Chapter 19
Everything
Sahar stood on the palace steps alongside her
brother as her father and mother said their goodbyes to King
Maksimillian and his bride, Anya.
“I am glad for you, my friend,” her father
said, clasping Maksimillian’s arm, “even if you have taken my best
cook and stable hand.”
“Thank you, Asad, for watching over my son,
and my love. If it were not for you, I fear they would’ve been lost
to me forever.”
“I wish you and your new family joy and
prosperity,” Asad said, clapping him on the back and moving on to
Anya, whose hand he took and placed a kiss on the back of her
fingers. “As for you, Anya, though we will all miss you, I could
not be happier that you have found each other again, and wish you
every good thing.”
“Thank you, my king.”
Asad chuckled. “You have a new king now,
Queen Anya.”
Anya blushed prettily and laughed. “That part
will take some getting used to,” she said, beaming at her husband.
Then she turned to Sahar’s mother and dipped a knee. “Queen Oona, I
can only strive to be as good and fair a queen as you.”
The queen pulled Anya in and hugged her and
kissed her on the cheek. “You will be a wonderful queen, Anya,” she
said. “You have a generous and loyal heart, and you understand the
life of the worker. I am certain having you as queen will make the
people of your kingdom’s lives better.”
Arman stepped up to say his goodbyes, and
then Pyotr and Serge, followed by Ursula, who Sahar had been
watching carefully, wondering why she hung back with Serge and
Pyotr rather than stand by Aleksi’s side. His father had married a
palace cook and made her his queen. Sahar didn’t think Ursula hung
back because she’d been a serving maid. She was betrothed to a
prince now. If Sahar had been betrothed to Aleksi, she would’ve
been right by his side. She’d lost her chance, and now she had to
say goodbye forever.
She shook hands with Serge and Pyotr, and
then stood face to face with Ursula, whose cheeks were round and
rosy with the perpetual smile that had been on her face for days
now.
“Congratulations on your betrothal, Ursula,”
Sahar said, managing not to snarl. “You have chosen the best of
men. I’m sure you’ll be happy.”
“Thank you, princess.” Ursula dipped her
knee. She glanced over at Serge and Pyotr and her rosy cheeks grew
even rosier. “I’m sure we will be.”
Sahar tilted her head and raised her brows,
but before she could say anything more, Aleksi stepped up to
her.
“Princess,” he said, lifting her hand in his
and kissing the backs of her fingers with his warm lips. “It’s been
an adventure.”
“It has been that, Prince Aleksandr.”
They stood there, Aleksi holding her hand,
Sahar loath to break his touch when she heard Ursula’s hearty
giggle.
“Congratulations, Aleksi,” Sahar said,
pulling her hand from his. “You have accomplished everything you
set out to do and more. Not only have you amassed a string of
broodmares and a wife of easy temper and strong body, but you have
reconciled with your father and mother.”
“Wife?” he asked, cocking his head, that
cursed shock of hair falling over his forehead. “What wife?”
“Your betrothed then.”
He shook his head. “Unless you have changed
your mind, I’m not betrothed.”
“But—but, what about Ursula?”
“Ursula is betrothed to Pyotr. Why did you
think she was betrothed to me?” Sahar didn’t know what to say or
think, and so she said nothing. “Is that why you have been so
distant and angry?” Still she said nothing. Aleksi leaned in and
whispered in her ear. “Why didn’t you ask me?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Ask me now,”
“Ask you what?”
“You know.”
“Why should I ask you, you strutting
stallion?”
“Because, my tigress, you want me as much as
I want you. It’s now or never, Kitten.”
If Aleksi had said anything about love, Sahar
would have gladly gotten down on one knee in front of her family
and his to propose marriage. But he hadn’t. Not ever. As much as
she loved him, she wouldn’t marry him if he didn’t love her. She’d
learned that she was worthy of love, and she wouldn’t settle for
less. Especially not from Aleksi.
She stepped back from him, hot tears welling
in her eyes. “Have a safe journey, Prince Aleksandr.”
Aleksi turned and looked back over his
shoulder at the palace on the hill where he had left Sahar standing
on the steps. She had thought him betrothed to Ursula. Only days
after having sex with her by the river, only one day after kissing
him in the stables with such heat and passion and sadness that he
still felt it in his bones. Apparently, she thought so little of
his feelings that she believed him capable of becoming betrothed to
another in a matter of days, and thought him so dishonorable that
he would have sex with her, kiss her like he had, while he was
betrothed to another woman. After everything they’d been through
she didn’t know him better than that.
He ran a hand through his hair and turned
back to the road ahead. The road that would take him home. Three
hundred leagues away from Sahar. A road he had always planned to
take, had told her he would be taking back, with or without her. He
should’ve been pleased to be returning home. He’d accomplished
almost everything he had planned, and more. A lot of it, not on his
own. He couldn’t have done any of it without Serge and Pyotr.
They’d watched over the stock and done all of the horse trading
while he trained and raced, and chased after his tigress. Surely,
he couldn’t claim reuniting with his father or finding his mother
as anything he’d done.
Although he was not returning with a wife,
now that he was a prince and heir to a throne, his field of choices
had broadened greatly. He had thought he wanted a wife of strong
body and easy temper, a wife to meekly follow his lead and raise
his sons.
Then he had met Sahar.
Proud and beautiful, with a royal pedigree he
was foresworn to despise, but whose blazing green eyes, stiff
spine, and fierce determination he’d come to admire. He had
discovered, somewhere out there in the wilds with a bloodthirsty
tigress, that she was who he wanted. She was who he needed by his
side, not some mealy-mouthed, meek-tempered, weak-willed maid who
would blindly do his bidding, but a strong-willed, fiery-tempered
woman with a mind of her own who would challenge him when she
thought him wrong, and fight beside him when she knew him to be
right.
He’d been more right than he knew when he
told her they should marry because they were good together. They
were good together. Not only in bed. They made each other
better. So much better together than apart.
He pulled Zolotoy up to a stop.
“Aleksandr?”
He met his father’s quizzical gaze. “I have
to go back,” he said. “I have to tell her.”
“Tell her? Who? What?”
“The Princess Sahar,” his mother said with a
knowing smile. “That he loves her.”
Sahar sat on the rock overlooking the river
and pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders, trying to stem
the shivers coursing through her body as waves of grief washed over
and through her. She planted her hands firmly on the rock where she
had lain with Aleksi, seeking to ground herself, to keep herself
from drowning in sorrow, a sorrow so deep, so all-encompassing,
that she felt as if she would never draw a full breath again.
A sorrow that she’d brought upon herself.
Not only had she let Aleksi leave without
her, but she’d sent him away. The only man who’d known her. Who’d
teased her, challenged her, and fought with her and by her side.
Who’d made her burn and who had burned with her, only to rise again
and again. The only man she’d ever loved with a fire and a passion
that she’d never know again. She’d let her bruised pride send him
away from her.
She would be alone. Forever.
Wasn’t that what she wanted? What she had
always told anyone who asked, including Aleksi? That she needed no
man, wanted no man. That she would make her own way in this world.
That she didn’t need a partner to hold her hand and stand by her
side, to love her as she loved him.
Aleksi had said that they should marry
because they were good together, and not only in bed. He was right,
they were. They brought out the best in each other, as well as the
worst. He’d cheered her on when she beat him and every other man in
the race. He’d championed her when his half-sister and the Wolf had
made insinuations and outright lies about her. He’d helped her
cross river after river until she could cross on her own without
fear. He’d been a willing partner as she transitioned from girl to
woman. He was a generous teacher and a passionate lover. He’d given
her his solid strength to lean on, his broad shoulders to cry on,
his pride to bask in, but he had never given her his love. Not in
words. But then, she had never told him that she loved him. She
hadn’t admitted she loved him to herself until she had thought it
too late.
She’d been wrong. Wrong about not telling
him. Wrong about not putting her heart into words and handing it to
Aleksi, palms up. To deserve love, you had to give love freely and
without expectation. She hadn’t done that.
She stood, hoping she was wrong about it
being too late, hoping what she had felt with him, what his body
had made hers feel, what his earth-brown eyes and cocky smile had
told her, if only she had listened, were true. Hoping.
She turned, ready to jump on Lasair and race
to Aleksi, and froze where she stood.
“Aleksi. What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come for you.” Aleksi took a step
closer to the wary tigress standing on the rock they’d pleasured
each other on only a few days ago. The rock where she had spat out
his seed. “I’ve come to tell you I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” She jumped down from the rock. “For
what?”
Aleksi took another step closer. “For lying
to you.”
She shook her head, her cloak falling back
and her black hair spilling down to her waist. “When did you lie to
me?”
“When I told you that we were nothing to each
other,” he said, closing the distance between them. He saw the
flash of pain in her expression, an old pain that he had caused her
in a moment of frustration and embarrassment. He held her gaze,
feeling contrite. “You are not and have never been nothing to
me.”
“No?”
“No.” He reached out and pushed a curling
tress back from her cheek. “You are everything to me.
Everything.”
She smiled and sniffed then laid the apple of
her cheek in his palm. The tigress tamed for the moment. “I
am?”
“You are.” He cupped her chin and lifted it
so that she could see the truth. “I love you. I have from almost
the first moment I laid eyes on you.”
“You mean the first moment you insulted me
and I put my blade to your stones?”
He laughed, glad to see the green fire back
in her eyes. “I thought I wanted an easy-tempered woman, a
broodmare I could ride at will and keep full of babies. Then I met
this fierce, fiery tigress, who rightly named me an arrogant ass
and proved all my prejudices about royal princesses wrong. A
princess I could never hope to have.”
“But you could have me.” She gave him a
wicked, wanton, smile. “You did have me.”
“For a short time, a time we both knew would
end once we got back to the rest of the world.”
Her expression grew serious. “It was never
about me being a princess and you being a bastard.”
“No,” Aleksi agreed. “It wasn’t. It was about
both of us being too stubborn to admit that we needed someone else.
That we need each other.” He waited for her to argue with him, to
tell him that he was wrong, that she did not need him or anybody
else.
“You’re right,” she said. “About all of it.
About us.” She took the hand cupping her chin in hers and kissed
his open palm. “I love you too.”
He grinned like the lovesick fool he was, and
took both her hands in his. “Will you marry me, Sahar? Will you do
me the honor of taking me as your husband?”
She smiled, and Aleksi basked in the
brilliance of her glow.
“At least you knew my name this time,” she
said.
“I know more than your name, my tigress. I
know you. I know you are the only woman I want by my side and in my
bed for all the days and nights of my life.”
She slanted her green cat eyes at him and
smiled.
“Yes, Aleksandr. I’ll marry you. I’ll gladly
take you as my husband and proudly be your wife. I’ll stand by your
side and love you in bed and out. I’ll bear your sons, and your
daughters, and we will raise them together. We’ll raise them and
they’ll always know they are loved, and they’ll always know they
are deserving of love.”
Aleksi wrapped her in his embrace and kissed
her. He kissed her so that she’d never have to question his need,
desire, and love again. So she would know he loved her down to her
marrow.
She kissed him back, hot, demanding, and
passionate. Her hands clutching his arms as if she would never let
him go.
When at last they broke for air, Aleksi led
her over to their horses and booted her up onto Lasair.
“Where are we going?” she asked as he mounted
Z.
“We’re going back to the palace to make love
in your soft, clean, warm bed, where I am going to put a baby in
you before you can change your mind about marrying me.”
She grinned, baring neat, white teeth that he
could not wait to have nipping at his flesh.
“Perfect,” she said.