The Sheikh's Royal Widow (Desert Kings Alliance Book 7) by Mel Teshco

Author:Mel Teshco [Teshco, Mel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

It almost broke Akeem to see the look of bewilderment and hurt on Takisha’s face as the truth dawned. His wound became a secondary concern as he stepped toward her, putting a placating hand on her booted foot. “I never once lied to you, Princess.”

“No, but you evaded the truth,” she said flatly.

“I didn’t have a choice—“

“Everyone has a choice,” she interjected.

“I kept anonymous to stay alive.” Though what she wouldn’t understand was how many times he would have gladly forfeited his life thanks to the guilt he carried inside.

She frowned, her eyes flashing with a myriad of emotions, all of them too quick for him to read. “Who wants to kill you, and why?”

He didn’t have a choice now but to tell her everything, not if he had any chance at all to keep her in his life for just a little while longer. “Likely the same people who tried to kill me today,” he conceded. “The Grand Vizier of Charkain and his followers.”

“What? But he’s your countryman, your oldest brother’s advisor.”

“Yes. He’s also the one man my brother trusts with his life.”

“Then what did you do to make the vizier hate you so much?”

He ignored the intense pain in his leg and the fact everything around him was doing a slow spin. That was the least of his problems. He had to convince Takisha he wasn’t a bad person and that he was worth something to her. “Thanks to my so called heroics as a soldier, my people believed I would make the better leader.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“For the vizier, yes. Lyron is malleable, the perfect puppet for the vizier to control.”

That the vizier had planned for Takisha to marry Lyron meant the vizier would have then controlled two nations. The man was a power hungry snake.

“Then maybe you are the better leader?” she suggested.

“No!” His denial was immediate, as barbed and dismissive as the negative feelings flooding through him. “I’m about as far away from being a good leader that a person can get.”

She appeared to consider his words, her mare stamping a hoof and swishing her tail. “Then surely you could talk to your brother, make him understand—“

“He chose who he trusts most. And I’m happy enough with my simple life now.”

She blinked, then sighed. “I guess if you weren’t you would have told me who you were, made an offer of marriage yourself so that none of your brothers were given the chance.”

He ignored a surge of yearning at her words. Bloody hell. He must be seriously delusional to imagine he belonged with someone like her. As it was it’d taken everything he’d had to walk away from his family, his life, and not look back. “Believe me, I’m not husband material. And you wouldn’t want to marry me anyway, not if you knew my past.”

She leaned back on her mare as if he’d struck her. “Then don’t leave me in the dark. I need you to tell me…everything.”

It wasn’t a question or a demand but he wasn’t going to deny her the truth, not anymore.

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