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Too much damn pain.

And when she started to speak, he realized why—-

“It’s j-just like—-” Kyria wetted her lips. “This is just like when my parents died.”

“God, Kyria—-” He tried to reach for her, and the sheikh’s chest tightened in pain when she jerked away from him. “

“One moment we were happy, we were c-complete, and then s-suddenly, they were justgone.”

He watched her work hard to make herself smile, and the sight gutted him.

“And this...this is like that.E-exactlylike that. One moment, you’re telling me I’m all you were waiting for, but when I became yours—-”

He saw her blink fast to keep the tears back, and it nearly drove him to his knees.

“You don’t want me anymore—-”

“No.” The word was torn from Malik’s throat. “Kyria, no. You know it’s not like that. You know it’s not.” His voice became ragged. “You have to know it’s not like that. Even without the words – you have to fucking know—-”

Even as her own pain ate her alive, she couldn’t bear to see the torment on Malik’s face, and she let out a choking, despairing laugh. “Oh, Malik.” And she found herself stumbling forward—-

He caught her in his arms. “Please,” he said hoarsely. “Please tell me you understand I’m doing this for you.”

Heaven to be in the arms of the man she loved...

But it was also hell, because the man she loved didn’t believe she loved him.

She cupped his face with trembling hands. “I know,” she said shakily. “It’s as you think. It’s impossible for me not to know that you’re doing this for me. That you’re hurting yourself for me. But Malik—-” Her voice caught. “Can’t you also see that if you let them win now, it will be the same again and again? Can’t you believe me now...when I tell you I love you? Can’t you trust me now?”

“I’m sorry.”

And when the sheikh slowly took hold of her hands to pull it down, she found herself crying.

“But I have to do this.”

Because she knew she had lost.

“Two years,” he said dully. “Let’s give it two years, until you graduate. If you don’t want to give us two more years, then this could be the other way around, too – perhaps you don’t trust yourself to keep loving me while we’re apart?”

He waited for her to speak, but all she did was cry.

“Is that it, Kyria?” His voice was harsh with all the fears he had started to harbor, ever since a seven-year-old girl came to his life.

The silence continued, as painful as the tears that flowed endlessly down her face.

But when she finally spoke, it was not what he had ever imagined she would say.

“Oh, Malik.”

It was the saddest way he had ever heard his name said, and the sound haunted him every moment after. There were no goodbyes when it was time for him to leave the hotel. Kyria had returned to her dorm, and even though he knew he was a fool for hoping, he had waited for her to show up at the airport for one last glimpse –

But of course, she didn’t come.

On his long, solitary flight back to the kingdom, the sound of his name on her lips remained close to his heart, a knife in his chest that he couldn’t make himself pull out. Because if the pain were gone, then it would mean that he had to face the fact that he had lost her all over again—-

And he didn’t want that.

Back in Ramil, Vanna had prepared a welcome dinner for him, and of course all the other sheikhs, along with Harper, were in attendance. He told them without preamble what happened, knowing that they would find out sooner or later. “I have to give her one last chance,” he said flatly, “to think things through.”