Page 74 of Maid for the Alien Prince

No, I knew that wasn’t possible. She would have to be at my side, no matter what happened. She would always need to be there so I could comfort and protect her.

I took two deep calming breaths, let them wash over me, and wiped the sweat from my brow before peering over at the other side of the bed.

It was empty, the bedsheets lying like a broken cocoon where she had released herself.

There were many reasons that she might have gotten up and left in the middle of the night. Perhaps Emma had come to her, asking for help with the injuries she’d sustained at Ges’ hands. Maybe she herself had overheard something and it made her get out of bed. Maybe she was hungry and wanted a midnight snack… and the Creator knew that we had done enough activities during the night that she ought to have been starving.

My own stomach growled, and I pressed a hand to it. Yes, I thought. That was the most likely thing to have happened.

I lay back down, my eyes still focused on the edge of the bed, how the sheets looked like they had taken a dive over the side. I didn’t like the way they looked.

Perhaps Camila hadn’t gotten out of the bed of her own volition at all. Perhaps she had fallen. She had a sore hip, and it was possible she could have accidentally fallen out.

I scrambled over to the other side of the bed and peered over it.

But she wasn’t there.

Her slippers weren’t there either, and for a moment, I felt relieved.

Who was going to kidnap her and take her slippers with them? It didn’t make sense.

She must have slipped them on and left the room.

But why?

There was a myriad of potential explanations, but that scream, the one that had awoken me in the middle of my dream…

It gave me an edge of fear that I couldn’t account for. Something within me, either my instincts or my fears—I wasn’t sure exactly what—but it was like stepping over a hot floor with harsh, dry sand, grinding against my skin and peeling it back… except it wasn’t grinding against my feet but my heart.

Something was wrong. I knew it in my bones.

I reached over and felt the spot where Camila should have been. It was cool, which meant she had to have left longer than the few minutes it took for the sheets to lose her warmth.

She’d been gone for a while… but how long?

I tossed the blankets aside and pulled on my robe. I slipped on my own slippers. They had a large “R” on the toes in looped golden lettering to signify Royalty. They had been fashioned from the skin of some creature that I’d never had a problem with and were said to be the most expensive and rare material in the galaxy… but they were not comfortable. I should have kept the two-credit pair I’d bartered for back on Hooerzitz Prime.

I tied the cord around my waist tight and stepped out of the suite. I peered one way and then the other to find the hallways were as silent as the grave.

I immediately shook my head at thinking in terms of sinister death and decay and moved down the hallway toward the stairs.

They were the set we used most often to move up and down the infinite palace hallways. There were really only a handful of rooms we used on a consistent basis, and they all fed off that single stairway.

I paused at the top, fear gripping me once again at the idea that she might have lost her grip on the handrail and tumbled down the stairs, one painful flight at a time.

I would see her body lying sprawled beneath me, her limbs snapped and broken amidst her torn clothing. No one would be awake to help her—and even if she could make a noise in such a condition, no one would hear her, much less rescue her and—

Stop it!

Just because she had a small problem with her hip didn’t mean she was fragile and liable to smash like a priceless heirloom! She was as tough as the woman I had met that night in my chambers.

She had come and squared off against me in the middle of the night to argue her father’s case—had faced off against a feral Ulsen during Steyatt and lived to tell the tale! There wasn’t a weak bone in her gorgeous body!

I peered down at the stairs and identified nobody lying unconscious.

Of course not!

I needed to watch myself, to not be too overprotective of her… although it would go against my basest instincts. She would feel stifled if I overdid it and that was the very last sensation I wished her to feel.

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