CHAPTER 60
The room was dim when she opened her eyes.
Familiar silk curtains. Snow-capped mountains outside the window. The faint scent of cedar and musk cologne. She was in the Jogra master bedroom suite.
The room felt too quiet.
For a few seconds, she lay still, trying to understand what time it was.
She tried to turn slightly.
Pain came immediately. A deep, dragging ache across her side. A tightness around her ribs when she breathed.
Then memory came back in pieces.
The Dal Lake, the flash of light, the shove, water, his voice raw and breaking
Her fingers twitched.
A chair scraped softly beside the bed.
She turned her head.
Bharat was sitting there. And he looked wrong.
His hair was slightly out of place. His jaw was dark with stubble he hadn't shaved. His white shirt was creased, sleeves rolled up. And his eyes were red. Bloodshot.
She had never seen him look anything but perfect. Until now.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. His gaze moved slowly over her face as if making sure she was real. Awake. Breathing.
“You're awake,” he said.
His voice was calm and controlled.
She swallowed. Her throat was dry. “How long?”
“Seventy-two hours.”
Three days and three nights.
“You lost a lot of blood,” he added. “The bullet grazed. It missed anything vital.”
He said it like a report.
But his hand was wrapped around the armrest so tightly his knuckles had gone white.
She tried to sit up. But pain flared.
He was on his feet immediately.
“Don’t move,” he commanded.
One hand braced her shoulder, while the other adjusted the pillows with efficient care.
Once she was settled, he stepped back, only an inch, close enough that she could still feel the warmth of him.
She looked at him.
His jaw flexed. “You are not allowed to do that,” he said.
“To do what?”
“To step in front of me.”
A faint smile pulled at her lips despite the ache. “I didn't step,” she said. “I pushed.”
His breath left him like she'd knocked it out.
For a second, something dark crossed his face. “You could have died.”
“But I didn't.”
“That isn't the point.”
“It is to me,” she said.
Silence stretched between them.
He moved closer again.
“I had everything covered,” he said, his voice low. “Security perimeter. Water patrol. Snipers across the ridge.”
“I know.”
“You don't.”
“I do,” she said. “You don't miss details.”
His eyes lifted to hers. She could see the tormented look inside.
“And yet you saw something my entire security team didn't.”
She held his gaze. “I saw the reflection shift in the water. The angle of the oar was wrong. Too steady. Tourists don't hold a paddle like that.”
He was quiet for a moment.
She could see him replaying it. Reconstructing what she had seen, from her angle, through her lens.
“You were talking to the reporter,” she added. “You didn't see him turn.”
His jaw tightened. “I should have.” The torment didn’t leave his eyes.
“You were irritated,” she said. “About the sexiest maharaja comment. Which is true by the way.”
A flicker crossed his face that she was teasing him. Even now. Three days after a gunshot.
Inhaling a deep breath, he took another step forward.
“You don't get to protect me like that,” he said. “That is my responsibility.”
“I will always protect you,” she said. “I'm your wife.”
His eyes darkened.
“You aren’t just my wife, you are my life,” he said.
She stared at him. She had never expected to hear such words from him.
He leaned closer instead, one hand braced carefully beside her on the mattress.
“When I saw the blood,” he said, his voice rough now, all the composure gone from it, “I thought—”
He stopped when his voice broke.
She reached for his wrist. Her fingers curled around it gently.
“I'm fine,” she said.
His eyes closed for half a second. Just long enough for her to see exactly how much the last three days had cost him.
When he opened them, the control was back. But thinner. Cracked at the edges in a way it hadn't been before.
She shifted slightly toward him.
He tensed immediately.
“Relax,” she murmured.
“You were unconscious for seventy-two hours,” he said flatly. “I will not relax.”
Her smile deepened.
“You didn't leave this room, did you?” she asked.
His silence answered.
She looked at the crease in his shirt. The exhaustion carved into his face. Three days without sleep, sitting in that chair.
“Is my mother here?” she asked.
“Yes, both our families arrived the evening you were shot,” he said. “Ram and Sanjana came despite Sanjana being eight months along. Pooja came within the hour. They are all still here.”
She absorbed that quietly. Her mother would have offered to sit with her. Her brother too. The palace staff would have taken turns through the night if he had asked. Rani Suchitra would have insisted.
He had said no to all of them. She knew this without asking.
Then she tensed slightly. “The man on the water,” she said, wanting to know about the threat directed against Bharat.
“Apprehended.” His voice was flat. “Jaiveer and team reached him before the security boats did.”
She understood what “before the security boats did” meant.
She felt relieved and didn't ask anything further.
A slow exhale left him. His hand slid gently into her hair, his thumb brushing her temple.
“I thought I would lose you,” he said.
“I'm not leaving,” she said.
She had said it before. The first time, when she had broken into his bedroom to seduce him. Then, in his studio, surrounded by twenty-two years of paintings. Standing in front of him after he told her to go to London. Each time she had meant it.
She meant it now more than all the other times combined.
His hand stilled against her hair.
“Good,” he said. “Because I am not built to survive a world without you.”
Her breath caught.
“I would punish every person responsible,” he added, in the same even tone. “And then I would follow behind you.”
He said it the way he said everything that was simply true. Without decoration. Without softening.
She understood, in that moment, that this was how he loved. Completely. Without a word for it until now.
Her fingers tightened around his wrist.
“I can't live without you either,” she said. “I love you.”
He closed his eyes.
He absorbed it the way she had learned he absorbed everything that mattered—slowly, carefully, as though he needed a moment to make it real before he could respond to it.
When he opened his eyes, the fear was gone from them.
She didn't have a name for what replaced it. She didn't need one.
He bent carefully and kissed her. It was soft and unhurried as though savoring her.
When he pulled back, his voice was steady again, but different.
“Promise you'll never leave,” he said.
She looked at him. At the stubble and the red eyes and the creased shirt and the hand still trembling slightly against her hair.
“You are stuck with me forever, maharaja,” she said.
His thumb moved once against her temple.
And for the first time since she had known him, Bharat wasn't looking at her as though he expected her to leave.
At last, the maharaja who had spent twenty-two years waiting had finally allowed himself to believe she would stay.