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But Azarknew.
He’d known the second he looked into the boy’s eyes.
Hell, he’d known it from fifty yards away as he’d sat frozen in the back of his SUV at the cemetery, watching Eden and the toddler placing flowers on his friend’s grave.
He had a son.
Abstractedly, he praised his strict palace childhood tutors for his ability to keep standing, breathing,reasoningwhen waves of shock threatened to drown him. When an avalanche ofpossibilitiesunravelled, pure and urgent, wrapping around his soul with the promise of doing things differently, of being the parent he’d always yearned for as a child—a desire he’d believed he’d rid himself of years ago.
Every instinct screamed at him to stalk next door, drop to his knees and just…stareat the beautiful child he’d help create.
And the boy was beautiful. If nothing else, Eden Moss had given him a healthy son…
‘Is my son well? Healthy?’ he asked, with a compulsion he couldn’t deny.
Her breathing stalled completely. ‘What are you talking about? He…he’s not yours—’
‘He is.’ He knew it to his very core. ‘He has the Domene eyes. He is mine.’
She lost a shade of colour, but even in her shock Eden Moss remained stunning. Eye-catching in a way he couldn’t believe still had such a raw effect on him, considering everything she’d done.
But that was an issue to be tackled later.
He turned on his heel and headed for the door.
‘Where are you—? Are you’re leaving?’
He clenched his teeth at the naked hope in her voice. Had it been anyone else, he would have felt a sliver of sympathy.
Every Domene since the fiery birth of Cartana half a millennia ago had sealed the formidable reputation of the European kingdom.
Those who’d imagined they might subsume or conquer the relatively small land mass sharing its borders with Spain, France and Italy had quickly learned that size mattered not one iota.
Enemies had been dispatched with brutal efficiency until its dominance had been widely and thoroughly accepted and respected.
These days the Domene men attempted to slap a veneer of civility and sophistication over their outward dealings on the world stage. But behind closed doors…in a matter such as discovering the next heir to the throne of Cartana was living in a squalid one-bed apartment in the back alleys of the world’s most decadent city, being raised by a woman who’d shown him the true meaning of duplicity…
Mercy was non-existent in the potent gaze he levelled at her.
‘No, Eden Moss. I’m not leaving. I’m going next door to see my son. To speak to him. To touch him for the first time.’
The words launched a seismic wave through him, changing his very essence from the inside out.
‘You can come with me, or you can stay here and pack your things. Either way, when I leave here in the next hour he’s coming with me.’
Her lips had parted with his first words. By the time he was finished her delectable mouth was gaping, the weight of his resolution widening her eyes.
And perhaps he wasn’t completely heartless, because that sliver of sympathydidflash through him. But he killed it in the next instant, when she blinked, then stepped determinedly towards him.
‘No. Wait!’
He didn’t. A simple equation had supplied his son’s age, reminding him of every small and big milestone he’d lost.
More than two years.
He’d never got to see his son take his first step. Hear his first word.
Dulce cielo.