Epilogue #2
And that was no hardship at all. Jude was my strength.
I might be more equipped to handle the official business of my country, but it came with a lot of pressure.
In his arms, I was able to reset for the following day.
He made sure I took mental health breaks, too, and spent as much time with the kids as I possibly could.
And when I couldn’t be, I didn’t have to worry because I knew the children were in excellent hands.
I couldn’t have asked for a better husband. No, he was more than just a husband. He was my soulmate, the father of my children, my comfort, and my best friend.
He was Daddy, and ten years hadn’t changed that. In fact, the more mature I’d had to be, the more I appreciated him because with him, I didn’t have to be strong. With him, I was just his little prince.
We drove for a while, and I stopped trying to figure out where I was going. I leaned into Jude, and he wrapped his arms around me. The quiet was nice. With the kids, we only found this kind of quiet at bedtime, when we shut ourselves away and enjoyed each other’s company.
After driving for what felt like hours, the car turned onto a gravelly path. I could feel the crunch of the tires against the pebbles. About half a minute later, we came to a stop, and my heart skipped a beat as my excitement mounted.
Last year on our anniversary, Jude had surprised me with a candlelit dinner on the beach.
He’d listened to my complaint all year round about missing our beachside home and had rented us a lovely home on a private beach for the weekend on Belvaria’s north coast. Very little could top that experience, but I was just pleased at the effort he always made.
Other people might have thought that, as the crown prince, I already had everything, but Jude knew best.
He could surprise me with something I didn’t even know that I wanted.
“We’re here.” Jude opened the car door.
“Can I take this thing off now?”
“Not yet.” He got out, then helped me down, and I crashed into his chest, but I didn’t have to worry about falling. He caught me in his arms and whispered for my ears only, “Later we’ll have some fun with the matching handcuffs.”
“Say what now?”
Laughing, he yanked the blindfold off, and I squinted against the sudden brightness. For a moment, I didn’t understand what I was looking at.
The house stood beyond a low white fence with pale blue siding and white trim around the windows.
A narrow porch ran along the front, and the flower beds were blooming.
A large tree rose in the yard, its branches stretching wide over the grass, and beyond it, I could see the faint outline of the hills my mother must have known as a child.
My breath caught.
“No,” I whispered.
Jude didn’t say anything. He only stood beside me, his hand warm at the small of my back.
I took one step forward, then another, my gaze moving over the porch, the windows, the chipped stone path leading to the front door. I knew this place. My mother had several pictures of it, which I still kept tucked away with all her things that Daphne hadn’t sold.
This was the reason I’d chosen California as a home after Belvaria rejected me.
Because the mother I barely remembered once lived here in this home as a foster kid.
This place had been to her and a lot of other kids what Halo House was to me.
When I’d tried to explain my purpose back then, the owner had refused to let me onto the property and told me I had to leave or they would call the police.
In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have started the conversation by explaining I was a prince and my mother, the late queen, once lived in the house.
Now I was here again, and no one was preventing me from being on the property this time.
“Dadd-y,” I said, the word breaking with emotions. “This is the house where my mother grew up. Father said that before this place, she had bounced around different foster homes. This was the last.”
“I only wish I’d done this sooner,” Jude said.
My eyes filled so fast the house blurred. “But how did you manage this? The owners were really mean to me.”
“Well.” He slipped both hands into his pockets, looking far too casual for a man who had just taken a piece of my heart and placed it carefully back where it belonged. “I bought it.”
I stared at him. It was already wonderful that we had the chance to visit the place, but this was way more than I’d expected.
Jude shrugged with a grin. “The owners were ready to sell. I may have encouraged them to be very ready.”
“You bought it? It must have cost a fortune.”
His mouth curved. “Good thing I have all that hush-Daddy money lying around.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“My hush-Daddy money.” He looked terribly pleased with himself. “You know. The generous allowance I receive for being the royal concubine.”
I gasped. “You are not my concubine.”
“I live in a palace, sleep with the future king, and occasionally get glared at by old ministers who think I have far too much influence. Sounds concubine-adjacent to me.”
“You are my husband.”
“Also true.”
“And the prince consort.”
“I much prefer concubine. Sounds more scandalous.”
I slapped his chest, laughing even as tears of joy rolled down my cheeks. “You are the best. I love you so much.”
He covered my hands with his and lifted one to his mouth, kissing my knuckles with the same reverence he had shown me from the beginning, back when I’d had nothing but a borrowed room, a wounded heart, and no idea how to survive outside the life I’d lost.
“I wanted you to have it,” he said. “You already have a palace that comes with a lot of responsibilities. I wanted you to have a place you could come to and just be yourself. A place where you don’t have to be a king but instead be my little prince.”
I wrapped my arms around him and held on, burying my face against his shoulder. For ten years, Jude had been finding pieces of me I’d thought were gone forever and bringing them back to me one by one. My confidence. My laughter. My ability to trust. My belief that love could be genuine and kind.
Now he had brought me back a piece of my mother.
“Thank you,” I said against his neck. “Thank you. Thank you. I don’t know how to thank you for this.”
“You just did.” His arms tightened around me. “You’re here. You’re happy, and that’s all the thanks I need.”
I lifted my head, ready to argue, but then I remembered. “Oh.” I grabbed his hand. “Oh, wait.”
“What?”
“The tree.”
Before he could ask what I meant, I pulled him toward the tree.
One of the guards stepped forward automatically, then stopped when Jude shook his head.
This was our moment, and while I was used to the bodyguards following us around, there were certain private moments I just wanted to share with my husband.
I crossed the yard, my shoes sinking into the slightly overgrown grass as I headed for the large tree to the side of the property.
I had seen it in one of the photographs, which had my mother, around fourteen, standing beneath it with four other children, all of whom had been foster kids in this house.
The bark was rough beneath my fingers when I reached it. I moved around the trunk slowly, searching through old cuts and initials, worn down by time.
“What are we looking for?” Jude asked softly.
“My mother. According to my dad, all the children who came here to live carved their names in the tree when they left. It was a way the couple who took them in as foster parents let them know that this would always be their home.”
Jude didn’t comment. He came to stand beside me, and together we searched the tree.
There were so many names carved into the bark.
Children who had passed through this place before finding somewhere else to go.
My mother had been one of them. This was the simple home that had raised a queen without knowing it back then.
“This is it.”
My mother’s name, small and uneven, was carved near the lower curve of the trunk. I touched the letters with trembling fingers.
For a moment, I was no longer the crown prince of Belvaria. I was only a son standing in the yard where his mother had once stood, touching the mark she had left behind before she crossed an ocean, married a king, and loved me into being.
“She was really here,” I whispered.
Jude’s hand settled at my back. “Yes, she was.”
I traced the letters again, so carefully that I barely touched the bark. “She was here, and now I’m here.”
“And our children will come here too.”
I turned into him, and Jude caught me the way he always had. I clung to him beneath my mother’s tree, in the yard of the house that had more memories of her than I did.
“I love you so much,” I said, the words shaking with emotion. “So much, Daddy. I love you so much I can barely breathe.”
He cupped the back of my head and kissed my temple.
“Keep breathing, little prince. That’s how you show me you love me.
Your country needs you, but more importantly, our kids and I need you.
Plus, I’ve kind of gotten used to living in a palace, and I’m pretty sure without you, they’d be eager to kick me out. ”
I laughed through my tears and held him tighter. “Then I’ll put it in writing that if anything happens to me, you are to remain the guardian of the kids and help Liora become a great queen.”
“No,” he said hoarsely, squeezing me hard. “You’re not allowed to leave me. Ever.”
“Okay.”
Behind us, the old house stood in the sunlight. In front of us, the tree carried my mother’s name, proof that she had mattered before the crown.
And most of all, beside me stood the man who had given me the one thing even a kingdom could not.
A place to belong.
Thanks for reading The Royal in Room 3! I’d love it if you left a review here.
And don’t forget to check out the next book in the series, The Liar in Room 5 by Kerry Kilpatrick.