Page 67 of The Only King to Claim Her

“We should talk about it. Sometime. When you’ve settled things with your wife.”

Maximus nodded. “All right. But I warn you that when you know the truth, you might not want me as a son anymore.”

“Maximus, you have wanted me as a father in spite of my frailties. I could never not want you as a son.”

Maximus hung up the phone and sat there for a long moment. Then the strongest, sharpest pain he’d ever felt pierced his chest. It was like dying. But he was still alive. Everything that he had tried not to feel since the attempt on Annick’s life assaulted him then. It was no longer just anger. No longer a desperate need for revenge. He had nearly lost her. He had nearly lost her without ever truly having her. He had nearly lost her without ever telling her that he loved her. Without ever letting himself feel it. It was not protection. It was foolishness. It was fear.

And fear was a great liar.

He was gasping for breath now, barely able to.

He had told her he didn’t love her. His Annick. He had hurt her. She had already been hurt so many times.

He did not deserve her. He didn’t.

He doubled over with that knowledge. With that pain.

But she had said that she accepted him. All of him. Everything that he was.

Why? How?

He didn’t have the answer.

But as he lay there, stunned by the full force of these emotions, he knew that it didn’t matter why.

Because it wasn’t fair.

Nothing about life was.

Not the childhood Annick had spent in the dungeon, the death of Stella or the fact that Annick loved him. Knowing all that he was.

None of it was fair.

It was better than fair.

It was love.

* * *

Annick was fed up with her own frailty at this point. She had lived through unimaginable cruelties, and she had not fallen apart. But that was the problem.She had not had the time then. Now she was safe, well taken care of and feeling quite ill-used. And she now had the luxury of reveling in it.

She missed Maximus. She missed everything about him. And she was ready to bind her own wrists and present herself in his bedchamber as a gift. For him to unwrap.

“Have a bit of pride,” she said to herself.

She did not want pride. She wanted Maximus.

She lay across her bed, and as if her dreams had conjured him, there he suddenly was. Strong and silent and standing in the doorway, and she remembered what she had thought when she had seen him there in the dungeon. It was no longer bars, but him. He was not a prison, but a strange sort of freedom. A path to the center of herself. To all of her desires.

A man who was strong enough to take her anger, her grief, her joy, her pleasure.

A man who felt created most especially for her, but he did not seem to want to see it.

“What is this?” she asked, sitting up. “Are you here to brief me on military procedure?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m here to tell you... I’m not worthy of you. And I’m... I’m not two separate men. There’s no monster in me. Just me. And it’s been easier to pretend that I had a life in one place that was all its own, and a life in another that belonged to someone different. But it’s all me. I took those missions because it was easier to do something than sit in grief. Because I was afraid of what I might do with my anger if I didn’t channel it into something specific. I kept my old life because I still wanted to be near my family. Because I still loved my father even though I was angry with him. And I never chose another person to love because I never even knew what love was.

“I was young and life was easy, and I fell into something good with a woman who was as light and happy as I was. And now I’ve seen dark things in the world. Atrocities. And knowing about all of that and having the strength to love anyway... Well, I wasn’t strong enough to do that. Or brave enough. It took a woman who had seen as many terrible things as I had to make me want that again. Annick, from the moment I saw you it was something different. It was like you united both pieces of me. You made me have to figure out what it meant to be me. The Maximus King who cared about things. Who enjoyed pleasure. Who enjoyed life. And the Maximus King who was lost in a world of darkness and revenge. Wanting to protect you gave me purpose. And knowing you made me feel things again. Watching you live... I thought I was dead inside, but no. You made me into something so much better than I was even before.”

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