Page 16 of Claimed By the Crown Prince

The way she quivered when he came near.

The almost ever-present flush in her cheeks—although admittedly sometimes that might be irritation or anger.

And you want her.

Dax turned and strode out to the terrace, to try and cool the heat in his body and brain. He might want her, but he couldn’t have her. Not this woman who’d been promised to his brother from her birth.

He cursed. Itwasarchaic. It was ridiculous. But it was her destiny and he had to do everything in his power to make sure it happened.

His brother had let him have his freedom and now it was Dax’s turn to give Ari what he needed. A wife and a queen.

A little later, Laia was sitting cross-legged on her bed with her bedroom door carefully locked. She was on her laptop, which was hooked up to rapid broadband.

There were no headlines mentioning anything about Dax going missing. There were, however, some headlines about Princess Laia’s arrival on Santanger, and speculation about the royal wedding but no real details.

King Aristedes must have realised that he’d have to postpone the wedding at the very least.

There were several grainy pictures of Maddi arriving in Santanger, wearing what looked like a man’s jacket and with long bare legs. And then there were more recent pictures of her and the King at a palace garden party.

Laia touched the screen. Maddi looked very sleekly polished and a little terrified beside the tall and stern King. Wide-eyed. Obviously the Kingwasdetermined to maintain the fiction of his wedding proceeding, and luckily no one had seemed to notice that Maddi wasn’t Laia.

They looked so alike. It was only at close quarters that someone might notice that Maddi’s eyes were darker and that she was a little curvier—much to Laia’s envy.

The fact that the King hadn’t noticed that Maddi wasn’t Laia from the very first moment told Laia she was doing the right thing. They might not have spent much time together but he knew her well enough to have noticed. If he cared.

Laia hoped that Maddi was coping okay, and vowed to get her back to Isla’Rosa just as soon as she could. Her heart swelled as she thought of what her sister had done for her so selflessly.

Laia had spoken to her most trusted and closest advisor, who supported everything she was doing. He was the only one outside of Maddi, King Aristedes and Dax who knew exactly what was going on and where she was.

She’d just had a video meeting with him, to make sure all was proceeding as planned and that nobody suspected anything was awry. The Privy Council—the group of traditionalist men who’d worked for her father and who Laia had every intention of disbanding once she became Queen, to make way for a much more gender-equal and inclusive council—were under the impression that she was, indeed, in Santanger, fulfilling her engagement duties. Thanks to Maddi.

They wouldn’t know any different until she came back to Isla’Rosa, just before the coronation was due to take place. There would be repercussions from breaking the engagement, but nothing she couldn’t handle.

So now she turned to the piece of paper where she’d written downMontero Holdingsalong with Dax’s assistant’s email address. The name MonteroHoldings rang a small bell, but she couldn’t place where she’d heard it before.

Laia sent his assistant an email from a generic account, explaining that she was acting on Dax’s behalf for a few days, and giving a set of instructions regarding launching a new software product online in the coming weeks. And another instruction regarding sending his apologies for not being able to make the board meeting of a charity that—

Laia stopped typing and sat back. She hadn’t fully taken in what she was writing down at the time. The New Beginnings charity was very close to Laia’s own heart. She’d donated generously over the years—usually anonymously.

It had been set up specifically to target babies, children and minors who had been left orphaned or alone after either a natural disaster or through migration, when they were most vulnerable and prey to being trafficked or exploited. The charity provided safe places to stay, education and resources to help them find permanent homes. It also provided scholarships for sports academies and third level education.

It was an amazing charity, and it had called to Laia as soon as she’d heard about it. Her circumstances had been vastly different, of course—she’d still had a loving father—but she’d always felt the loss of her mother so keenly, and could empathise with other children bearing that huge loss.

As far as she could make out Dax was on the board of this charity.Interesting...A lot of wealthy people paid lip service to charities—she’d seen photographic evidence of Dax attending enough events over the years, with a beautiful woman in tow, and she’d thought it started and ended there.

But being on a board was a responsibility—she knew because she was on a few. You wouldn’t be tolerated for long if you didn’t pull your weight.

Intrigued, Laia finished sending the email and resisted the urge to dive deeper into an investigation of Dax online.

She thought of the fact that he was dyslexic. The people she knew with dyslexia had had to overcome hurdles most people never had to face. They were incredibly high achievers and very successful. Ingenious.

Laia had to concede that maybe Dax had more substance to him than she’d initially given him credit for, but a man with a social life as busy as his—

A headline popped up on her web browser at that moment and she stopped and clicked on it.

Is Playboy Prince Dax finally settling down?

Below was an article speculating as to what he was up to, and with whom, because he hadn’t been seen on the social circuit in a few months.

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