Fated and knocked up by the Alpha King (Elara) novel Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen-Operation Wedding Prep

Morning came far too fast.

Elara woke to Aeron bouncing on her stomach, chanting, “WAKE UP, Mama, wake up! We go boom-boom?” His golden-flecked eyes were alight with excitement, his curls sticking in every possible direction.

“Boom-boom?” Elara croaked, groggy. “What on earth is—”

“Plane!” Aeron declared proudly, clapping his hands. “We FLY!”

Cassia barged in without knocking, already dressed like a runway model in travel chic. “Operation Wedding Glow Up 2025 is officially underway!” she announced, tossing a garment bag onto Elara’s bed. “You’ll thank me later. Probably. Maybe. Actually, you’ll hate me, but you’ll look stunning.”

From the hallway, Caius’s voice floated in, dry as ever: “You know it’s a wedding, not a fashion war.”

“Excuse you,” Cassia shot back, appearing in the doorway like a queen defending her throne, “every wedding is a fashion war.”

Aeron gasped and pointed at her sunglasses. “Auntie CASS! You wear eyes on your head!”

“They’re glasses, baby wolf.” Cassia crouched down, tapping the oversized shades. “Do I look fierce?”

Aeron considered, then solemnly shook his head. “You look like bug.”

Caius laughed so hard he nearly dropped the suit bag he was carrying. “She’s been destroyed by a toddler. Best day of my life.”

Alpha Darius arrived next, already in travel gear, arms crossed as he surveyed the chaos of bags, shoes, and Cassia’s dramatic posing. “Are we traveling as a pack family,” he asked dryly, “or as a circus troupe?”

“Both,” Caius said immediately.

“Both!” Aeron echoed, throwing his arms up.

Elara buried her face in her hands. “We’re never making it out of Valemont alive.”

They did, somehow, make it to the airport – though Elara swore it was a miracle.

Cassia argued with the check-in clerk about the garment bags like she was defending national security. Caius pretended not to know her while sipping overpriced coffee. Aeron ran circles around their luggage, his tiny wolf energy buzzing loud enough to draw stares.

“Mama, mama, LOOK!” Aeron shrieked, pointing at the moving walkway. “A floor that MOVES!”

Before Elara could stop him, he bolted onto it, arms spread like an airplane. “ZOOM! I’m fast! Faster than Uncle Caius!”

“You wish,” Caius muttered, but jogged after him anyway when Aeron nearly collided with a businessman rolling a briefcase.

Cassia leaned toward Elara, whispering, “See? He inherited my dramatic flair.”

Elara deadpanned, “Pretty sure it’s just toddler chaos.”

Aeron reappeared two minutes later wearing an airline employee’s spare hat, grinning ear-to-ear. “I HELP!” he declared proudly.

Alpha Darius pinched the bridge of his nose, his gray eyes narrowing. “Elara, control your pup before we’re banned from international travel.”

Elara scooped Aeron up, kissing his cheek despite her frazzled nerves. “You heard your uncle. We’re on best behavior.”

Aeron nodded seriously… then yelled at the top of his lungs: “SNACKS!”

The entire boarding gate turned to look.

Cassia beamed. “He speaks my language.”

By the time they finally boarded, Elara collapsed into her seat, Aeron snuggled in her lap with crumbs already clinging to his shirt. Caius stretched his long legs out with the satisfaction of a man surviving a war. Alpha Darius closed his eyes, muttering something about patience being wasted on siblings.

Cassia, of course, whipped out her phone. “Phase one of Operation Wedding Glow Up 2025: success. Phase two: survive this flight.”

Aeron piped up, mouth full of crackers. “Mama, plane poop?”

Elara groaned into her hands. “We’re not even off the ground yet…”

The plane had barely leveled out before Aeron discovered the tray table.

Click. Slam. Click. Slam. Click-

“Aeron,” Elara hissed, grabbing his little hand before the woman in front of them snapped. “That’s not a toy.”

He blinked up at her, all innocence. “But Mama… it’s door!” He demonstrated, slamming it shut with toddler authority. “Open. Close. Boom.”

“Sweetheart—”

“Boom!” Slam.

Cassia leaned across the aisle, her scarf draped dramatically like a movie star in disguise. “Don’t suppress his creativity, Elara. He’s engineering.”

Caius groaned, yanking his headphones off. “He’s giving me a headache.”

“No, he’s a genius,” Cassia countered, eyes twinkling. “Mark my words, one day he’ll build Valemont’s first flying wolf machine. We’ll all thank him.”

Aeron puffed up proudly, banging the tray again. “Flying wolf!”

Alpha Darius cracked one gray eye open from two rows ahead. “If the tray slams one more time, / will be flying off this plane without a parachute.”

Cassia gasped. “Alpha threats before coffee? Shocking.”

Darius muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like why me.

The flight attendant, bless her soul, tried to help. She handed Aeron a set of tiny plastic wings.

Big mistake.

Aeron immediately attached them to the back of his shirt, then stood on the seat. “I FLY!”

Elara yanked him down before he could launch himself into the aisle. “Absolutely not!”

Cassia clapped. “Encore! Encore!”

Caius buried his face in his hands. “If we get banned from this airline, I’m blaming both of you.”

“Correction,” Cassia shot back, “blame Paris Mystery Man. Without him, we wouldn’t even have this adorable chaos goblin.”

Elara flushed. “Cassia!”

Aeron blinked. “Who Mister Man?”

“NO ONE,” Elara said too quickly.

Caius smirked. “Interesting. Very interesting.”

米米米

By the third hour, Aeron finally collapsed, snoring softly on Elara’s lap, his curls damp from too much excitement. Elara stroked his hair, exhaustion pulling at her bones.

She let herself glance out the window, where clouds rolled endlessly beneath them, white against the blue. The motion of the plane, the quiet weight of her son against her chest, lulled her into thoughts she tried so hard to avoid.

Paris. His voice, his hands, the way he’d looked at her like she was more than a fleeting moment.

She closed her eyes tight. No. She had Aeron. She had her family. That was

enough.

And yet, her heart whispered: for how long?

“Psst.”

Three years, and still the ache hadn’t dulled. That should have told me everything I needed to know about vows.

Another knock. Not tentative this time. Elder Rowan swept in with his smile polished and his palms already ready to bless his own work. “Your Majesty,” he purred, appraising the cut of my jacket like he’d stitched it himself. “The hall is radiant. Ashthorne banners, Crescent sigils-oh, the sight it makes! History will

remember our wisdom today.”

“Our wisdom,” I repeated, bland.

Rowan inclined his head, unembarrassed. “The realm needed certainty. We provided it.”

“You provided signatures on a contract forged in a room I wasn’t in,” I said.

Rowan’s eyes flashed a warning-too quick for anyone who didn’t know where to look. “The Stone-and-Snow accord exists for moments precisely like this. The border raiders grow bolder by the week. Rogue numbers swell. The people cannot afford a king’s…hesitations.”

Julian’s voice sharpened. “You mean ‘choices.’ He cannot afford a king’s choices.”

Rowan smiled without warmth. “I mean what I said.” He bowed, shallow as a puddle. “It is time.”

When he was gone, Julian muttered, “If I tripped him down the stairs, would that be treason or charity?”

“Both,” I said, and adjusted the torque like I was lifting a blade.

We walked.

Corridors opened into carved galleries, galleries into a vaulted antechamber where light fell in spears through stained glass. Voices braided ahead-lords, alphas, courtiers muttering their calculations. The doors to the great hall stood closed, their ironwork vines catching points of bell-light as if they were hoarfrost. Beyond them: a thousand eyes. A thousand lies dressed like blessings.

Julian checked me once like a soldier checks a brother before battle-belt, cuff, expression. “You have me,” he said, simple.

“I always did.”

A flurry of silk to our left-Sera’s attendant rushing with a veil folded like snow in her arms. For a second I pictured it dropping not over a woman’s hair but over a blade, softening something meant to cut.

“Don’t look like that when the doors open,” Julian murmured. “They’ll think you’re about to chew the choir.”

“I might.”

He smiled. “Do it after dessert. You’ll stain the floor.”

I would have answered, but something moved in the air.

The wolf felt it first-stopped pacing, nose high, blood humming. Not incense. Not Ashthorne smoke or Crescent pine. Something finer, thinner, a thread pulled across three winters and plucked until it sang: ink and citrus and a spark I had tried to name and failed because the naming would have made it real.

Cold shot through my chest. Then heat. Then the tight, terrible quiet of an answer coming at last.

Julian straightened, every joke torn off his face. “What?”

I searched for words and found only the old one, the true one. “She’s here.”

His eyes blew wide. “Here? In this hall?”

I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say anything at all. The wolf had already stepped forward and put both hands on the inside of my ribs as if they were a gate.

The herald lifted his staff. The first chord from the musicians trembled, then steadied. Somewhere in the machinery of ceremony, cogs engaged and wheels turned and the great doors began to open.

“Thorne,” Julian said, a warning and a prayer.

I didn’t take my eyes off the light breaking along the seam between those doors. “They can chain a crown,” I said. “They can’t chain fate.”

The doors swung wider. The scent hit like a strike to the sternum-clean and fierce and impossible, the ghost of a night I had not been permitted to keep made flesh in a rush of air.

The wolf inside me stopped being patient.

Mine.