Sheikh's Baby Of Revenge

“Salaam-alaikum, Amira.”

She reached for the back of an armchair, blinking rapidly to clear the fast approaching tears. It was only relief. Only relief. She repeated it like a mantra.

Adir’s presence meant help. Meant she didn’t have to go through with the wedding.

Why he was here didn’t matter. He had made no promises and she wouldn’t expect anything. But he would help her escape. And then she could make a life for her and the baby, a life that she designed for herself, a life that wasn’t ruled by anyone else but her. Once she had settled into a new life, maybe she could tell him. She would not force this on him. She would not change his plans for his own life.

Maybe he would agree to visit her child whenever he was between assignments, or in the country? Maybe they could reach some...

“Amira?”

She startled, her mind a jumble of thoughts. “I’m afraid to blink for fear you’ll disappear. It’s not rational, I know, because I see you. My body remembers your scent—horses and sandalwood and...you. And yet the mind is such a powerful thing, you know? It weaves such illusions. I used to see my mother like that, months after she was gone. Hallucinations are caused by...”

“How much time is left before you marry your prince?”

She flinched at the open rancor in the question. This was not the charming, laid-back man she had given her virginity to. Something was different. Something had altered.

He wasn’t smiling. No, it wasn’t just the absence of his smile. He hadn’t smiled a lot that night, either. It was the presence of something else in his eyes today.

A dark intensity full of shadows.

A cloud of some intense emotion...resentment? Anger? Why?

He reached her with silent footfalls. His lower lip curled into a sneer as he took in her glittering wedding dress. As if she were nothing but a fake, tawdry imitation of what the future queen should be.

When his gaze returned to her face, that resentment smoothed out for an instant. There was a flash of that tenderness she’d seen that one incredible night.

“My father will arrive to escort me an hour before,” she said calmly before the hurt turned into words. “Why do you look at me like that? With such contempt?”