Page 63 of Crowned for His Son

For a full minute he remained frozen as the knowledge embedded in him. Burrowing into all his alarmingly vulnerable places. Rushing through his chest like a tropical thunderstorm until he was drenched with pure, unadulterated need.

Rising, he followed his wife and son at a steady pace.

He wouldnotbe left behind. He was the King, after all.

But as he joined them, planting himself by Eden’s side as the doctor did his tests and pronounced her healthy and on the way to full recovery, he wasn’t so confident of the battle ahead to win his wife.

But,he was the King. And he had the blood of past warriors flowing in his veins. He only needed to find a way to achieve thismorewithout fully exposing himself to any vulnerabilities.

Right…?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AZAR WAS CHANGINGthe rules on her.

Somehow he’d decided, the morning after she’d regained her memories, that what had happened in Arizona—the denigration of her character, the belief that she’d been playing him against Nick, deliberately inciting his jealousy, and that she’d even gone as far as to choose Nick over him—was merely a bump in the road they could overcome.

At first she’d been nonplussed, to the point of speechlessness. Then angry—because how dared he? But now, in the third week since regaining her memories, Eden had become intensely curious as to why and how he believed they could carry on as if hehadn’tlevelled the vilest of accusations at her. As to how long he intended to try and sweep her off her feet every time she so much as cleared her throat to address the giant elephant in the room.

So far, he’d taken her to every cheesy tourist spot in San Maribet and Cartana, eagerly couching it as ‘the honeymoon phase’ for the palace. He’d also shown her out-of-the-way haunts he’d visited as a boy with his father, like the private cave two mountains over from the mountain retreat where they’d spent their wedding night.

Today, the spectacular six-course meal he’d arranged there, across the lake on an expertly crafted royal raft, lit only with phosphorescence, was so magical Eden wasn’t sure she’d taken a full breath throughout. And now, after dinner he offered revelations when she asked why only his father had featured in these outings. Revelations she would have thought unbidden if not for the strained look on his face that told her this too had a purpose. One she couldn’t immediately grasp.

‘If you haven’t noticed already, my mother doesn’t care about appearances,’ he said. ‘Her only abiding desire is to further her own interests.’

She flinched at the caustic words. She opened her mouth, to say what she didn’t know. But he shook his head, pre-empting her.

‘Don’t bother with platitudes. I have recognised and accepted that ours will never be the normal mother and son relationship. And in all these years nothing has prompted me to believe otherwise. She is what she is.’

She frowned, not entirely sure why his words sent jagged unease through her. Perhaps it was because while her situation with her own mother bore some similarities to his, she hadn’t given up on forming some semblance of a relationship with her, whereas it sounded as if Azar had.

Was that so he could control never being hurt again? Did that control extend to every area of his life.To her?

‘So, in essence, where Max is concerned, you’re following in your father’s footsteps?’

His mouth twitched—not with cynicism at her observation, but with something close to fondness. ‘He said the same thing when I broke the news about Max.’ Then all traces of humour were whittled away. ‘And I cannot fault him. If he did one thing right, it was ensuring my brothers and I forged a relationship—despite all the opposition. I don’t intend to allow anything to stand in the way of what I mean to achieve.’

Something urgent pushed her to test that control. ‘With Max, and probably with me, but not with your mother?’ When his jaw tightened, she continued. ‘You speak as if that’s set in stone. As if you can’t change things even if you truly want to.’ He sent her a speaking look that made heat flare into her face and her heart lurch. ‘It’s not the same,’ she defended hotly.

Expecting an imperious counter argument, she was surprised, then vastly troubled, when he finally nodded. ‘It’s not. Because while I accepted the way things were with her even before I turned ten years old, I’m not doing the same with you.’

She shook her head. ‘You can’t just command things to be the way you want, you know?’

His nostrils flared, and in the glowing lights around them he resembled a fallen angel, intent on bending rules and kingdoms to his will.

After a moment, he reached out. ‘Get better quickly,tesoro. Then we can joust on a more even battlefield.’

I want to fight now.

But she held her tongue, because this place he’d brought her to, one that was special to him and his father, was wreaking sweet magic on her. She was loath to spoil it with disagreement. And also, deep down, the promise of fighting him for what he wanted sent too large a thrill through her.

For the two nights in a row after that, when the magic wrapped tighter, she came within a whisker of succumbing to the goodnight kiss he brushed over her lips, to the intensity in his gaze when he stared down at her, willing her to take things a step further. Or perhaps a step back, so she would be in his bed?

The clawing need when that happened felt like an uphill battle she was doomed to lose.

Caught in deep thought on just how she could save this heart of hers, which seemed to be flinging itself headlong, with zero caution, into the hands of a man she still couldn’t trust to treasure it, Eden forgot all about protocol as she opened the door to her father-in-law’s living room to retrieve her exuberant child and take him for his afternoon nap.

King Alfonso, who’d finally got rid of his pneumonia and was remarkably stronger, insisted he was fit enough to withstand Max’s frenetic pace, but Eden knew he needed a day or two between Max’s visits.

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