To Tame a Sheikh (Pride of Zohayd 1)

Amjad shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. “Why should I narrow it down? I’m having a ball tracing every transaction that occurred in the accounts of everyone who was ever in the palace and cross-referencing those with just about everyone in the region and their dogs. Even after I find the funds exchanged in the conspiracy and the hands that exchanged them, I’m keeping this up. Seems the Pride of Zohayd is not the only treasure to be found here. I’m exposing dozens of priceless secrets. I now have something ruinous on just about everyone, it’s just sublime.”

Harres thumped Amjad on the back. “What he meant by all that is that he, like all of us, is forever in your debt, Johara.”

Johara looked Amjad in the eye. “I’ll accept his gratitude when he actually proves effective in getting the jewels back.”

Amjad’s lethal smile acknowledged her third-person payback. “Oh, I will. But now it’s time to return to Zohayd and face the music. Harres should have stayed back and announced code red. Your wedding has the tribes up in arms. Expect the worst.”

The moment they touched down in Zohayd, the king summoned them. And it was clear the worst was to be expected.

It still took hearing it to make it real, to tip her from the edge and into the nightmare.

“The council is in session right now, Shaheen,” King Atef said as soon as they entered his stateroom, his voice heavy with sorrow. “They have made a final decree. You are to dissolve your marriage to Johara. A bride has been unanimously chosen for you, and neither she nor her family will accept her being a second wife. And they demand that her offspring be your heir, not your child from Johara. They are gathering their people on our borders, in all the hubs of unrest within the kingdom. They say your answer would decide their next actions.”

Johara felt as if a scythe had cut her down at the knees. Shaheen’s arm came around her, held her up, hugged to him.

“Don’t worry about those thugs, Father,” Harres growled. “I’ll send them running with their tails between their legs.”

“And afterward, Harres?” Everyone, including Harres was startled when Shaheen spoke up. Johara shuddered at his calmness. “You think force will create any long-term or real peace?”

Harres’s scowl was spectacular. She could see him fighting to the death over this. “They’re bluffing, and I’ll show them that I don’t take kindly to bluffs. And if they’re not, I’ll show them I’m even less forgiving of threats. This same council entrusted me with the peacekeeping of this kingdom, and B’Ellahi, I’m keeping it.”

“This is not a bluff, Harres,” King Atef said. “And if they carry out their threats, it is my fault. I’ve misled them for too long. Now they’re enraged. And unreasonable.”

Aggression blazed in Harres’s feral eyes. “Give me the word, and I’ll show them unreasonable!”

Amjad stayed pointedly silent through it all. Watching her.

Shaheen only shook his head at Harres. “There will be no need for any of that.” He turned to his father. “I wish you’d let them tell me that to my face instead of hiding behind you and burdening you with their pompous and insane demands.” Then he turned to her. “Stay here, ya galbi. I’ll be back in minutes.”

Johara watched Shaheen walk away and felt as if she’d lost him already. He would try to talk the council out of their decision. And he’d fail.

Her vision swam as it wavered to the men who’d been a major part of her life. They were Shaheen’s family, were hers, too. Harres growled that he’d beat back any attempt at an uprising so hard, the dead would reconsider their mutinies. The king argued that he couldn’t give the order to plunge the kingdom into war. Amjad watched her. She sank deeper in despair.

Then Shaheen came back. His kabeer el yaweran was behind him, laden in dossiers.

He took her hand to his lips then folded her arm through the crook of his. “Shall we, ya joharet galbi?”

She walked only because he steered her, could barely see the route they took through the palace to the council hall or the Roman senatelike assembly all around them once they entered it, barely heard the din die down as Shaheen brought her to a stop in the middle of the floor.

He spoke at once, his voice an awe-striking boom. “I will never divorce Johara. Or take a second wife. And this is final.”

The hall exploded.

Shaheen raised his voice over the cacophony. “But…I have a solution.”

The clamor again died down as everyone recognized the determination and certainty in Shaheen’s voice and demeanor.

He went on once there was total silence. “My solution will exonerate my king, my family and my tribe of my actions, end any ill will you now bear toward them.”

He let a beat pass when everyone and everything seemed to hold their breath. Then he said, “Exile me.”

Johara’s heart stopped.

She felt every heart in the gigantic hall follow suit.

Then Shaheen continued, and her heart burst into thundering shock and horror. “I offer that my family disown me, strip me of my name, and for the kingdom of Zohayd to forever forbid me, and my children, entry to its soil.”

As the uproar rose again, his voice again drowned it out. “But this will only appease the insult I’ve dealt you by breaking my vows. To compensate you, my venerable lords, for any loss you may suffer from my refusal to enter the beneficial union you demanded…” He beckoned for his kabeer el yaweran to come forward. “I give you all my assets.”

Silence crashed over the hall.

Nothingness roared inside Johara.

Shaheen was saying…offering…

Suddenly, a voice rent the silence. “Yes, make an example of Shaheen Aal Shalaan!”

Another roared, “It’s the only way to appease our tribes. Exile him!”

More voices rose, tangled.

“Prove that not even the king’s son can renege on his word.”

“Show every royal they cannot play with us all and get away with it.”

Shaheen only smiled down at her. The smile of someone who’d achieved exactly what he was after. Then he steered her away and out of the council hall.

They might have walked two steps or two miles when it all sank in. She wrenched on his hand, bringing him to a stop.

“Are you out of your mind?”

His smile broadened, his face the picture of relief. “I’ve never been more in it, and I—”

She cut him off, words colliding as they spilled out of her. “This is what you meant every time you told me you’ll resolve this? This was your solution all along?”