Page 16 of Rejected Mate's Baby for the Alpha King

And then I’d gotten another good whiff of her and confirmed what my wolf already knew. She was indeed pregnant.

“How do you know it’s not mine?”

“I know because…I only slept with you once.”

“It only takes one time.”

“How true. Um, but I’m a slut and I’ve been sleeping around, so the chances are pretty good it’s not yours,” she said loftily as she waved her hands in the air. “Plus, um… I was probably already pregnant when we had our fling. I think it had been awhile since I’d had my period.”

“It had been less than a week. I could still smell it on you.”

Her eyes widened. “Wow, that’s…an invasion of privacy.”

“So you don’t know if it’s mine or not,” I concluded. “Very well. We’ll have a DNA test done once it’s born. If it’s mine, I will raise it.”

“What?!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll pay you for him or her, and that is more than you should expect from me.”

“You’re not buying my child!” she spat as she stood. “How dare you!”

“Sit down.”

“I will not!”

Damn. I forgot I couldn’t order her around. “Sit down, or I will make you sit,” I said calmly. “There is nothing you can say or do to convince me to mate with you. This really is your best option. You talked so much about freedom, well here it is. I will make sure you have enough money to set you up for life. If you’re so hard-pressed to get away from your father, I will set you up in another territory with the funds to live on your own. It’s more than you deserve.”

Her eyes blazed with anger. “I don’t want your money or your hand in marriage,” she snarled. “I don’t want anything from you. Just let me go and you’ll never see me again.”

“If I let you go, nobody will ever see you again. You can’t even feed yourself,” I said with disgust. A fucking princess indeed. Her father had been far too indulgent with her. “But you will go home to your father, who will make sure that you are comfortable until you give birth.”

Her face drained of blood, turning her even more pale. “No, you can’t do that.”

“I can, and I will.”

Licking her lips, she nodded. “Fine. Yes. I’ll go home. Right now. Which direction should I go in?”

“Duke,” I called out. He immediately materialized. “This is my second-in-command. He will see you safely to the trucks and drive you home.”

“Please,” she said, a note of desperation in her voice. “You have no idea what my father is like. If you care at all about this babe, you will not send me there. Anywhere else. Take me to your home. Lock me in the basement until it’s born. Anything but sending me back to the Callahan clan.”

“I won’t be there for you to seduce, if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

“No, that’s not…wait, you’re staying here. You wanted to come here. What are you doing here? If it’s not a myth, then you can’t be here!”

“That’s none of your concern, is it? Don’t even think of telling someone that I’m here. I’ve got wolves all over the territories who will swear I was with them,” I said mildly. “No one is going to know that I am here.”

Her eyes widened and she tried to bolt, but Duke caught her easily enough. “Shift,” I ordered her.

“No. No, I won’t. If you’re planning on dragging me back, you’re going to have to do it like this.”

Duke just flashed a feral grin. “I like a challenge.”

Effortlessly, he picked her up and swung her over his shoulder. Inside me, my wolf surged forward, but I shoved him back down. Whatever he felt for her, it didn’t matter. If she was my mate, the mating bond would have snapped into place by now, and it had not. If she was worried about our babe, then he should be pleased that I was sending her to safety.

What he should have been worried about was whether we would live to meet the babe.

“You don’t understand,” Maya shouted as Duke carried her away. “Please, you have to listen to me!”

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