Championing Kade--Sample (Book 3 of The Sovereign Series)

2. I Could Not Travel Both

44 Days Before The Coming of Age Ball

Coming back from Princess Eliza’s room with an empty meal tray, Meredith couldn’t help but smile. Eliza’s appetite was picky as of late, but the woman absolutely glowed from her pregnancy. And it wasn’t the type of glow that came with a shiny forehead after heaving up your breakfast into the toilet. Those days were months ago. It made Meredith think that all the sickness, the nausea, the look of being green about the gills, was all worth it.

Besides, not all females dealt with pregnancy the same. Queen Alexandria had only the vaguest signs of morning sickness with her three children. She had looked slightly pale whenever anyone cooked fish for dinner, but she had otherwise had a healthy appetite.

It both hurt and heartened Meredith as she thought of more royal babies coming into the vast, cloistered world of the palace. A baby’s birth was always a thing of joy to behold, but she couldn’t help but be saddened by the fact that it was something she would never have.

Or at least have with Kade, the one person she could see fit to bear children for.

At least right now.

As she carried the tray back down to the kitchens, one of the other servants, Alistair, came up to her to help with the heavy dishes she struggled to hold upright.

“Let me get that for you, Meredith,” he offered, smiling as he took the heavy items from her arms.

“Thanks,” she said, wiping her hands off on her apron and following him to the kitchens.

A few scullery maids were rushing about with preparations for dinner. Already. It was only 2 PM in the afternoon, and they were acting like they were preparing a feast for the ball. A ball that was supposed to take place in less than a month and a half. A ball Kade was convinced he could somehow get out of.

Margot, the former queen, made no efforts in delaying the ball after Kolton had reneged on his. As far as she was concerned, it was as good as done. And Meredith had heard her talking about it in the purple sitting room as the females of the house sat, drinking tea and watching the children play or snooze in their bassinets.

The former queen knew her youngest son was easier to manipulate than either Kane or Kolton. Kade had always been the easiest to rear of her children, and Margot had been certain that it was just nerves that made him so reluctant to have the ball and take a mate. But if she was to find out what was really going on, Meredith would have a one-way ticket to the mainland and never see her parents again, unless they came to visit her.

Sighing, she walked through the noisy kitchens to the smell of roasting pork and spices. She followed Alistair to the back of the kitchen where he placed the tray and silverware onto a belt for the dishwasher to deal with. It was hot and muggy in the back with the large industrial machines, and Meredith’s thin cotton top started to stick to her chest. She pulled it away from her and flapped it back and forth, trying to keep herself cool until she was out of the general vicinity.

“How’s your mother and father?” Alistair asked after setting down the dishes.

“Good, and yours?” she asked. Like Meredith, Alistair had grown up on the island, and they had known each other since they were tiny babies.

“Bothering me to go out and find my mate,” he told her. Both aged 19 years old, he and Eliza knew that finding their mate wouldn’t be easy while living on a secluded island in the middle of a lake. Most of the palace staff took a year off to find their other halves once they hit 18, but Eliza and Alistair had stayed, though for differing reasons.

“Not mine,” Meredith said with a smile. “My father is convinced he won’t allow me to marry until I’m at least 30 years of age.”

Alistair laughed at that. “I wish my mother was a little more like him. She is convinced she is going to wither away to an old woman before she sees any grandkids of mine.”

“Lord, you’re only 19, Alistair!”

“Yes, but you know many of our kind produce offspring when they’re still quite young,” he pointed out. “Look at my older brother, Frederick. He became a father by the time he was twenty.”

“And how many little fledglings does he have running around his house now?” Meredith asked, chuckling. By last count, Frederick was father to three little girls, and practically begging for a boy of his very own.

“He got his first little boy just this past March,” Alistair said with a grin. “Cute little thing, too. Has his Uncle Alistair’s dashing features I would say.”

She rolled her eyes heavily at him. “Hopefully, he won’t get his uncle’s cocky attitude,” she teased.

“As long as he gets his uncle’s gigantic co—” he began.

“Language!” Meredith cut him off with a stern look. “We may not be royalty, but we should always have some sense of propriety, even in the dingy kitchens.”

He sighed. “You’re right. I hate it when you are, you know.”

Alistair settled into a morose frame of mind as his smile faded and he got a far-off look in his eyes.

“Why don’t you just tell them, my friend?” Meredith asked softly. “They’re going to start to wonder why you aren’t eager to meet your mate.”

Alistair looked at her, hazel eyes shining with emotion. “I can’t,” he whispered softly. “They would be so disappointed. They…they want children for me so badly it’s like they’re trying to live a second youth through me. Freddy was always the golden boy, always did what they told him to. Marked and mated right away after going off to find his female. I…I couldn’t tell them that that’s not going to happen for me.”

“They’ll find out sooner or later when you tell them your mate rejected you.” Her voice was even quieter, gentler. She ached for him, she truly did.

“He…he never actually said the words,” Alistair murmured to her. “He just said he couldn’t do this. Like it was some sort of option that he could choose to be straight. I… Lawrence has a girlfriend named Sasha. They’ve been together for ages now. I only happened upon him when I was sent to the mainland when one of the scullery maids broke her ankle and was laid up. If…if that hadn’t happened—”

“You would have found him either way,” Meredith asserted sagely. “He’s only across the pond on the mainland. Whether it was then or years from now, you would have met him. The world’s smaller than we imagine, you know.”

“He doesn’t want me.” Alistair’s throat clicked as he swallowed thickly. “He wants a family. Maybe with Sasha—who knows?”

“He doesn’t know what he wants,” she said stoutly. Or who, she tacked on internally. “If he didn’t formally reject you, there is still hope.”

“Hope,” Alistair said, punctuating the word with a scoff. “What a lousy f*****g word. It’s a four-letter word, you know. Like f**k, and s**t, and—”

“Love?” Meredith interrupted. He looked at her for a moment before averting his eyes and shrugging.

“Yeah, that’s another lousy four-letter word,” he replied bitterly. “Fantastical ideals aside, love is nothing without trust. No trust, no love.”

Meredith nodded, understanding her friend. “You don’t think you can trust him not to hurt you. You think that he is as conflicted as you are, though he is hiding behind someone, behind this Sasha. But you know, you’re doing the same.”

“By hiding my true nature from my parents?” he questioned. “I like to think of it as keeping them from getting hurt. This would wreck them if they knew.”

“When they know, I’m sure they’ll still love you just the same,” Meredith ventured hopefully.

Again, Alistair gave a disgruntled, acrid sound. “Easy enough for you to say. You don’t have parents who are trying to force you into mating so they can fawn over googly-eyed little rug rats.”

Meredith thought that over as they moved away from the kitchens towards the empty dining room to set up for dinner. “No, I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own secrets to hide.”

He looked up at her, an elegant, silver salad fork clutched in his hand. “And what, my dear friend, could you possibly mean by that?” he asked.

Meredith sighed. It was about time she told someone about everything on her mind. Who better than her oldest and dearest of friends?

К*К*К

“Kade, you in here?” Lexi’s voice called out from the entrance of the large library where they both often met. They didn’t do it on purpose; they were simply voracious readers and enjoyed the solitude of the library over the hustle and bustle of everyday life as a royal.

“Over here, big sis,” he told her, peeking out from behind one of the many shelves of books. He was holding an old, first-edition copy of The Silmarillion, one of Tolkien’s works with an elvish appeal. He was in the middle of the chapter called Of Beren and Lúthien when she called out his name.

Placing an old piece of scrapbook paper between the worn leaves, he walked out from behind the stacks to see Lexi with a pile of books in her arms, placing them on one of the old, antique tables near a comfortable, overstuffed chair.

Unlike the rest of the palace, the library was not as lavish, unless you counted the number of tomes kept in the cavernous space. While overseeing its transformation from an office, Kade had made sure that every chair was plush and comfortable, and that the place felt homey instead of clinically elegant, like the rest of the palace. Many of the tables and furnishings were cast-offs that his mother had replaced when she was queen, and he’d had help from a few of the servants to place everything in what he liked to think of as ‘old world-chic’. The chairs and tables were a mish-mosh of antique tables and stuffed reupholstered chairs. Lexi had added her own style to it, a strong, dark-weave papasan chair that was tucked away near the corner by the large windows so she could read and daydream to her heart’s content. It was her favorite, and she had even taken to putting a couple of the same style of chairs in her boudoir. She said it was comfortable for feeding her babies, but she would often fall asleep in them, as well read and write.

“What are you reading now? Star Wars fanfiction?” she asked teasingly.

He threw a lazy half-grin back at her. “How’d you guess? I always did love Princess Leia in her gold bikini,” he chimed in, laughing.

“Yes, I believe it’s a favorite of Kane’s as well,” she said, winking as she placed the read materials back into place in the romance section of the library. “I’m thinking mystery this week. Agatha Christie?”

“I prefer Georges Simenon, to be frank,” Kade told her. “The translation into English leaves something to be desired at times, but it’s damned good stuff. Plus, I read all of Christie’s works ages ago.”

“Simenon? Is that the one with Maigret?” Lexi asked, tilting her head to check the stacks for the books.

“Yes, that would be the one,” Kade said, smiling. “And for your romance of the week? What’ll it be this time? Danielle Steel? Nora Roberts? Madison Faye?”

She scrunched her nose at him. “Not likely. I prefer more eroticism with my romance. Like Lauren Blakely and Katee Robert.”

“E.L. James didn’t make the short list?” he asked, chuckling.

“No, I mean—her books were good, but it was just s*x and no heart. Oooh, Kelly Jamieson! I read The Rule of Three in one sitting the first time.” She plucked out another book by the author called Worth Waiting For, and leafed through the pages before placing it on a small table.

“Rule of Three? Let me think—a kinky ménage à trois romance with two men and one female?” he guessed shrewdly.

“Of course!” she told him faux-haughtily. “It all but spells it out in the title. It was a good book. Erotic and emotional. Those are the best kinds.”

“Just f*****g in a book has its merits, but when there is no emotional tether between the heroine and hero, it really seems lackluster.”

“Absolutely,” Lexi agreed. “I don’t find just plain erotica as entertaining as erotic romance. It’s all s*x and sweat, and goes no deeper most times. I need the emotional connection between the characters to really enjoy it.”

“I suppose erotica has its place in literature,” Kade said offhandedly. “But in real life, people want more than just a quick roll in the hay to get their motors running.”

“s*x is wonderful, but it’s so much better when there are deep feelings behind it, Kade,” she told him, raising a brow at her younger sibling.

“I…I know that, Lexi,” he said softly, his brows creasing in concentration.

“Ah, and how would my little unmated brother know about all that? Have you been a naughty boy?” she asked, teasing him.

Kade looked over at her from his twenty-odd paces away. They were alone, at least for now, and not many other people in the palace came into the room except for the servants when the shelves needed dusting.

Lexi is—well was—a commoner at some point. Almost like his Meredith. Of all people in the castle, she would understand it from a female’s perspective. And he trusted her for the most part. But could he trust her with his secret?

Well, he was about to find out.