The Missing Monarch

by Rachelle Mccalla

  “No!” Monica’s voice rose to shouting. “Have you heard anything I’ve said? Octavian sent me to get you, to bring you to him.”

  “We can’t go to him.” Thad tried to shush her with a glare that had sent many a calloused oil worker cowering.

  “Listen.” She ignored his silencing expression. “Octavian needs your signature. He needs a document that he says you stole from him. He says if you sign it, he’ll leave us alone.”

  Thad knew he had to contain the situation. Not only that, he needed to get a handle on the unfamiliar emotions that were thrashing inside him like the arctic waters during a storm.

  Even above the constant reek of oil and ocean brine, he smelled her gentle, feminine scent, and memories flew from the prisons where he’d banished them.

  She looked up at him, and he clutched his chest, trying to stifle the aching pain that originated there. He’d tried for six years to cauterize that part of his heart, but one look at her big brown eyes tore open the old wound, proving it had never really healed. Yearnings he hadn’t felt in years awakened from their long hibernation.

  “We need to leave.” She spoke with a note of authority he hadn’t heard her use before. This wasn’t the meek graduate student he’d fallen for so long ago.

  “We do.” He agreed. “We need to hide.”

  “We need to return to Octavian.” She took his arm and pulled him toward the door. “The pilot said he’d wait half an hour. Thick fog is rolling in—he didn’t think he could wait any longer than that.”

  The tug on his heart was even stronger than the pull on his arm, and he pulled her close to him. “I’ll hide you. He won’t find you again. But we can’t go with the pilot he hired. There is nothing outside of this oil rig that is more important than me keeping my head down.”

  “Nothing?” Her lips twitched again, and Thad thought he caught a glimmer of moisture in her eyes. The sight of it tore at him. If there was any way he could have spared Monica the pain of what he’d put her through, he’d have done it. But shortly after they’d eloped in Lydia in a solitary ceremony witnessed only by his trusted friend Kirk and the deacon who’d conducted the service, the insulated world of Thad’s royal heritage had been shattered.

  His father, King Philip of Lydia, had shared with Thad the ignoble agreement he’d struck with the billionaire Octavian. There was nothing his father could have done to change what had happened. After grilling his father on possible solutions, Thad had finally concluded the only way to keep all his loved ones safe and the tiny kingdom of Lydia free from the hands of a deluded would-be despot, was for him to leave.

  He repeated his answer. “Nothing.”

  * * *

  Monica felt dizzy. Maybe it was a lingering effect from the plane ride, maybe the result of being awake for the past thirty-six hours straight, or maybe the rig itself was moving with the rocking waves.

  She’d tried to talk that madman Octavian out of his plan. She hadn’t wanted to make this trip, but her life—and her son’s—were on the line. She struggled to recall everything Octavian had told her. The man had three objectives to achieve. If she wanted to get home to her little boy, she had to do as he asked.

  “Thad, listen. Your father’s in a coma.”

  “I know that.” An emotion flickered in his eyes. The thick mountain-man beard that covered most of his face made him almost unrecognizable, except for his eyes. After the many years they’d spent as friends, and the short weeks of love they’d shared afterward, she knew those eyes well. How long had she silently admired this man, content to be close friends, before he’d finally acted on the simmering attraction between them? How many years had she wanted to look into his eyes, content to catch friendly glimpses and look away before her true feelings were exposed? Mere weeks before graduation, Thad had finally realized that their friendship was something much deeper, and they’d gazed into each other’s eyes until she’d memorized every glimmer that hid there. She’d lost herself, staring into those eyes years before. She could lose herself there again if she wasn’t careful.

  “Your father was missing for almost a week. The cr—”

  Thad gave her a look that silenced her. She gulped a breath, took a step closer to him and spoke in a rushed whisper. “The crown has passed from him, and he can’t be king anymore. You’re his successor.”

  “Parliament formed an oligarchy to rule for now. My sisters are a part of it. It’s fine.” Thad’s words were mostly silence and crisp articulations punctuated by anger.

  “It’s not fine. Octavian wants you to—”

  “I refuse to do anything Octavian asks me to do.”

  Monica realized her hands were in fists. She slowly unclenched them, thinking of Peter. Octavian knew about Peter—he’d even given her the opportunity to call her mother and leave a cryptic message about having to go away on urgent unexpected business for a while. Her mother had been confused and concerned, but happy enough about spending more time with her grandson.

  Peter was in good hands. He’d be safe—as long as she could convince Thad that he needed to cooperate with Octavian. She had to make Thad understand. But the last thing she wanted to do was tell him about Peter like this.

  She had to make him see that Octavian’s way made sense. “The oligarchy was intended to be only a temporary solution until the rightful heir could be determined.”

  Thad crossed his arms over his broad chest. “It’s simple. They can crown Alexander. He’s the oldest after me. He’s a perfectly capable leader.”

  “But your father didn’t name Alexander his successor. He named you. Unless you renounce your claim to the throne—”

  “In order for my renunciation to be recognized, I would have to travel in person—”

  “Precisely. If you don’t intend to rule—”

  “I don’t intend to appear publically—”

  “You have to—”

  “They can declare me legally dead.” Thad’s voice boomed, silencing their war of whispers.

  She stared at him. No, maybe those weren’t Thad’s eyes after all. Maybe this person in Thad’s body was someone she didn’t know anymore. “You’re not dead.”

  But the stranger’s eyes bored into hers with a foreign sameness that gave her chills. He leaned close and whispered with intense authority, “The Crown Prince Thaddeus of Lydia is dead. I am Thad Miller, an engineer who left his wife to work in the oil fields of Alaska.”

  Monica pressed her back against the wall and studied the stranger who looked so much like the man she’d once loved. He had Thad’s tall stature, his booming voice. He had the same blue eyes, but the sorrow that simmered in their depths was utterly foreign to her, as was his thick beard, his unruly hair and his attitude.

  The Thad she’d once known would never have uttered any sort of lie. Certainly not about something as critical as whether he was even alive. But then, this Thad seemed to honestly believe the man he’d once been was buried and gone, and could never rise again.

  A hot lump burned in her throat, and she bit back the reminder of all she’d lost. Her husband. Her life’s love. Her son’s father.

  Octavian had given her more to say, but in the face of this unexpected stranger, she realized those words belonged in another world—a world that still cared about rules of succession and time-honored traditions, and the sanctity of life and death.

  She’d gotten a hint of it, traveling from oil rig to oil rig, of the desolation the men endured working there, living off
the dregs of greed at the edge of the earth. What had they told her time and again? Most men worked in two week shifts—on the rig for two weeks, and then back to civilization and their families for two weeks. It was the only way to keep them sane.

  If a man missed his shift swap, he’d be near buggy by the time he got off the rig. Men did desperate things, and went near suicidal under those conditions. It wasn’t any way to live. Not for a few weeks. Certainly not for six years straight. But Thad, as so many had noted every time she’d asked for him, didn’t seem to be a man at all. Instead of rotating off the rigs, he hopped from rig to rig.

  Never stopping. Never resting.

  More like a machine than a man.

  Maybe the man she’d married was gone. But that didn’t change the threat to her son.

  “If you don’t cooperate, Octavian has threatened to hurt my family.”

  “Why would he do that? There’s nothing he could gain from that.”

  Monica forced herself to breathe in and out slowly. Steadily. Thad would be thinking only of her parents and sister. Though he’d never met them personally, she’d spoken of them often enough. Her father was a medical doctor. Her mother had been a nurse decades before, but ever since Monica’s birth, Sheila Miller was mostly an at-home mom and volunteer of the year at half a dozen different places. And Monica’s little sister was a lawyer—perfectly capable of defending herself.

  No, she wasn’t too worried about them. Lydia’s enemies had little reason to go after them—not when she had a more vulnerable relative with closer ties to Thad’s country.

  She had no other option but to tell him. Her son’s life depended on it. Her hand shook as she pulled out the pictures of Peter. “We have a son.”

  Thad’s face blanched white under his beard, and he seemed to stop breathing for several long seconds as he stared at the pictures with unblinking eyes. “No.” He closed his eyes firmly, as though to shut out the evidence she held in her hand.

  Monica waited patiently for him to open his eyes again, to take in the images of the child who strongly took after his father. “His name is Peter.” She quoted the name she knew her husband loved, his favorite apostle from the Bible. “He’s five years old—almost five and a half, as he tells everyone whenever they ask. He has your eyes.” She looked him full in the face, comparing him to the photographs of Peter. “Almost your eyes—his are a little more greenish-blue.”

  Thad reached for the pictures with trembling hands, but then drew back as if touching the photographs would confirm a truth he didn’t want to accept. “No.”

  But Monica could see that he’d spotted the resemblance. She watched the truth sink in. “Peter is your son.”

  Still he shook his head. “No, no, no,” he stuttered mournfully, no longer protesting the truth of what she’d said, but rather, expressing deep regret that it was true.

  She’d told herself he wouldn’t likely be happy about the news, but his response—utterly appalled—cut at her heart. She loved her son more than anything.

  Thad looked as though he wished the boy had never been born. “This changes everything.” He looked weary, almost sorrowful.

  His expression pierced her heart, but she leaped on the hope he offered her with his words. “So, you’ll come with me?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Peter? He’s staying with my parents in Seattle.”

  “Octavian knows he’s my son?”

  She didn’t know how Octavian had figured it out—unless he’d only guessed. But even if it had been only a guess, she’d already confirmed the truth with her terrified reaction to Octavian’s barrage of questions. “Yes.”

  The sorrowful look in Thad’s eyes glimmered with fear, and Monica felt an uneasy terror grip her.

  Thad’s respiration rate increased. He took the pictures from her, tucking them back away into her wallet and slipping it inside her bag as though he could just as easily hide Peter from anyone who might be looking for him. “The pilot is working for Octavian?”

  “Octavian hired him because of his familiarity with the area. But I don’t think the pilot knows him. He’s not one of his men,” she said, a sickening fear crawling up her back. Thad acted as though Peter was already in danger. But no, Peter was safe. He had to be. Octavian had said Peter would be safe as long as she did exactly what he’d told her to do. She hadn’t agreed to find Thad in order to endanger her son. She’d done it to protect him.

  Still, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise in response to the panicked look on Thad’s face. Thad never looked panicked. Or he hadn’t when she’d known him. Now an ominous chill swept up her spine.

  Thad’s face blanched pale. “We’ll have to take the plane. Let them think we’re cooperating. With this fog rolling in we don’t have any other way of slipping away.” He pulled the door open. “We’ve got to hurry.”

  “Hurry?” She couldn’t be sure what he was muttering about, but she didn’t like the sound of it. He strode down the hall, and she had to trot along just to keep up with him.

  “To warn your parents.”

  Fear swept over her as though she’d been doused with icy water. Her son had to be safe. Octavian promised. Peter had to be safe. “Why do we need to warn my parents?”

  “They’ll have to sneak away with Peter before Octavian gets his hands on him.”

  “I thought Octavian was after you. He was only threatening Peter to get to you.”

  “That may have been what he told you, but if he hasn’t figured it out already, it won’t be long before Octavian realizes the legal loophole Peter has created.” Thad spun around in the empty hallway and, almost as though he feared the very walls might overhear, he leaned close to her ear and whispered, “I’ve been living in self-imposed exile in order to keep Lydia out of the hands of an evil madman. But if I have a son, they don’t even need me.”

  She felt a wordless plea rise up inside her, that God would take away the words she feared her husband was about to speak. Her fear for her son’s safety drowned out any comfort she might have felt being so close to her husband.

  Thad pulled away just enough to meet her eyes. “All they have to do is get their hands on my son.”

  TWO

  Thad packed a bag in seconds and threw it over his shoulder before leading Monica down the hallway at nearly a run.

  Octavian wanted control of Lydia. He’d hatched so many plots over the years in an attempt to get his way, but all of them had one thing in common: taking advantage of the most vulnerable member of the royal family to capitalize on their connection to the crown. Octavian had first approached Thad’s father, Philip, right after he’d been crowned king, while he was still mourning the sudden death of his own parents and wondering whether he had what it took to rule.

  That time Octavian’s plans had very nearly worked.

  When Thad had thwarted Octavian by running away instead of following through with his part of the arrangement Octavian had made with Philip, the ruthless would-be ruler had simply changed his target. Octavian had tried to marry off Thad’s younger sisters in hopes of creating a puppet heir. He’d finagled his way around an old family connection to change the order of succession.

  He’d tried anything and everything, but Thad’s siblings had held him off each time.

  But if Thad had a son, the Kingdom of Lydia had an heir who didn’t know enough to distrust Octavian—a young, impressionable little boy who could be molded and shaped according to
Octavian’s whims....

  Thad launched himself down the stairs to the platform where the seaplane waited. The craft was fitted with landing skids. Though some seaplanes could land on water or runways, he could see this particular plane was only equipped for water landings. He quickly clarified with Monica that they weren’t likely to fly directly into Octavian’s clutches. “Where did you board this plane?”

  “On the Alaskan shore north of Deadhorse. Octavian flew me into Deadhorse on a small jet, sent me by bus to the coast. He hired his seaplane to hop from rig to rig until I found you.”

  “Good.” Thad felt glad for the break, however small it was. They could take the seaplane back to the mainland, catch the bus for Deadhorse and then make a break for it. He’d made plenty of connections in the area over the past six years. He could slip out of Octavian’s clutches without too much trouble.

  The difficult part would be getting Peter to a safe location. If Monica’s parents could hide the boy long enough for Thad to reach him, he could take his son into hiding. He’d drafted contingency plans aplenty for himself. The tricky part would be reaching Peter before Octavian got to him. Monica’s parents had no idea what they were up against. Peter would be in a grave situation until Thad reached him.

  And if Octavian got his hands on Peter, the kingdom of Lydia would be lost.

  They’d have to hurry.

  Monica shook as he helped her board the plane, and her hands trembled so much as she struggled to latch her seat belt that the two ends merely clattered together until he reached across her lap and buckled them for her. She cast him a grateful smile.

  His heart stuttered at the once familiar sight of her lovely lips arched upward for him. Thad struggled to think clearly.

  The attraction he felt for his wife muddied his thoughts. Obviously, that was part of the reason Octavian sent her—to get him to think with his heart instead of his head. As much as Thad wanted to scoop up his family and whisk them away to safety, he had to think strategically. Octavian wouldn’t hesitate to use any missteps against him. So much was at stake. His siblings had already fought hard to keep the Lydian crown from Octavian’s grasp.