Page 40 of His Hidden Royal Heirs

Cristhian had no great love for his mother’s country, but he had to admit it grated to hear the king act as though it was somehowbeneathhim. “As is Lille.”

“Indeed. A partnership is what I’ve been after in securing my heir a husband. Both political and ensuring that the best bloodlines continue.” He frowned a little and drummed heavy fingers against Cristhian’s desk. “I don’t know what I’ll do about the crown prince. Beaugonia won’t do. I don’t suppose you have some princess cousins who might want to marry a crown prince?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I have little to no contact with my mother’s family, Your Majesty. I intend to keep it that way.”

“No, that won’t do. You want to marry my daughter, raise these children as you see fit, but you don’t understand. It is our responsibility as leaders to consolidate and protect the kind of power that will keep our families safe and profitable until the end of times. Lille and Hisla must come to a kind of...partnership. You’ll need to secure agreements with your family.”

Cristhian stood there and felt something so strange and out of place he didn’t recognize it at first. But eventually, understanding seeped in.

He regretted this. He’d made a mistake. To involve Zia’s father, her family. He knew he wasn’t wrong about getting married. But he had been wrong about trying to use her own blood as a weapon against her.

Because now, more than ever, he wanted to protect her from...this. Power and profits, when a child’s future should be about happiness. About peace. Not justhischildren’s.

But Zia’s.

He had no doubt, even now, Zia and her sister were up there planning rebellions. Escapes. Just as they had planned and enacted Zia’s escape to the island. In this moment of King Rendall talking about power and kingdoms, Cristhian was tempted to allow them to do just that. To get away from the man who sat before him.

But if he let Zia run away, the king would find her again. Maybe not right away. Maybe Cristhian could even thwart him, but it would mean a life of constant vigilance for Ziaandhis children. A life, essentially, on the run.

And running away never solved a thing. If anything, it always ended in destruction.

At some point, Zia was going to have to see that he was offering her protection just as much as anything else by marrying her. He was trying to do right by her, even if she didn’t see it. He would protect her. He would...

A strange, clutching feeling took residence in his chest. An understanding just out of reach. And an old memory from long ago.

Your family does not have power over you unless you give it to them.

They control everything.

Not me.

Cristhian stood there while King Rendall prattled on, stuck in that memory of his parents. One from not long before they died. He’d been meant to be asleep, but he’d gone to find them for some reason he could not remember now.

They were huddled on the floor of their living room in his grandparents’ house in the States, a fire crackling in the hearth.His mother had been crying. She was shaking even now, but his father held her as he always did. And said those words that echoed in his mind, as if his father was reaching out from whatever great beyond and whispering them to him now.

He’d always thought his father’s words were simply love talking. Cristhian still thought that, all these years later. His father had loved his mother enough to take on some sort of unearned arrogance that he could face down an entire monarchy.

Now Cristhian was following in those same footsteps.

But it wasn’t love on his part. Protecting Zia was about protecting his children. If he didn’t like the thought of her under King Rendall’s thumb, it was because he hated bullies. Royal bullies especially. It was because he’d watched his mother struggle and did not want that for the mother of his own children. The children would watch, they would see. So it was for them.

He had believed all of that, until this very moment.

Hedidn’tlove Zia. Couldn’t. What was there to love? He barely knew her.

Cristhian watched King Rendall’s mouth move and move and move, but he heard nothing the man was blathering on about. The wordloveclattering around inside him like some kind of internal grenade.

He thought her selfish, even if she had described a childhood where at every turn she’d made some sacrifice to protect her sister. She had run away forherself, not their children.

He could picture her perfectly in that cozy little cabin on an arctic island. Roughing it, essentially. It was hard to convince himself that had been selfish, exactly. There had been some sacrifice involved.

But for her own gains.

Gains she hadn’t attempted until she’d fallen pregnant. Then, very resourcefully, had escaped her royal chains and somehow lived for months on that tiny, isolated island. All those small, meaningful things she’d told him about doing the week she’d been exploring freedom, just to get a taste before taking on a marriage, an inheritance she didn’t want, to protect her sister.

And only the appearance of theirchildrenhad changed the course of that. Because she had put them first.

He hadn’t wanted to believe that, but he’d seen her face when she’d seen Beaugonia.

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