Twin Heirs to His Throne(21)

He shook his head. Shook, period.

She made no sound, no gasp or whimper or sob. Even her steps were soundless. Yet her anguish as she silently left him was deafening, almost rupturing his head.

He’d hurt her irreparably and unforgivably again.

But now more than ever, now that he knew the sheer extent of her emotions, he knew he’d made the right decision. In the past and now. It was better to push her away, have her hate him, hurt her temporarily...than to do so permanently.



Kassandra walked through the majestic halls and corridors of the palace, afraid she’d scatter apart if she went any faster.

But she had to hold it together until she reached her quarters. Apart from the eyes that she felt were looking at her disapprovingly and pityingly from those lofty portraits, other hidden ones were monitoring her progress. Leonid’s invisible security detail.

Not that they should be worried about him. Their future king was impervious. And lethal. As he should be, as he’d just explained he had to be, to be king.

The distance to her quarters seemed to have doubled. And they weren’t her quarters. They were just the place Leonid had exiled her to across the massive palace. Now she knew beyond a doubt why. She had known since the first night he’d avoided her, but just had to make him stab any hope she’d been wrong to death.

Not that she could blame him this time. She’d taken a gamble that there was something between them, something old to resurrect or new to nurture, and she’d lost. She’d thought the slightest possibility she was right had been worth any price she’d have to pay if she turned out to be totally wrong. As she had been.

Leonid didn’t want her. That incendiary encounter had been an unspecific response of an overendowed male to a female in heat. And he was clearly disgusted with himself for succumbing to a base urge he feared would jeopardize his priorities: his relationship with the girls, and his position as a king reestablishing a struggling monarchy.

And though it devastated her that she wasn’t one of the things he cared about, she understood. He couldn’t help how he felt, and how she felt wasn’t his problem. He owed her nothing, but owed the girls and his kingdom everything.

So now she had to live up to her promises. Live close to him for her girls’ sake, for his kingdom’s, playing her expected role for the world, while showing him nothing but neutrality and pleasantness. Even as she withered with futile yearning for him forever. As she would.

In spite of everything, she’d never stopped loving him.

No. It was far worse that that.

Inexplicably, she loved him now more than ever.



“You were married all this time, let us suffer through the scandal of your pregnancy, and you want me to calm down?”

Kassandra winced. Her father’s booming voice was loud enough it actually made the phone vibrate in her hand. Not to mention her brain shudder in her skull.

“Hush, Loukas, as if this is important anymore.” That was her mother on the other line of a five-way video call.

It had taken Kassandra four days after her last confrontation with Leonid to call her family, who mainly lived in New York but for two exceptions, to explain the whole situation and invite them to the coronation in three weeks’ time.

Only four out of the seven who made up her immediate family had been available. Her other two older brothers and another older sister texted to say they’d call as soon as they could. Now she was talking to her parents and two of her siblings.

“But Leonid Voronov... Now, that’s the relevant thing here!” her mother exclaimed. “How were you even able to hide your relationship? Hide him?”

Kassandra sighed. Leave it to her parents to each fixate on what they considered the issue here. Her father felt she’d shamed him socially for nothing, and would now make him look like the oblivious father his daughter had ignored in choosing a husband, and her mother was questioning her gossiping network and her own secret-divining prowess.

“What’s not making sense to me is that your breakup clearly happened after his accident.” That was her oldest sister, Salome, married with four kids and living in Greece since her marriage. “The Kassandra we all know wouldn’t have left the man she loved, at least loved enough to marry and submit to those convoluted cloak-and-dagger shenanigans to accommodate his desire for secrecy, when he’d just had a major accident.”

“Can’t you see you just answered your own question?” That was Aleksander, her year-younger brother, and almost her twin. “Voronov was the one who broke it off.”

“But why, for God’s sake?” Salome exclaimed as she rushed to stop her youngest, a four-year-old tornado by the name of Tomas, from dragging her laptop off the countertop. “At the time when he must have needed you most, when you needed to be with him...!” She put her son on the ground and focused back on her. “Say, it was around that time you discovered you were pregnant with the girls, wasn’t it?”

She’d already resigned to spending this conversation answering questions, and sighing. As she was now. “I found out just before his accident.”

“So he broke it off before you told him?” That was her father again, his voice like rumbling thunder. When she hesitated, he exploded. “He knew and still broke it off? And he’s back now expecting you to forgive him and give him every right to the girls? I don’t care who he is or who he’s going to be, this man doesn’t deserve to come near my daughter or granddaughters, and I’ll see to it that he doesn’t! I’ll kill him first!”

“Baba...” Kassandra parroted her siblings’ similar groans.

“Loukas!” her mother intervened. “You will calm down right this second. You’re not going to kill anyone, starting with yourself. I forbid you to have another coronary!”

Kassandra’s heart kicked. “Coronary! When was that?”

“See what you did, Rhea?” her father grumbled, looking like a petulant grizzly. “We agreed we wouldn’t tell her. Now she’ll worry herself silly when it was just a minor thing.”

“Minor?” her mother huffed furiously. “You call multiple balloon catheters and stents minor? How about keeping me on my feet and dashing around for days as you whined and grouched and made impossible demands until I literally dropped? Still minor?”

“Don’t mind them, Kass.” Aleks chuckled, the mellowest male in their pureblood-Greek clan, and the one who’d been fully Americanized. Almost. “They’re both back to peak condition, as you can see and hear, so don’t even start asking what happened. Their tempers have been more hair-trigger than usual since that hospital stay and we won’t be able to get them to stop if they start another episode in their Greek-tragedy love affair.”

Aleks had always joked that their parents’ dramatic fights were their way of spicing up a forty-plus-year marriage.

Looking positively murderous, her father glared at his son, then turned to her. “I’m bringing your uncles and cousins, even those from your maternal side, to take care of this man.”

“Whoa, you’re deeming to enlist my brothers’ and their progeny’s help?” Her mother scoffed. “After forty-three years, they’re finally good for something, in your opinion?”

Ignoring his wife, her father focused his wrath on Kassandra. “Russian king or billionaire or mobster or whatever that Voronov guy is...”

“He’s actually Zoryan, not Russian,” Aleks piped up.

“Whatever he is,” their father shouted to drown out his youngest son’s bedeviling, “we’re teaching him a lesson about being a man, one he won’t forget in this lifetime.”

Kassandra’s sigh was her deepest yet. “Congratulations, Baba. Now that you’ve detailed your plan to cause an international incident, you just made me revoke your invitation to the coronation.”

Paternal thunder broke over her again, making everyone grimace and groan. “You’re protecting him? He came back to you with puppy-dog eyes and all is forgiven? Not in my book. He needs to know the kind of consequences he faces when he messes with the Stavroses and their own.”

“So you’re drafting the Papagiannis in your war, but they don’t even get mentioned in the credits?” Her mother snorted.

Salome raised her hand like a student seeking to be heard in a raucous class. “Didn’t you notice the little detail that he came back with something more than a wagging tail? He’s making your granddaughters princesses and your daughter a queen, for God’s sake.” She turned her eyes to Kassandra, the implication clearly just sinking in. “Oh, God, I can’t wait to tell everyone here we’re going to be European royalty!”

“Is Zorya a European kingdom, or is it counted as Asian?” Aleks mused the pragmatic curiosity on purpose, Kassandra was sure, to amplify her father’s fury.

Ignoring him, Loukas Stavros leveled a glare at his firstborn, as if Salome had just called him a dirty name to his face. “I care nothing about what he offers. My granddaughters and daughter are already princesses and a queen without him.”

Aleks chuckled. “As are all girls to their fathers, especially Greek fossils. Lighten up, Baba, this is the twenty-first century and your daughter is a world-renowned celebrity and businesswoman. She can take care of herself.”