by Katee Robert
Theo couldn’t abandon them any more than he could abandon his country.
“I have to do this,” he said.
Alexis exhaled a long stream of smoke and looked at him. “You might get both of them killed.”
He tensed at the very idea of it. Galen could take care of himself, but he thought of Theo first, rather than his own safety. Meg was smart and savvy, but she was out of her depth in this situation. A world without either of them would be unthinkable. “I won’t let that happen.”
“You’re so much like your father, it makes me sick.” She shook her head and took another drag from the cigarette. “You’re not a god, Theodore. You can’t save everyone.”
He could stand here and argue with her until he was blue in the face, but she would never forgive him for being the reason her sister stayed in Thalania, or for having that country’s stamp all over him. Theo was who he was. And Alexis might not believe it, but Mary had been happy until she died. However his parents’ relationship started, it ended in mutual affection and love. He couldn’t say as much to his aunt, though, without being accused of lying.
Instead, he went with the reason they were in Germany to begin with. “Will you give me a copy of her birth certificate?”
“You should let this go. Settle down with your cute little polyamorous life. Have babies or don’t. Grow old at a normal pace instead of accelerated through the stress of holding an entire country together.”
Theo held onto his patience by his fingertips. “Phillip is actively trying to remove me from the equation now, Alexis. He won’t stop, because as long as I’m alive, I’m a threat—even if I’m living what passes as a normal life. This is as much about survival as it is about reclaiming my birthright.” He paused. “And my mother deserves to have her reputation cleared.”
Alexis gave a bitter little laugh. Her blue eyes, so like his mother’s, held no warmth or sympathy. “Mary’s dead. Who gives a fuck about her reputation?”
“I do. And I think you do, too.” He glanced over his shoulder. Galen would have Meg in the car by now. They were waiting. “Alexis, please.”
She sighed and walked to a small table situated between two wicker chairs to snuff out her cigarette. Alexis bent and pulled a faded blue folder from beneath one of the chair cushions. She handed it to him. “Next time you’re going to bring violence down on us, don’t involve my son.”
“I won’t.” It was the least he could agree to. “The renovation is complete, as agreed. Thank you for the use of the house.”
Alexis shook another cigarette out of her pack and lit it. “I’m still contemplating burning it to the ground.”
He bit back a protest. The house belonged to her, and as such, it was her choice. No matter how little he liked it. There was no guarantee Theo would make it back through Germany again any time soon, but hell if he wouldn’t have bought that house from her outright if he thought for a second she’d sell. They’d only been there for roughly twenty-four hours, but the memories he and Meg and Galen had created within those four walls would stay with Theo for the rest of his life.
He flipped open the folder and read the equally faded birth certificate for one Mary Mortimore. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m assisting in your determination to get yourself killed.” She turned away.
There was nothing else to say. He’d got what he came for, and there was no mending bridges when it came to Alexis. There hadn’t even been a bridge to begin with. “Stay safe, Alexis.”
“Go.”
He went.
Theo made sure the door was locked behind him and then walked to where Galen had a beige Audi station wagon running and slipped into the back seat next to Meg. Galen barely waited for the door to shut before he took off. “You got it.”
He looked at the birth certificate again. Mary Louise Mortimore. His mother. “I got it.” It didn’t seem like anything special, though. He had no idea why Phillip had specifically not included it in the evidence he’d compiled, but Theo had every intention of finding out.
After they got to safety.
He leaned forward. “Greece.”
“Figured.”
Meg had found a blanket somewhere—Galen, no doubt—and had it wrapped around her so that only her face was visible. “What’s in Greece?”
“A property Galen owns that no one in my family or his knows about. He purchased it through a shell corporation within another shell.”
She gave a wan smile. “I’m sure the fact that Greece borders your country has nothing to do with that decision.”
“Well, there is an infinity pool.”
She laughed softly. “Of course there is.”
“Next he’ll try to convince you that naked sunbathing is the thing to do.” Though there was a thread of amusement in Galen’s voice, the tense line of his shoulders gave lie to it. He glanced at Theo in the rearview. “Why don’t you both rest for a bit? It’s a long drive, and we’re going to have to make it longer to muddy the trail.”
“I’ll take over in a few hours.” He should have said he’d drive now, but the truth was that his head pounded hard enough that it was a wonder it didn’t fly right off his shoulders. Theo needed a handful of meds and a couple hours sleep and he’d be as good as new.
Mostly.
“Works for me.”
Theo touched Meg’s knee. “How are you holding up?”
“Oh, you know, I’m peachy.”
Right. Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. He motioned. “Come here, princess. We both need some rest while we can get it.”
She unbuckled her seatbelt and moved to the center seat. Once she had buckled herself back in, he arranged the blanket around them and tucked her against his side. The tension bled out of her as the space between them warmed. She shivered. “God, this is the most insane experience of my life, and that’s saying something. What the hell did they do—shoot us?”
“Not us. One of the tires.” Galen didn’t look back. “It’s not an impossible shot, but it took a lot of skill to set it up so that the tire would go out right as we hit a curve and send us into the ravine.”
“They really want you dead, don’t they? I thought you had until your brother’s coronation.”
He should shield her from this, but even lies of omission tended to blow up in his face when it came to Meg. Better to put all their cards on the table and let her decide for herself. “They think you might get pregnant.”
She shot up fast enough that she almost clipped him in the jaw. “What?”
Galen took the entrance ramp onto the Autobahn and picked up speed. “If you get knocked up with Theo’s kid, then it bring other factors into play.”
“Why? If Theo isn’t in line for the throne right now, then why would his kid be a factor?”
Theo sighed. “Because my uncle knows he’s spun a web of lies and my brother is barely more than a child. He’s not going to be married and settling down anytime in the next few years, even if he wasn’t taking the throne. That leaves our sister as his only heir, followed by Phillip. And Phillip has no kids of his own. You mentioned a civil war, but having our line die out would cause a civil war. There are two lines who could argue that they hold enough royal blood to be next in line after Phillip, and neither of them are going to compromise. It would be England’s War of the Roses all over again. While there are members of both families that would be happy to see that happen, the majority of them prize Thalania and their business interests over their ambitions. If they know that I have an heir, they might be willing to support me despite the evidence Phillip provided. I’m a known quantity, and even though you’re not one of the marriage candidates they’d been pushing on me since I hit twenty-one, it wouldn’t matter. Stability is everything.”
“So many strings.” She gave a sigh of her own and resumed her position tucked against his side. “I think I’m going to try to sleep now.”
He’d said something wrong again. Theo held Meg close and let
the hum of the car’s engine sooth his eyelids shut. He never usually had a problem talking to people, especially women, but from the start Meg had cut through the bullshit. She didn’t like words twisted into games, didn’t get off on the push and pull of power plays the way some women did.
She didn’t want his money, but she wanted him.
She didn’t seem too keen on the fact he was a prince, but she didn’t blink at his unconventional relationship with Galen—or that they wanted her to be part of it.
She’d agreed that this should be temporary, but every time he said something that supported that agreement, something shut down in her hazel eyes.
The truth washed over him in a slow surge. She doesn’t like the thought of this ending. She might not want to keep them in any real way, but it would hurt her to walk away.
He stroked a hand over her temple without opening his eyes. It would be so easy to get her to stay. No games. All he’d have to do is tell her the truth. I’ve gone and fallen for you, princess. I think we both have. It would be a long road, but at the end of it, it would be the three of them together.
Theo couldn’t do it.
His wants didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. He wasn’t his own person. He wasn’t free to choose.
That truth had never mattered all that much to him. It was just the way things were. He always knew things with Galen would get complicated, but they’d always been complicated in their own way. That was just another truth he worked around as necessary.
If he wanted to have his cake and eat it, too, he’d convince Galen to marry Meg. Galen was titled, but he had a shit ton more freedom than Theo did. It would tie her to them, would allow them to stay together…
Until Theo married.
He was a lot of things. A cheater wasn’t one of them. Any woman he married would expect him to be faithful, and rightfully so. A theoretical wife who didn’t mind that her husband snuck away to fuck his best friend and his wife… No, it was an impossible dream. One that would turn to ashes if he tried to force it. That way lay resentment and the fracturing of his and Galen’s relationship, to say nothing of bending Meg until she broke.
Theo could be selfish. Fuck, he was born that way. But this thing between the three of them was too precious to poison with his plans. It would hurt to let Meg go. It might even break something in him.
But he’d do it.
There was no other option.
The next two weeks passed in a blur that consisted of the hum of the car’s engine and the scenery sliding by too fast to really enjoy. They drove through countries that peppered Meg’s pin board, but the most she got to enjoy them was hitting gas stations and drive-thrus to keep them going. Galen was too paranoid to let them stay overnight in a hotel, so the only bed she got was an hour here and there when they’d make pitstops to shower. During those stops, he disappeared to do whatever it was Galen did to keep them safe. A direct route only should have taken them about twenty hours to make, but something happened between her falling asleep that first time and when she woke up. The plan changed. The easy camaraderie between them dissolved into tense silence and tenser conversations.
It wasn’t quite hell, but it was definitely hell-adjacent.
She woke to the realization that the car had stopped. When had she fallen asleep? Sometime after they crossed the border into Greece, the lull of Galen’s big body wrapped around her too comfortable to deny. He was gone now.
Meg opened her eyes. She lay across the backseat, her head pillowed on Galen’s jacket. She started to sit up, but stopped when the men’s voices reached her.
Theo cursed. “It doesn’t make any sense. The birth certificate is just a birth certificate. It’s not anything special. There’s no secret clue that’s revealing why Phillip didn’t include it. Maybe it really was that the clinic burned down and he couldn’t be bothered to search a copy out.”
“You’re wrong. It means something. We’ll figure it out.”
“We keep saying that, and we keep fucking up. Phillip is acting erratic and paranoid enough that he might just send someone with a rocket launcher after us if we don’t do him the favor of dying in a so-called accident.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“You aren’t a god, Galen. You can’t control everything, and if you throw yourself in front of a bullet for me, I swear to all that’s holy, I will bring you back to life so I can kill you myself.”
Galen was quiet for a beat. Two. “My life is yours, Theo. It has been since I was sixteen.”
She shouldn’t be listening to this. Eavesdropping when they were withholding information was one thing, but listening in on what was obviously a private conversation was something else altogether. The raw truth in Galen’s voice tolled through her. He wouldn’t want that vulnerability witnessed, and he wouldn’t thank her for having done it. Fuck. She couldn’t sit up now. It would ruin everything.
Theo’s voice moved closer, lower. “Knock that shit off. You don’t owe me shit.”
“Your father was going to send me into exile with them, and you stepped in. Fuck, Theo, that’s a debt I can never repay.”
Theo cursed. “And look where it took you—right into exile with me. Being mine hasn’t done you any favors, so you can climb right off that self-sacrificing cross of yours. My life isn’t worth more than yours. It never was.”
Galen’s parents had been exiled?
Meg obviously needed to up her research game. She knew about the fallout surrounding Theo’s parents’ marriage, but apparently the political upheaval went back further. She hadn’t been aware that exile was so commonly used in today’s world. She sighed. Damn it, what she needed was a week and a computer with good Wi-Fi just to catch up.
Above her head, the car door opened. She rolled carefully onto her back and stared up into Theo and Galen’s faces. “Oh. Hey.”
Galen shook his head. “What did we tell you about eavesdropping?”
She had no self-righteous anger to hold her steady this time. “I woke up and you were talking, and there didn’t seem to be a good time to interrupt.”
“Mmmm.”
“What? You were having a moment. I wasn’t going to be the asshole who ruined the moment.”
“And yet here we are.”
Theo surveyed her. “How are you feeling?”
Surely, he couldn’t mean to have this conversation with her flat on her back and them standing over her? She struggled into a sitting position. “I’m fine.” Meg caught sight of impossible bright blue behind them. She nudged Galen out of the way and her breath caught in her throat. “That’s… That’s the Aegean Sea.”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes burned and she rushed to climb out of the car. Theo was there with strong hands to help her to her feet, and he held on a few extra moments as if she might topple over. Maybe she would. Meg couldn’t bring herself to care, not with the sight before her. She took a cautious step forward, half sure it was a pain-induced mirage that would dissipate if she got too closer.
But no. It was real.
Once upon a time, she’d been infatuated with the idea of living in Greece. It was before the political upheaval and shit in the last ten years, which had dampened her desire to visit but hadn’t managed to remove it from her pin board.
They had parked the car next to a house that looked about as one would expect—very square and very, very white—but never in Meg’s dreams did said house include an infinity pool. And it certainly didn’t include what appeared to be a private dock into the Aegean itself. It was all stark low cliffs that the house was built into and the almost painful blue of the water and…
Meg pressed a hand to her mouth. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Arms wrapped around her as Galen came to stand behind her. A few seconds later, one of Theo’s hands settled on her hip, and she knew without looking that he’d taken up position pressed against Galen’s back the same way Galen was pressed against hers.
&nbs
p; In that moment they just…were.
There was no future lined with pitfalls and danger. There was no past littered with pain and betrayal and bullshit. It was just the three of them watching the sun creep toward the horizon.
She moved first, turning in Galen’s arms to look up at both of them. “This is your house.”
“This is Galen’s house.”
Galen shrugged. “It used to have something else on this land, but I wanted somewhere private so I had the house built.”
Not just a house he’d purchased, but one he’d picked for himself from the ground up. Meg’s curiosity perked up. She turned to look at it with new eyes. “Show me?”
“Sure.” He led the way around the side of the house and up to the front door. It was bigger than she’d expected, and it looked sturdy enough to repel a small invasion. He keyed in a number into a security pad next to it and pushed it open so she could walk through.
She gave him a look. “Are you sure you don’t want me to hide behind you so you can clear this house?”
“I have cameras set up inside that are linked to my phone. No one’s been here but the maid, and nothing has been messed with.”
“Security systems can be hacked.”
He paused, closed the door, and turned to face her. “You don’t trust me to keep you safe.”
It wasn’t that at all. She didn’t think anyone could have kept her perfectly safe from the odds they faced, not that Galen would ever admit that. Every time he looked at her, his gaze touched on her arm as if reminding himself how he’d failed her. He did the same thing to the impressive bruise that had bloomed and faded on Theo’s face. She glanced at Theo, but he had taken up a perch on the staggered stone wall that seemed designed to keep the steep hill behind the house from toppling the whole building into the sea. There would be no help from there.