LOGINLiam's POVKen was seated on the designed seat, specially made for this coronation. Every important personality and all the prominent monarchy family members who were supposed to be here were all present. It was such a wonderful sight to behold and so I couldn't help the thoughts going through my mind, while I stood right beside him with my bodyguard apparel, performing my bodyguard duties.‘After everything, it's finally happening. He is going to be king.’I glanced at him briefly.His face remained calm, but I knew him well enough to know he was nervous.A few months ago, nobody would have imagined we'd make it this far.Not after the scandals, and not after the attacks.I mean, not after everything they had thrown at him.Yet here he was, just one step away from wearing the crown.Ken suddenly looked toward me and for a second, our eyes met.His lips moved slightly."You okay?" He asked under his breath and I almost laughed at that."I'm not the one becoming king."I replied to him
Uncle Jones's POVThe knock on the door was quiet but in the careful, hesitant knock of someone who was not entirely sure they were doing the right thing and had decided to do it anyway."Come in," I said.The maid who entered was young … younger than I had expected when Eric had described her. She moved with the specific nervousness of someone who had stepped outside the boundaries of what they were supposed to do and was very aware of it. She was dressed in the palace uniform, her Samsung phone held in both hands in front of her like she was carrying something fragile.She stopped a few feet inside the door."Lord Jones," she said, keeping her voice low. "My name is Rhoda. I work on the east wing, near the Prince's chambers." She glanced down at the phone and then back up at me. "I got what you asked for."I did not say anything. I simply waited.She held the phone out toward me, the screen already unlocked as the video already pulled up and ready. "I recorded it this morning," she
Liam's POVThe moment he laid back in the bed, I was left with no other choice other than to join him in the bed. I think this was a moment we are supposed to spend together.We lay there afterward, tangled in the sheets, both of us spent and unhurried, the morning light shifting slowly across the ceiling."Uh oh, Your Highness." I pressed a kiss to his arm where it was wrapped around me. "So, how did you end up in your bodyguard's bed? And not just that, you are so relaxed as if you are in your space."He raised his hand slightly, smiling, and pulled me closer. "Well." He shifted to face me properly. "My bodyguard dragged me into it. And fortunately for me, I fell for it unapologetically."I laughed at the choice of words. That was really funny or better still, I didn't expect that answer from him."How is a helpless prince supposed to resist?" he added, and then looked away toward the wall, something almost shy passing over his face.I felt the warmth of it settle in my chest. "You
Liam's POVHis shirt was already loose by the time my hands found the last of the buttons, and neither of us was paying much attention to time anymore … 60 minutes had become a number that existed somewhere far outside this room.We both knew what we wanted. I could see it in the way he looked at me, and I was fairly certain my own face was giving away just as much.Our lips met, and the kiss was unhurried despite the urgency underneath it … the kind of kiss that arrived after a few days of circling each other, after gardens and lakesides and stolen moments that had always ended too soon. I kissed him deeply, both hands finding the sides of his face, and for a while there was nothing else in the room except the two of us and the morning light moving slowly across the floor.I lost my breath first.I moved to his neck in a slow and deliberate manner, kissing along the line of it in a way that I had learned worked on him days ago at that lakeside and had never forgotten. He made a small
Liam's POVMorning arrived faster than I expected, and with it came my first official day as Ken's bodyguard.I had laid the uniform out the night before, as Jenny had left it folded on the chair beside the wardrobe with a precision that told me she had done this for other people her whole career … and I was halfway into it, still working out which piece went where and which came first before the other, when the door opened.Ken walked in without much ceremony. Then he crossed the room and dropped onto my bed, propping himself up on one elbow, settling in with the unhurried comfort of someone who had decided this was exactly where he wanted to be at this hour."Don't you have your own room to lounge around in?" I asked, not looking away from the mirror."I do," he said. "But I think this one is more interesting."I caught his reflection over my shoulder, watching me with the kind of focused interest that made it considerably harder to concentrate on what I was doing with my hands."Yo
Uncle Jones's POVI had not slept properly since the night the Queen had walked through that space and taken everything I had built away from me in four minutes of live television.The coronation was tomorrow.That single fact had been sitting in my chest since I woke up, pressing down with a weight that had not let up for a single hour. Every plan I had constructed, every piece I had carefully moved into place, had collapsed at the exact moment it should have paid off, and the window I had spent years prying open was now closing faster than I had any ability to slow down.I had Eric brought to me.He arrived at the same private room as before … the one outside official channels, away from anywhere that kept records of who had visited whom … and he had the look of someone who already understood, before he sat down, that this was not going to be a pleasant conversation."Explain to me," I said, keeping my voice level in the way that had always communicated more danger than shouting ever







