His Two Royal Secrets (One Night With Consequences)

by Caitlin Crews

  “What did you do?” she demanded. “What do you mean, you called them?”

  “I called them,” he said again, much too calmly for her peace of mind, and even looked a bit quizzical. As if she was the one who had stopped making sense in a dizzying rush.

  And he was the man she loved. The man she had married in what she’d foolishly imagined was a quiet, sweet, personal ceremony.

  She’d believed his just the two of us, and all the while he’d had a helicopter full of reporters waiting.

  Which meant none of this had been romantic.

  You knew better, she reminded herself bitterly. And you did it anyway.

  Something in her turned over, spinning around in a nauseating loop. For a moment, she thought she might be sick. A kind of cramp ran through her, centering low in her belly, and she moved a hand to curl beneath the heaviest part of it. And she held it there, wishing she could hold herself together as easily.

  “Tell me why,” she managed to say. “Tell me why you would do this. We ran away from my father’s funeral to avoid these people and you called them here... You must know that they took pictures that will be everywhere within the hour.”

  He raised a brow. “That was my clear intent.”

  Pia looked around, wildly, because she thought her legs might cease to hold her. There was a bench to the side, beneath a huge painting that she had studied in finishing school, the better to make sparkling cocktail conversation. She waddled over to the bench and sank down on to it. Gratefully.

  Though she looked at Ares—her husband—and that awful feeling in her belly got worse.

  “I do not understand why you are looking at me as if I killed a man,” Ares said.

  And what struck her most was how truly, effortlessly beautiful he was. He was dressed in one of his usual royal uniforms, complete with the sash that proclaimed him the crown prince of these islands. Even here, in a controlled environment with less intrusive lighting, he looked as if the sun beamed down upon him.

  Pia should have known when Marbella had laid this particular dress out this morning. It was pure white. And while the hilarity of wearing all white while this astonishingly pregnant did not escape her, she couldn’t quite bring herself to laugh.

  Because she had believed him, and he had been putting on a show.

  And all the things she’d told herself about the heartache she’d experience had been one day. Far off the future. Far away from here, now, today.

  Yet here she was anyway, with a fantasy ring on her finger and a fantasy man, and a fantasy new marriage, too. The reality was a girl the size of a whale in a white dress that seemed pointed, a staged kiss, and all the sniggering she was sure she could already hear out there—or maybe her ears were ringing. She couldn’t quite tell.

  “I’ve spent my whole life in my father’s shadow,” Ares was telling her, standing over her with all that light he made on his own, and Pia should never have let herself do this. She should never have been so weak, risking not only her own humiliation—but her sons’. “I’ve never been good enough for the man. He ranted at me about our bloodline until I wished I could reach my hand inside my own body, and exsanguinate myself to escape it. The only thing that worked was keeping myself away from him. Excusing myself from the damned bloodline. But then you came along and changed everything.”

  “And you felt the best way to celebrate this change was with the paparazzi?”

  Pia felt raw inside. Torn wide-open.

  And worst of all, like such a fool.

  Because she’d believed him. She’d believed that not only did he care for her, not only did he want her, but that deep down—whether he knew it or not—he might even love her.

  She had believed what she wanted to believe, clearly.

  And Ares had been setting up a photo opportunity to get at his father.

  “I realized the last time I saw my father that I have abdicated my responsibilities entirely where he is concerned,” Ares told her, still standing where she’d left him in the middle of the wide hall. “And the closer we get to the birth of our own two sons, the more I realize what I owe not only them, but this kingdom. I think our subjects deserve better.”

  “Power infects,” she said, sounding hollow to her own ears. “You told me that.”

  “Better to claim it, then,” Ares replied, something flashing in his green eyes. He crossed to her, then crouched down to put himself at eye level. “Better that than to let it sit about, festering. I want to be the kind of king these princes—” he put his hand out to touch her belly, and for the first time she wanted to slap it away “—can look up to. No temper tantrums like winter storms, brutal and unpredictable. No shards of crystal littering the floors while they stand there, hoping not to be hit. I want to be a better man, Pia.”

  There was a roaring thing in her, grief and shame, and she wasn’t sure she could keep it inside her skin. She wasn’t sure she could survive this. Or that she wanted to.

  “You’re not talking about being a better man, Ares,” she threw back at him. “You’re talking about being a king. You begged me to marry you, and I surrendered. You didn’t tell me that it would be a business arrangement. You didn’t convince me by promising me a convenient union we could both use to our own ends. You made love to me. You made it romantic.”

  And she would hate herself forever for the way her voice cracked on that.

  But she pushed on anyway. “How could you make it romantic?”

  Ares looked floored. Astounded, as if it had never occurred to him that she could possibly have a problem with what had happened here today.

  “I do not understand the issue,” he said stiffly.

  “You could have asked me. You could have appealed to my practical side. You didn’t have to sleep your way into it.” And there were tears then, and those were worse. They felt too salty against her cheeks. They felt like a betrayal, or one more betrayal, and her heart felt tattered. Broken beyond repair. “You could have asked, Ares, and I would have come around.”

  “Pia—”

  “But you pretended it was something else,” she said, and the cramping was getting worse with every word she spoke. She rubbed at her belly, sucking in a breath as she tried to make herself comfortable. Or just make it through this conversation. “You pretended that you cared.”

  “I do care.”

  “You even told me I was beautiful.” And her voice dropped on that, into something so painful it hurt her to hear herself. “Why did you have to lie to me? Has this whole thing been a game to you from the start?”

  “This is not a game.” He rocked back on his heels, and even now, the moment he stopped touching her she wanted only for him to start again. “How can you think it?”

  “How could I think anything else?”

  “I don’t know what this is, Pia. Of course I care for you. You are the mother to my—”

  “You told me I was beautiful,” she said again, and her eyes were too blurry to see him now, which she took as a kind of blessing. There was a strange fire low in her belly, and that cramping that wouldn’t stop. “And the worst thing is, I wanted to believe you. I did believe you. Why would you do this to me?”

  “What did I do to you?” he roared at her, as if even now, he didn’t understand.

  “You made me think that you could love me,” she told him, though she thought it might kill her. There was a sob in her voice, and something heavy, like a stone, over her heart. And yet she kept going, though her face twisted. “Because only a man who loved me could find me beautiful.”

  Ares’s face changed then, into something like alarm, and that was even worse. “Pia.”

  But she’d started down this road. She’d humiliated herself. Why not throw all her cards on the table? After all, what was there left to protect?

  “I love you,” she told him, sealing her doom. “And I
never would have told you that. I would have kept it to myself because I know better. I still know better. But you told me I was beautiful, and I hoped, and you gave me your grandmother’s ring. And I wanted so badly to believe it could all be real.”

  He moved closer to her, a harsh look she’d never seen before on his face. “Pia, you need to—”

  She lifted up her hand to keep him back, because she couldn’t trust herself. And she tried to struggle to her feet, but her legs refused to help her. And she reminded herself that no one actually died of heartache, no matter how terrible they felt. No matter how awful she felt right now.

  “It’s not the first time I’ve been made a fool of, and I doubt it will be the last,” she told him. “You have what really matters to you. Legitimacy for your heirs. But I need you to promise me something, Ares. No matter what, you must never lie to me again. I need you to promise me that whatever games you need to play, it will never be this one. Never again.”

  “I will promise you anything you want, woman,” Ares all but shouted at her. “But right now, you are bleeding.”

  It seemed to take Pia a lifetime or two to look down at the white dress she wore. The way it pooled around her feet.

  And at the way what she’d taken for anxious cramps and heartache was instead bright red, and spreading out across her lap.

  “Promise me,” she said, though she didn’t mean the same thing any longer. Or she didn’t think she did.

  But then it didn’t matter what she meant, because the darkness came rushing at her, and sucked her in deep.

  * * *

  There was too much blood.

  Ares caught Pia as she began to slump over, and he was already shouting for his staff. For someone to call back that damned helicopter. For help.

  But there was blood. Everywhere.

  He swung Pia up and into his arms, and he barely felt the weight she carried in that marvelous belly of hers. He strode toward the staff who yelled at him, or for him, he didn’t care which.

  Her face was so pale. And the blood kept coming.

  It was the longest helicopter ride of his life. And when they landed on the Northern Island, on the top of the Royal Hospital, Ares was still holding her. And found he wanted to start knocking heads together, or start tearing people apart—something—when the medical personnel that met them on the roof took her from him to strap her on a gurney.

  “She is my wife,” he told them, aware he must sound mad with terror, with grief. Fierce with the fear that burned in him. “She will one day be your queen. She is carrying the heirs to this kingdom and you must save her. You must.”

  And then, despite all his arrogance, all his consequence and power, he could do nothing but watch them rush her away.

  Someone led him to a private room, eventually. They offered him a change of clothes, but he refused it. He sat in a chair with his head in his hands, and he waited.

  While inside, his heart threatened to burst.

  He could not lose Pia. He could not lose his sons.

  He had spent his whole life doing everything he could to avoid having a family, and he was about to lose his before he got the chance to enjoy them.

  Pia couldn’t believe he had called her beautiful.

  But Ares couldn’t believe she loved him.

  His first reaction was denial. Rage, that she would take this there, when it had worked fine as it was.

  Because he knew what no one dared say to his face.

  That there was nothing about him anyone could love, except his mother. And she had died a long time ago now.

  But there was no one else on this earth, not even his father, who shared that sentiment. Ares was a monument to a throne, that was all. He was not a person. He existed in the first place only because his father needed an heir. Any child his mother had could have taken on that role. But no one loved him.

  Except Pia.

  And Ares could argue with himself all he liked. He could tell himself that she was mistaken. Or that she didn’t know enough about men and had fallen for the first man who had ever touched her—

  But he knew that wasn’t true. There had been any number of men at that party, but Pia had smiled at him.

  Him.

  Ares knew now that she had never done anything like what she had that night in New York, but she’d done it for him. She’d given him her innocence. She had suffered his reaction to the news that she was pregnant. She’d come with him to the islands, and allowed him to lock her away for his own peace of mind, not hers.

  She had done all these things, and he knew that there could only be one reason. The one reason he never would have come up with on his own, because the word wasn’t in his vocabulary.

  She loved him.

  Once he understood that, Ares couldn’t understand how he had ever managed to convince himself that it was anything else. That it could be anything else.

  And now she had blood all over her. Blood, again. Blood always.

  And if that blood was poisoned, the way he’d always believed, he had done that, too.

  And Ares found that while he had no trouble thinking of the ways he could pay for the sins of that bloodline, he couldn’t bring himself to imagine that Pia might also pay that price. Or either one of the babies she carried.

  He could not lose her.

  God help him, he could not lose her, not now. Not when he had only begun to grasp how very much she meant to him.

  She was the only woman he had ever been this intimate with. There was the astonishingly good sex, yes, but they’d spent all this time together. Time enough to get to know her. Time enough to understand how much more it was he wanted to know her.

  Time to understand that he wanted, badly, to meet his own sons.

  Ares needed more time.

  He thought he could spend a lifetime trying to imagine what Pia might say next. He thought he could spend another one learning the different shades of meaning in her smiles.

  She was the only woman he had given his grandmother’s ring. The only woman he had asked to marry him, not once, but time and time again.

  She was the only woman, period.

  She needed to live, so he could tell her so. So he could tell her a thousand things. So he could apologize for treating her like a pawn—

  She just needed to live.

  “Your Highness,” came a voice from a doctor at the door, and Ares’s head shot up, but he couldn’t read anything on the man’s face. “Your wife is stable, but the babies are in some distress. We will be performing a cesarean section immediately.”

  “Early,” Ares managed to say, his head spinning. “It’s too early.”

  “Twins are always early,” the doctor replied. “But we must make haste.”

  And Ares followed, unable to do anything else.

  Because he could not lose Pia. And he could not lose these babies he had yet to meet. And he had not realized until now, until he found himself in these antiseptic halls, how very thoroughly lost he had been since the first moment he’d set eyes on this woman.

  His wife.

  His future queen, and mother to the future king of Atilia.

  Ares, by God, would make sure she lived long enough to assume each and every one of those roles.

  And tell him she loved him once more.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  PIA WOKE UP in a panic. A desperate, confused rush—

  “Pia. Cara mia.”

  Her head snapped around, and she found him there.

  Ares.

  With those grave green eyes, and a stern set to his beautiful mouth. Ares, her prince, though he appeared to be wearing hospital scrubs. Of all things.

  She felt herself calm, just a little. Because Ares was there, and that meant—

  “My babies—” she blurted out, her heart exploding inside her. She t
ried to sit up, but her abdomen protested sharply, and she had the terrible notion that she’d had surgery. And that meant... “What happened to my babies—”

  “We have all been waiting for you,” Ares said, very solemnly, and the calm sound of his voice made her stop. Made her breathe. “Allow me to make the introductions.”

  And then he reached into the double bassinet she hadn’t seen beside the bed, and carefully lifted up a tiny little bundle. It sported a wrinkled pink face and a shock of dark hair peeking out from beneath a little white beanie.

  “I present to you our first born,” Ares said, something rich and awed in his voice. “He is perfect in every way. I inspected him myself.”

  Pia accepted her baby, a rush of something so intense and primitive slamming into her as she took him that she was happy—fiercely so—she was already in a bed. Because she feared it would have knocked her over. She gazed down at the tiny bundle in her arms, making sounds she hadn’t heard herself make before. She saw him scrunch up his nose, and his perfect little mouth, and she understood that she would never be the same again.

  “And his brother,” Ares said, and placed the other baby in her other arm. As if he knew that she needed to touch them both. “He is equally perfect in every way. I can verify this personally.”

  And that same wave took her over again. Harder, deeper.

  She bent her head to one, then the other. She checked to make sure each one was breathing. And as she did, each tiny boy began to make tiny little noises, as if they understood exactly who she was and were offering their own form of greeting.

  She could already tell they were that smart. That beautiful. That absolutely perfect.

  “You were there?” she asked.

  “They came out of you, directly into my hands,” Ares said, and it sounded like another vow. Like an impossible intimacy.

  And when she met his gaze, her chest ached.

  “I want to feed them,” she whispered.

  Or, having missed their birth, maybe she needed to.

  And Ares was there beside her, so she didn’t have to worry over all the various things she’d read about how best to get each one of them where they needed to go. He helped her. He set a pillow over her abdomen, which stuck out significantly less than it had when she’d last seen it.