Pregnant Runaway Mate of the Alpha Prince, page 6
part #37 of Forbidden Alpha Kings Series
“Hazel!” I was half-shouting as I knocked.
I didn’t have long: I didn’t need Vivian finding out where I was, or why I was there.
Hazel answered the door eagerly, stepping back with a sweeping motion to welcome me into her home. “I just opened the newspaper,” she grinned.
“I didn’t mean to lose that shoe, I’m so sorry.”
“Darling, it never belonged to me. It was yours to lose. You were always going to leave it there for him.”
“How much do you know?”
“Not enough,” Hazel smiled. “Tell me about your night.”
She led me into her kitchen and started her kettle on the stove. I handed over the bag of muffins, and she opened them joyfully. “You make better muffins than your father did,” she laughed. “His were fine, but yours are almost like a wonderful mini cake just for breakfast.”
“They’re yours whenever you want them,” I reminded her. Pulling myself onto a stool at her counter, I watched as she pulled out a couple of mugs and tea bags. “What am I supposed to do about the shoe?”
She bobbed her head from side to side, weighing each option, and sighed. “What do you want to happen?”
“I don’t know.”
It wasn’t a lie. I really had no clue what I was allowed to want. I never had this much of a choice before.
“Would you marry the prince?”
I laughed and shook my head. “He wouldn’t marry me! Not if he knew me.”
“He would in a heartbeat,” Hazel corrected me. I rolled my eyes, knowing her well enough to know when she was just saying something because she wanted to, instead of when she was seeing something.
“He wouldn’t if he knew me,” I doubled down.
Hazel pulled down her sugar canister and then moved to her fridge to retrieve the cream. She was so comforting to be around. I couldn’t help but wonder if my mother would be anything like her if she was alive.
“If he knew you and wanted to marry you, would you want to marry him?”
I hadn’t let myself consider that.
It felt so outlandish and selfish to think about.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
The kettle whistled, and she set to making our drinks. “I don’t want to tell you what to do, but if a handsome and kind man offered a sum of $50,000 to anyone who was able to find me, I’d be turning myself in for the money.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought.
She handed me my drink, which was the perfect mix of sweet and creamy. I basked in it as I took a deep sip.
Hazel pulled a muffin out of the bag and sliced it in half, sliding half to me so she could have the other. “Did you have a good night last night at least?”
I nodded. “It was the best night of my life.”
“So why not see him again?”
“It isn’t that easy,” I reminded her. “Vivian gets mad when I visit Beth. Imagine how she’d act if I started trying to date the prince?”
“You could finally leave her behind.”
“With my father’s bakery? She’d run it into the ground.” I couldn’t let that woman ruin the one living memory of my parents.
Hazel nodded and took a bite of the muffin, smiling as she chewed. “It’s so good,” she complimented me again.
“I owe you a lifetime of them for last night,” I relaxed.
She smiled, the lines of her face setting deeper in the expression. “I might cash in on that,” she laughed. Picking up the paper, Hazel started rereading the article on the ball. “Where are you keeping the heel?”
I shrugged, taking a deep sip of my tea. “It’s in my room.”
“In the open?” Her eyes were bright on mine, and I realized my mistake.
My heart dropped, and I popped down from the stool, grabbing the newspaper. “I have to go,” I said quickly.
She followed me to the door as I half-ran to get back to my home.
“Just remember that nothing is written in stone,” she reminded me. “You can turn this around and live however you want to.”
“Okay,” I waved her off as I ran. “Thank you for the tea!”
My feet moved as quickly as possible, freshly sore again after gleaning those few minutes of sitting. The house was quiet as I entered it. Thank god. Maybe everyone was still asleep!
Rushing through the main floor as quietly as possible, I moved up the stairs, down the hall, and made it to my room in record time. The shoe was still there. Grabbing it, I couldn’t help but wish I was brave enough to admit who I was to Prince Harris.
He’d never want to speak to me again if he knew the real me.
I wasn’t worth anything to a man like him.
Pulling a blouse I never wore out of my dresser, I carefully wrapped the shoe, tucked it back into the dresser, and closed it. This was my only connection to him besides the mark on my neck.
It felt almost fitting that he had one shoe and I had the other.
I was going to have to compartmentalize him, tucking those memories away, like the glass shoe, until they were just something nice I could revisit whenever I wanted to. There was no way I was giving up the bakery.
Just like there was no way a prince was marrying a latent shifter.
Heading down to the bakery, I reminded myself that it was just supposed to be a nice night out anyway. I would be doing myself a disservice if I let myself believe it could be anything else.
Still, I wanted to see him.
8
Harris
“Sir, we have someone saying they found her.”
I hadn’t slept.
How could I sleep knowing that she was out there?
“I’ll be right out,” I answered. Dressing myself quickly, I tried to focus on what I would say. How do I apologize for scaring her off like that?
Especially when I secretly wished I chased her further.
That I caught her.
I needed her back in my hands, or it was going to be the death of me. Buttoning my shirt, I slid on my shoes and tried to make my hair look like I was putting in an effort. It didn’t look right, but if it was her, I wasn’t sure she’d really care.
Grabbing the shoe from the table, I considered bringing it with me to return it.
No, I could just bring her back here and return it.
Pull her down onto the couch with me and spend a few days continuing what we started in those woods. Hell, I’d take a lifetime of it.
I was never interested in a lifetime with anyone until her.
Setting the shoe down, I stepped out of my room and let Buck lead me to my car. He was noticeably quiet, and I wondered if he had gone to see the woman he had spent the night dancing with.
What would he do if he married?
I enjoyed having him at my side, but he needed some semblance of a life outside his duties. It would make him happier in the long run. When I got into my car, the driver started it immediately; I needed to know everything.
“What is her name?”
“Her family name is the Creels,” he confirmed. “They’ve had a family business in town for over thirty years, and she works in the shop with them.”
I nodded, taking it in.
“How did you find out?”
“Her mother called and said the shoes were a family heirloom.”
A glass shoe being a family heirloom felt bizarre, but I wouldn’t fight against it. It made sense that she would work in her family’s business. She said she had a curfew, so she probably had to leave to get work done.
If she agreed to be with me, she’d never have to work again if she wanted.
I couldn’t stand the idea of another man touching her.
The car was heading North, and somehow this felt wrong. When she ran from the castle, she kept going westward from its gates. Maybe she was running to where a car was parked, or perhaps she was trying to get away and wasn’t thinking correctly when she fled.
Watching the houses slip by, I tried to keep my hopes up.
They could have found her.
It could be her.
The car eventually stopped, and Buck and I stepped out. The home ahead of us was older but built with a keen attention to detail. Small fish motifs were snuck into corners and details on the porch as we approached it, a call back to their family name.
“You’re here!”
A middle-aged woman burst out from the front door. “I am so glad. The moment I saw the article, I knew it was my daughter.”
I smiled, letting myself be guided into her home as she talked.
“She said she danced with you last night, and when she came home, she showed me this,” the mother said. She lifted a box to show us. Inside was shattered glass that could have easily been a heel or a wine glass.
“What’s this?”
“I think she shattered it on the way home. I’m so glad you could recover the other; it belonged to my great-grandmother,” she explained.
Brock and I exchanged a look, and I regretted coming out here.
She led us to her kitchen, still talking, and suddenly I caught a trace of cinnamon and ginger. Just like the woman I spent the night before with. Her exact smell.
She might actually be here.
“Come down here! Immediately, we have guests!” The woman shouted up the stairs.
The scent was the only thing holding me where I stood.
Footsteps started down from the second floor, and I couldn’t stop myself from feeling hopeful as I stepped around and looked up the stairs.
The moment I left the kitchen, the ginger and cinnamon smell vanished.
A young woman who was absolutely not the one I spent the night with started coming down the stairs. This girl was barely out of her teen years, and looked as confused that we were there as we were.
Stepping into the kitchen, I shook my head briefly at Buck and was hit by that smell again.
On the counter beside me was a bakery bag.
Of course.
I was smelling food in a kitchen, revolutionary. I was an idiot.
“I’m sorry she broke your wine glass, but if you try to file a false report like this again, there may be legal recourse,” Buck explained to the mother. “Thank you for inviting us into your home. We will be leaving now.”
“Wait, I heard you chased a masked girl down the stairs. Who’s to say it wasn’t her?”
The girl rounded the corner to us, and every part of her felt wrong.
This wasn’t her.
“I’m sorry. Your daughter and home are lovely, but your lie isn’t going to make this better. Have a good day,” Buck said quickly.
I didn’t have time for this type of misdirection.
Not when there was a chance that the real woman was trying to reach me and I wasn’t at the castle to see her.
When we got back into the car, I wanted to tear the seat ahead of me out of the fucking floor. Of course, it wasn’t her. She’d just run from me. What were the chances that she’d be fiending to return to me?
“I’m sorry, sir. We’ll vet them more carefully moving forward.”
“How many calls have come in with reports?”
Buck pulled out his phone and moved to his notifications. “Three more people claiming to be her or to know her have come in since we stopped in.”
How many more false reports were there going to be?
What if her reaching out got lost among them?
“Feel free to use the guards. Tell them to visually confirm seeing the glass heel before you tell me about any of them.”
“Of course,” he responded.
I wasn’t mad at him. I just wished everyone could see and sense her the way I could. She was different.
She was everything.
I had to find her.
The car led us back to the castle, and as it did, I could feel my exhaustion from going without sleep dragging me down. I needed rest. There was a chance I wouldn’t even find her that weekend, much less that same day.
What good would I be if I collapsed at her feet the moment I saw her?
My mind circled back to that bag of baked goods, and I almost wished I had taken it just to enjoy her scent longer. Whatever baked good it was, it smelled exactly like her.
Damn it.
The moment I had her back in my hands, I would never let her go again.
9
Ella
I didn’t expect the shoe to become this big of a topic.
Nearly every customer I saw over the weekend had a different guess at why the shoe was important and who the mystery girl was. Some thought she was a thief, while others were closer to the truth.
“I think she’s the prince’s chosen bride, but she’s too shy to come forward.”
“That’s silly,” another customer answered. “Why would anyone be too shy to know what marrying into royalty could do for them? I think the girl is a bait and switch and is trying to blackmail the prince over something he did or said.”
I served them all the same.
“My neighbor told me her daughter was the girl! They called the number, and the prince showed up in the flesh,” someone told me early Monday morning.
I nodded, gathering a few cinnamon rolls for them.
“I asked if she really thought her girl was the one they were looking for, and she showed me a broken wineglass in a box,” she scoffed. “There’s no way that gangly child is the one the prince is in a tizzy over.”
“In a tizzy over?” I laughed.
The customer shot me a strange look, and I tried to regain my composure.
“I can’t see him getting that bent out of shape about this, is all,” I explained.
“Think what you want, but he told my neighbor if she lied to the crown about something this important again, she’d be in legal trouble.”
“The prince said that?”
“That’s what she told me.”
I tried to picture the Harris I knew on Friday night saying anything like that, and it just didn’t fit him. It’s not like I knew everything about him, but I felt like I had a good enough grip on who he was as a man to know when something wasn’t him.
That customer left, and I wondered if this was what life was going to be like for the rest of my life: just people writing think pieces and making idle gossip about a shoe and a weird article from the castle.
How would any of these customers react if they knew it was me?
The idea made me laugh, and when it was finally time to close shop, I grabbed a loaf of bread and headed into the house. It was Wednesday, so Vivian would be out for a few more hours before returning, and the girls were probably still out shopping.
I liked the house like this.
Quiet.
I still needed to make dinner for everyone, though. Pulling chicken thighs from the fridge that I had left there to defrost during the day, I turned on the stove and started heating some oil to brown them.
My phone buzzed, and I looked down to see that Beth was calling.
I’d been putting her off for ages, so it was time to reach out again. After all, I wouldn’t have had this magical night if she hadn’t pushed me to want to go in the first place.
“Hey, I’m so sorry,” I said when I answered the call. “I needed to get back to you, but I felt so guilty the longer I waited until it wasn’t—”
“Stop! Stop, I’m just glad to hear you’re alive,” Beth cut me off. “What happened? Why was Michaela in your dress?”
I glanced over at the counter and made sure I didn’t see anyone else’s purse before I started talking. They were definitely all out for the day, but they were still perfect.
“Vivian found the dress. I hid it in the back of the bakery, and she claims she found it while doing inventory. Still, I don’t think she’s ever done inventory,” I explained. “She got really mad and gave it to Michaela. She told me I had to clean the entire house before they returned from the ball.”
“That bitch,” Beth reacted.
I flinched, almost worried Vivian would hear it, regardless of how far away from the house she was.
“Did you get to go at all?”
I paused while seasoning the chicken, unsure how much of the truth I could tell her.
“I did,” I decided. “I left my phone at home and forgot to check it until the next morning.”
“Did you get in?”
“Yes,”
Beth half-shrieked, and I held the phone away from my ear as I started pressing the chicken thighs down into the thinly oiled pan. “I didn’t get in. What was it like there?”
“It was beautiful,” I could be honest. “Everything was so expensive-looking, and everyone was dressed like it was their personal wedding,” I laughed. “There was a buffet of food and drinks, and I didn’t even get to try any of it.”
“What were you doing the entire time then?”
My face felt hot, and I shrugged. “A guy asked me to dance, and I said yes.”
“Who is he?”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her anything else.
Instead, I tried to work around the truth.
“He works in the castle. I think they had a lot of the castle guards as guests,” I explained.
“Oh, so you’re saying he was buff?”
I laughed and started flipping the chicken thighs once they got enough color. The kitchen was beginning to smell incredible. “Yeah, but I don’t think I’ll be seeing him again.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged as if she could see me.
“I don’t have the time or patience for romance right now. I have to work on getting the bakery to earn more.”
“Do you see a penny of the money it earns?”
She knew I hated talking about this.
“It’s expensive to run, you know. It costs a lot of money to have the ovens running all day and to keep up with the ingredients.”
“You don’t get paid anything.”
“I don’t have to pay rent,” I reminded her.
“It’s your family home.”
She was right, but I didn’t have the energy to deal with that stress now. Pulling some veggies from the fridge, I started chopping carrots, celery, and onion as we kept talking.
