Damien
I CARRY JULIET to a staff-only elevator. She writhes in my arms.
“What is happening to me?” she cries.
“It must be the aftereffect of the drug you were given,” I say through gritted teeth.
I stepped away from her before when something in my gut told me I shouldn’t. I put her in harm’s way. If X hadn’t found the real genetics doctor bleeding from a head wound on the landing of a stairwell, where would Juliet be now? What would the Black Watch be doing to her?
“How did they get to me?” Juliet asks, and then she moans in my arms.
I let out a bitter laugh. “They breached the one place we couldn’t stay away from with you in your condition—the hospital. They’ve been unable to infiltrate the palace, but we didn’t anticipate this.”
“Damien,” she cries, then spins in my arms, hooking her legs around my hips. “Damien, you have to make it stop!”
I can’t think straight, so I hit the emergency button on the elevator, and we jerk to a halt.
“Make what stop?” I ask.
Her eyes plead with mine.
“I need to come.” She squeezes her knees around my hips and slides up and down against me.
My cock hardens, my body betraying my animalistic desires.
“I have to have you inside me,” she grinds out. “Fill me up and give me release, or I swear to you this ache will kill me!”
She hops down and tears at the button of my jeans, then yanks my zipper open.
“Now,” she gasps. “Take me now!”
She hikes up her dress, revealing no panties underneath.
Christ.
She grips my thick shaft with her fist and rubs my slick tip up and down her folds.
I growl. “Juliet,” I grind out, and she whimpers.
“Inside me!” she wails, but I will not take her like this. Even in her state, I will not lose control. Because I have failed her like I failed Victoria. Just as I knew I would. But I will give her pleasure. I will give her release. She deserves love and protection, but I am good for only one thing.
“Turn around,” I tell her.
Her breath hitches, and she stills. “But I thought—” she starts, a sobering look in her eyes. “I thought after last night...after seeing our baby... Damien, I know you don’t remember us, but I also know that you feel something.”
“All I feel, Princess, is the truth. I destroy everything that is good and pure. Know that my family will protect you and this child, but I will return to my life of banishment—for their safety and yours.”
She turns, her back to me now, and she presses against my erection.
“Do what you’re good at, then,” she snaps with bitter resignation. “Give me what I need and then do what you do best. Leave.”
She reaches behind me and grabs my shaking palm and pulls it around her hips and between her legs. My finger brushes her wet, swollen clit, and she whimpers, her beautiful, innocent ass rubbing against my cock.
“Do it!” she orders, and I plunge one finger inside her, then two, and then three.
She bucks as I pump in and out, as I drag my soaked fingers up and down her heated folds.
She is an animal, riding my palm like no woman has done before, and I silently curse X for not truly preparing me for what was happening to her.
My tip presses against her ass. I could enter her like this. She would let me past that final threshold.
But it would be a line crossed over which I could never go back. Taking her like this would mean she was no different than any other woman I’d been with since Victoria. And I would have to live with the knowledge of hurting her like that.
I slide my fingers from inside her and swirl them around her clit. She cries out, reaching a hand behind me and grabbing my shaft.
“Do it, Damien! Fucking do it!” Juliet yells. But that is not the voice of my Juliet. That is not the mother of my child, the woman I love.
Because I do love her, dammit, even if I am poison.
I bring her to climax with my hand alone, and when she’s done bucking and thrashing—when she falls limp against me—I catch her as her knees go weak. Only when she steadies do I let go, pulling up my pants over my now-painful erection.
“Damien,” she says, voice shaky.
“Are you okay?” I ask, my voice hoarse against the knot in my throat.
She nods.
“You deserve better,” I tell her. It is the truth—the only truth I can tell her. “Now we must get you and the baby to safety.”
I start the elevator again, and we both ride to the main level in silence.
Only when we reach the bottom does Juliet break the silence. “I know what you’re thinking,” she says. “And it’s not your fault.”
My jaw tightens. “You don’t get it. I ruin everyone and everything. I can’t do this.”
Her eyes grow wide. “What are you saying?”
I clear my throat. “I’m saying that you will be cared for and protected by my family. But you will be a princess without a prince. It is not as if I’ve been officially reinstated. It will be best for everyone if the banishment sticks. I am sorry, Juliet.”
The doors open, and there before us are a host of guards, but they are no guards of Edenvale.
“Good morning, Princess,” one jeers, and I swear I’ve heard that voice before. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Juliet opens her mouth to scream, but one of the Black Watch yanks her from the elevator car and clamps a hand over her lips.
“Get her to the car,” the first guard sneers. “And be careful. She’s a biter.”
He shakes out his hand, and I note the scars on both the back and his palm. Whatever happened before Juliet came to find me, this bastard had his hands on her—and she made him bleed for it.
She kicks and flails, and something in me breaks. I launch myself at the man who holds her, my fist connecting with his face. I feel bone crunch.
A fist jabs into my side—into my still-healing ribs—and I crumple to the floor, gasping for breath.
The first guard stands above me, grinning.
“Are we going to do our dance again, young Prince?” He glances over his shoulder to where Juliet stands captive. “Let her watch this time. Let her see what awaits her in the public square tonight.”
I roar through the pain and try to climb to my feet, but the man of the Watch pulls a handgun from his side and swings it at my head. Right before everything goes black, I hear Juliet scream.
Juliet
In my life, I have known soul-crushing boredom. I have drunk deep from the well of loneliness. I have felt passion grip me in its jaws and tear me to a place between agony and ecstasy. And I have known the awe-inspiring, almost holy sensation of being in love and getting that love returned.
But I’ve never known hatred—true hatred—until this moment. Bile burns my throat as I fight like a cornered lioness surrounded by jackals. I’m fighting for more than my own life. This is about my unborn child and Damien cold-cocked and discarded on the cold elevator floor like yesterday’s trash.
One of the abductors carrying me turns my body toward his chest as he adjusts to my thrashing weight. The acrid scent of his body odor assaults my senses. He reeks like liverwurst and stale aquavit. I don’t hesitate, lunging forward and sinking my teeth through his shirt until I connect with the hard muscle beneath.
Unlike Damien’s powerful body, which exudes a need to protect, this man gives off an air of cruelty and small-mindedness. He wants to hurt me, so I hurt him first and make it count.
He bellows as my teeth clamp down, and I twist my head back and forth to deepen his pain. I don’t know what has come over me, only that the whole world has turned hazy and red.
I channel my inner bulldog, driven by a primal need to defend my child. In the background, I am dimly aware of pain in my skull as the man yanks fistfuls of my hair in an attempt to stop my assault.
My eyes burn, watering from the agony. I can hear strands of my hair giving way as roots are pried from the scalp. But I don’t stop biting because maybe I am buying myself and my baby a few more precious seconds of time. Even now members of The Order might be assembling to come to our aid. And with any luck they will find Damien. Fear creeps into my heart with a reptilian coolness. The last time the Black Watch got their evil hands on him he lost so much. Can he withstand a second assault?
The world explodes in a white light. A dull, heavy sound of metal striking bone reverberates to my core. My body goes limp as a warm, sticky liquid slides down my neck. As I’m shoved into the cramped darkness of a trunk, a man stares at me with a leering smile, a steel club clutched in one beefy hand.
“Time to go home, Your Highness,” he chortles before slamming the lid.
I part my lips to scream but can only muster a weak mewl before I lose consciousness completely.
I don’t know how long I remain in the trunk. Every so often I start to wake, unable to see anything, not even my hand before my face. Holding my stomach, I croon snippets of lullabies from my country. Not songs my mother ever sang to me, but those my nursemaids and nannies used to comfort me as a child. The lyrics are pretty and silly about mountains and snow, little trolls and wildflowers.
“It’s a beautiful place,” I whisper before my world goes dark yet again. This is how I spend the ride to my home country—in the trunk of a car, falling in and out of consciousness.
Yes, Nightgardin is a proud, timeless land forged from ancient glaciers and wild rivers. Its people are good and hardworking even if the ruling class is corrupted to the core. If I find a way to survive the trials ahead, I will figure out how to reforge the monarchy into an institution that can make my people proud once again. Where young women are respected and advanced just like any son.
But first I need to live long enough to defeat my parents.
The trunk opens a few hours later and I push myself to sitting, dehydrated with a splitting headache and my hair matted with my own blood.
I look around, realizing where my abductors have brought me—the Nightgardin Stables. Once it was a place of refuge and freedom for me, but today it may well become my doom.
“Darling,” a woman croons in the shadow, stepping forward to take the shape of my mother. She looks like a Renaissance painting of a Madonna with her long thick hair and lovely features. The trouble comes when you get a good look at her eyes, which are devoid of any human compassion or love.
“What have you done, Mother?” I growl as if a fierce voice can cover the fact that my legs are so weak they can barely support me. A pitchfork leans against the closest stable, the home of my favorite stallion, Loratio. If I grab it I could... I could...
“You wouldn’t murder your own mother, now would you?” she asks with a soft smile, her gaze following mine to the tool.
“No.” My voice is choked. “I’m not like you.”
“That’s right.” She watches me with her flat, dead eyes. “You’re not.”
Then she snaps her fingers, and the Black Watch goons reappear.
“Tie her up!” she orders. “And put her in the empty stall beside Loratio.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“Me?” My mother adjusts her long gray dress and transforms her face to the picture of grief. “I’m not going to do anything. The Black Watch, however, will show the public what happens to those who commit treason. Because isn’t that what you’ve done...darling?”
“You’re insane,” I whisper.
She smiles sweetly, though there is no trace of anything sweet in this woman’s body. “Not at all, darling. I am a woman who knows what she loves, and in my case it’s power. I thought we could tame you—that we could stomp out that spark we saw from the beginning. But when you ran off, we knew you were beyond our control.”
“So you decided to murder me and pin it on Wartson.”
She raises a brow. “Look at you, Juliet. You’ve learned so much in your absence. Have you not? You might have actually made a good queen were I ever willing to give up the throne.”
She laughs, but it is without an ounce of true mirth.
“You can’t eliminate me,” I say. “The Black Watch abducted me right in front of Damien. He saw everything even as your filthy servants beat him—just like I know they did last time. Soon everyone will know their queen is not a queen of the people but a ruthless, heartless witch who cares only for herself.”
I have to believe—even after what he almost did in that elevator—that Damien will come for me. I know what it meant for him to have wanted to take me from behind, that I am no different from the countless others who have come after Victoria. But I also know that he is as invested in this child as I am. If it is not me he loves and wishes to save, he will come for his heir.
She simply shrugs as her minions seize my arms. “What does it matter when he’s the one who ruined Nightgardin’s future queen? In this country, my subjects will only care about one version of the truth...mine. The rest is fake news.”
“Where is Father?” I cry out as the men drag me to the stable. Of my two parents, he’s always been the kinder one. That’s not saying a lot, but I can’t imagine he would be in favor of murdering his only child in a bid to rule forever—not when they could lock me away in a tower and never let me see the outside world again. It is a fate unimaginable, but at least my baby would live.
“Detained,” she says as if confirming my thoughts. “My consort is in the palace gaol deciding whether he is with me, the true daughter of Nightgardin, or against me.”
She turns and begins to walk away.
“If there even is a spring, you will never get to it. The Lorentz family has protection the likes of which you will never know!” I cry. “You won’t win, no matter what you do. Even if you kill me and your grandchild.”
She spins to me, a viper ready to strike. “You think The Order can protect them? We’ve eliminated their members before, and we will do it again.” She saunters toward me with such ire in her eyes, the likes of which I’ve never seen. The strike across the face comes before I have time to anticipate it. I cry out and then taste blood. “Gag her,” my mother says to a member of the Watch without glancing back. “Let my daughter spend her last few hours on this earth in silent contemplation of her many sins.”