The Wolf King Needs an Heir by Max Rose

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Two days until the due date…

Julian was crying. He was ugly crying, and he was very pregnant. It felt like being kicked while he was down. Or kicked when he was at his most vulnerable—exhausted and aching and barely able to move. Not only that, but he’d been having irregular contractions for a few hours.

He felt miserable and completely alone. Maybe because he was alone. He hadn’t seen anyone but the servants since yesterday. They brought him meals. He could tell they knew what had happened. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know if they’d overheard the argument or if Samara had spread the tale, but they were cold to him. He had been friendly with them before. He fit in best with the servants. But now they were quietly hostile. That broke his heart too.

But not as much as losing Edric had shattered his heart. He’d tried to leave the royal chambers to find Edric. To talk to him. To explain that it wasn’t his phone and he’d been set up. The guards outside wouldn’t let him leave. And Edric never came back.

The damn priestess had betrayed him. She had set him up. It hadn’t even been a complex plot, but he’d stumbled right into the trap like a complete fool.

Her scheme was as nasty as it was simple. Give Julian a phone with planted evidence on it going back several months. Go to Edric and tell the king that he’d been betrayed. Tell him that Julian was trying to take his son away. Play on Edric’s Achilles heel: how much trust meant to him. How much he feared being betrayed by people he counted on. And then send Edric here to find the phone, fire off a damning text message from another disposable number, and then sit back and watch the fallout.

Trust was important to Edric, but the threat of losing your child? What parent wouldn’t be provoked by that? Terrified by it? Even if your child hadn’t arrived yet, parents still felt powerful emotions—protectiveness, love…

Samara had pushed all the right buttons. She’d probably even played on the fact that Julian was an omega with filthy human blood. Or that he wasn’t religious and didn’t serve the Goddess. Working the knife in deeper.

Julian had gone through the phone completely after Edric left him and Julian stopped crying long enough to be angry. The cell phone was a shell. Everything on it was designed to incriminate him. It was an obvious setup, but he’d still been outplayed. Then again, he’d never been cut out for this palace intrigue.

But he had believed that Edric loved him. He’d been confident that his mate had his back. Trusted him. Had faith in him. But…no.

Edric wouldn’t listen to him. He’d never come back to take the phone to some forensic computer science guy or whatever and reveal how Samara had set him up. No, he chose to believe the worst of Julian. The first big test of their love, and they had failed miserably.

Edric had chosen not to believe him. He was too busy hating Julian to even try to find the truth. That hurt so deeply that Julian didn’t have the words to describe it. His heart was utterly and completely shattered. He had lost the man he loved…and he would soon lose his child. How did you survive two blows like that, one after the other?

Because Julian knew he wouldn’t be able to see his child once their marriage was annulled or Edric divorced him or however they would be legally torn apart. Edric was right. Human courts didn’t have jurisdiction in the kingdom. Julian would have no rights over his child.

If that wasn’t enough, the contractions told him he might be in early labor. Irregular contractions were a sign, according to Dr. Smith. He’d had a few random contractions late yesterday, but they had faded. So yes, he might be facing childbirth without Edric by his side. He might be trapped in labor with Edric furious at him and intending to take their child away.

Suddenly, he heard yelling outside the royal chambers. Part of him wanted to pull the covers over his head until the yelling stopped. It didn’t stop. He got up and slowly made his way across the big, opulent room to the doors.

The voices outside the chamber doors were from a male and female—but only the female was yelling. He felt a mix of shame and hope because he recognized the female voice. Terra, Edric’s sister, wanted to come inside the royal chambers. One of the guards was telling her she couldn’t go inside on orders of King Edric. Only servants were allowed inside. Terra was so furious that she sounded five seconds away from biting someone…without bothering to transform into a wolf first.

Julian reached the doors and opened the one on the right. The double doors locked from within, but there were always guards outside, day and night. Not that he could escape the palace anyway. They were on the third floor of a palace in the middle of nowhere, he had no car, and oh yeah, he was as big as a house and nine months pregnant.

Terra turned to look at him when he opened the door. Her cheeks were flushed pink, but she did indeed look angry enough to spit. She reminded him of a furious pixie. Those classic Rylan features that made her seem so pretty were now set in a battle face. She wore designer jeans with designer rips and tears—a concept Julian found mindboggling. Only rich people would buy their stuff pre-ripped. She wore a dark red blazer, gold bracelets, an elegant gold chain, and had her hair yanked back into a ponytail. She might’ve been pissed, but when she saw him, her fists unclenched and she swept toward him with her arms out.

“Julian! There you are! I was afraid they had you chained up inside. How’s the baby?”

Before he could answer, she hugged him. It was a pregnant-belly hug, with his girth between them. A little awkward, but he needed the hug. Then she nudged-shooed him inside. She turned around, pointed at the guard menacingly (as if promising she wouldn’t forget this), and slammed the door. She locked it and glared at it as if convinced someone might use a battering ram on it to drag her out again. Finally, she made a show of dusting off her hands.

“There. That should keep those thugs out. I can’t believe they refused to let in a princess! That’s almost as outrageous as them keeping you locked up in here.”

“Don’t blame them. They’re only doing what they’ve been ordered to do.”

“You’re too nice, Julian. Believe me, that’s not always a plus. Especially around wolves.”

“I am who I am.” Although that hadn’t ever done him any favors, had it?

“Didn’t some cartoon character say that?” She snorted and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “I just got back to the palace an hour ago. I can’t leave for a day without the whole world imploding.” Her eyes were worried but compassionate. “What is going on? I’m hearing all these crazy rumors, but I don’t believe any of them.”

He took a deep breath to steady himself. Then his eyes filled up with tears, and his throat seemed to clamp shut. Emotions choked him. He felt hot tears begin to trickle down his cheeks.

She pulled him into another hug. “Oh, sweetie. That bad?”

“Edric hates me,” he sobbed, hating how pitiful he sounded. It was disgusting. But he couldn’t stop. She was the first kind face he’d seen since…since Edric…

“No. I know my brother. He’s an ass, but he loves you. Anyone can see it in his eyes. Especially when he’s with you.”

Julian was already shaking his head. His hands settled on his belly. One of the erratic contractions hit him and made it hard to speak for a second. He winced and struggled to ignore it.

“Edric thinks I want to steal our child from him.”

She blinked at him. “Why in the world would he think that?”

Julian pointed at the cell phone still sitting on an end table. In his mind, that phone was as dangerous and frightening as a venomous snake.

“Samara set me up. With that phone.”

“That’s not your phone?”

“I haven’t had a cell phone since I moved into the palace. They told me it was a security risk and took my old one away. They were supposed to get me a new one, but I never leave the palace without Edric, so… So it never seemed like a big deal…”

“You’re saying that’s Priestess Samara’s phone? How did she set you up and why?”

“I don’t know. She was so friendly to me yesterday. We talked in the garden. She told me she wanted to open an orphanage in my name. She gave me that phone so I could read about the project plan.”

“Okay. So how did we get from there to Edric believing you are stealing his child? That makes no sense to me.”

“That phone has fake messages from me to some lawyer in New York. I think Samara told Edric that I was going to leave him. She said I was going to flee the kingdom with our child once we were back in New York or something like that. Edric came here and saw I had the phone in this room. As he asked about it, a text message came in from my human ‘lawyer,’ exposing the whole scheme. Convenient, wasn’t it? Samara set me up. It was crude, but it was enough to turn Edric against me. He…he lost it.”

“I can’t believe it… I brought Samara here. I’ve known her all my life. She’s never done anything like that before. I thought she could be trusted.”

Julian only shook his head, his heart sinking. It seemed as if he couldn’t convince Terra of his innocence, either. Everyone seemed to believe Samara. Maybe because Julian was an outsider. Or a bastard omega. A wolf who lived among the humans. Who would believe someone like him? The despair twisted tighter around him.

She walked to the phone and picked it up, turning it on. Then she frowned at the glowing screen. “There’s no fingerprint or pattern lock on the phone? No facial recognition?”

“I don’t think so. She must have turned it off.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Julian. “If you were planning on running for it and using this phone to make your plans, why wouldn’t you at least password lock it? Who would be that careless?”

“She wanted Edric to be able to look at it. She told him about the phone, sent him here after it, and then sent the incoming text while he was here. I was left with the smoking gun with my fingerprints all over it.”

“Edric didn’t believe you when you denied it?” She sounded uncertain, her big eyes filled with dismay.

Julian looked away, feeling like his heart had been torn from him. “No.”

“That’s bull crap. There has to be some kind of misunderstanding here. I’m going to go kick my big bro’s ass for making you cry. If he believed this story…” She shook her head. “Samara must be mistaken. She wouldn’t do that to you.”

Terra returned her attention to the phone, scowling as she stared at the screen, scrolling through the fake-but-damning text messages.

“None of this makes any sense,” she mumbled.

He meant to reply but instead gasped in a breath as a contraction hit him. Pressure in his back at first, then strong pressure low in his abdomen, like every muscle he didn’t know he had was suddenly flexing and wanted him to know it. He couldn’t ignore it. The contractions were becoming more regular and closer together.

Terra noticed. She looked at him closely. “Are you okay?”

“Contractions,” he said tightly.

Her eyes went wide. “You’re having the baby now?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re in labor!”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve had them. They don’t stick around.”

“How long have you been in labor?” She sounded almost panicked. Her voice was only a few decibels short of yelling again.

“I’m not in labor.” He realized he sounded like a moon landing denier. “Okay, maybe early labor. These contractions have been bothering me since last night. But they would come and go…”

“And now they’re sticking around?”

“Sort of.”

“That’s it. I’m getting the doctor.”

“I don’t think—”

“Don’t worry. I’ll do the thinking. I’ll get Dr. Smith. What good is having a doctor living in the palace if you don’t take advantage of it?”

“You’re right.” He didn’t have the heart to argue with her. She was the first friendly face he’d seen in too long. He was desperate for someone to believe him, but it was good to simply have someone being nice to him again.

“Okay. Good. Stay here,” she said as if he were about to go out jogging. “I’ll get the doctor. She can diagnose you. We’ll be okay!”

He gave a tired smile. “Diagnose me as…pregnant?”

“You know what I mean.” She put her hands on her hips and eyed him. Then she remembered that she was supposed to be fetching the doctor and she broke for the door. “Be right back!”

He couldn’t help a grin. He felt just a little better. His heart was still broken. He was still hollow inside. But…it was a bit better knowing Terra was giving him a chance. She was still his friend.

Terra halted at the door and whirled to face him again. “And don’t think this nonsense about the phone and stealing babies is over with. I’m going to get to the bottom of it. If my stubborn, knob-headed brother can’t see how much you love him, then someone needs to smack him upside the cranium. Looks like it might have to be me, but I won’t complain.”

After that pronouncement, Terra left. He overheard her yelling at the door guards that she was getting the doctor and they’d best not try to keep her out again if they ever wanted to have children of their own.

Julian sank back down on the couch, feeling the loneliness settle in again with Terra gone. It hadn’t taken long, had it? He still felt empty and devastated, in a heartbroken daze, not believing that he’d been happy and suddenly it had all fallen apart.

He didn’t have long to wait before the doctor showed up with Terra. He’d been sitting on the couch, doing nothing, starting to worry because the contractions weren’t getting farther apart. He didn’t want to have this baby now. Not with the father of his child hating his guts, believing Julian had betrayed him.

The doors to the royal chambers swung open as the guards let in Terra and Dr. Lana Smith with a minimum of yelling this time.

Dr. Smith smiled at him reassuringly. “I hear you’re having some contractions.”

“You just missed a good one,” he said. “They're coming closer together.”

“Have you been timing them?”

“Not exactly. Sort of.”

“That’s fine. I have to earn my pay somehow.” She took out a white device and put it on Julian’s belly while Terra watched nervously.

“What is that?” Terra demanded.

“A tocodynamometer. It measures contractions.”

Dr. Smith looked at the digital readouts while Terra and Julian waited in tense silence. Then she nodded and reached over to pat his hand. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take a ride to the birthing center. It looks like you are in the early stages of labor.”

“So he is having a baby!” Terra announced excitedly.

“Perhaps. It could be false labor, but since we have our own helicopter and rooms waiting for us, we might as well err on the side of caution.” She stood, collected her doctor’s bag, and started for the door. “I’ll contact the birthing center so they know we’re coming. Our pilot’s on standby. I’ll tell him to file a flight plan or whatever it is that pilots do. And I’ll inform King Edric so he can ride with you.”

Shame and pain swept through Julian, so powerful they wracked him like a particularly fierce contraction. “He won’t want to come.”

Surprise flashed across the doctor’s face. “Of course he will. The helicopter can carry four passengers. If I remember correctly, flying was always something King Edric liked.”

Julian wasn’t in the mood to argue. Let her discover the truth on her own. The memory of the hatred in Edric’s eyes still cut him deep. But it was the betrayal, the hurt, in Edric’s eyes that had gutted Julian completely. It was made all the worse because Julian had done nothing to betray the man he loved.

The doctor glanced at Terra. “Your Highness, will you call the servants to help pack? We may be at the birthing center for a couple of days.”

“I have a hospital go-bag ready,” Julian said quietly.

“Good. Don’t worry. We have plenty of time. I won’t be delivering a baby on a helicopter.”

Terra put a hand on her chest and let out a dramatic breath. It even made Julian smile briefly. He hadn’t been worried. The contractions were growing closer and stronger, but he wasn’t in full-on labor. Not yet. But now he had the feeling that he would be having this baby today.

That thought simultaneously thrilled and terrified him. The stress went deep, like caverns inside a mountain. He felt exhausted and drained and already defeated. That wasn’t a good mental state to start labor in. Yet part of him was desperately eager to finally meet the life he’d grown inside him for all these months. He wanted Edric to be proud of his newborn son.

He wanted the king to be proud of Julian for giving him a child…

He had to bite back a sob as Terra suddenly asked where the go-bag was. He told her. She scrambled off to find it, and he tried not to think of losing Edric.

Terra used both arms to drag the bag into the main room. “What are you hauling in this? Gold bricks?”

“I wish. Just clothes. And toiletries. Oh, and drinks and snacks and stuff.”

She grunted and let go, then wiped her forehead and grinned at him. “Are you excited?”

“Sort of.”

“You are excited! Are you afraid?”

“Definitely.”

“Don’t worry. This is perfectly natural. Well, for women. But I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“On the ‘raising my morale’ scale, you get a negative one, Terra.”

The next twenty minutes were both hectic and boring. Servants came and went. Terra sent them scurrying with her orders. The doctor arrived again to tell him the pilot was warming up the helicopter on the pad. They would be leaving in fifteen minutes. She would be riding with him in the helicopter to the hospital.

He took a deep breath, steeling himself for the answer. “Edric?”

Her face grew very still. “The king will follow us in another car.” She reached out and touched his arm softly. “Don’t worry. He promises to be there for the birth of your child.”

Julian nodded, but now he was fighting against tears again. His eyes ached so badly. He didn’t want to cry anymore. He needed to be strong. He needed to be strong for his baby. There would be time enough in the future to bawl his eyes out. Alone.

Soon, the doctor and Terra escorted him across the paved path to the helicopter pad. The blades were spinning up. The pilot was already in the cockpit, doing pilot things, flipping switches and talking on his headset. The three of them were followed by a slew of servants—one of them hauling Julian’s go-bag—and a couple of palace guards.

Julian looked around for Edric. There was no sign of him anywhere. That felt like a punch right to the center of his chest. It hurt so bad that for a second, he couldn’t breathe.

He pushed the pain out of his mind. He had other problems right now. Going into labor was number one on that list. The doctor climbed into the helicopter first and turned to help him. He awkwardly climbed into the back of the helicopter. One of the servants helped him with the restraint harness until he was safely secured…like an awkwardly shaped piece of cargo.

Terra leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “I can’t wait to meet my nephew!” she bellowed into his ear over the thump of the helicopter blades and the whine of the engine. “We’ll see you soon!”

They shut the helicopter door. The train of servants and guards hurried away, their clothes flapping in the downdraft of the rotors.

Julian kept staring out the window, scanning for Edric. He let his gaze move over the palace, wondering if Edric was watching him from one of the windows…

But this was a message, wasn’t it? The helicopter had four seats in the back. Edric wasn’t coming.

Julian had always imagined Edric riding beside him on the flight to the hospital. The absence of his mate hurt him. He felt like a vital part of him was missing, and he was only half alive now.

Suddenly, Edric walked out of the palace doors leading to the terrace. He was tall, broad, and handsome, wearing a suit and moving with that confident stride that ate up so much ground.

Julian’s heart leaped. He’d been wrong. Edric would be flying with him after all. Maybe they could put all this behind them and come together again. Maybe he found out that Julian hadn’t lied to him—that he’d been set up and…

Edric stopped at the edge of the terrace. He stared at the helicopter, but he only stood there, not moving one step closer. Hesitantly, Julian raised a hand to wave to him, still hoping the man he loved so much would come with him. Hoping Edric would be at his side during this life-changing moment…

Edric didn’t come closer. He didn’t return the wave. He stared at the helicopter, standing as still as a statue.

Julian’s hopes slowly disintegrated into ashes.

The helicopter lifted off. Julian never took his eyes off Edric. Not until they had flown so far from the palace that he could no longer see his mate. He leaned his head back against the headrest, closed his eyes, and practiced breathing through another contraction. There was nothing else he could do.