Protect his wife.
The words rang through him with a completely different meaning. It was the second time that night that they hadn’t used protection and Eloise might be pregnant with his child.
The realisation was truly sobering, and the image of a small child with his dark skin and her blue eyes sprang into his mind and lodged itself into his heart. Along with the desire and need to be better than his father—more than a distant, commanding figure shaping a small child, paving over the secret wants and wishes contained in that child’s heart and moulding him into being something else, someone else... He wouldn’t be that person. He would never be like his father.
Again guilt and sorrow poured salt on to a painful open wound. He had long ago grieved for the man who had once shown him love, for the loss of his mother, and the moment he had realised that his father was human, was fallible, had faults... That was the moment Odir had truly become a man.
He never wanted his child to feel that same crashing sensation. Oh, it would happen, he was sure—Odir was not arrogant enough to think himself perfect. But still...
His father had chosen to indulge in pain, zealousness and misery. He had taken the love he had once felt for his wife and children and turned it into something bitter and damaging. And Odir knew that his country wouldn’t survive if it suffered the same again. Odir would never willingly allow that threat to his people. But deep down he knew it wasn’t just his people he was protecting. It was himself.
So within his mind he slowly began to rebuild the walls around his heart—brick by brick, second by second—until everything that had been undone by Eloise in the last two hours was erased. No matter what happened after tonight—no matter what happened in the next few weeks and months—he had to make sure that his feelings for Eloise were not something that would risk the future of his country...the future of his heart.
But before he could speak to Eloise of the future he had one last thing to say about the past—words that were now bursting from his chest.
‘Eloise, I’m so sorry. For what I said to you earlier this evening. For what I thought of you.’
‘We never really had a chance, did we?’ she said, her sad smile offering sympathy, offering understanding.
‘But we do now. We can make a go of it now. I will help you maintain Natalia’s medical care. I will do whatever I can to help your mother in whatever way you want.’
* * *
Still lying on top of him, Eloise felt his breath against her neck, heard the words that he whispered into her ear, and wrapped herself in this new vow he was making to her. His apology soothed the sting of the past and she knew that he meant it. She knew that for the first time in her entire life there was someone to share her burden. To share her fear and the weight of the responsibility she had borne for so long.
‘But Eloise, I can give you nothing more than that.’
He paused as if to let his words sink in. As if to allow her time to hear the truth falling from his lips.
‘I cannot give you love. You were right—I do know how to love, I can and I have. But my love has now gone to my people. All of it. I have none left to give you.’
It hurt. More than she had ever thought it would. Her stomach cramped and she was surprised that her body didn’t curl in on itself the way she wanted it so desperately to do.
Here in his arms, with his body beneath her, she felt a part of the past break away and disappear into the night. And with it came the realisation that in the last six months of trying to ensure her friend’s safety she had experienced the very freedom that she had always yearned for.
Yes, she could walk away now—she could leave. If Odir wanted he could tell her father where to find her, could tell him that she had broken her promise to him and to her mother. Not that she thought he would... She could leave it all behind. But what would happen to Farrehed? What would happen to Odir?
When she had agreed to the marriage her father had arranged with Odir she had thought he might rescue her. When she’d realised that wasn’t the case she had tried to make the best of it. When he had thrown her aside she had taken the opportunity and run. She had protected her friend and lived a lie for six months.
Looking back, Eloise realised that at each turn, with every step, she had been thinking only of herself. She had not thought of the man she’d married. She had not thought of the people who had become her people.
If she was willing—if she could put aside her own broken heart and step back into the world of royal responsibility—then she could ensure the future and the security of everyone she cared for. How on earth could she put her own wishes above all that? And if in the last few hours Odir had managed to uncover a want that she had never known she had—a want for someone, anyone, to love her for who she was and not for what she could do or what she could be—well, that wasn’t his fault.
She shut her ears against the echo of a childlike voice, one from a distant memory, broken with tears, that was still asking to be loved.
Confused and hurt, desperate to reach out and comfort her past self and her future self, assuring both that one day they would all be okay, Eloise fought within herself. She had proved to herself that she was stronger than she had ever thought. She had started over again in a new country under
