SEDUCING HIS PRINCESS (16 page)

Najeeb wrenched his shoulder, his face contemptuous. “You think
Jala could have had emotions for me and still came to your bed? Betraying us
both?”

“I said it was a dread, not a suspicion. She’s the most
upstanding person I know, the most forthright.”

“She is. I share a bond with her that was forged in the fire of
our lives’ worst experience and later nurtured by our kindred natures. There was
never the least romantic involvement on either of our sides, as I told my
foolish father. You should have both believed in
my
forthrightness and that if my emotions for her had been of that nature, I would
never have denied them.”

“That’s why I’m going insane. Because I believe in
her.
And everything she did, said...indicated she’d
forgiven me, proved she loved me now, even if she never truly did in the
past.”

“She did love you in the past. So completely your deception
destroyed her.”

He shook his head. “She told me what she felt for me wasn’t
strong enough to counterbalance her aversion to commitment and her fear that I
was a threat to her independence. Her discovery of my deception was just the
last straw.”

“Then she told you a lie, so you wouldn’t know the depth of her
past involvement and what your betrayal cost her.”

Mohab gaped at Najeeb, a vice squeezing around his heart. If
this was true, then he
had
hurt her more than he’d
ever realized. Which made her being with him again at all a miracle. Was that
her revenge? To make him fall as fully in love with her as she’d fallen for him
once, then give him a taste of his own poison?

But...no. She
wouldn’t
do that.

Najeeb went on, ending his confusion...and delivering a
crippling blow. “When I told her the truth, she pretended that you hadn’t
succeeded in seducing her, that I saved her in time to salvage her dignity. But
then I discovered the depth of your exploitation of her when I stumbled on her
in a relief mission in Colombia...and found her pregnant.”

* * *

By the time he arrived in Judar, Mohab felt he’d lost
whatever remained of his sanity. On receiving him, Kamal had said he didn’t care
how this had happened, only that Mohab resolve it or have him as an enemy for
life.

Mohab had told him to stand in line.

Now he entered Jala’s quarters and found her standing at the
French windows. She spoke as soon as he closed the door.

“I told you not to do this, Mohab, not to force another
confrontation on me. I have nothing more to say to you.”

And all his shock and anguish bled out of him. “I almost went
insane all those months I couldn’t find you after you left me. Now I know I
couldn’t because you did everything to disappear. So I wouldn’t find out you
were pregnant.”

“You went to Najeeb.” A ragged breath left her. “But you’re
wrong. I disappeared so I wouldn’t cause my family a scandal. I didn’t think you
would bother with me again.”

Every word made him realize he had dealt her an indelible
injury.

But right now, there was one injury in particular that he
needed to heal. “I want you to tell me what happened to our baby.”

“What do you think happened? That I gave him away?”

Him.
It had been a boy. The knife
hacking his vitals twisted. “I think you lost him. I want you to tell me
how.”

“It was a landslide while driving up a mountain in Colombia.
The jeep rolled over into the valley. One passenger died...and I lost the baby.
I was seven months pregnant.”

Her telegraphic account, condensing her horrific experience,
felt like bullets. “And you hated me that much, you didn’t think to tell me you
were carrying my baby? Distrusted me so totally, you didn’t even think it a
possibility I’d want to be there for you after your ordeal?”

Another ragged exhalation. “I believed I didn’t matter to you
either way, so I assumed you wouldn’t have cared if I carried your baby. And
that you would have probably been relieved I lost it.”

He squeezed his eyes. He’d hurt her even worse than his worst
projections. “Is this why you’re leaving me? Because you still don’t believe I
care?”

“I left because we had a deal.”

And he stormed toward her, his every nerve firing as he grasped
her shoulders, felt her again. “To hell with that deal. I never really meant it
when I first proposed it, and I faced the truth of what I always wanted right
before our engagement.
Ahwaaki, ya hayati, aashagek wa
abghaki bekolli jawarehi.
I love you, and I worship and crave you
with every spark of my being. You’re not in my heart, you
are
my heart. And I can’t live without my heart.”

She wrenched herself free from his grasp, her features suddenly
contorting out of control, her voice strangled with tears. “That’s what you say
now, what you think you mean. But you’re not only a man, not only a prince,
you’re a king now. You will need an heir. An heir I
can’t
give you.”

He gaped at her, a cascade of mutilating suspicions crashing in
his mind. Her next words ended them, solidifying them into terrible reality.

“My miscarriage was so traumatic, at such an advanced stage,
the doctors told me I’d never have children again.”

This was it. The dark secret that explained it all. All the
pain he’d felt from her and could never account for.

When he’d learned she’d been pregnant, he’d thought losing
their baby explained it. But it wasn’t only the loss, the injury, but the
permanent scar. She’d lost their baby, and any hope of having another.

He stared at her as her tears began to flow, as her shoulders
began to shake, at a total loss.

What could he do to mitigate her anguish?

He heard his voice, choking on his own agony. “I don’t
want
an heir,
ya hayati.
I
didn’t inherit my title, I was chosen for it based on merit, and when the time
comes for me to step down, I will pass the throne to whomever deserves it.”

A shaking hand wiped at her tears. “You do need an heir. Aliyah
told me King Hassan is withholding signing any treaties until he knows the
reason he blessed our marriage, the blood-mixing heir, is a reality. She wasn’t
worried, but only because she thinks we’re postponing having children
voluntarily.”

And then he exploded. “To hell with my uncle and Saraya and the
peace treaty. To hell with Judar and Jareer and everyone in them. I only care
about you.”

“You can’t say that. Now that you’re king, you owe it to your
subjects to keep the peace in their kingdom. I’ll be what stands in the way of
your achieving it.”

“I
will
keep the peace, and it
won’t be by bowing to any backward tribal demands. I only pretended to so it
would give me a chance to approach you again.”

She shook her head as she escaped his grasp, tears falling
faster. “Even if you do, you
will
want a
family....”

“We
already
have a family—me and
you and our furry babies, and we’ll have as many more as you want. And if you
long for the human kind of kid, we’ll try. The doctors’ verdict doesn’t have to
be final....”

“It is. I didn’t use protection, hoping they were wrong. They
weren’t. There is no hope.”

“Maybe there will be with minimum intervention. If there isn’t,
or you don’t want even that, I don’t care.”

“I can’t, Mohab...I can’t let you give up your right to have a
child. I can’t let you give
anything
up.”

“But
I
want to give up
everything
for you,
ya habibat
hayati.
” She shook so hard, her tears splashed over his hands,
burning him through to his marrow. He clamped her shaking head in trembling
hands, tilted her face up toward his. He had to convince her, stop her from
leaving him, destroying them both. “You carried my baby inside you, nourished
and nurtured him in your body and with your essence. You wanted him and loved
him, even when you thought I never wanted or loved you. And I wasn’t there for
you....”

A hiccup tore out of her. “I was the one who pushed you away,
who made it impossible for you to find me. You looked for me, even thinking I
never really loved you....”

“I should have looked more efficiently, not let my anxiety mess
up my methods. You can’t imagine how much it hacks at me to know you were
pregnant, without me, and then had to go through the pain and desolation and
loss...
Ya Ullah, ya rohi...
if I can’t give you
all my life in recompense, I would end it in penance.”

“Don’t say this....
Ya
Ullah...
don’t...feel this way.”

“I do feel this way. And as far as I am concerned, you
have
given me a son, and
we
lost him. And now I grieve with you as I should have at the time,
and we cling to each other even more, and forever.”

“No.”
Her shriek of agony pierced
him as she stumbled around and staggered away.

He hurtled after her, caught her back and crushed her to him,
out of his mind now with dread, begging her over and over.
“La tseebeeni tani, la tseebeeni tani abaddan.”

* * *

Don’t leave me again, don’t leave
me ever again
.

Mohab’s litany sheared through her, and his tears—his
tears—
rained over her face, mingling with hers,
singeing her soul. She never thought she’d ever see them. And now that she did,
felt their agony rain down her flesh, she couldn’t bear them, would do anything
to never see them again.

But she had to do this for him. He would come to regret his
emotional outburst when his head cleared and his passion cooled. He’d sooner or
later long for a child of his flesh and blood. And she’d be what deprived him of
fulfilling this need. He’d come to resent her for it. It was better for her to
die, to leave him now than to live with him till this came to pass.

She pushed out of his arms, shaking apart, tears a stream
draining her life force. “I never suspected you loved me as much as I love you,
Mohab. That was why I agreed to marry you. I wanted to have some more time with
you, give you the closure you said you needed, then disappear from your life
again. If I suspected you felt the same, I wouldn’t have done this to you.” A
sob tore out of her depths. “Please, believe me, I never thought I’d hurt you.
But once I realized you had become emotionally involved, I knew it was better to
hurt you temporarily than hurt you for the rest of your life. When I’m gone, in
time, you will forget me.”

He groaned as if she’d just stabbed him. “If I never forgot you
when I thought you didn’t love me, when you weren’t my wife, you think I’d ever
forget you now?”

“You
have
to.”

“Would
you
have left me? If you
discovered I couldn’t give you a child? Especially if you knew I couldn’t on
account of an injury you caused me?”

“You had nothing to do with my accident. I won’t have you
feeling guilty over this.”

“I
am
guilty. Of injuring your
belief in me and in your own self-worth. Anything that happened from that moment
forward is my responsibility, my guilt.”

She wiped furiously at her streaming eyes. “I once held you
responsible, too, but I was wrong. If there was guilt, then I share it in full.
I didn’t give you a chance to defend yourself, intended to deprive you of your
child. I deserve what happened to me....”

“
B’Ellahi...
you were a victim in
all this,
my
victim.”

At his desperate shout, her sobs ratcheted until they drove her
down to the ground.

Jala gazed up at him as he stood over her, looking as if his
heart had spilled on the ground, and she wailed, “If you love me, Mohab, let me
set you free. I’m not leaving you. This time I’m begging you to let me go.”

* * *

He let Jala go.

But only to set the plan to get her back in motion. Now that he
knew she loved him, too, he was never letting her go.

He had called a summit of all the people who were players in
this mess. His uncle, Najeeb and her family. They were all convened in Kamal’s
stateroom. Jala was there, too. This had been the last favor Kamal had said he’d
ever do for him.

He walked in, swept them all in a careless gaze, before he
focused on Jala. She looked pinched and drained, her beloved eyes extinguished.
It nearly drove him to his knees, how much she suffered, how injured and scarred
she was. He wanted to lay down his life so she’d be whole again, so she’d stop
feeling any deficiency. But since he couldn’t undo the damage, he could only
move heaven and earth, dedicate his very life to making it up to her.

He started talking at once. He told them the truth about the
past, what he’d done, what he’d cost Jala.

Feeling her brothers’ rage boiling over, he went on, “I want
you to know that I will accept, even encourage, any punishment you exact from
me. But that isn’t why I called you here. I did so to inform you that no matter
what you do, no matter what happens, I’ll part from Jala only when I die.”

His uncle heaved up to his feet. “But you have to. I only
agreed to the treaty,
and
the marriage...”

“Shut
up,
uncle.” His roar made
King Hassan sag back to his chair. “
You
didn’t agree
to anything, I was just humoring you, trying to save your face and avoid your
folly. But if you make any more trouble, or if you don’t sign the treaty, I will
be the one to declare war on you.”

“You don’t even have an army,” his uncle spluttered.

“I’ll make one. Or I’ll borrow one if it’s faster. Jareer is
far more important to so many powers today than Saraya, and they would do
anything for me if I ask. I bet they’d help me depose you just to be rid of your
nuisance. So
enough,
uncle. You’ve already cost us
what your very life doesn’t begin to make up for. Take my clemency and never let
us hear from you again except as a voice corroborating peace.”