The Last Prince of Dahaar

CHAPTER THIRTEEN


THE DEAFENING QUIET of the desert snarled inside Ayaan’s mind, scratching its fingers up and down his spine. He forced himself to picture Zohra, laughing at him, challenging him, loving him. The fear didn’t recede but the thought of Zohra diluted it enough for him to not fall back into its pit.

He could have left this matter to his security team but something he couldn’t shake had lodged in his mind. Something about this man niggled at him.

It had taken Imran a month to unearth all the hidden sources of the recent terrorist intelligence and of course, it had been traced back to the same man who had fed them information the first two times.

Which meant he had intentionally covered his tracks. And Ayaan had instantly known something was wrong. It had taken his team another two weeks to find his whereabouts, two weeks of hell, in which Ayaan missed Zohra with an ache that had become a constant companion.

The whisper of harsh breathing, the sounds of footsteps, which he wouldn’t have heard on the gravel road except for the fact that the man’s stride was out of step, fell on his ears and Ayaan leaped from his crouching position behind the tent.

He couldn’t have taken a breath before a blow came at him, grazing his jaw. Shaking off the jolt of pain up his jaw, Ayaan returned a blow, and pushed the man to the ground. The man’s leg shot out from under him, and Ayaan tackled him to the ground, his heart leaping into his throat.

Moonlight flickered over features that were as familiar as his own. A deathly chill fell over Ayaan as he collapsed to the desert floor, his muscles quivering with shock.

His throat choked with tears, his chest so tight that he thought he would explode. Shock waves paralyzed his mental processes as he stared at the man he had worshipped his entire life, the man he had held in higher regard than his father, the man who had taught Ayaan everything he knew.

The man who had fallen in front of him five years ago while Ayaan had froze, had stood there like a coward.

The desert wind howled around them as his heart pumped again. Surprise abated and a joy, unlike he had ever known flooded Ayaan.


His brother, the true prince of Dahaar, was alive.

* * *

Ayaan dismissed the security outside his office in the main palace wing, closed the door behind him and ran a hand over his eyes. His head pounded as if someone had hammered away at it relentlessly. He had been awake for forty-eight hours straight, and sometime yesterday, right when his mother had started crying as though her heart was breaking—again, a twitch had begun behind his left eye.

He knew that this was only the beginning of the hardest time of his life. And the fact that he had turned his back on the one woman who would have brought him solace, who would have understood his pain, who was the one shining point of his life, was an acrid taste on his tongue.

Since he had returned to Dahaar two days ago, the hours had seemed endless, each blending into the next, the things he had to take care of unending, until he thought he would break under the weight of it all.

He had kept Zohra’s face at the forefront of his mind through it all, drew strength from the image of her warm smile, rooted himself in her belief that he could beat anything.

He had bent but he had not broken.

Now he was exhausted, both physically and mentally, and he ached to see her, to hold her, to share this fresh grief with her.

Ya Allah, he would give anything in that moment to hold her.

Pushing away from the door, he walked past the sitting area into his office beyond.

And as though he had conjured her out of his very imagination with sheer desperate craving, there was his wife, pacing the floor. Emotion knotted his throat, rooting him to the spot.

He must have said her name aloud because she was hurtling toward him before he could blink. She hugged him tight, then stepped back, her gaze hungrily sweeping over him.

“I heard the news. Is it...Is he...” She frowned. “How are you taking it? You look...exhausted.”

Ayaan blinked, a host of emotions vying within him—the need to hold her tight against him was the strongest. He sucked in a deep breath, greedy for the scent of her.

Until she had spoken, he hadn’t realized how good it was to be asked, to know that his state of mind mattered. Of course, it mattered to his parents too, but right now, they needed him more than he needed them.

She was dressed in stylishly cut gray trousers and a light blue silk blouse. The delicate arch of her neck, the strong pulse thudding there, the stubborn jut of her chin, the flare of her arrogant nose—he was starving for the sight of her. Shaking his head, he tried to focus on what had bothered him about her statement. “Only four people know that he is alive.”

“Khaleef told me,” she said, the concern in her voice fading back. “And before you bring down your wrath on him, remember this, Ayaan.” Her voice broke on his name, but she continued, her chin tilted high. Pure steel filled her words. “I care about Dahaar, about the king and the queen. I have every right to this information.”

Despite the journey to hell and back in the past two days, Ayaan smiled. And in that very moment, he saw what he had been too blind to realize until now. This beautiful, amazing woman was a gift he had been given and due to his cowardice he hadn’t been able to accept it. “Are you done, ya habibati?”

“No. And you can’t send me back to Siyaad either.” Her words reverberated with a confidence that brooked no argument, but her tight fists at her sides gave her away. “I refuse to hide, refuse to lick my wounds in private as I have done for so long, refuse to let someone other than me decide my fate, decide what I deserve and what I don’t.

“Whether you want me or not, I am your wife. I have a right to live in Dahaara, a right to learn everything I need to be the Dahaaran queen, a right to your parents’ love. I have earned my place, Ayaan. And if you can’t bear the sight of me, then it is on your head. But you try to send me back and I will show you what a Siyaadi princess is truly made of.”

It was the most magnificent sight he had ever beheld. His heart pounded in his chest. He moved closer and ran his fingers over the pulse beating frantically at her neck. “Adding to my nightmares, Zohra?”

The resolve in her brown eyes melted, giving way to the cutting pain she hid. It punched him in the gut. “If that is how you see me, then so be it. But I have never wanted to be the cause for your—”

“Shh...I meant it would be a torture to be near you and to not touch you, to not hold you.” He breathed into her hair. Tugging her toward him, he held her at her waist, loosely, striving for control over himself. “All I feel is joy when you are near, pure, freeing, like I have never felt before. How can you think you bring pain?”

“I will kill you myself if you leave me again, Ayaan.” Fighting words, but Ayaan heard the pain in them.

“Shh....” he said, and ran his palm over her back, up and down, more to soothe himself than her. She was so fragile in his grip, and yet inside where it mattered this woman he had had the good fortune to marry, this woman he had had the temerity to fall in love with, had a core of steel and a heart as big as the desert.

And he would spend the rest of his life loving her as she deserved to be loved.

He touched his forehead to hers, his heart lodged in his throat. “You brought light into my life. If not for you...” He shook as the grief he’d held at bay since the minute he had laid eyes on his brother burst through him. Tears he couldn’t stem, tears that needed to be shed, wet his cheeks.

Her slender arms tightened around him, her body a cocoon of warmth. And everything she gave him was a precious gift. “Ayaan?”

“I have seen what it means to be truly broken, Zohra.”

Her heart crawling into her throat, Zohra clasped Ayaan’s chin and tugged it up. Fear beat a tattoo beneath her skin. Even in the most painful moments, even when he had been drowning in his nightmares, she had never heard such stark desolation in his words. “Whatever it is, Ayaan, we will beat it together.”

“You have already saved me, ya habibati. I was just too stubborn, too blind to see it. But he...there is nothing inside him, Zohra.”

A ghost of a shiver passed over her at his words. “Your brother?”

“If eyes were windows to the soul, then there is no soul left in him.” He tugged her hard against him, his arms steel vises that could snap her in two. Rising on tiptoes, Zohra held on, letting him take what he wanted from her.

“I was so afraid, Ayaan. Khaleef said he was in bad shape. And my heart sank. I thought seeing him like that would mean—”

“That guilt would claw through me once again? It does. It hurts so much to see him like this. But the worst is knowing that for God knows how long he has been aware of his identity and he has been in hiding. If I hadn’t followed up on that hunch, we would have never known he was alive. He doesn’t want to be here. And even in the state he is in, it took both Khaleef and me to force him to come with us. And my mother, Ya Allah—”

“How is she?”

Ayaan smiled and kissed her again, intense sadness still clouding his eyes. “He refuses to see her or my father, said he will put a bullet through his head if I bring her to him.”

Shock waving through her, Zohra frowned. “You think he would?”

“Whether he is bluffing or not, he knows I won’t risk calling him on it. He said he wants to be free of this family, he wants nothing to do with any of us. If I became mad, he...he has devolved into pure emptiness. Maybe my madness protected me from the worst.”

Anger fired those words and Zohra stared at Ayaan. His family, his duty, his country—they had always come first with him.

“For the first time in my life, I wish I could walk away from all this, steal you away, give you a life free of my demons, a life free of duty... All I want is to prove my love to you but all I see is more pain, more sorrow ahead. If you leave me...if you walk away, that is what I will become, too. And I don’t want to, Zohra.

“I want to live with you, I want to laugh with you, I want to snatch any happiness I find with you. If you don’t leave tonight, there is no turning back, ya habibati. I will never ever let you go again, not even if you beg me.”

He clasped her cheeks, his long fingers greedy in the way they moved over her. His gaze shone with everything Zohra wanted to see in it when he looked at her—his pain, his honor and his love. It was all she ever wanted. “I am in love with you, Zohra. You were right. I let guilt pollute everything I felt for you, everything I found with you. But no more, ya habibati. You and I and our happiness together, I will allow nothing to mar it. Will you still have me, Zohra, knowing what lies ahead for us?”

Zohra kissed him, melting into his embrace, joy flooding every inch of her. His hunger matched hers, as his mouth moved over her lips as if he would never get enough. “There was no turning back for me from the moment you kissed me, the moment you came to my defense, the moment you said my honor was your honor. I will always love you, Ayaan.”

She tucked her face into his shoulder, she clutched his shirt in her fingers, striving to fight the depth of emotion that overpowered her. The love she felt for him had already been fierce, but now that he had accepted it, now that he had admitted what she and their happiness meant to him, it flew through her with an incredible force.


She would allow no one to add to his burden, not even the brother who meant everything to Ayaan. She would allow no one to steal even an ounce of happiness from him.

“You can’t give up on him, can you? I am sure he knows that, too. And whatever you have to do for him, for Dahaar, I will be right by your side.”

His fingers moved over her cheeks, his gaze glittered with a happiness that stole her breath. “I am never going to stop loving you, Zohra, will never forget what you brought into my life.”

“And what you brought into mine, Ayaan. Never forget that either.”

He nodded, kissed her again and picked her up. “There is one problem, ya habibati. I still don’t think you should be sleeping beside me at night. I don’t want to ever wake up and learn that I hurt you even a little. I couldn’t bear it.”

Breathing through the happiness that constricted her chest, Zohra nuzzled into his neck. “I have the best idea about how to take care of that, Ayaan.”

Gold fire lit up his eyes.

“How about we cuff you every night before you sleep? That way, I won’t get hurt and you are...”

Ayaan laughed, the naughty glint in his wife’s eyes sending a thrill running through him. The guilt, the pain, they would all forever be a part of him, but as long as he had Zohra by his side, he would tackle them. Because he also had a taste of utter joy. “Your wish is my command, Princess.”