He couldn’t do that. He had made the decision to keep things… Platonic with Emerald.
To keep from descending into that madness that had captured both of his parents.
But now he had to answer that dark part of himself. The one that wanted to keep her here. Keep her away from everyone.
His child was royal, even if he was not. Emerald loved her country.
And there was more to life than this compound. That was the life the child of a crime lord had to lead. Locked away, with so many enemies beyond the walls that you were never truly safe. All because of your father’s ego.
He was still acting from a place where his ego was making decisions.
Especially with Emerald, and his refusal to marry her.
“This cannot endure,” he said.
Emerald looked at Andrei, certain she was misunderstanding him. “What can’t?”
“We are in hiding here, and it is sadly far too much like the last couple of years I spent with my parents. I will not do that to my son or daughter.”
“What are you…what are you proposing?” she asked, the calm, tranquil feeling she’d had a moment ago turning into something cold, afraid.
“I think we need to go back. Face all of this. Face all of this mess.”
“And what if Lucian orders your death?”
“Come now, Emerald. I would not be so easily defeated. I would not be defeated at all. Do you not know me?”
“I do. You’re arrogant and difficult and… I don’t want the father of my baby to die.”
She didn’t want him to die. She didn’t want to say that. Not now while he was in this space of cold, remote detachment.
“We need to marry,” he said.
“I thought you weren’t…”
“I don’t wish to force you. You will not be my mother. I will not be my father. But I think it is the only way forward.”
So logical. And correct, if she was honest. But it hurt all the same.
“Are you proposing a marriage in name only or…”
“For now,” he said, his tone rueful. “There is no way for us to manage all the things we must if we let ourselves get lost in lust. That is what harmed us in the first place.”
He was taking a lovely moment and turning it into something so cold.
He was right, though.
She didn’t know what to do with all the feelings inside her, so big and unwieldy. She didn’t know how she was going to be a mother, a princess, a wife. And the idea that they had a problem to solve together—that felt manageable.
Sorting out the issues between them much less so.
“All right, Andrei,” she said. “I will marry you.”
It had nothing to do with love, passion or desire. Nothing to do with what they’d felt for each other before everything.
What a strange realization.
He’d cared about her more before they’d ever made love.
