Rejected and Pregnant by the Alpha King (Forbidden Alpha Kings #4)

56. Raine

56

Raine

Nyx has his back to me when I slip through the crack of the door and into the conservatory.

He’s bent over something on a wooden bench, his shoulders moving in quick motions while he uses some kind of tool. Growing closer, I realize that, on the bench, is a small bushel that he’s clipping the leaves off of.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

He doesn’t seem startled by my sudden presence, the quick flicks of his wrist not once hesitating. His long hair is pulled back from his face in a loose tie at the nape of his neck, with some of the slightly shorter layers falling past his shoulders.

“Pruning,” is what he answers with.

I hover behind him, not quite sure where to place my hands while wringing my fingers together. So far, he isn’t acting any different than normal. Which is and isn’t a problem. I’m not being shunned, but now it feels like last night never happened.

Maybe that’s what he wants? He left before I woke up. With no note and no word left for me to find, what kind of message was he trying to send, anyway? Obviously a soft letdown—

“Raine.”

Startled, I look back at him. “Yes?”

“I can smell you overthinking.”

My entire face heats up instantly. Shit.

I want to have this conversation but I’m absolutely terrified of the answers. Having my heart broken by one alpha king nearly killed me. Another one doing the same? I don’t even know how I’m going to take that.

Oh gods, I can’t do this.

“Why are you pruning?” I ask, desperate to change the subject.

Thankfully he takes pity on me. “I believe my mother would raise herself from the dead and give me quite the earful if she were to find out I let her plants wither and decay in my care.”

Wow, that’s…not what I was expecting to hear at all.

“So, all of this was hers, then?” I wager, slowly moving around him and taking a seat at the end of the bench.

Looking at him from this angle, he’s focused intently on the plant in front of him, carefully clipping it with the kind of precision that I would expect from him.

“Yes. It was a gift from my father when he took her as his Luna.”

“That’s sweet.”

“He could be at times.”

I want to know more. I want to know everything there is to know about Nyx. He hardly ever talks about himself outside of his duties as alpha and dealing with the issues that come with the territory. He knows plenty about me, even if I’ve left out the nitty-gritty details.

Not like any of that would change my story, so getting into the thick of it just seems like it’d be complicating things too much.

“What was your mother like?” I ask.

His brows pull together while he thinks, continuing to prune the bushel in the silence that follows. I’m in no rush to push him on anything and will wait for him to talk again on his own time.

He’s been plenty patient with me and my shit, anyway.

“She was…loved by our pack,” Nyx finally settles on. “When she passed, we all felt it.”

Nodding, I say, “You must miss her.”

“Yes and no.”

I wait for more but it never comes.

See, the thing about Nyx is that he’s quite the puzzle. Needing the question to be shaped just correctly enough for him to actually open up and give the entire truth and not just small snippets here and there that are more or less satisfying for the time being.

My need for him to let me in is undying. Overwhelming, even.

I want to know it all.

“Why do you say that? Are your memories of her fading?” I ask.

His pruning pauses. “Not exactly…I do miss her. She was my mother, after all. However, I believe that she is in a better place. She endured a lot living under my father’s rule.”

My heart sinks for him.

Unfortunately, with becoming a Luna, it’s common for things like that to happen. Don’t get me wrong, not every alpha is abusive or rules with an iron fist, but many of them have a hard time letting up control in any space—especially their personal lives.

Daniel had been like that for as long as I’d known him. His own Luna ran off a year prior to my dad leaving. She’d left in the middle of the night and no one had heard from her after that. Many enforcers tried tracking her down but had come up empty-handed.

I always wondered what happened to her and why she left. After my dad went too, I saw full well what hell she’d been put through living under him as he soon turned his anger on me.

“I think that’s common for many Lunas.”

He sighs, letting his arms drop. “Yes. Unfortunately. My father wasn’t a kind alpha. Nor was he a compassionate alpha king. He cared deeply for her, showed it at times, but I don’t know if he was ever capable of love.”

“That…must’ve been hard growing up under.”

His eyes dart over to meet mine. “You would know, wouldn’t you?”

My mouth falls open.

“Did you think it wasn’t obvious when I came for you?” He snaps the clippers in his hand together, the blades serrating against one another. “How badly he’d broken you in?”

Swallowing thickly, I say, “It’s…a complicated situation.”

“You say that. I have half a mind to go back there and kill him.”

Instantly, my heart stutters while my core tightens with heat. I shouldn’t be turned on by this, by an alpha offering to kill my previous one. In fact, I should be running for the damn hills with the way that look in his eyes is telling me how serious he is.

No one has ever offered to do something like that for me.

“Would you?” My words come out in a whisper.

He steps in front of me, slowly lowering himself down to his knees. The clippers are set next to me on the bench carefully, the ends faced away so only the handles are close to me.

Never in my life would I have expected an alpha to kneel in front of me. Not like this—like he’s offering me something.

Nyx folds his hands around mine, cupping them. “Yes.”

Oh, I want him so badly. I want last night to have not only been a one-time thing.

He leans forward, murmuring, “Shall I?”

My tongue darts out to wet my lips, our breaths mingling together. “You can’t. It would start a war with the North.”

“Fuck the North,” comes his automatic response.

I can’t help the smile that crosses over my face. “Stop it.”

Nyx captures my lips with his, the twin piercings biting into the soft flesh of my mouth while his hands grab at my thighs, pulling me onto the very edge of the bench until my knees are bumping up against him, forcing me to spread them so he can pull me even closer. I snap my thighs around him, trapping him against me.

My hands tangle in his hair, pulling it out of the tie. The soft strands curl around my fingers as they fall past his shoulders.

He rips his mouth off of mine, all but growling, “Let me.”

“No.”

“Raine.”

I pull him into another kiss to distract him, my teeth pulling at one of the piercings. It tastes metallic against my tongue, smooth and warm as I play with it.

What I wouldn’t give to march across the border and storm my home pack’s territory with a damn alpha king at my back. I’ve had many dreams in my life of forcing Daniel to kneel in our town’s square and getting him to confess to his crimes against me in front of our whole pack.

The possibility of that coming true with a simple “go for it” being all I need to get it done is a little too much power held in my hands in my opinion. Telling Nyx on a whim to kill my former alpha feels wrong, even if that male completely deserves it.

What would happen to the rest of the pack? Surviving without an alpha to protect them is unheard of.

Nyx works his mouth off of mine again, trailing his lips across my cheek to follow the line of my jaw down to my neck. He sucks marks into my neck, not even bothering to try to hide them under the collar of my dress. Clearly he doesn’t care if anyone in the pack sees.

It’s almost like he deliberately wants them too.

My core tightens at the realization. Gods, I want him so badly.

“Let me,” he says against my skin.

My entire body shivers. “You’ll start a war with the Northern King.”

“Fuck the Northern King.”

I find it funny that he’s asking my permission for this and not just simply leaving and taking care of it himself without bothering to tell me. In any other situation, that’s exactly what I feel like Nyx would do. So why is this different? Why care about my opinion on the matter at all?

His tongue drags up my neck, a soft groan leaving me.

The last thing I want is for Nyx to get entangled with Aiden. Neither of them needs to be getting into a spat—or worse, a fucking war—over me.

He growls again, lifting me clear off the bench and into his lap. His length grinds up against my ass, drawing another groan out of me. Instinctively, I roll my hips forward and grab onto his shoulders to keep myself steady.

Nyx curses under his breath. After tightening his arms around my body, he twists around on his knee, pivoting us until he moves us away from the bench. I’m soon laid down on the ground before him, his body leaning over mine in an instant.

“You are a naughty one, aren’t you?” He kisses me hard, his tongue swiping over my lips until they open for him.

My core aches, feeling his cock rub against me just hard enough that it barely scratches the surface of getting me off but still sends zings of pleasure racing up my spine.

I nip at one of the rings in his lip, teasing it with my tongue and teeth. His hips jack into mine—once, twice—causing me to gasp.

“Fuck,” he hisses, shoving his pants down his hips. “You drive me crazy.”

Reaching down between us, I hike up my dress to get the fabric out of the way. His hand travels up my inner thigh, his touch tickling me. Once he finds my panties, he hooks two fingers around them and yanks them to the side, exposing me.

Nyx pulls in a deep breath, scenting the air with my arousal and letting out a deep groan. “I think you like teasing me. You have been doing it since you arrived. Perhaps I should show you just how much you drive me insane.”

If I wasn’t so horny already, I’d be embarrassed with how turned on I am by his words, but I’m too far gone to care. I want whatever he can give me. I need to feel how much he wants me.

“Show me.” I challenge.

Hooking my legs back to give him room to settle between them, he spreads me wider with his elbow, a hand already wrapped around his length to guide himself to my core.

“Let’s see how much of this you can take before you’re begging me for mercy.” The head of his cock slides into me first, a slow-going motion that I rock against to drive him deeper into me. I need him buried so deep that neither of us knows where the other ends or begins.

His hand quickly curls around my hip, stopping me from moving too much.

I know I’m showing all my cards here by being too eager, but I can’t help it. Last night wasn’t enough for me. It only gave me a taste of what I could have as long as Nyx would give it to me.

“Look at you,” he says, voice husky. “A picture of desire.”

He rocks his hips into me, each thrust moving deeper and deeper, teasing me with his cock and pulling out of me right when my walls clench around him. My legs kick apart farther, letting him rock into me until his hips are flush with mine.

Moaning, I say, “Mmmm, right there.”

Nyx crushes his lips to mine again, his hair falling around us in a dark halo and blocking out the sun beating down through the rippled glass roof of the conservatory.

I hold onto him, giving in to us both chasing our pleasure.

His cock hits me deep, pressing against those spots I’d only felt once before with Aiden and never thought I would again, matching the thrusts of his tongue into my mouth like he’s fucking me from both ends.

The feeling is erotic and has my core tightening instantly.

My world is tipped forward, Nyx’s hold on me shifting just a bit to peel me off of the ground and lift me into his arms. I’m settled into his lap while he keeps ahold of my hips, slamming me down over and over again until I feel my entire body shake from how badly I want to come.

He won’t let me though, prolonging my suffering with a soft chuckle as he pulls his mouth off of mine. “Not yet.”

His lips are wet with my saliva, glistening in the sunlight streaming in through the windows. The two of us fucking here in the greenhouse is more erotic than I thought it would be—alone among the hand-grown plants, with no one around to interrupt us and pull us away from each other.

I grab onto the hair at the nape of his neck, keeping a steady hold on it. “I’m so close…”

“Scream for me, then,” he says, his face lowering to my neck. “So that everyone will know you’re mine.”

Just as I come, I yell out his name. His teeth bite down on my neck, leaving a lingering mark as he fills me.