Natural-Born Protector / Saved by the Monarch

by Carla Cassidy

  He had failed.

  He had underestimated the enemy and let down Judi, his family and his people. He should have known something wasn’t right, caught some sign, should have sensed that something had been off with the general.

  Hot fury burned through him. He had loved the man like a father. He had confided in him in the past, listened to his advice. He had thought the bastard a hero.

  If the army was against the monarchy…No other force in the country was strong enough to stand against the Valtrian Army. The army he’d helped to make more efficient, helped to strengthen. The very one he served in.

  With so many of his friends, men he considered brothers.

  Would they, too, fight against him?

  He looked up at Judi, wanting to make her understand, somehow, how sorry he was that he wasn’t going to be able to save her. He would have given anything to see her safe, but the men who’d captured them had no reason to bargain.

  Chapter Seven

  The last time Miklos had been to the compound, as a guest, General Rossi had called it his mountain hunting hideaway. Since then, the place had taken on the character of a miniature military base, crammed with army trucks and the odd tank or two, soldiers—traitors—filling the guesthouses.

  Since they were both gagged, the best Miklos could manage was a slight brush against Judi’s hands when they’d been pushed out of the chopper. He wanted to let her know that as long as he was alive, he was not going to let anything happen to her. Which wasn’t much of a guarantee under the circumstances.

  “Move it.” They were shoved forward, taken into a cement structure that looked like a military bunker, then down a flight of stairs.

  Prison cells. When had the general put this in? How long had he been preparing? The sense of betrayal was a heavy weight that pushed him down, along with the blame he felt for not figuring this out earlier. He met with the general at least once a week. How many times had they talked just this month? If he’d caught even a hint that something had been off, he could have saved his family.

  His hands fisted, but he could do nothing. The situation looked as dire as it possibly could. They faced overwhelming opposition forces. So he did what any good soldier would do under the circumstances: kept a sharp eye out for a small break, something he could turn to his advantage. And he refused to give up hope.

  “Your new royal suite is waiting,” one of the soldiers mocked, stepping between his prisoners.

  Miklos could do little to reassure Judi when her panicked gaze flew to him.

  But when they went inside and he spotted the two cells, almost like bear cages, he saw that only one was empty. Then, when he got used to the semidarkness, he recognized the other prisoner, despite the fact that the man’s face was badly beaten and bloodied.

  Miklos lurched toward the bars, bruising his shoulder when he broke free from the hold of the soldier behind him, and slammed against the inch-thick steel rods. The gag loosened from his mouth in the process. “Chancellor?”

  But the man didn’t move.

  “Chancellor! It’s Miklos.” It seemed impossible now that he could have suspected the chancellor of turning against the monarchy, even for a second.

  He had trusted the general implicitly because they were both military men. The chancellor was a politician through and through, embroiled in a number of intrigues at court in his younger years, most involving young ladies, then political ones later. And even though Miklos had been shocked when the general had accused him, in the back of his mind there had been that little doubt, the knowledge that the chancellor had a reputation for being a wheeler and dealer.

  “Chancellor Hansen!” He started to look the man over for signs of how serious his injuries might be but was unceremoniously yanked away from the bars, then shoved into the empty cell with Judi.

  One of the soldiers pulled a knife and cut their gags as well as the plastic ties that had held their hands together. Then the door swung shut with a creak and a bang. The lock turned.

  At least they were together.

  He wanted to take Judi into his arms, but the men were heading toward the other cell. He threw himself against the bars, from the inside this time.

  “Chancellor Hansen,” he shouted. Then as the soldiers opened the old man’s cell, he called out an order. “Do not touch him!”

  Only when they dragged the chancellor out, over the uneven, cold floor, did he realize that his old friend could no longer hear him, nor could he feel the soldiers’ rough handling.

  He blinked as the man’s lifeless body was dragged out. Miklos beat against the bars until his hands turned bloody, hard rage filling him. Then he leaned against the cold wall of the cell, seeing little more than the chancellor’s bloodied, lifeless body.

  His muscles were rigid with grief, his soul black with the need for revenge. When he got out of here—and he would—those sons of…He was pure soldier in that moment, a fighting machine that could and would take his enemies apart with his bare hands.

  Judi stepped up next to him. Just stood there within touching distance, waiting. Her presence made it impossible to fully settle into the darkness that tried to claim him, no matter how much he wanted to do just that.

  “He was a man of peace.” He bit out the words and felt broken, unable to erase the sight from his mind. A man of peace through and through. How could he have ever doubted it? “Hurting him was completely unnecessary. They had nothing to gain by killing him.”

  But they’d done it anyway. In cold blood. A kind old man, and they had beaten him to death. Rage was filling Miklos to the brim. He wanted to strike out at anything and everything.

  “Were you close?” Judi put a hand on his shoulder. Her voice sounded weak with shock. She wasn’t a soldier, wasn’t used to seeing violence.

  Hell, the past twenty-four hours were getting to be too much even for him. “As close as family.” Bile burned his throat. He stepped away from her, his rage too strong, his emotions too tumultuous to be near anyone. He wanted to rip apart their cell brick by brick and go after the general.

  She came to him, not understanding his need for space. When he was practically cornered, she leaned against him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry.”

  And to his surprise, he didn’t feel like shaking off her touch. But still, his fury took time to cool. A few minutes passed before he rested his chin on the top of her head and could at least accept a small portion of the comfort she was offering.

  Each breath he took brought her scent to him, making it impossible to ignore her.

  He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had tried to give him comfort. Maybe the nursemaids when he’d been little. His mother had always been too busy with matters of state to spend much time with her children. The extent of their contact was when the governesses brought the children in for her inspection for one full hour each day before dinner. His father believed in bringing up strong boys, toughening them up early for the roles they would have to play in life. For this he employed fencing and wrestling tutors. As far as personal time went, he did take them skiing once a year.

  Judi hugged him tighter.

  He didn’t realize until then just how good a gentle touch could feel, that he could need something like that. But now that he had it, he didn’t want to let it go. She was the one person outside his closest family who didn’t want anything from him. In fact, all she wanted was to go home.

  But for now she was still here. Still unharmed for the most. They were still together.

  He closed his arms around her. “Are you warm enough?”

  There was no heat in the dungeon, and all she had on was a sweater. He had a good parka he’d gotten from Luigi.

  He’d brought warm clothes for her, too, but he hadn’t been able to get back to his snowmobile after the fight. He’d been too busy getting tied up and shoved up into the chopper.

  “I’m fine.”

  Of course she was. She was as tough as any soldier he’d ever known, w
hich he greatly admired about her. But that toughness should never have been tested like this. He pushed her back a little, opened his parka and settled her against his body before closing the parka on her back. He did his best to remain detached and keep his focus on the door as their bodies molded together.

  “What’s going to happen to us?” she asked and trembled against him slightly.

  Probably the same thing that had happened to Chancellor Hansen, he thought, but couldn’t say the words to her. “There are more people who are loyal to the monarchy than who are against us.”

  “So we’ll be saved?”

  He didn’t count on that too much. Eventually, good would win over evil, he was sure of that. But he couldn’t guarantee how fast that would happen, whether it would be too late for them. And his family. He would have given anything for news of his mother and brothers.

  “Oh,” she said after a while when he didn’t answer. “Things are worse than you thought, aren’t they?”

  Still he hesitated to share his thoughts with her. But she was in the middle of the danger with him. She had a right to know.

  “Like I told you, just before I left to receive you at the airport, I received intelligence that there was a plot against Arpad, the crown prince.” He still couldn’t say that without seeing red.

  Her hold tightened around him. “And there you were, worried about your brother’s life, having to deal with me.”

  He didn’t mind dealing with her. He acknowledged the odd thought. She was worth any trouble. And he would defend her with his life if it came down to it.

  “There’s more, isn’t there?” She tilted up her head.

  “To go after Arpad, a small group of assassins would have been the most logical. Sneak in, sneak out. To remove Arpad, they didn’t need to get the army involved, didn’t need to lay siege to Maltmore Castle.”

  “They want the whole royal family.” She finished the thought for him in a shaky voice, sounding as stunned as he felt by the prospect.

  “Yes.” The Freedom Council must have decided that trying to make the royal family abdicate wasn’t worth the effort. They didn’t want a cumbersome public discourse that would take forever.

  “I think our enemies might be engineering a revolution. A fake revolution. The people aren’t the ones rising up, but that’s what they’ll say later. The Freedom Council somehow gained the general’s support. The general turned the army or part of the army…” A prince didn’t use foul language. But if he did, this would have been the perfect time to swear.

  “Why not let you reach your brothers at Maltmore? He could have had the whole family taken out all at once. Wouldn’t that make more sense than having you separately kidnapped?”

  “I’m an army man. Some of the army might not go up against the castle if they think they’re going up against me. The general can cook up some story about my family, about something terrible my brothers did or new taxes the monarchy is planning that would burden the common man, whatever. But a lot of the soldiers know me. The general might even say that my own brothers killed me because I stood up for the people. He plans on taking care of me separately.”

  He couldn’t see much of her in the dim prison, but he could tell that she was staring at him with an expression of wide-eyed horror on her face.

  “And the soldiers here? They saw you already. They know that the general kidnapped you. Why don’t they turn against him and set you free?” she asked after a while.

  “I haven’t seen one yet that I know. They must have been brought in from outlying posts, maybe from the eastern border. No telling what lies they’ve been told. They are loyal to their general. We will not find any allies here.”

  But they had to break out somehow.

  His brothers and mother were at Maltmore Castle, which had been surrounded by the general’s men on pretense of protection. Had they made their move yet? Was his family already dead?

  Judi laid her head against his chest, her voice a mere whisper when she spoke. “How much time do you think we have left?”

  JUDI WAS LEANING AGAINST the wall as she sat next to Miklos, their shoulders touching. She needed that connection.

  Their small prison had no bed, no table, no bucket. It looked more like a bear cage than a prison cell. They’d been dumped in here about an hour ago, but their captors clearly weren’t planning on keeping them too long. She could figure that out on her own, even if Miklos had evaded her question earlier.

  They had been left in the dark—the light that filtered in under the door was precious little—and it was cold. But at least the bunker was closed, and it kept the wind out. And being partially underground, it wasn’t nearly as cold as that first cave up high on the mountain.

  The thought sent a shiver through her body.

  “Did they hurt you when they took you from the inn?” Miklos’s voice cut the darkness and drew her from those frozen memories.

  She’d seen him looking her over a couple of times on the way here in the chopper, checking for injuries. He must have seen the one bruise on her cheek. They’d done little beyond pushing her around. “I’m fine.”

  “You always say that,” he told her as if he didn’t fully believe her.

  “They only needed me to get you to come to them. You should have stayed away.”

  He said nothing to that.

  “They didn’t exactly take me from the inn,” she confessed. “They tried, I think. Someone was breaking in. But I climbed out the window.”

  She could feel as he shifted toward her. “We weren’t on the first floor.”

  “I jumped on top of a truck.”

  Ominous silence stretched between them.

  “Then I asked the driver to take me to Sacorata.” It had been a good plan. It could have worked. If she could have gotten away, then he wouldn’t have had to save her. He could be at Maltmore Castle by now, instead of keeping her company in some nasty dungeon.

  More silence. She was beginning to think that wasn’t good.

  “I thought if I stayed, I’d just hold you back.” He had to understand that.

  “You got into a truck with a strange man?” His voice was deceptively controlled.

  “He seemed nice.” Okay, that did sound pretty stupid in hindsight, but at the time she hadn’t had many options.

  Yet more silence came from the prince.

  “Having to worry about me was the last thing you needed.” That was a fact he couldn’t argue with. She hoped.

  “And just how far did you plan to run?” His voice had an edge to it.

  She bit her bottom lip. “Home?”

  She could hear him breathing. His chest huffed like a bellows.

  “You were leaving me for my own good,” he stated flatly.

  “Right.” Why did she think that she wasn’t doing a good job at convincing him?

  “And then what happened?”

  She shivered at the memory. “We ran into a roadblock a couple of miles out of town. They—” She swallowed. “They just shot the driver. He couldn’t have been older than I am. All he was doing was helping me. They yanked me out of the cab, and then they shot him point-blank.” Her voice broke.

  All that blood in the cab. God.

  Gunther had been killed because of her. Because she had begged a ride from him. The stress and danger of the last two days crashed down on her, along with the sure knowledge that Miklos and she would soon be joining Gunther wherever he was now. The constant, unrelenting threat of death was beginning to become more than she could bear.

  And she knew Miklos was mad at her, that he was ready to tear into her for having acted so foolishly. And he would be right. She might have started with good intentions, but they meant nothing. Gunther was dead. A sob escaped her throat.

  She fully expected the prince to give her a piece of his mind, was ready to admit how right he was, how foolish she’d been. But the next thing she knew, his arms were warm and strong around her, his presence fortifying as he pulled her to him. His
familiar scent comforted her. She let her head rest against his shoulder as she swallowed her tears.

  “I shouldn’t have left you alone in that room,” he said softly.

  His warm hand reached under the parka he’d insisted she wear, and smoothed her back. She soaked in his strength. And with each passing moment, she became more and more aware of their bodies touching.

  She only had to move her head a fraction of an inch to have her mouth come into contact with his neck. She could feel his pulse as blood rushed under his skin. Her lips tingled, but she didn’t move away. She brought a hand up to his chest instead, and sank into the feeling of his arms tightening around her.

  Awareness filled out the darkness. The connection between them could not be ignored. It had been there from the very first moment. She had been foolish to deny it.

  Heat blossomed inside her and spread through her body.

  “Would you mind if I kissed you?” he asked suddenly.

  Desire trembled through her. Maybe it was the imminent threat of death, but she wanted him with every ounce of her being, as if his touch was the only anchor left that held her to life. But she didn’t want him to see, to know just how badly she needed him.

  “Oh, why not. We’ll be dead by morning anyway.”

  “That’s the spirit,” he said with a chuckle that broke some of the tension between them, but not the sexual tension, which even another avalanche would have had trouble extinguishing at this stage. He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to his.

  When their lips touched at last, their surroundings fell away.

  Warm.

  Firm.

  Seeking.

  He kissed her bottom lip leisurely, like a man who had all the time in the world, when all she wanted was to rush headlong into the denied need between them. The top lip came next, then the corners of her mouth. And when she relaxed at last and sighed in pleasure, his tongue swept inside to touch hers.

  Inches of clothes stood between them, but she was more aware of his body than she’d ever been of any other man. Need filled her little by little as he expertly seduced her mouth. That scared her. She didn’t want to need him.