Page 64 of The Prodigal Prince

“I like fruit.” Usually. She wasn’t sure anything would sit well. “Is there something plain and simple? I’m not sure I can manage something like tropical fruit.”

The queen nodded. “I’m sure there is.” She dug through the cabinets until she found some bagels then held up a jar. “How about some hazelnut spread on it?”

Fiona nodded. “I think I can handle that.”

The queen didn’t let Fiona prepare it herself. She handed a bagel covered in spread to Fiona and then poured her another cup of hot tea.

“How are you?” Queen Eliana asked her gently. “I know it’s not easy to have family members missing.”

“To be honest, I’m kind of surprised I’m not totally falling apart,” Fiona admitted. “Gray is my life. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to him. And Mac…” She sighed. “Mac is someone I thought I’d left in my past. I felt a certain way about him until recently then discovered why he’d done what he did, and it changed everything.”

Breaking a bit of the bagel off, Fiona stared at it. “I think I was half in love with him years ago, despite our short flings. I think we spent a total of less than a month together over the course of a couple of years. Seeing him with Gray the last few days, the way he tried to protect us despite everything, I’m falling for him. There’s definitely chemistry between us. There always has been. Right now, I don’t know what I feel about him, not for certain.”

“It can be very difficult to change how you see someone you already know. It’s not nearly the same, of course, but when I realized I no longer saw Thor asjustthe head of security for both my late husband and my son, it was a difficult transition.”

As Fiona started to answer, she heard something she couldn’t quite make out. She tilted her head to try to hear better.

“Hello?!”

Before she realized what she was doing, Fiona had bolted out of her chair and across the room toward a door she’d never been through.

As she neared it, the door opened revealing the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen - her son and Mac - dusty and disheveled but alive.

With a cry she launched herself toward Mac and their son.

Gray reached for her, wrapping his arms around her neck and burying his face against her. Mac wrapped his arms around both of them.

“Are you okay?” She pulled back to look at Gray. “Are you hurt?”

“No, Mama.”

Fiona looked up at Mac. “You?”

“We’re fine. We took a chance to get way out then found a door that opened into a basement area. It took us a while to find our way out of the maze down there.” He pulled her back closer to him.

She heard footsteps pounding behind her as the word reached others in the building.

One thing she wouldn’t do was let go of her son.

And it turned out Mac refused to let go of either one of them. They would go together or not at all.

Medical personnel quickly appeared and looked both of them over, deciding that while they might be a bit dehydrated, there wasn’t anything to be concerned about. That let Fiona breathe a sigh of relief.

Then they were taken back to the conference room. Fiona wanted to escape to their suite - or even back to the palace - but first the authorities needed to hear their story.

It seemed like it took an eternity for Mac to tell what happened to them since she’d been taken away, but eventually they made it back to their home away from home for the night.

Fiona helped her son get cleaned up and into fresh pajamas. They both tucked him in.

“Mama, will you stay here?” His small voice broke her heart. The first thing she needed to do was find someone who could help him work through any emotional trauma from the last few weeks.

“I’ll be right outside talking to Mac. I’ll come back in here to sleep. Is that okay?”

He nodded. “Can Daddy stay, too?”

Hearing him call Mac his daddy… it filled her with a warmth she never would have expected. “He might need to be somewhere else, buddy.”

“No.” Mac jumped in. “You’re my family. There’s nowhere else I need to be.”

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