“It’s very simple, Chloe James. I intend to take you as my wife.”

Chloe felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. All the air leached from her body, making her gasp. “What?”

“Not a real wife, you understand. This is about presenting the image of a family to the people. If I am meant to raise Aden as my own, my wife will be expected to treat him as her own. You want to stay, you want that role, so I am giving it to you.”

“But… you want me to marry you?”

“I don’t want you to marry me. I want to protect Aden and give the people what they expect—give them an image that will bring comfort.”

Chloe felt as if her heart was trying to claw its way up her throat. Failing that, she was certain it would beat through her chest. She knew all about marriage. About the dynamic between a husband and wife. About what a man did when he saw a woman as his property.

SECRET HEIRS OF POWERFUL MEN

Their command is about to be challenged!

Sheikh Sayid al Kadar and Alik Vasin might not be related by blood, but these brothers-in-arms forged an unbreakable bond in the line of duty.

They’ve fought for their countries, for their lives, but has that readied their hearts for what could be the biggest battle of them all…?

HEIR TO A DESERT LEGACY April 2013

Sheikh Sayid discovers that his brother is survived by a son, and he’ll do anything to recover the true heir to the throne. Even if it means taking on the child’s aunt; she’s like a lioness who insists on fighting him every step of the way!

HEIR TO A DARK INHERITANCE May 2013

When Alik’s wayward past comes back to haunt him, he’ll ensure that his young daughter will grow up with a childhood nothing like his own.

But one woman is standing in his way, and there may be only one solution… to marry her!

About the Author

MAISEY YATES was an avid Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance reader before she began to write them. She still can’t quite believe she’s lucky enough to get to create her very own sexy alpha heroes and feisty heroines. Seeing her name on one of those lovely covers is a dream come true.

Maisey lives with her handsome, wonderful, diaper-changing husband and three small children across the street from her extremely supportive parents and the home she grew up in, in the wilds of Southern Oregon, USA. She enjoys the contrast of living in a place where you might wake up to find a bear on your back porch and then heading into the home office to write stories that take place in exotic urban locales.

Recent titles by the same author:

HER LITTLE WHITE LIE

AT HIS MAJESTY’S COMMAND

(The Call of Duty)

A GAME OF VOWS

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Heir to a
Desert Legacy
Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my readers. Without you, none of this is possible.

CHAPTER ONE

SAYID AL KADAR SCANNED the empty street and tugged the collar of his coat up, shielding the back of his neck from the raindrops that were threatening to infiltrate. The Portland drizzle was intolerable in his opinion.

Even in this more desirable part of the city, everything seemed locked together. Stone on the road, the walk, the buildings that stretched up into the sky. It all felt closed in. A glass-and-steel prison. It was no place for a man like him.

No place for the heir to the throne of Attar. And yet, according to every piece of data he’d gathered over the past twenty-four hours, this is where the heir to the throne of Attar was.

The moment he’d found the paperwork in his brother’s secret vault, he’d been driven to find out if there was a chance that the heir had survived. Alik had confirmed not only the child’s survival, but his whereabouts, in record time. Not that his friend’s speed and efficiency should surprise Sayid at this point. Alik never failed.

Sayid shoved his hands into his pockets and crossed the street, just as a woman was approaching the same apartment building he was intent on.

He smiled at her, reaching for the kind of charm he’d buried long ago, if he’d ever truly possessed it. A kind of charm he rarely bothered to feign anymore. It worked. She keyed in her code and then held the door open for him, her smile wide and inviting.

He wasn’t looking for that kind of invitation.

He went into a different elevator than she’d chosen and waited for it to carry him to the top floor. He felt out of place here, and yet, being away from the palace brought its own relief.

His jaw tightened as the lift rose, tension bunching his muscles to the point of pain by the time the doors slid open. The hallway was narrow, the building broadcasting its age with each creak of the floorboards. Dampness hung in the air, clung to his clothes, his skin, another side effect of the unpleasant climate.

It reminded him of a jail cell. He had never had a reason to come to the United States before. His place was in Attar, in the broad expanse of the desert. Though, now that his duties kept him close to the palace, it felt nearly as foreign as this cold, damp place.

Since his plane had touched down, he’d been struck by the constant wetness. A chill that soaked through everything, wrapped itself around his bones.

Or maybe the chill wasn’t something that could be blamed on the weather. If he were honest, he would admit that he’d been cold for more than six weeks now. Ever since the word had come about the death of his brother and sister-in-law.

And now there was this.

The child. He made it a goal of his to avoid children, babies in particular. But there would be no avoiding this.

He paused at the door that had a thirteen bolted to it and knocked. He could not remember the last time he’d knocked.

“Just a second.” There was a crashing noise, a loud curse and the wail of a baby, then footsteps. He could hear someone leaning against the door. Checking the peephole most likely.

In which case he doubted he would be given admittance. Something else he could not remember facing at any time in his recent memory, at least outside of a combat situation.

He heard a shuffling noise and imagined that the woman who was behind the door was now leaning against it, not opening it, as she’d just seen who was on the other side.

But there was no benefit to Chloe James hiding from him. None at all.

“Chloe James?” he said.

“What?” Her response was muffled by the heavy door between them.

“I am Sheikh Sayid al Kadar, regent of Attar.”

“Regent, you say? Interesting. Attar. Nice country I hear. In northern Africa right near—”

“I am aware of the geography of my country, as are you, in ways that go beyond textbook knowledge. You and I both know this.”

“Do we?”

There was a sharp spike in the crying, the volume rising, the tone growing more shrill. Loud in the contained environment. Louder behind the apartment door, he imagined.

“Um, I’m busy,” Chloe said. “You’ve woken up the baby now and I have to get him back to sleep so…”

“That is what I’m here about, Chloe. The baby.”

“He’s cranky right now. But I’ll see if I can fit you into his diary.”

“Ms. James,” he said, aiming for civility. He could push the door in with relative ease, but he doubted that was the right way to go for this. He didn’t usually care. But not causing an international incident was a high priority to him at the moment, and he imagined breaking in and simply taking the child might create one. “If you will let me in we can discuss the circumstances of the situation we find ourselves in.”

“What situation?”

“The baby.”

“What do you want with him?”

“Exactly what my brother wanted with him. A legal agreement has been signed, and you should know exactly what it says, as yours was one of the signatures. I have it in my possession. Either I go through the court system, or we discuss it now.”

He didn’t want to involve the courts of either the United States or Attar. He wanted this to go smoothly, silently, to not make a ripple until he and his advisers were able to devise a story about how the child had survived, and why the child had been kept from the public in the weeks since the sheikh had died.

Before he did any of that, he had to find out just what the situation was. If the papers that had been drawn up were reflective of the truth, or if there had been more to his brother’s relationship with Chloe James than was documented anywhere.

That could complicate things. Could prevent him from taking the child with him. And that was not acceptable.

The door opened a crack, a chain keeping it from swinging open all the way, and one wide blue eye, fringed with long dark lashes, peered at him through the opening. “ID?”

He released a frustrated sigh and reached into the inside of his coat, pulling out his wallet and producing his passport, showing it to the eye that was staring at him with distrust. “Satisfied?”

“Not in the least.” The door shut and he heard the jingle of the chain, then it opened. “Come in.”

He stepped into the room, the cramped feeling of it squeezing down on him. Bookshelves lined the walls, pushing them in, heightening the feeling of tightness. There was a laptop on the coffee table, more books in a stack to the right of it and a whiteboard on a stand in the corner with another stack of books placed next to it. There was a logic to the placement of everything, and yet the lack of space gave it all a feeling of barely organized chaos. Nothing like the military precision with which he ordered his life.

He let his eyes fall to Chloe next. She was small, her hair a deep, unusual shade of red, her skin pale and freckled. Her breasts were generous, her waist a bit thick. She looked very much like a woman who had just given birth and who had spent the weeks since in a state of sleep deprivation.

She shifted and her hair caught the light, a shock of red-gold burning bright beneath the lamp. If the child was hers genetically, there would be some sign, of that he was certain. She was very unlike his olive-skinned brother and his beautiful, dark-haired bride.

“You realize that you have no security to speak of here,” he said. The crying had ceased, everything in the tiny apartment calm now. “If I had wanted to force my way in, I could have done so. And anyone seeking to harm the child could have done so, as well. You do him no favors by keeping him here.”

“I didn’t have anywhere else to take him,” she said.

“And where is the child now?”

“Aden?” she responded, a chill in her tone. “You don’t need to see him now, do you?”

“I would like to,” he said.

“Why?” She edged around the front of the sofa, as if she meant to block his way. Laughable. She was so petite, and he was a highly trained soldier who could remove a man twice his size without feeling any sort of exertion. He could break her easily if he had a mind to, and she just stood there, a small, flame-haired tigress.

“He is my nephew. My blood,” he said.

“I… I didn’t think you would feel any connection to him.”

“Why not?” It was true that his was not a heart connection, not the sort of family connection she might mean. His was a blood bond, a sworn oath to protect the ruler of his country with his very life if it came to it. It was a connection that he felt in his veins, one he couldn’t change or deny. Only death could break it. And in that scenario, the death had better be his own.

She blinked rapidly. “You’ve never been… close to the family. I mean, Rashid said…”

“Ah. Rashid.” Her use of his brother’s first name was telling. And not in a good way. In a way that might complicate things. If she was the mother of the child, the biological mother, it would be much more difficult to use the legal documents against her. Difficult, though, not impossible.

And failing that, he would simply create an international incident and bring the child back with him. By force if necessary.

“Yes, Rashid. Why did you say it like that?”

“I’m trying to ascertain the nature of your relationship with my brother.”

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Well, I gave birth to his child.”

A cold, calm sort of fury washed through him, the ice in his veins chilling the rage as it ran through him. If his brother had done anything to compromise the future of the country…

But his brother was dead. There would be no consequence for Rashid, no matter the circumstances. He was finished now, with this life. And Sayid was left to ensure that Attar did not crumble. That life went on, as smoothly as possible, for the millions of people who called the desert nation home.

“And you drew up this agreement—” he produced a folded stack of papers from the inside of his coat “—so that if anyone caught on to the fact that it wasn’t Tamara who gave birth to Aden, they would believe it had been a part of the plan from the beginning?”

“Wait… what?” She curled her lip, one rounded hip cocked to the side.

“You conspired to invent the story about the surrogacy to cover up the relationship that you had with…”

She held both hands up, palms out. “Hey! No. Oh… no. I gave birth to his child, as a surrogate. His and… Tamara’s.” There was a slight wobble in her voice now and she looked down.

“Why didn’t you come to me?” He wasn’t certain he believed her answer, but he wasn’t going to press, either. Not now.

“I don’t… I don’t know. I was scared. They were on their way… here when it happened. On their way to the hospital from the airport. I was already in labor, I went a little earlier than anticipated. They were going to have me moved to a private facility, and their doctor was with them during the… everyone who knew was with them.”

He looked around the room, his top lip curling. “So you brought him here, to your very insecure apartment, to protect him?”

“No one knew I was here.”

“It took my men less than twenty-four hours from the discovery of your existence to pinpoint your location, and for me to come to your front door. You are lucky that I am the one who found you. Lucky that it wasn’t an enemy of my brother, of Attar.”

“I couldn’t be sure that you wouldn’t be an enemy to Aden.”

“Be sure of that now.”

Chloe raised her gaze and met hard, dark eyes. She couldn’t believe that Sayid al Kadar was in her living room. She’d been watching the news about Attar carefully since Aden’s birth. Had seen the man assume power with ease and grace, an almost eerie calm, amidst a tragedy that had rocked a nation.

The sheikh and his wife were dead. As was their unborn heir.

So everyone had assumed.

But what no one knew was that the sheikh and sheikha had used a surrogate. And that the surrogate, and the child, were safe.

She’d had no idea what to do. When the royals’ private doctor hadn’t materialized during delivery, and then Tamara and Rashid hadn’t come, either…

She could still feel it, the sick, cold dread that had washed over her. She’d known. She’d just known. And then she’d asked a nurse to turn the television on and it had been everywhere, on every channel. The loss of Attar’s royal family and the doctor to the royal family, killed in an accident on a highway in the Pacific Northwest.

And all she’d been able to do was hold the baby—the baby that wasn’t hers, the baby that was never supposed to be hers, the baby who had no one but her—close to her chest and try not to dissolve completely.

In the weeks since she’d been in a daze. Mourning her half sister, Tamara, though she’d barely known her, and trying to decide what she was supposed to do with Aden. Trying to decide if she should trust his uncle. Because if it was revealed that Aden was alive, then Sayid was not the ruler of Attar, he was merely regent.

And the idea of what he might do to preserve his position had frightened her. She knew it was unlikely, ridiculous, even. Rashid had never spoken badly of his younger brother, and neither had Tamara.

Still, this sort of strange, never-before-felt protectiveness had her in its grip, digging into her like claws, not releasing its hold. Aden was her nephew, and because of that, she did have a connection to him, but it was more. She’d imagined that it wouldn’t be. She didn’t want children, after all. Had never seen herself as the maternal type.

But she’d carried him in her body. Nurtured him in that way. No matter what she’d believed, it wasn’t a bond that she could simply break. Her head knew one thing, but her body firmly believed another.

“And you didn’t think to contact the palace?” Sayid asked, his voice deep. Hard.

“Rashid asked that it be kept confidential. I signed legal documents saying that I would never divulge my involvement. If they had wanted to include you, they would have.”

“So all of this was out of loyalty?”

“Well… yes.”

“And how much were you paid?” he asked.

Her cheeks heated. “Enough.” She had accepted payment, and she was hardly going to apologize. Surrogates were paid for the service, and while she’d done it in part because Tamara was her half sister, she’d also done it out of a need for the money. Even with all of her scholarships, graduate school was costly. And independence was an absolute necessity for her, which meant money held a lot of importance in her world.

“Loyalty. I see.”

“Of course I was paid,” she said. “I wanted to do this for them, but honestly, carrying a child and giving birth? It’s a very big deal, as I have spent the past ten or so months now discovering. I won’t feel guilty for taking what I was offered.”

“And why exactly did you want to do this for him?” He was still looking at her with a dark, angry light in his eyes and she had a feeling he still didn’t really believe that she’d had no involvement with Rashid.

“Because of Tamara. She’s my half sister. And I’m not surprised you didn’t know. We didn’t meet until a couple of years ago, and we’ve never had the chance to become close.” Finding out she’d had a half sister had been such an extraordinary moment. Tamara had found her, using the new resources available to her as the sheikh’s wife.

Chloe had been in awe of her when they first met. The sheikha, her sister. But it wasn’t her beauty or power that had captivated Chloe, it was the fact that she had a new chance at family. Something whole, tangible and shining where before there had been nothing but broken pieces, pain and regret.

They hadn’t had the chance to spend a lot of time together. They lived a half a world away from each other, and meetings had been sporadic, but wonderful. A friendship that had been bursting with the possibility to be a bond she’d never had the chance to have before. And now she never would. That new, beautiful thing was shattered, too. There would never be any family for her, not ever.

Except Aden.

Her heart ached just thinking about the tiny baby sleeping in the bassinet in her room. She didn’t know what she felt for him. Didn’t know what to do with him. Didn’t know how she was supposed to give him up. Or keep him. She couldn’t imagine doing either, which put her right where she was now.

Studying for midterms with a baby that wouldn’t let her sleep, living in fear of the moment she was currently standing in. For one brief, dark second she hated her life.

A year ago she’d been starting grad school, on her way to getting her doctorate in theoretical physics, and now she was living in an existence that didn’t seem like it could possibly be hers.

Grieving the sister she’d barely known, the possibility of something that had never gotten to be, struggling to finish her coursework. Raising a baby.

And in that same, ugly moment, she imagined handing Aden to his uncle and telling him to take good care of him.

When she’d agreed to all of this, clearly, she’d never imagined that keeping Aden would even be a possibility, and now she felt as if she was in a hellish limbo, having tiny tastes of what could be, what might have been. If she’d been different. If her life had been different.

If could never really be her life. Not really.

She took a deep breath, fighting the wave of exhaustion that grabbed her by the throat and started shaking her hard.

Sayid’s face remained impassive, his eyes the only tell, showing a hint of hard, bitter regret. “I am sorry for your loss.”

“And I’m sorry for yours.”

“Not just mine,” he said. “My country’s. My people’s. Aden is their future ruler. The hope of the future.”

“He’s a baby,” she said, her voice hollow in her ears. Aden was so tiny, so helpless. Robbed of his mother, his real mother. The one who was prepared for him, who was ready to give everything to raise him. The one who was capable of it.

All he’d had for the first six weeks of his life was her. She’d never held a baby before he was born, and now she was fumbling her way through caring for one round the clock. She was exhausted. She wanted to cry all the time. She did cry sometimes.

“Yes,” Sayid said, “he is a baby. One who was born into something much bigger than he is. But then, you and I both know that was the purpose behind his birth.”

“Partly. Rashid and Tamara wanted him very much.” That much had been clear, the desire for a child pouring from Tamara’s every word when she’d made her impassioned request.

“I’m certain they did, but the only reason a blood bond was so important, the only reason adoption could not be considered, was the need for an heir that was part of the al Kadar line.”

She knew that. That day seemed like an eternity ago. Tamara had come for a visit, but this time, her dark eyes weren’t glittering with laughter, but tears. Tears as she told Chloe of her most recent miscarriage. Of how she kept losing her babies. Of the depth of her desire for a child of her own, of her need to give birth for the kingdom.

And then she’d made her request. So big. So altering.

You’ll be compensated, and of course, once the child is born he’ll return to Attar with us. But you’ll be a part of bringing your nephew into the world. More family. For both of us.

And Chloe ached for family. For a web of support like she’d never had before.

And so she’d convinced herself that being pregnant for nine months really wouldn’t be a hardship. And that at the end of it, Tamara and Rashid would have everything they needed and that Chloe would have helped bring a new life into the world. And that a whole lot of her financial problems would be solved.

It had seemed an easy thing to do. A small thing for the only family who seemed to care about her at all. Simple.

Of course, once the morning sickness had hit the “easy” thing had seemed a long-ago, laughable thought. Then there had been the weight gain, the sore breasts, the stretch marks. And of course, labor and delivery.

Nothing about it had been easy.

But in the peaceful quiet just after giving birth, that brief surreal moment in time, before she’d found out about Tamara and Rashid’s deaths, as she’d looked down at the tiny, screaming baby in her arms, all of the fragmented pieces in her life had seemed to unite, to create a clear and beautiful picture. As if she’d done what she was here to do. As if Aden was her finest, most important achievement. Now or ever.

That was before the world had broken apart again, before things had been smashed, destroyed so utterly and completely that she had no idea how it would ever be fixed again.

She’d been a zombie for six weeks. Caring for Aden, caring for herself when she could, studying, sort of. Slipping beneath the surface, certain that she was going to drown.

Sayid’s appearance was both a salvation and damnation rolled into one.

“I know. But right now he…. What do you want to do with him?”

“I intend to do what was always meant to be done. To take him back to his home. To his people. His palace. It is his right, and it is my duty to protect those rights.”

“And who will raise him?”

“Tamara had hired the best nannies already, the very best caregivers in the world. After I announce that he is… alive, everything will go as it was meant to.” There was a strange sort of calm to his voice, one that made her wonder what was going on beneath the surface.

“When did you find out?” she asked.

“Yesterday. I was going through my brother’s safe, his most private documents, and I found the surrogacy agreement. For the first time in six weeks… some hope.”

“You really did find us quickly.”

“I have sources. More than that, you aren’t very well hidden.”

“I was afraid,” she said, her voice a choked whisper.

“Of what?” he asked.

“Everything.” That was the honest truth. Her life had been marked by gut-churning anxiety and fear since Tamara’s death. Every day felt temporary, and like an eternity. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want the competition. That you wouldn’t want to lose your new position.”

Sayid’s dark eyes hardened, his lips thinning. “I was not raised to rule, Chloe James, I was raised to fight. In my country, that is the function of the second born son. I am a warrior. The High Sheikh must have compassion and strength. Fairness. I was not trained to have those things. I was trained to carry out orders, to be merciless in my pursuit of preserving my people and my country. Which I will do now, at any cost. This is not about what I want, it is about what is best.”

She believed him. The evidence of the truth was there in his voice, in the flat, emotionlessness. He was a soldier, a machine created to carry out orders with swift, efficient execution.

And he wanted to take Aden with him.

She blinked, feeling dizzy. “So, essentially, you’re the ax man of the al Kadar family?” It just slipped out. She wasn’t prone to speaking without thinking. Thinking was her stock-in-trade. But she felt off balance now, not sure what to say or do. There was no textbook for this situation, no amount of studying that could have prepared her for it. No amount of reasoning.

“My path was set from my first breath.”

“And so is Aden’s,” she said, her lips numb, cold shock spreading through her. She’d always known that the little boy sleeping in the bassinet in her bedroom was meant for greatness, greatness that had nothing to do with her. But these past weeks… they had been out of time. Something so different from anything else she’d experienced. Miserable, and beautiful. Temporary. And in them, it had been easy, necessary even, to ignore the reality of his destiny.

“He needs to come back home. Your life can go back to the way it was. To the way you planned for it to be.”

She could finished school, get her doctorate. Take a teaching position at a university, or maybe get a job at a research institute. A girl and her whiteboard. It would be a beautiful and simple existence. One where she spent her time analyzing mysteries of the universe that had a hope of actually being solved, something that seemed impossible in interpersonal relationships. Which was one reason she rarely bothered with those, not beyond casual friendships at least.

That was the future that Sayid was offering right now. The chance to go back to the way things were. Like nothing had changed.

She looked down, saw the rounded bump where once her stomach had been flat. And she thought of the child, sleeping in the next room, the child who had grown inside of her body, the child she’d given birth to, and she knew that everything had changed. Everything.

There was no going back.

“I can’t just let you take him.”

“You were going to let Rashid and Tamara take him.”

“They were his parents, and they were… meant to be with him.”

“His place in Attar goes deeper than that,” he said, his voice uncompromising.

“He’ll be confused, I… I’m the only mother he knows.” She’d never put voice to that thought until now. But she’d been caring for him. Breastfeeding him. She’d given birth to him, and even though, genetically, he was not her son, he was something, something that was essential in some ways.

“You do not wish to go back to your old life? To get back to how it was?”

In some ways she did. Badly. Just thinking about it, about what she’d have to give up, to either have Aden or to have things the way they were, made her feel as if she was being torn in two.

“I don’t think it can,” she said, the truth, another thing she’d left unacknowledged for as long as possible. “It’s not the same. It never will be again.” A fact, irrefutable as far as she was concerned, no mathematical equations required to prove it.

“Then what do you propose?” he asked, muscular arms crossed over his broad chest.

Just then, Aden stirred, his sharp cry loud in the silence of the apartment. That single, shrill cry, pierced her heart, made her ache everywhere.

“Take me to Attar.”

CHAPTER TWO

“ABSOLUTELY NOT,” SAYID said, striding from the living room and heading toward the bedroom, where Aden was crying plaintively.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Something inside of her snapped, watching that large, predatory body walking toward the baby’s room.

He stopped, turning to face her. “I am going to collect my nephew, as is my right.” He held the papers out, the surrogacy agreement, which she had signed, knowing full well what it meant. Papers she’d signed without regret. Papers that said Aden belonged to the royal family, to Attar, and not to her. Never to her.

He turned away again and her feet carried her, without her volition, quickly, to where he was going. She put her hands on his shoulders and tugged him backward. His shoulders were thick and muscled, his frame solid and immovable beneath her hands. The kind of man she normally feared.

For a blinding second, she had a flash of what it would be like if he swept the back of his hand across her face. She knew just how that looked. Hard packed muscle coming up against a petite frame. Knew what it looked like to see a woman crumbled on the ground, broken and bleeding, the victim of masculine power.

Sayid didn’t do that. He stopped, not because she’d had any effect on him. He could have shrugged her off of him with ease, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned back to her slowly, his eyes dark, filled with heat and fury. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“You’re not just going to go in there and scoop him up and carry him off to the desert,” she said, her pulse pounding in her throat. “You might be the sheikh in your country but here you’re just an intruder in my house and if I have to mace your ass and then call the cops I will do it.” Anger drove her, a rage that made her shake, made her body quiver down to her bones. It banished her fear, fear of retribution, of violence at his hands.

Because right now, Aden was the weakest one here. And if she didn’t stand for him then no one would.

“Interesting,” he said, his voice coated in ice, “your file said you were a scientist, I expected more reserve.”

“And you’re supposed to be a leader, I expected you to have a little more of a deft hand at negotiation.” For some reason, he reacted to that. A small reaction, a small flare of something much deeper and more frightening than the anger from before. But it didn’t stop her. “Did you honestly think I would let you walk in and take my baby?”

Sayid straightened, his eyes black, blank again, absent of malice, or anything else. “He is not your baby.”

The truth hit, cold and hard, at the same time as the realization of what she’d said. “I know that. But I’ve been caring for him. I breastfeed him,” she said, desperation building in her chest, “you can’t just come in and take him.”

“You were meant to surrender him, and you know it to be true.”

“To Tamara,” she said, her voice rough. “I was meant to hand him to his mother, my sister, but she wasn’t there. His mother is dead. And no one knew about him. I didn’t know what to do, who to tell. The only other person who’s ever held him have been medical personnel, and you want to… to take him away.”

“I don’t want to take him from you,” he said, his jaw tight, his tone hard. “I must do what is best for Attar. I am not here to disrupt your little game of house. But Aden is not your son, and he does not belong here.”

“Then let me go there.”

“And reveal the secret that Rashid was so desperate to protect?”

She shook her head. “No. No… I could be… the nanny.”

“For the next sixteen years? Until he comes of age?”

She didn’t have the next sixteen years to spend in Attar. She had a life here. She had friends. And school. A student teacher position starting in the fall. All she had to do was wean herself away. There was no other choice, no other choice beyond making a clean break now, and that she knew she couldn’t do.

She shook her head. “No… not that I…” She swallowed and looked down. “But maybe… if he could be here with me for a few months even. Six months.” She didn’t know why she’d said six months. Only that it was time. More time to try and wrap her head around everything that had happened to her. More time to hold on to Aden when she really should just let go.

She started to walk into the room, toward Aden, and Sayid caught her arm, dark eyes blazing into hers. “Tell me this,” he said, his tone hard, “and be honest. You were only the surrogate, right? There was nothing between you and my brother?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“I need to know. Because there can be no surprises. No scandal.”

“Rashid loved Tamara. He would never…”

Sayid nodded. “He did. It’s true. But I have seen the things men can do, thoughtless things that cause a world of pain, and I would not put it past him. Not even him. Everyone is capable of evil.”

Evil, she had seen. In the most seemingly innocuous of men. His hard hold on her, fingers biting into her skin, was a reminder of that. “Even you?”

“Everyone is capable of evil,” he repeated.

“Well, your brother did no such evil. Not with me.” The idea was completely laughable. Or it would have been if Sayid hadn’t been so serious. “I did this because of Tamara. Because she was my family. And now Aden is my family.”

He released his hold on her. “Good. I cannot afford any complications.”

Anger spiked in her again, a welcome reprieve from the hopelessness that was starting to overwhelm her. “Well, I couldn’t afford any complications, either, Your Royal Sheikhiness. Yet I seem to have nothing but complications at the moment.”

“I could make them go away,” he said, his voice cold, uncompromising. “Can make it so your life goes back to the way it was before.”

“Could you take the pain with you?” she said, desperation tearing at her as she realized, fully, just how impossible a situation she was in. “Can you make it so it’s like it never happened? Make me forget that I carried a child and gave birth to him? That I cared for him for the first six weeks of his life? Can you make him forget?”

“He will be given everything in Attar. No comfort will be denied him. This is not a decision to make with your emotions. This is a decision that you must think about logically.”

Logic had long been a comfort to her. Fact, reason, had carried her through a childhood filled with chaos. But logic couldn’t win here. For the first time, her heart was louder than her head. “Will you love him?” she asked.

His black eyes were cold. “I would die for him.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“But it is the promise I can make.” Men, men and their promises, had been something she’d spent a lifetime avoiding. She’d watched men break their promises, again and again, and as an adult she’d chosen to never put stock in them. But this promise, this vow, that seemed to come from deep inside of him, from his soul, was something she couldn’t doubt. She felt it echoing inside of her, down on a subatomic level. “He is my king. The heir to the throne of Attar. He has my allegiance, both as my future leader and as a member of my family.”

“He’s a baby,” she said, the word catching in her throat. “Right now, that’s the important thing.”

“He is a child,” Sayid said, “I know that. But he will never be like other children. He is meant to rule, it is a part of who he is. Who he was born to be. We all have a burden to bear in this life,” he continued, his voice softer now. “We all have a purpose that must be met. This is his.”

“But… but,” she stuttered, desperation digging its claws into her. She took a breath and redirected, scrolling through her mind for information she could use. Knowledge was power, now and always. “I understand that he’s the heir, but fundamentally, he’s a baby. Taking him from me, from his care-giver, now could cause damage, especially as I assume there will be staff caring for him?”

Sayid shrugged broad shoulders. “Of course.” Because Sayid would not be involved, not on a personal level. He might be willing to lay down his life for his nephew, but changing diapers was another thing altogether.

“I grant you, child development, and biology in general, are not my areas of expertise, but I know they’ve done studies on these early life experiences and they’re crucial to the emotional well-being of a person. If they aren’t given the proper attention now, they may never be able to form attachments in the future.”

Sayid regarded her, his eyes dark, fathomless. “That I believe.”

“I mean, they’ve actually looked at CAT scans of the brains of children who have experienced stable nurturing and those who haven’t. It changes them on a physical level. Parts of their brain cease to function properly and… and… I doubt you want that for a ruler, do you?”

“Naturally not,” he said, clipped.

“I’ve been… I’ve been taking care of him,” she said, her throat tightening. “Breastfeeding him. What do you think it would do to him to be separated from me? I’m his only stability.”

“And what do you think letting him cry is doing to his psyche?” he asked, his tone hard.

She brushed past him and went toward the bassinet, her heart in her throat. She bent down and pulled him gently into her arms. Holding him still didn’t feel natural. It made her nervous. Always afraid she wasn’t supporting his head just right. And the soft spot. Yes, she knew there was a reason for it to be there, but it terrified her to the core. It highlighted just how vulnerable he was. How breakable.

Sayid watched Chloe pull the child in to her body, her arms wrapped around him securely but gently. She didn’t look like a natural, didn’t look at ease. Her blue eyes were huge, her lips tightened into a firm line, denoting her fear and concentration.

The sight created a strange tightness in his chest, a heaviness that made it difficult to breathe. Her discomfort was evident. The fact that she didn’t want to do this, or that she, at the very least, didn’t love it, was evident. Yet she felt compelled to fight to stay in Aden’s life. Had cared for him, protected him, from the moment he was born. Because she was bonded to him, her loyalty deep and strong.

Loyalty he understood. Honor. The need to protect others at the expense of yourself. He saw it all in that moment, etched across her face.

“Six months,” he said.

She looked up at him, her expression cautious. “Six months of what?”

“You may come back to Attar, to the palace, for six months and serve as his nanny for the purposes of maintaining the fiction of his birth for the public eye. It’s a reasonable step. Logical to believe we secured a woman who is able to nurse the child, as he’s lost his mother.”

“I… oh… I…”

“I will make the announcement to the press that Aden was born just before Tamara’s death and that until we knew his health was stable we wanted no intrusion.”

“What will people think… that you kept something like that from them?”

“They will understand,” he said, his voice, his certainty, echoing in the room. “There is no other option. Rashid wished to keep it a secret, and so it will be kept secret.”

“Tamara said… she said if people knew they might think that it was down to some sort of faithlessness on her part.”

He shook his head once. “Not everyone. Anyone who knew her would never have thought so. But certainly yes, you have factions of the population who regard infertility as a link to some sort of sin on the woman’s part.”

“They wanted to avoid that,” she said. “And now… now it’s even more important, isn’t it? Now that he’s the only one left.”

She looked down at the top of Aden’s fuzzy head, her expression dazed.

“Yes,” he said. The helplessness of the child, his tiny size, delicate body, filled him with a sense of unease. He had the sense of fingers being curled around his neck, cutting off his air. He had felt ill at ease ever since assuming the throne. He was not a diplomat, not a man to sit and do paperwork or make polite conversation with visiting dignitaries.

The press knew it. Took every chance to compare him with the sheikh they had lost. The sheikh that had been born to rule with the one that had only been bred to fight.

And now there was this. This baby. This woman. The child might very well be his salvation, the one that would take his place on the throne. But right now… now he was a baby. Small. Helpless.

It made him think of another helpless life, one he had been powerless to save. And it added another brick to the weight of responsibility on his shoulders. He shook the feeling off. Emotion, regret, the pain of the past, had no place in his life, not even in such a small capacity.

He had learned that lesson early, and he had learned it well. When a man felt much, he could lose much. And so he had been shaped into a man who had nothing left to lose. A man who could act decisively, quickly. He couldn’t worry about his own safety. Could worry about being good. He had to find lighter shades of gray in the darkness. Do what was the most right, and the least wrong. Without regret.

Looking at Aden, his nephew, the last piece of his brother’s legacy, tested him. But he could not afford to break now, couldn’t afford a crack in his defenses. So he crushed it tight inside of him, buried it deep, beneath the rock and stone walls he had built up around his heart.

“Six months?” she asked, raising blue eyes to meet his.

“Six months. And after that you will carry on as you intended to. That is what you want ultimately, isn’t it?”

She nodded slowly, her fingers drifting idly over Aden’s back. “Yes. That’s what I want.”

“And that’s what you will have. Now pack your things, we need to leave.”

“But… I have midterms… I…”

“I can call your professors and arrange to have you take the tests remotely.”

“I don’t know if they’ll let me.”

That made him laugh. “They will not tell me no.”

“You don’t have to fight my battles for me,” she said.

“I fight everyone’s battles for them,” he said. “It’s who I am. As you will soon discover.”

Sayid’s parting words rang in her ears as she packed, her fingers numb while she folded her clothes and stuffed them into her suitcase. She still felt that same numbness as she boarded the private plane that was sitting on the tarmac at Portland International Airport. It had spread to her face, her lips. And she felt cold.

Shock, maybe. Or, judging by the sharp stab of pain that assaulted her when the door to the plush, private airplane closed, maybe the shock from the past six weeks was finally wearing off. She wanted it back. Wanted to be wrapped up in the fuzzy cocoon she’d been living in, where she hadn’t been able to see more than an hour ahead. One foot in front of the other, just trying to survive. Trying to look at the future as a whole was too demanding.

Six months.

She held Aden a little bit closer and leaned back in the plush, roomy seat, examining the cabin of the plane. It wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen before. Being in Attar would feel like being in another world, and she’d expected that. She hadn’t expected everything to feel so different the moment she stepped into Sayid’s domain, even on American soil.

Sayid sat across from the seat she sat in with Aden. His arms were resting on the back of the couch, his body in a pose that she imagined was meant to mimic relaxation. She wasn’t fooled, even for a moment. Sayid wasn’t a man who relaxed easily, if ever. His eyes were sharp, his body clearly on alert.

He looked as though he could spring into deadly, efficient action at any moment. Like a panther preparing for a strike.

“Handy that you had a passport ready, expediting Aden’s was much easier than having to do it for the both of you. Have you done a lot of traveling?” he asked.

She knew these weren’t idle questions. He still didn’t trust her, not really. Which was fine since she certainly didn’t trust him.

“I went to see the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland a couple of years ago. It was a brilliant opportunity.”

The left side of his mouth lifted upward in a poor imitation of a smile. “Most women I’ve known would consider a sale on a designer handbag a brilliant opportunity.”

She could tell he was trying to make her angry. She wasn’t sure why he was trying to make her angry, only that he was. “I like a good handbag as much as the next woman. But if you really want to watch my eyes light up talk string theory to me.”

“I am afraid I would be outmatched,” he said, inclining his head. She’d earned some respect with that response.

He was testing her. Jackass. Nothing she wasn’t used to. Men didn’t like being shown up by women. The men in her academic circle were threatened by her mind, by her successes. So they were always looking for a weakness. Good thing she didn’t have one. Not when it came to her mind, at least.

“You ought to be,” she said. “But if you wanted to talk… I don’t know, Arabian stallions I might be outmatched.”

He laughed. “You think my expertise lies in stallions?”

“A guess. A stereotypical guess, I confess.”

He shrugged. “I’m not one for horses myself. Military vehicles are more my domain. Weapons. Artillery. How to stage an ambush in the dunes. Things like that.”

The statement maybe should have shocked her, but it didn’t. There was nothing that seemed remotely safe about Sayid al Kadar. He exuded danger, darkness. She wasn’t one to cultivate a lot of interpersonal relationships, but danger was one thing she’d learned to see early on. A matter of survival.

“Well, I can’t make much conversation about that.”

“Silence would be your solution, then?” he asked, arching one dark brow.

“I wouldn’t say no to it. It’s been a long twenty-four hours.” It had taken some time to get the documentation to allow Aden to fly.

“The press will be gathering in Attar as we speak. Jockeying for position in front of the palace.”

“Do they know what you’re announcing?”

He shook his head. “No. I will announce it after the results of the DNA test are back. A precaution, you understand. The testing must be done to prevent rumors of us bringing in a child who is not truly an al Kadar.”

“This royalty business is complicated,” she said.

“It’s not. Not really. Everyone has a role, and as long as they are there to fill it, everything keeps moving.” There was a bleakness wrapped around those words, a resignation that made her curious.

The plane’s engines roared to life and she curled herself around Aden, holding him securely as they started down the runway.

“He makes you nervous,” Sayid said.

She looked up, knowing exactly what he meant. “I don’t have any experience with babies.”

“And you haven’t been waiting around dying to have your own.”

“I’m twenty-three. I don’t exactly feel ready for it. But… even in the future I didn’t have plans of… marriage and motherhood.” Quite the opposite, she’d always intended to avoid both like the plague. Had done so quite neatly for her entire life.

“Yet you protect him. Like a tigress with her cub.” Everything was a casual observation from him, no heat of conviction. No emotion at all.

“There are survival instincts that are born into us,” she said, looking down at Aden’s head, his hair fuzzy and wild, standing on end. “An innate need to propagate the species and ensure its survival.”

“Is that all?” he asked.

She shook her head, her throat tightening. “No.”

“It is good. Good that he has an aunt who loves him.”

Yes. It was completely natural for her to love him. To feel like he was a piece of her. He was, after all. Her nephew. Her only remaining family.

The only remaining family that she acknowledged. Her parents were no longer a part of her life. She never intended on speaking to them, going back and peering into the ugliness that was their marriage. She’d escaped it, and she never intended on going back.

Aden represented her last link with family. Her last chance. It was no wonder the bond was so strong. And he had no one. At least, he’d had no one. It had been just the two of them, holed up in the apartment, surviving.

“I do love him,” she said.

“It pleases me.” She noticed he didn’t return the sentiment, and that none of the pleasure he spoke of was reflected in his tone. She searched his face, looked into those hard, black eyes to see if she could find some hidden depth of emotion. Some tenderness for the tiny baby in her arms.

There was nothing there.

Nothing but an endless sea of darkness, a black hole, that seemed to pull light in, only to extinguish it.

“I went to live with my uncle, Kalid, when I was seven. I don’t know if Rashid ever mentioned that,” he said.

“No.” She’d barely ever spoken to her brother-in-law. He wasn’t usually present during her visits with Tamara.

“It is common, with the warrior children, to go and learn from the one currently holding the position.”

“So young?”

“It is necessary,” he said. “As you mentioned, early childhood experiences play strongly into how you will be as an adult. Something so important could not be left to chance.”

“What… what do you mean?”

“Because to be a perfect soldier, you can’t be a perfect man,” he said. “You have to be broken first, so that it can’t happen later. At the hands of your enemies.”

His tone was perfectly smooth, perfectly conversational. Betraying nothing of the underlying horror. But it was there. In his eyes.

It was easy to imagine getting pulled into that darkness. Easy to imagine getting lost in it. In him. The feeling that created rocked her deeply, gripped her stomach and squeezed tight.

She’d never had a thought like that before, had never felt, even for a moment, the sudden, violent pull to someone like she felt for Sayid.

She turned away, redirecting her focus. This six months was for Aden. A chance to introduce him to his home. To give him the transition they both needed.

It was not a time for her to get drawn in by a man with dark eyes and an even darker soul.

CHAPTER THREE

IF THE PLANE WAS LIKE another world, the Attari palace was something beyond that. On the outskirts of a city that was a collision between the old world and the new, was the seat of the royal family’s power. Gleaming stone, jade, jasper and obsidian, inlaid in intricate patterns over the walls and floors, the edges gilded, catching fire in the dry, harsh sun that painted the air with waves of heat.

The only green was in the palace gardens, the lush plants an extravagant example of wealth. A surplus of water in a dry place. The fountains spoke of the same excess, statues carved of young women, endlessly pouring water into the pools below.

The palace itself was shielded from the heat, the thick stone walls providing cover and insulation.

Her entire apartment could fit in the entryway of the palace, pillars wrapped in gold supporting ceilings inlaid with precious stones.

For the fist time, Chloe was ashamed that she’d asked her sister into her apartment. Tamara had never said anything about the shabby little one bedroom, but… but this was what her sister had been accustomed to. And Chloe hadn’t had a clue. She’d known her sister had lived in a palace, but her mind, so dedicated to number and fact, could never have imagined it was this grand.

The suite of rooms they were installed in had been set up for Aden and the nanny. Her room was expansive, a high ceiling with a star pattern arching over the opulent bed, white pillars, carved with scenes of camels wandering the desert, stationed throughout as support.

Chloe wandered in, placing her hand over one of the camels. Amber, she realized, set into a golden background, representing the Attari sand. One pillar would easily pay for a year of her college tuition, a sobering realization indeed.

She followed the flow of the room into Aden’s, which was connected to hers. The bed that had been prepared for him the focal point of the room. Blue with swaths of fabric draped from the ceiling that covered the little crib, making it look like a throne fit for a very tiny prince.

Which he was really.

“An improvement, isn’t it?” She placed him gently into the bed, her fingertips lingering on his round belly.

The sight of him, so small, in the plush bed made her throat tighten. This room had been prepared by Tamara. Prepared for a son she had never gotten the chance to hold. Hadn’t even been able to carry in her womb.

Chloe had done that, and she had hated it. Had been miserable through the whole pregnancy while her sister, who would never even know her child, had longed to carry the baby and hadn’t been able to.

Tears stung her eyes. She wanted to rail at the world. At the injustice of it. Nothing made sense in the world. Nothing. There was no reason. And she, she most especially, seemed to have no way of controlling it. She’d tried. She’d planned. And everything had fallen apart.

Anguish threatened to overwhelm her, to wrap bony fingers around her throat and squeeze her tight, cutting off her air.

“Is everything to your liking?”

She turned and saw Sayid standing in the opening to Aden’s room, his shoulders military straight, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression hard. In that moment, she envied him. He saw things clearly, in black and white. There was no confusion for him. No anger. No grief. He was simply doing what had to be done, and for him, that seemed to be enough.

Nothing she did felt like enough. Nothing felt right.

Not even this, and it was the only thing she could think to do.

“It’s beautiful, but I imagine you know that.”

His shoulders broke rank long enough to shrug. “The palace is done in the traditional Attari style. It is not so unusual here.”

“Ah yes, well, I can see how a castle made of semiprecious stones would get tiresome after a while,” she said drily.

“I find most anything preferable to an enemy prison, in that regard the palace does nicely. It is nicer to look at than a prison cell at the very least.”

“Is that all that makes it better?” she asked, laughing, a nervous shaky sound.

“In some ways,” he said slowly, “it is shockingly similar to prison.” His statement begged a question but he pressed on too quickly. “Your schooling has been worked out. The classes will be broadcasted onto a website you can log in to. That way you can view the lectures in addition to having your reading material on hand.”

“Labs? I mainly work in the realm of the theoretical, which means more mathematics than actual physical experiments, but there is some lab work to be done.”

“It will likely have to be deferred, but that’s fine, as well. You’re a well-liked student.”

“Most everyone at this level is. If you’re pursuing physics this far, it’s a passion.”

“And you are… passionate about it?”

The way he said “passionate” made her stomach curl in slightly, and she wasn’t sure why. “Yes.”

“What about it do you find so fascinating?”

She looked down at Aden. “I like to know why. The why of everything.” She looked back at Sayid. “Though, I’ve discovered there are things in life that simply aren’t explainable. I know about the building blocks of life, but I haven’t exactly figured out how to make everything make sense yet.”

“Not everything can be explained,” he said.

“But it’s my great quest to see if it can be.”

He shook his head. “I can tell you right now, there is too much in this world that does not make sense and never will. Greed makes men do terrible things, desire for power. The desire for control.”

“Survival of the fittest,” she said.

“Sure. But I’ve seen it. I’ve seen what people are willing to do. It does not make sense, trust me.”

She did. His voice rang with a depth of understanding that echoed inside of her. Images of violence flashed behind her eyes.

Sometimes there really was no reason.

“To the best of my ability,” she said, trying to shake off the memories, “I try to make sense of it all. To find the absolutes, the things that can’t be argued or denied. Theoretically, it should make my life feel more ordered. More in control.”

“How is that working out?”

“Like hell, actually.”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, that has been my experience, as well. In particular, in regards to recent events.”

“Common ground,” she said. “Unexpected.”

“Perhaps not quite so unexpected,” he said. “I see things in much the same way you do. Black or white. Yes or no.”

She looked at Aden, love, pain, filling her. “I used to see things that way. More than I do now.”

Sayid looked away from her, his dark eyes scanning the room. The moment of connection was broken. “There will be two other nannies in my employ while you are here. One to work in the night, the other to help handle him while you study.”

“And I’m the… wet nurse. Part of the prince’s team?”

He looked back at her and for a moment, she thought she saw a teasing light in his eyes. “A prince needs a team. Calling you another nanny would do, though, no need to be dramatic. Or medieval.”

She looked back down at Aden and the enormity of what he would face filled her, overwhelmed her. It was unfair, she knew, because even if his parents had lived, his future would be the same. He was, as Sayid had pointed out, born to rule.

But right then it didn’t seem fair. Didn’t seem fair that the expectations of a nation should rest on the shoulders of this tiny baby.

“Why can’t you just do it?” she whispered. “You were going to rule. Can’t you take it from him?”

She chanced a glance at him. His eyes were trained on the wall, distance. Dark. “I would do what had to be done, but I am not the man to lead this country.”

“But you’re doing it until Aden is old enough to—”

“I will do what must be done.”

“Nothing more?” she asked, not bothering to keep the bitterness from her tone.

He looked at her then, and she studied the hard lines of his face, the light that filtered through the windows deepening the grooves by his mouth, making the line between his brows appear deeper. It revealed his cares, his pain, the marks, the age, the world had left on him.

“Attar needs hope. A future filled with endless possibilities. With me, they will not get that. Death follows me, Chloe James. I will not bring that on my people, but on their enemies.”

He turned and walked back out of the room, and Chloe just watched, tension releasing from her slowly with each step he took away from her, until she was left feeling like wrung-out jelly. She hadn’t been conscious of just how tense she’d been until it had started to ease.

She let out a breath and clenched her hands into fists, trying to stop her fingers from shaking. His words echoed in her head, so dark, so certain.

She shook her head, focusing her mind back on Aden. There was too much going on for her to adopt Sayid’s issues, as well. And anyway, she imagined he would say he didn’t have any. She wandered back into her room, sitting down at the laptop that had already been set up at a corner desk for her. She could at least do some course work, study for her tests. She pushed the on button and waited for it to boot up, scanning the room, the view of the gardens from the double doors.

Today, everything had changed. Again.

“Sheikh Sayid,” Sayid’s advisor, Malik, walked into the dining room, his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him. It was not the person he’d been expecting. He’d been expecting Chloe, spitting hellfire and brimstone about him taking over her schedule and demanding she have dinner with him. He was not so lucky. “We need to discuss the matter of the press conference that is planned for tomorrow.”

“What is there to discuss?” Sayid asked, annoyance coursing through him. He didn’t want to talk about the press conference. Didn’t want to do anything but eat dinner and treat himself to a punishing workout. Something that would numb him and leave him utterly exhausted. After a day locked inside of an office, trapped behind a desk, he felt it was deserved. Necessary.

It was like prison. Even if it was a more comfortable cell. It was also too opulent, too busy. He longed for the simplicity of a desert tent, or at the very least, the whitewashed walls of the seaside palace he had spent time in as a child.

His aide kept on avoiding his eyes. “You know that the people are… they are restless.”

“They do not like me,” Sayid said. “That is the crux of the issue.”

“You are not… personable.”

Sayid laughed, the sound void of humor, his body void of humor. “Am I not?”

“It has been said, Sheikh.”

“Not by you, certainly,” he said, eyeing the man who had served Rashid so faithfully.

He did meet his eyes this time. “Certainly not.”

“It is of no consequence. I am not the permanent ruler of this country. Soon enough, my nephew shall take over and I will go back to my more palatable position outside of the public eye.”

“In sixteen years. That is a reality you cannot ignore.”

It was the truth. It wasn’t like submitting to physical torture. As a ruler he had to lay open pieces of himself, show personality. Be nice. At least when his hands were bound, when he was being whipped, burned, he could shut down the pain, allow it to rest on his skin like armor, recede inside of himself and simply endure. Survive.

But that was not what was required of a ruler. And he knew nothing else.

“Are you questioning my competence?” he asked.

“Not in the least, Sheikh.”

“Be sure you do not. You are dismissed.”

Malik nodded and turned away from him, walking out the door. Panic, momentary but intense, shivered over Sayid’s skin. He would have to face a people who distrusted him tomorrow, would have to find words to speak to them. Words of comfort. Diplomacy.

It simply wasn’t what Sayid had been trained for. And trained was precisely the word that should be used. From the time he’d gone into Kalid’s care, he’d been conditioned to see life in a certain way.

And at sixteen, it had been cemented. He had been broken, remade. A man who could, physically, endure all.

But he was no diplomat, no compassionate ruler.

All of the civility, the grace and manners, had been bred into Rashid. Sayid had gotten none of it. Sayid was a weapon, a living, breathing weapon. It was all he knew. It was all he’d ever done.

Control was necessary. A drop in control could lead to unspeakable horror. A girl forced into marriage, her child torn from her body against her will. Soldiers captured and killed. Tortured.

His weakness had caused those unspeakable horrors. Cracks in his armor leading others to ruin.

Leading, ruling, would require him to deal with people. Not simply enemies and soldiers. It would require the kind of openness, caring that would create a breach he couldn’t afford. One he could already feel deep within his soul. A soul he had not been aware of until recently.

“I don’t appreciate you… scheduling my evening without talking to me.”

Later than expected, Chloe walked in, her curves encased in a simple black dress. There was nothing particularly sexy about the dress. Nothing modern or interesting in the cut. But the way it flowed over her curves, molded to her breasts, made it spectacular.

She looked very much like a woman who had only just given birth, her figure plumped, exaggerated, and yet he found he liked the look.

“I would apologize, but I’m not at all sorry. Have a seat.” Breathing felt easier than it had a moment ago. He could only attribute it to Malik’s exit.

She walked in slowly, blue eyes narrowed, glittering. “If you wanted to have dinner with me, all you had to do was tell me earlier.”

“I don’t want to have dinner with you, I need to discuss something with you,” he said. “I thought it might be convenient to do it over dinner.”

She blinked. “Oh. Well.” She sat in a chair farther down the table and across from his.

“Come closer.”

She scooted one chair over.

“Across from me,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and stood, making her way down the table and taking the seat opposite him. “What exactly do we need to discuss?”

“We need to make sure there is paperwork that backs up our story. I would like to put you on payroll.”

“I don’t want money from you.”

“Because you already got money?” He didn’t bother to soften the words.

“I… that’s…”

“Don’t pretend you don’t need it, you do. You admitted it was part of the reason you agreed to carry Aden in the first place.”

“Yes. But I wanted to come here to care for him. I need to. I’m not going to accept money for…”

“While you are here, you can obviously have no other form of employment. In my mind that means you should be paid for your services.”

She recoiled slightly, blue eyes wide. He didn’t understand the woman. She had never once claimed she felt like she was Aden’s mother, and it stood to reason, as she was not. Yet she seemed unable to part with him, and now unable to accept compensation for caring for him.

“I am going to set up an account in your name and I will deposit money into it as I see fit, no matter whether you agree to this or not.” He needed her to take the money. Needed to put her in a neat, easily understood position, not simply for appearances, but for himself.

“Are you always like this?”

“Always. It is one of my more effective personality traits.”

“It’s one of your more impossible personality traits. Actually, I’ve only glimpsed this one personality trait in you. Do you have any more?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I get the job done, Chloe, that’s who I am. I make sure everything works. That my people, my family, are safe and provided for. It’s why you are here, for Aden’s well-being.”

“Fine. Set up an account.”

“You aren’t planning on taking anything out of it, are you?”

“I despise men like you,” she said, her voice a low hiss. “You think you can just… control me. Take absolute…. You just think that you can buy someone. That you can own a woman simply because you have power and status and bigger muscles. It’s not impressive. I see you exactly for what you are.” She stood up, her frame trembling. He had no idea what had set her off, but he had a feeling it went deeper than a simple dinner invitation and a demand she take his money.

“A man making an attempt at protecting his family legacy?”

“A man who needs to… demonstrate his testosterone by posturing like an… animal,” she spat.

Anger spiked through him, unreasonable, completely unusual. He should simply let her words slide off. But for some reason, they stuck into him like barbs, tore at his pride. Perhaps it was because he knew how wrong she was. That to be an animal, he would have to act with gut emotion. Intuition borne of feeling. And he possessed neither. The realization made him frighteningly, acutely aware of the void in him. The pit that seemed as though it could never be filled.

He felt poised on the brink of it. As if the tendrils of darkness reaching up for him might wrap themselves around him. Might drag him down into the abyss.

He stood, pushing his chair backward. “An animal? Is that what you think I am?”

“You’ve dragged me back to your lair.”

“I brought you here,” he growled, circling the long table slowly, his fingertips brushing the top of each chair he passed, “at your request.”

All of the emotion, the intensity from the past few weeks, threatened to overwhelm Chloe. She was past the point of reason now. She was nothing more than a burning ball of kinetic energy, the forward motion unstoppable. She’d held it in for too long, let it build as she sat in her apartment, numbed by shock.

But the shock was gone now, and the trajectory of her emotions set. “Because I couldn’t just let you take him!”

“I was hardly going to tear him from your arms.” But he would have. They both knew it.

“But you were going to take him. As soon as possible.”

“It’s what needed to be done. It has nothing to do with you. None of this has anything to do with you,” he said, his voice hard, simmering with barely contained anger. “You were the vessel. Nothing more.”

She’d only ever felt the desire to hurt one other human being physically. Had only ever had to fight the urge to stop herself from attacking one other man. She’d never followed through on the feral, savage desire to hurt her father because she’d seen exactly what he could do with his fists. Had seen that he wouldn’t hesitate to hit a woman. Not just once, but until she could no longer get back up.

But she didn’t care about the consequences now. She wanted to hit Sayid, with everything in her. Inflict pain on him for hurting her with his words. For telling the truth.

For saying that Aden was nothing more than her nephew, even though she’d carried him in her body. Given birth to him. In the big picture, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t hers and she had no claim on him. But spoken from that arrogant mouth, with such harshness, it was more than she could stand. The truth of it so raw and evident, so unwanted.

She stepped toward him without thinking, just as he rounded to her side of the table, her fist pulled back. He caught her arm, stopping her, tugging her up against him.

“You think you could hurt me?” he asked, his hand fitted securely around her arm without causing her any pain. His strength was so great, he didn’t seem to be exuding any force. It only made her angrier. And now that the dam had burst on her control, she couldn’t stop it all from pouring out.

“I might have been able to break your nose. It doesn’t matter how much muscle you have, that’s still a susceptible spot.”

“If you think a broken nose would hurt me… you have a limited understanding of what I am capable of. Of what I have endured.”

He lowered his head, dark eyes boring into hers. Heat bloomed in her stomach, her muscles quivering. He smelled like sandalwood, and clean skin, and there was no reason for her to notice something like that. No reason at all.

It wasn’t the smell she usually associated with men. Her father was alcohol, sweat and tobacco. Occasionally, blood.

And as an adult, the only time she’d gotten close enough to a man to smell him was if they were sharing a microscope. And then he usually smelled like chemicals.

“If I release you, will you promise to put your claws back in?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Only if you watch what you say.”

“Then we’re at an impasse because I don’t have to watch what I say.”

“You’re right,” she said. “You do suck at diplomacy.”

“I never claimed otherwise,” he said, his tone rough.

“I don’t have to like what you say. And I don’t. Not at all.”

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” he said, his voice low. “But I am telling you the truth. I’m not going to wrap the situation up as something else and try to make it more palatable. It is an ugly situation. Nothing about it is simple.” He released his hold on her and stepped back. “But we will survive it. As will Aden. If we do it right, he will thrive. This is about him. Not about us.”

Her heart was thundering in her temples, her head spinning. She put her hand over the place where his fingers had been. Her skin was hot, not to the touch, but beneath the flesh. Inside of her. She’d never felt anything like it before. Didn’t understand how it was possible.

“On that we can agree,” she said, aware, painfully, that she sounded breathless. That she was breathless.

“Then perhaps we can put a halt on the dramatics?”

“When you put a halt to your douche-baggery.”

Dark brows locked together. “What is this word?”

“It means you’re being a jerk. But more than a jerk even,” she said. “Worse.”

“No one talks to me like this,” he said, his tone firm, not imperious. He was simply stating a fact, and she wasn’t all that surprised by it. She didn’t know why she felt empowered to speak to him like that. Maybe it wasn’t empowerment so much as a need to push him away. Anger was safer than the pull she felt toward him. Much safer.

“No one who has any idea of how to act in polite company talks to people the way you do,” she said.

“I spend a lot of time outside of polite company.”

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Clearly.”

“Our discussion is through.”

“What about dinner?”

“Suddenly, I am thinking I might take it in my room. Or an enemy prison. Either is preferable.”

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