Page 33 of Coronation (Royally Forbidden #1)

Nineteen

Zelda

T here has to be a limit to the amount of emotional whiplash one person can reasonably take.

For a month, the hits have kept on coming.

One after another, they’ve shoved me back on my ass until I was the emotional equivalent of limping my way through existence.

This, though… This makes falling for a grumpy, too-old-for-me king who possibly only wanted me for my body, positively easy to handle.

Now, I would give anything to go back to yesterday, when all I had to worry about was a silly garden party and seeing the king I’d foolishly caught feelings for. Hell, I would even settle for going back to a few hours ago, when being fucked into the dirt by that same king was my biggest concern.

Those hits, I could have recovered from.

This one might do me in.

Before, at least, nobody knew. Sure, Davina might have had her suspicions, but she had an iron-clad NDA and absolutely zero proof of that.

I could have moved on and been happy with a nice guy I didn’t meet at a sex party.

Now, I know that isn’t going to happen. Or, if it does, the hypothetical nice guy will have to be way nicer than I previously needed him to be, because he won’t just have to be nice about me being an insecure, overly emotional actor with an incurable case of imposter syndrome.

He’ll have to be nice about me being an insecure, overly emotional actor with an incurable case of imposter syndrome, and a love child who was famously fathered by the King of Stelland.

The possibility first occurred to me as I slipped back into the groups of garden party attendees, sans panties, with the king’s cum slick on my inner thighs.

My panic at not using any birth control should have been put to rest when I calculated my period would be arriving any day now, so the chances of my getting pregnant from the encounter were slim.

Except, I didn’t feel any better.

I’d attributed my nausea to anxiety about the party, but what if it wasn’t that at all.

What if it was something else.

My only comfort, that we’d used protection when we were together before, quickly fell away too when I remembered the drive to Fernmoor House. When he impaled me on his cock, edging me until I could have cried in frustration, and most definitely didn’t use a condom.

My stomach churned so violently at that point that I had to press my lips together to keep myself from puking, just as the king in question appeared amidst the partygoers.

Ben looked as cool and unruffled as ever, without a single hair out of place to serve as evidence of the desperate, frantic act we’d just committed in the center of the maze.

George and the rest of them were eager to meet the man again and to get the photo-op they’d come for.

As he moved closer, though, murmuring words of welcome and shaking hands as he went, I knew I couldn’t do it.

The prospect of staying here for even one more second of this felt unbearable, and I capitalized on looking as terrible as I felt, telling the group I needed to go.

None of them questioned it, and I left in a hurry, possessed with the need to know for sure that I was just overreacting, because I had to be wrong. I just had to be.

I had my driver stop at a pharmacy on the way back to my hotel, careful to keep my head down and my sunglasses in place in the hope that nobody would notice a twenty-five-year-old, very single movie star purchasing a pregnancy test. I got lucky, and the place was empty apart from a very bored-looking middle-aged man behind the counter, who barely glanced at me as I bought the thing, shoving it into my purse like I was smuggling something illegal.

The entire drive home, I did what I could to minimize some of my panic, promising myself that I was just being cautious by taking the test. It was going to be negative, and then I could return to my regularly scheduled bout of self-loathing for sleeping with King Benedict again, but with the fresh new perspective of “at least I’m not pregnant. ”

Now that would really suck.

Unhelpfully to my mental state, my nausea kicked up violently as I got out of the car at the hotel and caught the scent of a smoked fish vendor situated on the far end of the block.

Even so, I clung to my comforting affirmations of denial, striding through the lobby without talking to anyone.

I went straight to my suite, my hands already shaking as I tried to open the box before the door had even closed behind me.

Negative , I remind myself as I read the instructions four times.

Negative , I think again as I hold the strip of plastic between my legs while I pee .

Negative , I soothe my racing heart as I set the test on the marble countertop, washing my hands without looking at it.

Full of nervous, restless energy, I pace the suite, refusing to allow my eyes to drift to the bathroom door as I wait for the timer to go off.

I decide that when this is all over, I’ll laugh at myself and have a glass of wine.

Everything is going to be fine because the test is absolutely going to be negative.

The quiet chime of the alarm on my phone sends my heart into my throat as I turn on my heel, hurrying into the bathroom, desperate to finally put this horrifying possibility to rest. My hands, which were so shaky a minute ago, are perfectly steady as I seize the pregnancy test.

Negative, negative, negative.

No. Not negative.

Positive .

The entire world seems to still as I stare at the test, my lips moving as I silently read the word printed on the tiny screen.

Pregnant. I’m pregnant.

I’m having a baby, and its father is the King of Stelland.