And there was only one explanation she could find.
He’d changed his mind.
He no longer wanted to have an heir.
Not from her.
* * *
Numair didn’t know how it was possible, after all he’d done in his life, that he’d deserved a second chance.
Yet he’d somehow gotten it.
Jenan wasn’t pregnant yet.
The news had almost buckled his knees when bullets had failed to do so. Relief still so enervated him, he hadn’t been able to do anything since she’d left for Zafrana’s royal palace an hour ago.
This development bought him the most precious commodity—time to resolve everything. This way he could let it be her choice to give him a child after she knew everything about him, and everything that had brought him into her life. He wanted nothing but for her to have the dignity, the freedom and self-determination to decide to be with him, to share her life and child with him, after full disclosure.
This was everything he wanted now. He no longer cared about taking over Zafrana’s throne or even Saraya’s. He no longer even cared about punishing his uncle or avenging his father or himself. All the ugliness and horrors and suffering suddenly felt as though they had happened in someone else’s past, someone he no longer was.
He was now a new man, a man who loved Jenan with all the heart she’d created inside him. He cared only that she forgave him his initial deception and gave him her trust, her love, forever. Nothing else but her mattered.
As for resolving the other matters he’d come here for, his plans had radically changed. He still had to depose Hassan, as this was no longer just about him, but because he couldn’t let such a criminal continue ruling his homeland. He now just had to find a way that wouldn’t hurt or disgrace the rest of Hassan’s family...and his own. Then he’d be able to confess everything to Jenan.
Suddenly, another realization burst in his mind.
He couldn’t make love to her anymore!
Though there was a possibility he couldn’t impregnate her since he hadn’t yet—which he also realized didn’t matter at all—he couldn’t continue making love to her without protection, in case they finally succeeded in creating a child before he resolved everything. And he couldn’t suddenly start using protection, either, not without explaining why.
His only way out was to not make love to her at all. It felt like the most mutilating sentence he’d ever had inflicted on him. But it was a price he had to pay for his mistakes, until he fixed them and told her the truth.
He could only pray to whoever or whatever had answered his first prayer, that when he did, she’d still want him and would give him a second chance.
The second chance his life depended on.
* * *
“Is Numair coming today?”
At Fayza’s eager question, Jen turned from staring numbly at her reflection in her bedroom mirror. She found both her sisters with their heads poking around her suite’s door, their long hair cascading like waterfalls of mahogany and ebony. They were now the one thing that made being back in Zafrana’s royal palace, in Zafrana at all, in this whole life, bearable.
She had one response for them. “No, he isn’t coming.”
And she feared he never would again.
“But we want to ask him if we can have another party on board his jet,” Zeena lamented.
“Can we call him?” Fayza zoomed inside, bombarding her with questions. “We don’t have his phone number. Does he even answer if it’s a number he doesn’t know? Or does he know our numbers? Would you call him for us?”
“Don’t you think we’ve taken enough from Sheikh Numair?”
Jen’s heart squeezed at their father’s weary voice. He now followed the girls into her suite at a much slower pace, as if it hurt to walk.
Forcing a smile, she rose to greet him, and he took her in arms that trembled and kissed the top of her head.
It felt as if her father had grown smaller in the past months, had aged far beyond his sixty-three years. Being helpless to solve his kingdom’s problems, and the shame of having to sacrifice his eldest daughter as their only solution had taken their toll. Even now that it was over, it seemed the ordeal still echoed its distress and defeat inside him. It probably would for the rest of his life.
She pulled back, wanting to soothe him, even when she had nothing but dread and pain inside her own soul, and he looked at her with a world of contrition in his eyes.
“When you first came to me with Numair and told me he’d resolve Zafrana’s debts, I couldn’t believe he’d do that without asking for something even bigger in return. I didn’t even know if he could do it. Then Hassan called everything off, and I knew Numair had fulfilled his promise. A week ago, I got back everything I signed away, just because Numair willed it. Now I find myself in an even bigger debt than what bound me in servitude to Hassan. This time to Numair. The debt of the restoration of your freedom, of our kingdom’s stability and of my dignity. And it’s a debt I have no idea how I will ever repay.”