Page 45 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child

But Shona couldn’t answer any of her own questions. And the more they spun around inside of her, the more ill they made her feel.

When Yadira came to tell her, with her usual polite smile that Shona sometimes wanted to peel off her face by any means necessary, that the king would be dining elsewhere that evening, Shona wasn’t surprised.

It felt like a kick to the ribs when she was already down, but she wasn’t surprised.

She and Miles ate together instead, sitting on pillows low to the ground because Miles still thought that was almost too much fun to bear. When Miles asked where his papa was, she told him that his father was a very busy man who might often have to spend time away from them to do the things he needed to do as a mighty king. And she wondered if this would be her life now. If she would make up story after story to explain Malak’s absence, or if she would be the one who was exiled. And if she was locked away somewhere, what stories would Malak tell Miles to explain her absence away?

A lump stuck in her throat.

She shooed away the nannies and put Miles to bed herself as if they were in their own, rattly house in New Orleans instead of a vast suite tailor-made for the crown prince. She tucked him into his big, wide bed that he liked to pretend was a spaceship and she read him story after story, and then she stayed with him as his breath became deep and even.

She had pulled the sumptuous curtains closed so Miles’s room was dark, with only the faint gleam of the night-lights the nannies had placed at intervals casting happy little glowing circles in the corners of the big room.

Shona finally understood that her son was a prince. She understood, whether she liked it or not, that this was the reality they lived in now and there was no getting away from it. But there was more than a little part of her that rebelled at the notion that her sweet little Miles, so happy and so bright, might one day turn into another version of his father. Or his grandfather.

Malak, who touched her like she was made of fire then told her coldly he had never wanted her at all. Or the old king, whom Shona had only seen in passing, shuffling through the palace halls with a thousand-yard stare and nothing but whispers in his wake. She didn’t want to see Miles become either one of them.

She didn’t want her son growing up like all the broken men whose homes she’d lived in as a child. She’d seen ruin in all its forms. Substance abuse. Pure cruelty, simply because they could. Because no one cared. She’d seen poverty and selfishness and, worst of all, good intentions gone horribly wrong.

She didn’t want any of that for Miles. She wanted him whole. Happy.

As bright as he was now. As he was meant to be forever.

Why don’t you want that for yourself?asked a tiny little voice deep inside of her.

At first she tried to ignore it. She concentrated on the sweetness of the moment. Just her and Miles, curled up on a bed together, the way it always had been before. Her and Miles against the world.

But that little voice was insistent.

And the more it poked at her, whispering questions she didn’t know how to answer, the more Shona found herself turning all of this over and over inside of her. As if her whole life was some kind of shivering thing that had taken her over tonight, and she couldn’t control it at all.

Why did she accept it when someone made her feel like trash, even if that someone was the only man she’d ever loved? Why did she agree with his assessment when some part of her knew—she knew—that he’d been deliberately trying to hurt her? She would take great pleasure in ripping apart anyone who dared do that kind of thing to her child—so why couldn’t she stand up for herself?

“You’re not a whiner,” she whispered at herself, there in the dark, while Miles slept beside her. “You’re a fighter.”

If she could fight and survive in New Orleans all these years—from foster care to the life she’d carved out for herself with absolutely no help from anyone—she should certainly be able to do the same here, where she was more pampered than she’d ever imagined any person could be.

But she couldn’t help thinking that she’d spent her whole life fighting for the wrong things.

That notion tasted sour in her own mouth, but that didn’t make it any less true.

She’d fought for some kind of safety, always. She’d fought to keep herself protected—by any means necessary. She’d fought to keep her child safe, too. To keep them both under a roof. To keep predators away from the both of them, one way or another. She’d fought and she’d fought, even if that fight had often meant cutting off her nose to spite her face.

And the notion that Miles might ever have to do any of that—for any reason—made her feel even more broken than she had in that sitting room earlier.

She pulled in a breath and tried to steady herself, but that feeling didn’t go away. If anything, as she was lying there with her hand on Miles’s back, feeling that little-boy heat of his fill her palm, it got worse.

Shona didn’t want that kind of life—her life—for Miles. She would die before she would let him live the way she had. Always desperate. Always suspicious. Always waiting to get knocked down again. She would die.

So why was it she so easily accepted it for herself? As if it was no more than her due?

Shona didn’t realize she meant to move. It seemed like some kind of dream. She had a simple enough thought about what she ought to accept for herself—and then the world changed. Or she did, anyway.

She was on her feet before she knew it. Then she was in the halls, wandering through the palace as if it really was her home. As if she had every right to go where she pleased. She swept past the guards at the entrance to Malak’s rooms, and realized as she inclined her head in their direction that she was perhaps more of a queen than she’d ever given herself credit for.

Because they certainly treated her as if she had every right to march straight past them.

Malak wasn’t in his private dining room, and that meant Shona had to explore the rest of the sprawling monarch’s suite that she’d really only seen in passing—too busy had she been with her gaze on Malak. It was even more luxurious here, one room leading into the next in a cascade of evident wealth. She moved through all of them, paying little attention to the gilt and the gold, the huge paintings and the towering statues, the marble floors covered in rugs so soft and so delicate they felt like clouds.