His Pregnant Princess Read Online Free

nothing to be done. Protecting Alys was the most important thing. His feelings, his desire to put the other man’s teeth through the back of his head, were not relevant. He knew—he had always known—that there was no future with Alys, and yet he had taken her to bed.
    It did no good to let emotion affect his work now. He hadn’t allowed his emotions for his own wife to distract him from doing the job of protecting the princess. It would be a heavy irony if being overly attached to her caused him to forsake her now.
    And that was impossible. She would be higher profile in the year leading up to the wedding. A royal wedding was a worldwide event and the media coverage would be relentless. She would need him. And he couldn’t afford to let anything affect her safety.
    He pushed open the door to her sitting room and stood, his hands behind his back, his posture straight, eyes on the wall behind her. “Princess Alys, you requested my presence?”
    “Don’t bother with formality now, Liam—I’ve seen you naked. It’s laughable. Not your nudity but your attempt at distance. Please come in and sit.”
    A rash of heat burned on the back of his neck, and he closed the door behind him. But he didn’t sit down.
    “Sit,” she said again.
    “As you have just pointed out, Alys, we’ve seen each other naked. Don’t try to get imperious with me now. It’s laughable.”
    He looked at her for the first time and his stomach tightened. She was so beautiful. But she looked sad. Pale, with dark circles beneath her eyes.
    “I have something to tell you,” she said. “Something that, I fear, changes things, rather a lot.”
    “And that is?”
    “Well, and this relates back to us having seen each other naked and then, in that state, getting into bed together and...well, you remember, don’t you?”
    “I’m not likely to forget,” he said, the blood in his veins burning.
    “Right. Well. It turns out there were consequences.”
    And then, for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t decide if he was elated, angry or more scared than he’d ever been in his life. The possibilities hit him like a rain of bullets against a flak jacket.
    “I’m pregnant.”
    And just like that, the whole world changed. Everything around them looked the same, but everything inside him was shifted, upturned. Drawers inside him where he kept emotions locked up pulled open, the contents tugged out and spread all over.
    Alys was pregnant with his child. And the situation was as impossible as it had ever been.

CHAPTER FIVE
    “Y OU ’ RE SURE ?” HE asked, his expression so still it might have been carved from stone.
    “No, Liam, I’m not. I thought it best to sound the false alarm before I was certain. Yes, I am certain . As certain as one can be when all one has done is relieve oneself on several little white sticks and not gone in to see a doctor. And there’s the matter of me being a week late.”
    She didn’t know how he could be so damned serene, not when she felt as if everything was changed. As if everything was wrong and right all at the same time. Perfect and utterly destroyed. How could he look calm when the world was its most beautiful and most terrifying? She certainly wasn’t calm.
    She was two more quick breaths away from full-on hyperventilation. Which could not be good for the baby.
    Oh, dear Lord, the baby.
    His baby.
    “I see.”
    He was so stoic. It was unreal. As if they were having two different conversations. Or as if he didn’t believe....
    “You’re the only man I’ve been with,” she said.
    “I would never have questioned you on that,” he said, his tone sharp.
    She blinked rapidly. “All things considered, I suppose I couldn’t have blamed you since I am engaged to another man now.”
    “And what is to become of that?”
    “I have three options, Liam,” she said, her voice trembling as she fought to get out the speech she’d rehearsed earlier. “And the option I choose is not