“What the fuck happened?” he roars.
“I don’t know,” Leo says. “But I’m going to find out.”
“Do it,” Rhys commands.
Before we can all settle down and debrief, Dahlia starts to stomp away. Leo, without thinking of his job or protocol, reaches for her and grabs her by her arm.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he snaps.
“I don’t think that’s any of your fucking business,” she seethes. “Now let go of me.”
“I don’t think you’ve thought of anything at all today,” he yells after her even though she’s only gotten a few steps away from him. “Did you use your brain at all out there? What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that someone was trying to hurt my sister-in-law,” she says, her voice low and full of menace. “And that even if she were simply my sister-in-law, she’s our fucking Queen and I wasn’t going to sit back while someone took her from the car!”
“You could have been fucking hurt,” he roars, stunning us all into silence.
“Well”—she flips her slightly tangled hair over her shoulder as she turns away, effectively dismissing him like a princess would—“then it’s a good thing I wasn’t.”
“That’s not the point!”
“I think we’re done here,” she says cooly. There’s obviously more meaning behind her words than that she’s done with the argument, but she walks away.
Leo stands statue-still and watches her, torn between whatever is going on with them and his duty to his king.
“I’ll be ready to debrief when you are, your majesty,” he says dejectedly.
I feel like a lot has happened in such a few short hours and I really hope Rhys doesn’t fire Leo over this. I’m not sure any of us could take another loss today.
So, on that thought, I look up and tell Rhys, “I need a shower and a nap and comfy clothes and my cat.”
“Aye,” he says gently, his eyes turning soft as he looks at me. “Let’s get you your cat.”
Chapter 8
Scared
Two weeks later…
Icouldn’t tell you what it was that scared me. It wasn’t one specific thing or another, but a culmination of things. I swear, I can feel someone watching me at all times, even while I sleep, which seems ridiculous. But if I had a nickel for every time someone has tried to kill me, I’d only have two nickels but it’s still weird that it’s happened twice.
I’m jumping at shadows and hearing whispers where there aren’t any, and to make it all the worse, the coronation is closing in on me. I have dresses and orders andoh my God, I’m going to have to have sex in front of a room full of people. I want to throw up just thinking about it. Then there’s a secret part of me that thrills at the thought of what happened in the office. There were people in the room, but somehow Rhysstill made what should have been awkward, all about me… and I liked it.
But then notes started appearing…
I thought the first was crazy. An anonymous fan in a crowd handed me a bouquet, which is far from unusual. Normally, I would accept a few as I moved down the line and then when it became too cumbersome to carry, I would pass the bundle off to a royal aide. There was something about this particular bundle, as I worked my way down the line, that called to me to look at it. And when I did, I was shocked. Written in neat scrawl, it just said:
Get out while you can.
“Don’t worry about it,” Rhys had said. “We get threats all the time, it’s best not to look at them, but to let the royal aides report anything off putting to Leo as the head of your security.”
“But don’t you think we should take this seriously?”
“We take everything seriously,” he said making me feel like nothing was serious at all. “This is just part of royal life.”
Sure, sure, only my royal life is going to be shorter than I’d hoped because someone keeps trying to fucking kill me.
• ••