CHAPTER FIVE

S HE TOOK EVERY last one of those thirty minutes, but not one second more. She did not have much, but Cristhian supposed even a runaway princess could only travel with what she could carry. He plucked the bags from her hands and marched them out to his car.

She followed him at a much slower pace. Her gait was careful, one hand placed over the rounded stomach as she stepped around icy patches in the snowy path. He had to fight the urge to cross to her and offer an arm. He prided himself on being polite in all situations, even finding missions, but it would be best for the both of them if he limited any and all physical contact that might be a dangerous reminder.

Especially since he was planning on taking her to his estate just north of Lille. Close enough to returning her, should he decide that be their fate. But also on his own turf, so he would be making the decisions.

It would just be the two of them and his very minimal staff. Where they could privately and safely work out some kind of...agreement. Risky, considering his body had not gotten the memo that she was his adversary now. But necessary.

Marriage? He would not be party to any more royal tricks and maneuvers, so a union seemed like the worst-case scenario. And yet he would be a part of his child’s life. Perhaps he’d never had any driving desire to be a father, but he knew he had wisdom to impart. He would ensure his child received that over any royal brainwashing that would no doubt come from the king.

Zia was young. Perhaps her running away meant she was not fully under her father’s thumb, but Cristhian knew how this went. He had watched it play out in his mother’s short life. Princesses might try to escape, but they never succeeded. They ran away instead of making a stand.

Case in point.

Moreover, Zia would not be immune from running back to Lille. She would want more for her—their—child, as his mother once had. Birthrights were dug in deep, no matter how stifling a person found the royal life.

Cristhian needed time to think. To plan. To prepare. To rearrange the world to his specifications. In a way his parents had not been able to accomplish.

Because he would not meet their fate, and he would not allow Zia to. There would be no running away, and his child would have their parents. One way or another.

He drove them to the small airport. The sky was dark, and snow had begun to fall. Takeoff would be tricky, but necessary. Once he parked, he gathered Zia’s things. He could not stop himself from helping her out of the car, her slender, gloved hand sliding into his offering too many memories that threatened to distract him from his cause.

But Cristhian was stronger than that. He dropped her hand and led her into the terminal of the airport. He found his assistant.

“Is the plane ready?”

“Yes, sir. But we must take off as soon as possible. Weather is coming in. They’re anticipating they’ll have to lock everything down before the hour is out.”

Cristhian nodded. Then followed as his assistant led them through a maze of hallways and out onto the tarmac. As they approached his plane, he handed the bags to his assistant, who would stow them away in the back of the plane.

With reluctance yet again, Cristhian offered his hand so he could help Zia up the stairs into the plane.

But she hesitated. “This plane is very small.”

“An excellent quality for a plane that will land on my private airstrip.”

She gave him a look, the same look she’d leveled him with inside the cabin when she’d said, “Tell me again you’re not royalty, Cristhian.”

But he was not. Perhaps he had an official title in Hisla, but he never used it, and the current queen—his mother’s older sister—had no use for him. Nor he for her, so it worked out. Perhaps some of his estates came as an inheritance from his mother, but most of the inherited money that he’d turned into his own fortune had been from his father’s movie earnings.

He thought for a moment of his grandparents in the States. His mother’s family had kept them out of his childhood as best they could, but as an adult he’d forged a relationship with them. They were elderly now, his grandmother frail, his grandfather stubborn. But they would welcome news of a child.

It almost warmed him.

But there were too many complications to wade through first. Like how he had managed to make his one and only adult mistake with a princess .

He helped her up the stairs and gestured her to a seat. “Take your pick and make yourself comfortable. The flight will be a few hours.”

She began to follow instructions, then looked back at him as he began to duck into the cockpit.

“You’re flying?” she demanded, her voice going up an octave.

He looked over his shoulder at her, eyebrow raised. “A pilot wasn’t in the budget.”

She scoffed. “I can only imagine what you charge for your finding services. I imagine your budget can include whatever you wish.”

He lifted a shoulder and didn’t bother to answer. “I would buckle up, Princesa. It looks like we’ll be flying around some weather.”

The he pushed her existence out of his mind and focused on flying.

The flight had not been smooth. Zia’s nerves were shot by the time they, what felt like, skidded to a landing. She had to pry her fingers off the armrests as they were stiff from gripping so hard.

It was not Cristhian who helped her down the stairs of the plane this time, but the man he’d met at the airport. Who offered her a kind, encouraging smile, which certainly was a change of events.

She was led to another car while snow fell at heavier and heavier rates. She had no idea what country they were in, where Cristhian was taking her, and she knew she should be more concerned about that than she was, but what was there to do? He was the father. He had a right to some say in this.

She just had to figure out how to make sure he did not somehow have all the say. She had to maintain some amount of power and agency here, and she did not know how to do that just yet. She’d never had a chance to learn. Running away had always been the only answer.

She couldn’t run from this, any more than she could run from the pregnancy or the fact that Cristhian was the father of her children.

Children. The most important part of all this. She would do anything for them, fight whatever powerful men she had to fight. She would have a say because she would protect them in all things. She would put their needs above all else.

The way her own mother had never stepped in and protected her or Beau. The way her father had never put anyone’s needs above his country’s.

She smoothed her hands over her belly, gave her children an internal promise she’d do whatever it took. To keep them safe. To keep them happy. She’d find a way.

Cristhian took the wheel of the car, his assistant not getting in with them. Zia felt a little deflated at the loss of the one person who’d offered a glimmer of kindness, but exhaustion was creeping up on her. She’d eaten on the plane, but she had not been able to sleep.

Cristhian drove them over twisting and rolling roads, the snow nearly blinding the whole way. Zia gripped the car door just as tightly as she’d held on to her seat on the airplane. Cristhian drove through it at a slow pace, and still it seemed impossible he knew where the roads were.

The snow began to ease a little. Big flakes still fell, but not at quite the alarming rate. Cristhian slowed at a gate that after a few moments began to slowly open. He drove through it once there was enough space, then over a winding drive that led toward a...

“Cristhian.”

“What?”

“This is a castle .” Perhaps on the smaller side of many of the royal palaces she’d been to in her life, but it was still so clearly built for royalty. Stately stones, towers, intricate windows and cornices. Like a fairy tale with the snow fluttering in huge flakes all around them, and the trees and rolling ground heavy with snow.

Cristhian studied the grand building as if he’d never considered that term before. “Not a castle.”

“It has turrets .”

But he would not be deterred, because of course the man she’d been so physically attracted to she’d forgotten all sense would be the most stubborn man alive.

“Old, yes,” he returned. “There’s some ancient Scandinavian line to my grandmother’s family. But we have never called it a castle. This is Espinas Cottage.”

She snorted at the word cottage , but he ignored her.

“Very private. Very out of the way. We will have a few days to determine how we will move forward.”

“ We or you ?”

He shrugged in that arrogant way of his. “Feel free to argue semantics all you like. For now, we should get in out of the cold.”

Which meant he thought he was going to be making all the choices. And she was clearly stuck here—in a castle, in the middle of a blizzard, with a man who thought he ran the world.

How familiar, all in all.

And because it was familiar and frustrating, she found those old rebellions swimming around in her as he helped her walk through the snow, up grand castle stairs. She wanted to lash out, shock, get a leg up on all that male certainty. Just like she had as a wild, impetuous teenager who’d only ever been cowed by threats against her sister. Because her parents saw Beau’s panic attacks as a weakness, a blight. Not simply a condition to be treated. For years, Zia had done whatever they wanted in the hopes they wouldn’t lock Beau away.

But her sister wasn’t here. The only one Zia could hurt now was herself. And him .

“There is something I forgot to mention,” she offered as they stepped into a grand, echoing foyer.

“What’s that?” he returned somewhat absently.

“I’m not having your baby, Cristhian.”

He sighed heavily, disdain in every second of the sound. “Zia—”

“I am having your babies . Twins.” And she had the great satisfaction of seeing his mouth go slack for a moment. The total and utter shock she’d put in his expression. Not put together even enough to find that blank look. Just pure, unadulterated shock.

So she smiled at him for the first time since he’d shown up in her life again, and meant that smile.