katerina.”

Diamandis did not stiffen. He did not allow himself to be caught off guard byanythinganymore. Or so he told himself. His former assistant had caught him off guard more times than he cared to count.

He did not allow his mind to conjure up images of her. She had fled in the middle of the night, leaving only a note, and so she was as good as dead to him.

At least that was what he told himself whenever the memory of her popped up. He tried to convince himself this was simply because she was the best assistant he’d ever had and every attempt at replacement had failed dismally.

He did not allow himself to think ofthat night. Inthisoffice. The exquisite perfection of her and all that could not be.

Ever.

“What does this have to do with the wedding preparations?” Diamandis asked, stiffly.

His curtness did not deter Zandra, but then very few things did. “It doesn’t, but I think I may have solved your mystery of why she up and left.”

“Oh?” Diamandis had his own suspicions, but they were ones he would never share with his sister. Or anyone.

“I saw her in the baby store. With a belly bigger than mine.”

Diamandis did not move. He did not hear whatever Zandra said next. Everything was simply a buzzing in his ears.

A belly bigger than mine.

“I suppose that’s why she left,” Zandra said after she’d rambled on about something. “Heaven knows I wouldn’t want to be growing a human while suffering underyourbeck and call.”

“What?”

Zandra slid her hand over her rounded belly as if that was the answer.

Itcouldn’tbe the answer.

“It is odd, though,” Zandra said, tapping her chin as if deep in thought.

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