Fated to the Mad Alpha, Pregnant with His Twins

The SUV door closed with a sound like a bonesaw biting through iron.

I pressed myself into the corner of the backseat, my shoulder blades digging into the leather, Kael’s jacket still draped around my shoulders like a weight I couldn’t decide was a comfort or a threat. The cabin was vast for a vehicle—stretched black leather, tinted windows so dark the morning sun looked like dusk, a partition between us and the driver that hummed with the quiet electricity of absolute privacy.

Kael sat less than half a meter away.

He hadn’t spoken since he’d caught me in the apartment. Hadn’t explained the door. Hadn’t acknowledged

Ethan and Chloe still crumpled on the floor. He’d simply walked me out, one hand at the small of my back, and the crowd of Royal Guards had closed around us like a wall of black armor.

Now he reclined against the leather, long legs crossed at the ankle, eyes closed. His breathing was even. Slow.

The picture of bored indifference.

I was not breathing evenly.

My heart was trying to claw its way out of my ribcage. Every instinct I’d developed over twenty-three years of being the weakest person in every room was screaming at me to make myself smaller. Quieter. Invisible. I was in a car with the Lycan King. The King who’d killed the previous Alpha Council. The King who’d ended a bloodline in a single night. The King whose golden eyes I’d seen burning in the rain like twin funeral pyres.

And I was wearing his jacket.

Smell it, Kira moaned. Just put your nose in the collar and breathe. He won’t notice. He’s got his eyes closed.

I am not sniffing his jacket, I thought back, my jaw clenched so tight my teeth ached.

You’re literally shaking. Not from fear. From proximity. I can feel what your body is doing, Elara. Your thighs have been pressed together since he caught you.

That’s fear.

That’s arousal, and you know it. Kira’s presence unfurled in my chest like a cat stretching in sunlight. We’re in his car. HIS car. He threw a door off its hinges and carried us out of that apartment like we were something precious. Do you understand what that means?

It means I’m a trespasser and he’s taking me somewhere to execute me privately.

It means he couldn’t stand the smell of another Alpha on us, Kira purred. It means he’s territorial. It means

—

The SUV hit a speed bump.

My body pitched sideways. I’d been so focused on staying still, on being invisible, that I hadn’t braced myself at all. The jacket slipped. My bare knee knocked against something hard and warm—his thigh—and I gasped, flailing, my hands reaching for anything to steady myself—

A black leather glove closed around my leg.

Just above the knee. Thumb pressing into the sensitive flesh of my inner thigh. Fingers curling around the outside with a grip that was absolute.

I stopped breathing entirely.

Kael hadn’t opened his eyes. His expression hadn’t changed. But his hand was wrapped around my thigh like it belonged there, and the heat of his palm burned through the thin cotton of my skirt with an intensity that made my vision blur.

“If you wanted to throw yourself at me, little suspect,” he said, his voice a low, lazy rumble that vibrated through the leather and into my bones, “you’ve picked the wrong location.”

I made a sound. I don’t know what it was—a squeak, a gasp, something embarrassingly breathy that I would remember at three in the morning for the rest of my life.

His hand, Kira wailed. His hand on our thigh. Elara. ELARA. Do you feel his thumb? Do you feel where his thumb IS?

I felt it. The pressure of it. The heat. The way my skin seemed to pulse toward his touch like a flower turning toward sunlight. If he moved his hand two inches higher, he’d be—

I wrenched myself backward, slamming into the door with enough force to rattle the window. My chest heaved. My face was on fire. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at anything except my own lap, where the hem of my skirt was twisted and my knee was still tingling from the ghost of his grip.

Kael’s hand returned to his own lap. Casual. Unbothered. But I caught the way his leather-clad fingers curled into a fist before he relaxed them.

He’s fighting it, Kira said, almost reverent. He wants to touch us more. He’s holding back. The most powerful Alpha alive is HOLDING BACK for us.

The rest of the drive passed in silence, but Kira purred the entire way.

The Royal Alpha Estate rose out of the morning mist like a monument to power.

I’d seen pictures of it on PackNet—distant shots taken by influencers who’d been invited to garden parties, carefully curated content that showed manicured hedges and marble fountains. But the photos hadn’t captured the weight of the place. The way the black stone absorbed light. The way the towers seemed to lean inward, watching. The way the iron gates opened without a sound, as if even metal knew better than to creak in the King’s presence.

The courtyard was lined with servants. Dozens of them. Heads bowed. Hands clasped. Uniforms pressed into razor-sharp creases. When Kael’s door opened and he stepped out, they bent lower—a wave of deference that rippled through the crowd like wind through wheat.

Then they saw me.

A guard opened my door. I stumbled out, still wrapped in Kael’s jacket, my coffee-stained sneakers hitting pristine cobblestones. The servants’ expressions flickered—just for a moment—but I caught it. The shock.

The confusion. The quiet, frantic recalibration of everything they thought they knew about their King.

They’re looking at the jacket, Kira said smugly. They know it’s his. They know we’re wearing the King’s scent.

They’re looking at the coffee stains, I thought back.

Same thing.

Guards flanked me as we moved through the estate. Marble hallways. Vaulted ceilings painted with scenes of ancient hunts. Chandeliers that dripped crystal like frozen rain. Every surface gleamed with the cold, untouchable wealth of a dynasty that had ruled for centuries.

I was not taken to a dungeon.

The guards stopped at a set of double doors on the top floor. Dark wood. Iron handles. No locks that I could see, but somehow the absence of locks felt more threatening than bars would have. They opened the doors and stepped aside.

It was a bedroom.

No—it was the bedroom. A master suite the size of my entire former apartment. Windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. A bed that could have fit six people, draped in black silk and piled with pillows in shades of charcoal and silver. A fireplace. A sitting area. A door that led to what looked like a private bathroom clad in dark marble.

I stood in the doorway, my feet rooted to the carpet. “Your Majesty,” I said, and my voice came out thin and wavering. “Isn’t the dungeon… underground?”

Kael stepped past me into the room. He pulled off his gloves, one finger at a time, the leather peeling away from skin with a soft, intimate sound. Then he reached for his tie—black silk, loosened it with two fingers— and I watched the column of his throat emerge like a secret being revealed.

He turned. His golden eyes found mine. The corner of his mouth lifted—not a smile, but something sharper.

Something that knew exactly how terrified I was and was amused by it.

“The dungeon is filthy,” he said. “When it comes to high-value prisoners, I prefer to conduct interrogations personally. Under my own supervision.”

He nodded toward the bathroom. “Shower. Wash the stench of that gutter you were living in off your skin.

We’ll talk when you don’t smell like a Beta’s cheap apartment.”

The bathroom was larger than any room I’d ever slept in.

Hot water sluiced over my shoulders, my back, my legs. Steam filled the air until I couldn’t see the walls. I scrubbed until my skin was pink and raw—coffee stains, mud, the phantom residue of Ethan’s cologne that

Kira kept complaining about. By the time I turned off the water, I felt like I’d shed a layer of myself.

The clothes I’d been wearing were gone. Taken. A silent maid had appeared and disappeared without a word, leaving only a single item folded on the heated marble counter.

A black silk shirt.

I picked it up. The fabric slipped through my fingers like water. It was huge. Massive. A man’s shirt—his shirt, I realized, as I brought it to my face without thinking and inhaled.

Cold forests. Dark chocolate. That elusive burning note underneath, like embers buried in ash.

Oh, Kira breathed. Oh, Moon above.

She went limp inside me. Not faint—satisfied. A full-body purr vibrated through my chest, my spine, my thighs. My knees buckled. I had to grab the edge of the counter to stay upright.

Put it on, Kira commanded. PUT IT ON RIGHT NOW.

I pulled the shirt over my head. It fell past my hips. Past my thighs. The hem stopped just above my knees, leaving my legs bare from mid-thigh down to my bare feet. The sleeves covered my hands completely. I had to roll them back twice just to free my fingers.

I looked at myself in the fogged mirror—a pale ghost in a black sea of silk, damp hair dripping down my shoulders, cheeks flushed from the heat.

We’re wearing his clothes, Kira whispered. We’re covered in his scent. We’re in his bedroom. We’re—

Don’t, I thought, but it was too late. My body was already responding. My nipples tightened against the silk.

My thighs pressed together. The place between them throbbed with a slow, insistent ache that had nothing to do with fear.

He’s going to smell it on us, Kira said, and she sounded absolutely delighted.

The bedroom was warmer than I’d left it.

Kael was on the sofa, a crystal decanter in front of him, amber liquid swirling in two glasses. He’d changed out of his suit jacket. His shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows, exposing forearms corded with muscle and traced with faint silver scars. His hair was slightly disheveled, a dark lock falling across his forehead.

He looked up when I walked in.

And stopped.

The decanter hovered in mid-air. His eyes—liquid gold, burning gold—locked onto my bare legs with an intensity that made my skin prickle. They traveled up. Over the hem of the shirt. Over the way the silk clung to my hips, my waist, the shape of my breasts. Up to my throat. My mouth. My eyes.

He set the decanter down with a click that was too deliberate to be casual.

“Better,” he said. The word came out rougher than before. Thicker. “Much better than the gutter.”

He rose from the sofa and closed the distance between us. I had to crane my neck to hold his gaze. He towered over me—at least a foot taller, his shoulders blocking out the firelight, his presence pressing against me like a physical weight.

His hand lifted. His bare fingers—no gloves, just skin, warm and rough and electric—gathered a lock of my wet hair and lifted it. He rubbed the strands between his thumb and forefinger, and I watched his pupils dilate.

“Now,” he murmured, and his voice vibrated against my ear like a plucked string. “Tell me, little suspect.

What exactly did you see in my garden last night?”

It sounded like an interrogation. It felt like a seduction.

---

Kael was losing his mind.

She’s wearing our shirt, Bane roared. OUR shirt. OUR scent. Look at her legs. LOOK AT THEM. She’s barefoot on our carpet. She’s wet-haired and pink-skinned and she smells like our soap and her thighs are pressing together and she’s AROUSED, Kael, can you smell it? CAN YOU?

He could smell it. Moon take him, he could smell it. The faint, sweet, devastating scent of her arousal cutting through the soap and the steam and the silk. It was all he could smell. It was all he could think about.

Push her onto the sofa, Bane demanded. Bury your face in her throat. Lick the water from her hair. Mark her. BITE her. She’s OURS, she’s right there, she’s—

Kael released her hair before his hand did something he couldn’t control.

He turned away. Fast. Too fast. His shoulder nearly clipped her as he moved, and he heard her sharp intake of breath, but he couldn’t stop. He made it to the table. Grabbed the crystal glass. His grip tightened.

She’s in danger, he snarled at Bane silently. The traitors who murdered my uncle are still out there. If they discover she’s my Mate, they’ll slit her throat before I can—

THEN KILL THEM FIRST. KILL THEM ALL. I DON’T CARE. PROTECT HER. CLAIM HER. NOW.

The crystal cracked.

A spiderweb of fractures spread through the glass under his fingers. Amber liquid dripped over his knuckles.

He stared at it without seeing it, his chest heaving, his gold eyes bleeding toward red at the edges.

He forced the beast down. Forced his voice into cold, imperious control. Forced himself not to turn around and devour her.

“Until your innocence is proven,” he said, and his voice came out like winter—flat, hard, absolute, “you will remain here. This suite is your cage. You will not leave it without my permission.”

He turned his head just enough to catch her reflection in the window. She was trembling. Her eyes were huge and dark and full of something that wasn’t quite fear.

“If you set one foot outside this door without my authorization,” he said, “I will break both of those pretty legs. Understood?”