You are being provided with a book chapter by chapter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chapter. After reading the chapter, 1. shorten the chapter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any important nouns in the chapter. 3. Do not translate the original language. 4. Keep the same style as the original chapter, keep it consistent throughout the chapter. Your reply must comply with all four requirements, or it’s invalid.
I will provide the chapter now.

40
BRIDGET
DON’T LOOK AT HIM.
If I looked at him, I would lose it, and I was already half out of
my mind. The stress, guilt, and exhaustion of the past four days had
seeped into my bones, turning me into a walking zombie.
But I couldn’t help myself. I looked.
And my heart promptly splintered into even more pieces than it
already had.
Rhys stared at me, so still he could’ve passed for a statue had it
not been for the pain flickering in his eyes.
“Had?” That calm, even tone never boded well.
“It was fun while it lasted.” The words tasted bitter on my
tongue, like poison pills of lies I fed myself to get through the next
hour and possibly the rest of my life. “But people know. Everyone’s
watching us. We can’t continue whatever…this is.”
“Fun.” Still in that dangerously calm voice.
“Rhys.” I wrapped my arms tighter around myself. The hospital
staff had set the temperature to a comfortable seventy-three degrees,
but my skin felt like ice beneath my palms. “Please don’t make this
any harder than it has to be.”
Please let my heart break in peace.
“The hell I won’t.” His gray eyes had darkened to a near black,
and a vein throbbed in his temple. “Tell me something, princess. Are
you doing this because you want to, or because you feel like you
have to?”
“I don’t feel like I have to. I do have to!” Frustration seared
through me, sharp and hot. Didn’t he get it? “It’s only a matter of
time before the press confirms the allegations. Elin and Markus and
my family already know. What do you think is going to happen once
it’s all out in the open?”
“Your Majesty!”
“Grandfather!”
Nikolai, Markus, and Elin rushed to Edvard’s side while I stood there,
unable to move.
I should join them. Make sure he was okay.
But of course he wasn’t okay. He’d just collapsed…because of me and
what I said. Because I thought, for one second, I could have a semblance of
control over my life.
If he died, the last conversation we had would have been an argument.
“You will end the relationship and never see Mr. Larsen again.”
“No.”
Something inside me shriveled into a husk.
“Bridget…”
The sound of my name, deep and raw, scraped against my
willpower, leaving dents in something that had never been strong to
begin with. Not when it came to him.
I closed my eyes, trying to find the cool, unshakable version of
myself I presented to the public. The one who’d smiled through
hours of standing and waving while my feet bled through my heels.
The one who’d walked behind my father’s casket and held back
tears until I crumpled into a ball in the bathroom during the wake.
But I couldn’t. I’d never been able to hide who I truly was from
Rhys.
I heard him walk toward me. Smelled that clean, masculine scent
that had become my comfort scent over the years because it meant
he was near and I was safe. Felt him rub away a tear I hadn’t even
noticed had escaped with his thumb.
Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.
“Princess, look at me.”
I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut tighter. My emo-
tions formed a tight knot in my throat, making it near impossible to
breathe.
“Bridget.” Firmer this time, more commanding. “Look at me.”
I resisted for another minute, but the need to save myself from
further heartache paled compared to my need to soak in every last
bit of Rhys Larsen I could.
I looked at him.
Gray thunderstorms stared back at me, crackling with turmoil.
“The mess with the pictures, we’ll figure it out.” He grasped my
chin and rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip, his expression fierce.
“I told you, you’re mine, and I’m not letting you go. I don’t care if
the entire Eldorran military tries to drag me away.”
I wished it were that easy and I could sink into his faith, letting it
sweep me away.
But our problems went way beyond the pictures now.
“You don’t get it. There is no happily ever after for us.” We
weren’t a fairytale. We were a forbidden love letter, tucked into the
back of a drawer and retrieved only in the darkness of night. We
were the chapter of bliss before the climax hit and everything crum-
bled into ash. We were a story that was always meant to end. “This is
it.”
My mother died giving birth to me.
My father died on his way back from buying something I’d asked
him to get.
My grandfather almost died because I’d refused to give up the
one thing that ever made me happy.
That was what I got for being selfish, for wanting something for
me. Future queens didn’t live for themselves, they lived for their
country. That was the price of power.
No matter how much I tried to change reality, it remained the
truth, and it was time I grew up and faced it.
Rhys’s grip on my chin tightened. “I don’t need a happily ever
after. I need to be by your side. I need you happy and healthy and
safe. Goddammit Bridget, I need you. In any way I can have you.”
His voice broke for the first time in all my years with him, and my
heart cracked in response. “If you think I’m leaving you to deal with
this bullshit alone, you don’t know me at all.”
Trouble was, I did know him, and I knew the one thing that
would make him snap, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it right
now.
One last selfish thing.
“Kiss me,” I whispered.
Rhys didn’t question the sudden shift in my tone. Instead, he
curled his hand around the back of my neck and crushed his lips to
mine. Deep, hard, and possessive, like nothing had changed between
us.
He always knew what I needed without me saying it.
I drank up every drop of him I could. His taste, his touch, his
scent…I wished I could bottle it all up so I had something to keep
me warm in the nights and years to come.
Rhys picked me up and carried me to the couch, where he pulled
my skirt up and my panties down and sank into me with exquisite,
deliberate slowness. Stretching me. Filling me. Breaking me into a
thousand pieces and putting me back together, over and over again.
Even if my heart ached, my body responded to him the way it al-
ways had: eager, willing, and desperate for more.
Rhys palmed my breast and swiped his thumb over my nipple,
playing with the sensitized nub until a fresh wave of heat crested in
my stomach. All the while he pumped into me, the slow, leisurely
slides of his cock hitting a spot that made me see stars.
“Rhys, please.”
“What do you want, princess?” He pinched my nipple, the sud-
den roughness of the action causing my mouth to fall open with a
gasp.
You. Forever.
Since I couldn’t say that, I settled for a panted, “Faster. Harder.”
He lowered his head and replaced his hand with his mouth,
swirling and licking while he picked up the pace. My nails dug into
his back, and just as I teetered over the precipice, he slowed down
again.
I nearly screamed with frustration.
Faster. Slower. Faster. Slower.
Rhys seemed to intuit the precise second I was about to come,
and he varied his speed, edging me until I was a dripping, whimper-
ing mess. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he groaned and
slammed into me, his mouth claiming mine in a bruising kiss as he
fucked into me so hard the couch inched across the floor with a
squeak.
Lights exploded behind my eyes. I arched up, my cry swallowed
by his kiss as another orgasm tore through me and left me drained.
Rhys came right after me with a silent shudder, and we sank into
each other’s arms, our heavy breaths mingling as one.
I loved sex with him, but I loved the quiet moments afterward
even more.
“Again.” I wrapped my limbs around him, not ready to break
free of our cocoon yet. Just a little more time.
“Insatiable,” he whispered, running the tip of his nose up my
neck and along my jawline.
I smiled at the reminder of our afternoon at the hotel. Our last
truly happy time together before everything went to hell.
“You love it,” I said.
“Yeah princess, I do.”
We spent the next hour like that, climbing high and crashing
down together.
It was perfect, as were all our stolen moments together. We
fucked hard and fast and made love sweet and slow. We pretended
this was our life, not just a snapshot in time, and I pretended like my
heart still beat in my chest when the pieces lay scattered at our feet.
“There’s no other way, Your Highness.” Elin’s eyes flickered with sym-
pathy for a second before it vanished and her expression hardened again. “It
has to be done.”
“No.” I shook my head, denial digging its claws deep into my skin. “It’s
too soon. He’s fine. The doctors said—”
“The doctors said he’ll recover…this time. The fact is, His Majesty was
hospitalized twice in one year. We can’t risk a third hospitalization.”
“We can cut back on his workload,” I said desperately. “Have his aides
handle the more strenuous paperwork and meetings. He can still be king.”
Elin glanced at Markus, who stood in the corner looking grimmer than
I’d ever seen him.
“We’d discussed this with His Majesty after his first hospitalization,”
he said. “He expressly said that if he collapses a second time, he would step
down.”
I vaguely remembered my grandfather saying something like that in the
weeks after his first collapse, but I’d been so focused on Nikolai’s abdication
the implications of it had gone right over my head.
“I realize this is perhaps not the best time to discuss this,” Elin said
with another flicker of sympathy. “But His Majesty’s condition is stable,
and we need to start preparations right away.”
“Preparations.” Something terrible took root in my stomach and spread.
It seeped into my chest, my neck, my arms and my legs, numbing me from
inside out.
Elin and Markus exchanged glances again.
“Yes,” Elin said. “Preparations for your coronation as queen.”
I’d thought I had more time, both with Rhys and to convince Par-
liament to repeal the Royal Marriages Law, but I didn’t. Time was
up.
“Do you remember Costa Rica?” Rhys’s lips brushed against
mine as he spoke. He lay on top of me, his powerful body swallow-
ing me up, but he’d propped a forearm on the couch so he didn’t
crush me with his weight.
“How could I forget?” It was one of the happiest memories of my
life.
“You asked me if I’d ever been in love. I said no.” He pressed a
soft kiss to my mouth. “Ask me again, princess.”
My lungs constricted. Breathe.
But that was hard when everything hurt to the point where I
couldn’t remember what it felt like not to hurt. My heart, my head,
my soul.
“I can’t.” I forced myself to push Rhys away.
My skin immediately chilled at the absence of his heat, and small
shivers wracked me as I got off the couch and walked to the bath-
room. I cleaned myself and straightened my clothes with shaky
hands while his gaze burned a hole in my back through the open
door.
“Why not?”
“Because.” Tell him. Just tell him. “I’m going to be queen.”
“We already knew that.”
“You don’t understand.” I washed my hands and returned to the
room, where I finally looked at him again. Tension lined his face and
notched a deep groove between his brows. “I don’t mean someday. I
mean I’m going to be queen in nine months.”
Rhys froze.
“That’s not all.” I could barely speak past the lump in my throat.
“Because of the Royal Marriages Law, I have to—”
“Don’t say it.” His voice was so quiet I almost didn’t hear him.
“I have to marry or at least get engaged before my coronation.”
There would already be backlash against me taking the throne so
soon. You need all the political goodwill you can get, Markus had said. I
hated it, but he was right. “I—”
“Don’t. Fucking. Say it.”
“I’m marrying Steffan. He already agreed.”
It wasn’t a marriage of love. It was a political contract. Nothing
more, nothing less. Markus had reached out to the Holsteins yester-
day and made them sign an NDA before making the proposition.
They’d agreed a few hours later. It’d all happened so quickly it made
my head spin.
Just like that, I had a fiancé, at least in theory. Per the agreement,
Steffan would officially propose next month, after the furor over my
grandfather’s hospitalization died down. As a bonus, the engage-
ment would drive the allegations about me and Rhys out of the
headlines, as Elin had not so subtly pointed out.
Rhys unfolded himself from the couch. He’d already fixed his
clothes. All black. Black shirt, black pants, black boots, black
expression.
“The fuck you are.”
“Rhys, it’s done.”
“No,” he said flatly. “What did I tell you in the gazebo, princess?
I said from that point on, no other man touches you, and I meant it.
You sure as fuck aren’t marrying someone else. We have nine
months. We will figure. It. Out.”
I wanted to agree. I wanted to be selfish and steal more time with
him, but that wouldn’t be fair to either of us.
I’d already had Rhys for three years. It was time to let him go.
No more being selfish.
“What if I want to marry someone else?”
Rhys’s nostrils flared. “Don’t lie to me. You barely know Steffan.
You went on three fucking dates with the guy.”
“Royal marriage isn’t about knowing someone. It’s about suit-
ability, and the fact is, he’s suitable and you’re not.” I hoped Rhys
didn’t notice the wobble in my voice. “Plus, Steffan and I have the
rest of our lives to get to know each other.”
A shudder rippled through his body, and hurt slashed across his
face, so raw and visceral it cut through my soul.
“I’m the crown princess, and I need to act like one,” I said, hating
myself more with every second. “In all areas of my life. I can’t be
with a bodyguard. I…” Tears clogged my throat, but I pushed past
them. “I’m meant to be with a duke. We both know that.”
Rhys flinched. One tiny movement, but it would haunt me
forever.
“So we’re over. Just like that.” It came out low and dangerous,
edged with pain.
No, not just like that. You’ll never know how much my heart is breaking
right now.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
I wished I could tell him I’d never been happier than when I was
with him.
I wished I could tell him it wasn’t about the throne or power, and
that if I could, I would give up a kingdom for him.
But I’m sorry were the only words I was allowed to say.
The emotion wiped clean from Rhys’s eyes until I was staring at
steel walls, harder and more guarded even than when we’d first met.
“No, Your Highness,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
He walked out.
One minute, he was there. The next, he was gone.
I crumpled, my knees giving out beneath me as I sank onto the
floor and hot tears scalded my cheeks and dripped off my chin. My
chest heaved so hard I couldn’t draw enough oxygen into my lungs,
and I was sure I would die right there on the hospital floor, just a few
feet away from the best doctors and nurses in the country. But even
they wouldn’t be able to fix what I’d just broken.
“You have to move.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your house. It’s a security nightmare. I don’t know who signed off on
this location, but you have to move.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“No. But I hope to be one day.”
“Good night, princess.”
“Good night, Mr. Larsen.”
Snippets of memories crowded my brain, and I pressed my face
into the blanket draped over the couch, muffling my sobs.
“Your Highness?” Elin’s voice floated through the door, followed
by a knock. “Can I come in?”
No. I would be happy if I never talked to you again.
But I had responsibilities to fulfill, and an engagement to plan.
I forced my sobs to slow until they tapered off.
Deep, controlled breaths. Head tilted up. Tensed muscles. It was
a trick I’d learned that had come in handy quite a few times over the
years.