Page 144 of The Unlikely Spare

Eoin

Something is wrong.

I surface from sleep with that particular jolt reserved for when your subconscious knows something’s catastrophically wrong before your brain catches up.

The tent is empty.

My hand’s already on my weapon before I’m fully awake, adrenaline flooding my system. The T-shirt Nicholas slept in is folded neatly on top of the sleeping bag, but there’s no prince.

The night was uneventful. I spent most of it watching Nicholas sleep and wondering how the hell we’d gone from royal tour to fugitive camping in less than forty-eight hours. Along with wondering if there was anything I could do to turn his “I don’t know” into “yes, I forgive you.”

Playing his husband by the barbecue had been both torture and bliss. The way he’d leaned into me, the casual touches, the kiss that tasted like possibility before it went up in smoke with our sausages.

But what am I thinking? Even if he does forgive me, what then?

We live in different universes. He has palaces and protocols and a life mapped out in gold. I have a bedsit in London and a career that is probably over.

What kind of future could we possibly have?

Christ, I’m being ridiculous. I’ve fallen for someone so far above my station that I might as well be reaching for the moon.

Yet, somehow spending time with Nicholas like this has proved that when you remove all the external bollocks, the crown and the badge, we actually make sense together. We work well together. We seem to instinctively get each other on a level that I’ve never experienced with anyone else.

Being away from our normal reality, our normal roles, just helps me see the underlying base truth. We are two men who weirdly fit together like pieces of the same puzzle, despite coming from different boxes.

And I trust him more than I trust other people.

Like this morning, when Nicholas woke at four a.m. and insisted I get a few hours of sleep.

After he promised to wake me if he heard any sound, I relented and tried for some much-needed shuteye. And surprisingly, I had managed to sleep.

However, I’m so fucking regretting it right now, having woken up to an empty tent.

The tent walls close in as scenarios cascade through my mind, Pierce’s people finding us, dragging him away while I slept like a fucking amateur?—

Luckily, the sound of the zip cuts through my racing thoughts.

Nicholas pushes through the entrance, and the panic in my chest loosens for exactly three seconds before I clock his expression.

“We have somewhat of a situation,” he says.

“What is it?”

He flashes his phone at me.

The screen displays a cascade of digital front pages, each headline more creatively catastrophic than the last.

The Daily Chronicle screamsWHERE’S NICHOLAS? Royal Tour Derailed by Prince’s Wild Disappearancealongside speculation about everything from a secret wedding to a mental breakdown. The Celestial, never one for subtlety, blaresNAUGHTY NICHOLAS DOES A RUNNER! with helpful arrows pointing to a map of New Zealand marked with question marks, alongside a sidebar titledA History of Royal Rebellions.

My personal favorite is the New Zealand Talker’sBritish Prince on Unauthorized Hobbit Adventure? complete with a photoshopped image of Nicholas’s head on Frodo’s body.

“We’re going to have every amateur royal hunter in the country trying to track me down,” Nicholas says grimly.

“Do you think this is Pierce’s doing, or something Callum and Oliver cooked up for the palace to explain canceling your official tour schedule?”

“I think it might be Pierce. After all, it works in his favor to have every amateur royal hunter in New Zealand desperately trying to track me down, doesn’t it?”

He quickly types something into his phone.