Knocked Up by My Rejected Alpha - A Rejected mate Fake relationship Forbidden Age-Gap Werewolf Shifter Romance #981017

They handed me to a cursed prince to keep him alive. He kissed me like I was everything. Then called me by her name.
I was never supposed to be his bride.
When the real one ran the night before the wedding, my father handed me her dress and told me to be grateful. The cursed Alpha Prince needed a wife by midnight or lose another year to the darkness eating him alive. I was the closest match. I would do.
So I walked down that aisle in a dress that didn't fit.
And the moment Kael Dravon turned around and looked at me — really looked — my wolf said one word.
Mate.
I told her to shut up.
He was everything the rumors promised. Tall. Cold. Devastatingly dangerous. Every wife before me had died. The curse found the bond between them and burned through it like fire through paper. Six women. Six graves. Each one faster than the last.
But nothing about Kael felt like death.
It felt like something I had no business wanting.
For three weeks we argued about treaties in a library. He noticed when I hadn't eaten. He moved my room to the warmer wing without saying why. He came to me in the dark when the curse was bad and let me sit with him because I knocked on a door I had no business knocking on.
And then one night he kissed me like I was the only woman in the world.
Thirty seconds.
Then he pulled back and whispered her name.
The real bride's name.
I left before dawn. No note. No goodbye. Just me, a bag on my shoulder, and a secret I was going to take to my grave.
I was pregnant.