The Summer King Bundle 3 Stories - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,149

left me for dead two years ago, had tortured me for weeks. For months. And it wasn’t like I’d gotten three square meals a day.

“Your body has been through a lot,” Luce repeated carefully. “Even for a fae, a viable pregnancy would be nothing short of a miracle. But for a human? It would be highly unlikely—”

“Then are you sure?”

“I cannot think of any other reason why you would have such an increase in that hormone. I want to do more testing. An ultrasound, for example. Some more blood work.”

“I’m… I’m pregnant.”

She gave a quick nod.

“Pregnant,” I repeated, the information sort of sinking in. A child was growing inside me, right at this moment. I was… I was going to be a mother. My heart stuttered. Could I even be a mother? I was relatively organized and responsible. I was smart, and I’d had to take care of my mother from a very young age, but that was not the same thing as having to take care of a tiny human being. I had no idea what my future held.

Now my heart raced. Aric had…he’d fed from me repeatedly, just like the fae had done to my mother all those years ago. The trauma that had left her spontaneously going in and out of reality. I’d already had moments of being sucked into a world that seemed to exist only in my mind. There could be a chance I would wake up tomorrow and spend the entire day stuck in a world of terrifying memories and haunting hallucinations. I might spend days that way. Mom had sometimes spent weeks like that, and I…I didn’t want to do that to a child. I knew what it felt like to see someone you loved, who was supposed to be the person that supported and took care of you, become trapped and unreachable. I wasn’t bitter nor did I regret being there for my mom. Not at all. But when she was herself, I knew the knowledge that she needed constant care killed her.

I didn’t want to repeat that cycle.

God, that was the last thing I wanted to do.

Luce’s pale blue eyes searched mine. “It would help to know who the father is. That could possibly explain how this is likely.”

I pulled myself from what felt like a downward spiral into flailing panic and drew in a tight, shallow breath.

Her shoulders squared as if she were preparing herself. “It is…obvious that the King cares for you deeply. When you were gone, he nearly tore the city of New Orleans apart looking for you. He’s barely left your side since he found you, and sleeps only for a few hours here and there.”

My heart squeezed painfully, and I closed my eyes. So much had happened since I woke up, no longer chained to what I believed would be my tomb. I’d just remembered what Aric had insinuated. That a Summer fae had been aiding him. I needed to tell Caden this. Not only that, I was still trying to process everything that had happened with Aric, what had come before that and after. And just an hour ago, I’d felt a sense of hope for the first time since Aric had taken me. The feeling had nearly stolen my breath.

Caden loved me. He’d ended his arranged engagement for me, but the awe-inspiring part was that I could still feel attraction and love after being trapped by Aric. The pain and the humiliation and the god-awful fear hadn’t stolen the capability to desire, want, or love from me. Realizing that was life-altering. I knew that I could move on from what Aric had done, even if doing so took days or months or years. And I knew that Caden would be waiting for me, no matter how long it took.

That hope had crashed and burned spectacularly when Tatiana, the would-be Queen of the Summer Court, sat right where Luce was sitting now and explained what would happen if Caden didn’t marry a fae of the Summer Court.

A King must choose a Queen to bear the next generation. Without doing so, the entire Summer Court would be weakened, and so would Caden. He would be dethroned, ostracized, and unprotected. Although he would no longer be a King, his blood still could be used by the Winter Court to commit unimaginable horror. Not only that, if what Tatiana claimed was true, the entire Court’s fertility rate would continue to decrease until the entire race died out.

Caden must