“When are you going to face the facts?” Angus crouched before Siobhan, taking her hands in his. “You must be guarded. You’ll get used to it. In time you’ll scarcely notice them.”

He gestured at the dozen brawny men standing outside the Green Room.

She shot a withering glance at her elite guard, standing with legs wide, arms folded across broad chests, wearing those ridiculous black suits, black glasses, with black earpieces. More like a black guard. Implacable, stony faces, and all of them with physiques that would make Atlas consider shrugging half his weight over. Where do they breed these kinds of men?

She snorted her disgust. “What you don’t understand is that if you’re so busy protecting me, the assassin is going to get whoever they’re really after.”

Angus raked his hand in his hair several times. “And who do you think they are after? Me?”

“Yes, of course! I’m a nobody, Angus!”

That made him stop, fear galloping through his heart. “You’re my fiancée—you’ll be my wife in a month—and you’re pregnant with my heir,” he whispered his reasoning, as if not saying it out loud would keep her safe. And you’re a royal in your own right.

They had talked at length about what Catriona discovered and had surreptitiously told her, trying to drive Siobhan away from Angus. He had also told Siobhan about the tampering of the gate and his suspicion his mother was trying to kill her as he suspected Catriona had done to Lilian.

But to Siobhan, the fact Catriona used this information, believing it would send her away on her own, was reason to doubt that Catriona had it in for her.

“Why do you refuse to accept reality?”

Irritated by his logic, she put her hands on her hips and said, “You’re stubborn.”  

“I bow before you, my lady. The queen of willfulness.” He stood up to his full height and towered over her, his stare hard. And then in a softer voice, he reinforced, “Reality is someone wishes you dead. Reality is I am only trying to protect you. Reality is you are going to be my wife, and I will always keep you safe from harm.”

He was leaning closer as he spoke, punctuating the word reality with a sharp stab at the air directly in front of her, which Siobhan compensated by shrinking deeper into the haven of feathered pillows of the chaise lounge she was sitting in.

“It is my duty, my honor, and my pleasure,” he continued. His eyes swept her upturned face and darkened with desire. “Reality…ah…reality is that you are exquisitely beautiful, Lieben,” he said in a voice suddenly roughened.

His voice conjured images of sweet cream blended with fine Scotch, tossed over melting ice cubes. Smooth and rough at the same time. It unnerved her, flatly shattering what little composure she’d been hugging tightly around her. When he wet his lower lip with his tongue, her mouth went dry as a desert.

His gold-flecked eyes were a smoldering promise of endless passion.  A look that set her body and soul on fire, and didn’t allow her to think straight. Needing space, she rose from the chaise and walked to the door, closing it firmly shut in the faces of her bodyguards.  

“Perhaps, I should go on a trip, visit Jaxon in London, or even better, go on a visit to Aragon.” The thought had weighed heavily on her heart and her mind since she had found out who she truly was and she did not want to put the visit off any longer.

The passionate stare was gone in an instant. “No.”

She placed her hands on her hips. “No? You would deny me the chance to meet my relatives?”

He stepped closer. “Someone nearly killed you. I am not about to let you go gallivanting to England, or to any other country, when I can’t even keep you safe in my own!”

Siobhan wasn’t fazed by his worry. “Angus, surely you understand the need.” It was a soul-wrenching need to figure out what kind of person her father had been, his new family was, and, more importantly, what kind of person she was meant to be.

It would give her a place to belong, a sense of home that hadn’t been forced on her like the others had been.

And right now, as much as she loved Angus, Siobhan was feeling like a prisoner. “Please?”

“No. I will not have you put in any more danger until I can ensure your safety. Besides, now that we know about your own royal bloodline, we have to consider the possibility that someone else—besides my mother—has also discovered this fact. Or maybe they already knew.”

His unspoken thought was it could be her own brother she was dying to meet. Maybe his public desire to find her was so he could privately have her killed. He shook his head, adjusting the cuffs of his jacket. She had been with him long enough to know it was his signal he was done with the conversation and hope withered inside of her.

“We will go there together, or maybe we can invite them here. I’ll think about it. I promise.”

He exited the room, leaving the door ajar enough for her to see the guards holding their place on the corridor, in case some idiot decided to end her life right where she stood inside her own rooms.

Siobhan snorted, balling her hands into fists as Angus disappeared from view.

“You’re quite the pompous ass right now, Dragon,” she mumbled.

* * *

Irritated, Angus pushed open the door to his office and walked directly to the bar, pouring himself a drink and downing it before he allowed himself to think.

She wants to go to her brother—brothers.

Of course, he knew she needed to do so but what she didn’t realize was that he had failed to keep her safe in his own home. She was to be his wife, the woman that was carrying his child and she had nearly died.

He couldn’t take the risk of losing her.

She wouldn’t understand it, but he was sure as hell going to enforce it.

* * *

“Why do you think he doesn’t want you to come here or go to Aragon?”

Siobhan sighed into the phone, stroking Sunny’s fur to keep her nerves under control. After her discussion with Angus, she needed to blow off steam and before she knew it, her fingers had dialed Jaxon’s number.

It was good to hear his voice, so good she nearly cried. “Because he thinks someone is trying to kill me.”

“That’s a bloody good reason then,” Jaxon said, surprise in his voice. “Is someone trying to kill you, Siobhan?”

She thought about the incidents lately. “Of course not! Who would want to kill me? I mean, I’m not worth anything.” Not that anyone knows. Yet.

“Maybe not to you, but I would wager if you died, and that baby died with you, it would kill your lover boy.”

Her hand shot to her stomach. She hadn’t thought about it in that way.

Would Angus miss me if I was gone? Or is it because of the baby? Is that what all the fuss about protecting me is really about? “I need to meet my long-lost family though.”

“I agree,” Jaxon replied. “But Siobhan, I would listen to Angus. He seems to know what he’s doing. I mean he runs a country.”

Sunny stretched out over her lap and Siobhan rubbed the cat’s ears lightly. She sighed. “I doubt he would let me within ten feet of the door before one of his guards told on me anyway.”

“Give him time to think about it,” Jaxon urged, the sound of the tube coming into the phone. “Gotta go. You take care of yourself and of this precious life you are carrying, hear me?”

“Yeah, bye,” she said and when he hung up, she threw the phone on the bed.

Sunny meowed loudly as she curled up around the pillow, the cat pressing her body against Siobhan’s growing bump.

She knew Angus had the best of intentions when it came to her and their child’s safety, and though it drove her bonkers to think she was under lock and key, Siobhan knew deep down it was because of his own anxiety of losing her—them.

She would play along for now, but he wasn’t going to keep her away from her family forever.

* * *

“What about this one?”

Fiona looked up from the rack she was looking through at the frothy confection that Siobhan held up, shaking her head slowly. “You will look like a wedding cake gone mad.”

“You are far too picky,” Siobhan admonished as she stuck the dress back onto the rack, smiling at the attendant who hovered nearby, waiting for the next dress to go into the dressing room. “I mean, you only wear the dress once, right?”

“One time only,” Fiona said.

They had come to town to look at wedding gowns—just for fun, Siobhan had told Fiona, since Ewan was already contacting international designers to come and design a bespoke dress for her. But it had been more a statement of her will—something that would both get her out of the palace and away from the heavy guards that were waiting outside, daring anyone else to step in.

It was a nice change, even if she looked like she was some celebrity on a shopping spree.

Fiona sat down on the bench beside the rack, picking up her glass of champagne. “You do plan to wear it only once, right?”

Siobhan looked over at her, surprised by the question. “Of course. Why would you ask?”

“I don’t know. I know your situation is very, well, weird with Angus, and the way he’s…erm…brought you here.” Fiona shrugged. “I just thought that maybe you were attempting to pacify him for now.”

Siobhan laughed as she sat next to the woman, picking up her water, and wishing that she could drink the good stuff. “I promise you, when I decided to accept Angus’s proposal and wed him, it was with all the intentions of making it the real deal.”

No matter how angry Angus made her, or how he had attempted to take over her life, it would be all or nothing for her. She would be committed to the marriage and to the family they would raise.

That and whatever else would come with the position.

“Good,” Fiona said after a moment. “You two are a striking couple by the way. And when he looks at you, I only hope I can feel that heat from someone in my lifetime.”

Siobhan blushed as she thought of the heat that coursed through her veins when he looked at her as well. There was this attraction she couldn’t shake whenever he was around, a magnetic pull that turned her stomach inside out and had molten heat flowing through her body.

“Attraction comes from the unlikeliest of sources,” she finally said, standing once more. “Come on. I have to buy something to compensate for all the trouble I put that poor saleswoman through.”

“You should wear something short,” Fiona said as Siobhan looked at a normal gown. “And red. Fire engine red.”

Siobhan laughed. “What are you talking about?”

Fiona grinned, holding up her glass. “Just think of what kind of fits his mum and mine would have.”

“You’re evil,” Siobhan said, unable to help herself from picturing the look on Catriona’s and Aileen’s faces if she did something so brazen.

Fiona gave a half shrug. “I wore a short, red dress once. Mother said she would disown me.”

Siobhan laughed imagining the fit Aileen must have had seeing the very proper Fiona in a feisty red dress.

“And you know, Siobhan, it might not be a bad idea,” Fiona smiled at her friend.

Siobhan laughed and shook her head at her friend. For the future, maybe. For now, there are more than enough sparks and embers burning in the palace.

* * *

Diamanta stared at the sinking sun, wondering at what point would the sky explode into the thousands of stars she used to count as a child, when times were simpler, and her life was as well. She had tried and failed so many times now, and the thought of carrying forward, to right what had been wronged, seemed just a silly dream, a fantasy really. There was nothing else for her, no victory in what she had tried to do, no relish in the defeat of what the king would taste yet again.

There was nothing, and she in turn, was a failure.

“Mother, what are you doing out here without a coat on? Do you not feel the chill in the air?”

She turned to see Javert walking toward her, one of her beloved colorful shawls in his hand and she drank in the sight of him. He would be so disappointed in her once the truth came out, upset the woman that raised him had been an utter failure in all senses.

She could not stand to see that hurt in his eyes, that anger that matched her own. He was her greatest triumph. “I do not feel the cold.”

“Then you must have drank too much at dinner,” he chuckled, throwing the shawl around her shoulders. “Snow is in the air once again; do you not taste it?”

She reached up and patted his cheek lightly, giving him a weathered smile. “I am nothing but an old woman.”

His eyes darkened to a burnished gold, and she saw another resemblance, one that had haunted her all these years.

“Are you well, Mother? This is not like you.”

She waved him off, her heart heavy with what had to come to light soon. “I am fine. Just the cold settling in my bones.”

“But you just said you felt nothing,” he remarked with a worried laugh. “I believe you need rest, Mother. I hear you pacing at night. You are not sleeping again.”

He was right. She wasn’t sleeping but she could not tell him why. He had enough to worry about and this was her burden, and hers alone. It had been her assignment to see it through. “I will take more medicine then.”

“I love this country, you know? It was this I missed most when you took me away. This peace, this beauty.” He tucked his hands in his pockets, looking at the dying sun with her. “It’s something I never grow weary of.”

Diamanta felt the tears form in her eyes as she watched him. No, she would never grow weary of sharing these moments with him in the country where he was born, where he rightfully belonged.

She might have failed her mission, but she would not fail her son.