Chapter 21

I looked to the foot of my bed and there stood my father. This was the first time in over three years that I was looking at his face. All the time since I'd returned home I hadn't yet seen him. My guess was he hadn't been able to bring himself to see all his years of grooming turned to a pile of stinking defeat.

"This is for my attention. There, you have it. I am here, so get up."

I couldn't even begin to comprehend his words. I also knew that there had been a question in there somewhere but I couldn't imagine what it was. The question and it's answer didn't come and I turned my back to him. I was just so tired, exhausted even, though I hadn't left this bed in weeks. A part of me felt as if I never would.

I was facing the balcony watching the night through the double French doors when my view was cut off. My father was there beside the bed. His olive green eyes were like I'd never seen, not even when we'd had our falling out had he looked at me this way.

"I have never been ashamed of you in your entire life, not even when you chose to defy me in this home. I respected your strength but this? I am ashamed for you, Sookie."

He never called me Sookie, not ever. I met his eyes silently, begging to be left alone, but his pitiless gaze told me he would never allow me such self-pity.

"Of all my children, I thought you the best of me but when faced with a minor setback, this is what you do? This is how a Princess by birth, by right, and by blood would react to a single unsuspecting blow. It is disgraceful, Shy'ra."

Minor setback? Whose life was he talking about? Not mine, that much was for sure. "They took everything from me," I said as if that wasn't obvious. "They took him. They—"

He waved a hand at me that signaled for me to stop talking. "Oh, so your manners were one of the things they took as well?" He derided. "It must be because that is the only reason why you would speak to me, your father, and your King while lying on your back?"

I said nothing. He was always trying to teach a lesson or reinforce some code. I just didn't have the energy to do this with him and I didn't care enough about anything else to try.

He growled. "I said, 'Get up!' Now!" He didn't wait for me to comply.

He grabbed both my shoulders and dragged me into a sitting position against the headboard. I looked at him and I don't know what he saw, but it washed the harshness from his face and he pulled me into his arms. His scent was one I associated with all things safe and strong. I'd never needed it more. He held me and when my tears fell, he pulled away. My father wiped them away as if hiding my shame and, it helped more than any soothing touch could to halt my tears.

"Princesses do not cry Mi amor." He said softly. "If they do it must be in the rain. You know this, I taught you so."

I nodded. "I know, Daddy," I said sniffling and trying to stave off more tears. Had this been anyone else, I didn't think I could have even attempted to smother my crying. I would have fallen into hysterics and I don't think I could have ever stopped until my heart did.

"Nothing has ever caused me this much pain in my life. What's worse? I deserve it." I said, in a voice fit for the gallows. The shame he had spoken of was there and it threatened to choke me. "I was too close, too blinded, and too stupid to see it."

I was the dumbest smart person, ever born. Even when Ocella came to our door step, I hadn't seen this coming in a million years. My worries were about such superficial things, my time with Eric, sharing my space, and the worst, Ocella coercing Eric into sex. It never occurred to me that Ocella could make Eric leave me.

"Yes," My father replied thoughtfully changing to his native tongue. It was the one he used to soothe me. "Did you think I did not wish a powerful husband for you?"

I recalled he had been accepting suitors for my hand just before I left. I just thought it had been a maneuver that would get me where he wanted me to be. Then I had gone and made a choice he hated, and there was no coming back.

"I did. With Eric's age and reputation, your mind and abilities along with my money, the two of you would have been unstoppable. I have always indulged you, overly so at times but only if it didn't contradict what was best for you and that was what you couldn't see with Eric. I wanted the best for you, but the risk The Viking posed was too high."

He frowned at nothing in general as he continued. "I think that was what angered me most. You ignored a blatant threat and asked me to invite it into the fold. I knew Ocella would find his way to Eric as he is known to do from time to time, and once he did he would hurt you, and you would learn your lesson."

Lesson learned. My father turned to look at me. His eyes were unfathomable while they searched over my pale, gaunt face.

"I would have been happy to be wrong if only to have spared you this, mija." He whispered. He cupped my face, running his thumb over the dark spots under my eyes, and drying the remaining evidence of my tears.

"Pain makes the brain smarter," I whispered. Of all the things I learned from Sai throughout my life that had been one lesson that resonated above all.

"You have never been stupid, not even when you tried. I think you were young, still are, and it is a factor we both overlooked because of your many abilities."

"I don't feel young," I told him. With the pain in my heart and the turmoil it had brought to my mind, I felt I had aged centuries.

"I do not agree. We but all of us are as wise as our experiences and you do not have many. He was the first man you'd ever known?"

"The only one."

He nodded in understanding. "With that fact, the time you spent with him and the condition you were in, I should have been able to guess that you were attached. I overestimated your emotional maturity and you underestimated my ability to adjust. I am your father even after I am ashes in the wind and you are dead in the ground, I will be your father still. I will always want is best for you. You should have allotted me more trust."

That was as close as he was ever going to get to apologizing. It wasn't necessary. I was just as wrong. I never, not once since I was returned to him from Louisiana thought my best interest was his end goal. I thought he wanted me to be Queen because then I would finally be good enough. If I hadn't had that insecurity, how differently would things have turned out? I couldn't even begin to count all the ways.

An hour passed as we sat in silence. He held my hand and kept an arm around me supporting all my weight. His body was cool, but it was the warmest I'd been in weeks. For the first time in close to three months, I tried to think through what happened. I didn't let myself feel, but I tried to see where I went wrong. I voiced my thoughts to the one man who had always known my mind.

"At first I thought Ocella was testing me, you know? Seeing if I was good enough, strong enough for Eric. That wasn't the case. It was me. He wanted nothing but to demean me and Eric allowed him," I confessed. It was the first time I was voicing it and the words tasted like poison… so wrong… and just so warped. "When he found I didn't cower, he wanted to hurt me, and still Eric did nothing. He had made excuses."

Eric had told me that Ocella was petty when in truth he was nothing but a sadistic bastard. He didn't care who he hurt to satisfy his own twisted urges. I'd looked at Eric's lack of actions as his way of not wanting to choose sides in a delicate situation. Yet, he'd wanted me keep it light while his Maker continued hitting harder and harder, cutting deeply into me with his words. Looking back now, I couldn't believe all the shit I'd let slide. Would I have done it if I hadn't been alone and away from home? Yes, I would have because I loved him.

My father shrugged. "It could be argued that Eric had no choice."

We both knew that there was always a choice. It was only when choices became sacrifices that people claimed otherwise. I did believe Eric had been forced into the divorce, especially by the underhanded means in which it was done. It just simply wasn't his style, even with his enemies. I also knew that he had been forced into giving up information about me. Everything up and until that point, he'd had control over. That was what hurt more than anything; it was what had broken me.

Eric knew Ocella far better than I ever would. He was aware of the danger his Maker posed to us and he never told me. I would have killed that boy-loving bastard and ended all this before it could have even begun. Eric knew I wanted that. Despite having no love for Ocella, he still gave him loyalty of this magnitude. The truth was that Eric chose Ocella and sacrificed me instead. I had thought I was irreplaceable, no; he had made me feel irreplaceable. That was what I had based my love, life, and forever upon.

"He made his choice and it wasn't me." I said.

As I said the words I knew them to be true. There it was at last, sweet, merciful rage. It came and swept over me like a fiery breeze.

"Eric thinks he can just discard me as if I'm nothing and he did it at the behest of that Roman bum no less. Worst of all, that whore of a Queen thinks she can just take my husband, and then invite my father to the wedding?" Who fucking does that?

"As a guest of honor for that matter," My father informed me.

"The nerve! The sheer gall of it!"

"It is quite astounding," He agreed. "She has no fear of retaliation, which leads me to believe she is not getting accurate information regarding just whom you are."

"I do not care," I told him.

Even if I had been just the telepathic barmaid that most believed me to be, nothing gave anyone the right to do what Freyda had done, Queen or not. I was seething and I wanted to go on a rampage, but that would be stupid and I was so over being foolish. I needed to get stronger, but first I needed to get out of bed. I tested my weight on my feet, shaky, but they would hold me.

My head spun from vertigo. I couldn't remember the last time I stood. I wobbled, but my father didn't move. When I took my first step, I crumbled on one knee catching myself on the bed rail so the other wouldn't follow. While I found my strength, my father never moved to aid me. I loved him for it. I didn't want his tenderness; it would rob me of my anger. He waited patiently for me to rise to my feet, and when I did he smiled at me. It wasn't warm. He knew there was murder on my mind and he approved.

"I am a Princess and no one takes from me."

Freyda of Oklahoma was first on my list, that slut was in for a rude awakening, so was that Roman peasant and the mate-abandoning Viking after I rescued him that is.

"Good to know," The King said. "I have been in talks with Freyda, as I said. I do not believe she is receiving accurate information. Perhaps we can resolve this peacefully before she finds herself holding an angry vampire by the fang." He tapped my chin and it was then I realized my fangs were out and I wanted to dig them into someone, quite a selected few someones.

That solution, even if it was successful, didn't provide me with the amount of bloodshed I craved at the moment. That was just it though, this rage was momentary. I wanted the same thing I always wanted, Eric. I'd also made the mistake of not trusting my father once before. I would never do that again. It had gotten me where I was. I scowled, but nodded to give my agreement.

My father reached beside the bed and came back with a clipboard. It was the same one Doctor Wexler had been keeping on me since I got home.

"These are all the things that are wrong with your body as of present." He said, placing the thick stack in front of me. "Do what you must to heal by month's end. I am having a final sit down with the Queen of Oklahoma."

I would make it to that meeting even if it killed her.

I'd done a number on myself. I could feel it but I didn't know the half until I read my medical charts. It would have taken months to undo the damage if I was solely human. Such as it was it took me three and a half weeks. My father gave me his blood to get me back into top physical form. I still wasn't at a hundred percent, but I just needed to be able to put on the show of being such and I was close enough.

"No matter what she says to provoke you, her safety has been promised in blood," My father reminded me.

Of course I knew that. Nothing else would take a regent from their Kingdom and into another without such fanfare. No matter how long I'd been away from home, the lessons he had imparted in me about surviving, in and out of the vampire political system, never faded. More than once his teachings had saved me.

"See and hear, but I will not feel nor speak." I promised.

He smiled while he got behind the wheel of his Lamborghini Gallardo. My father seldom drove, but, when he did, it was a car that could rival any race car. I slid in beside him with Sai watching from his place by the garage door. His expression was the same as always, scowling and menacing. I caught a slight glimpse of Nim fifty miles after we left home. He would be close by if we found trouble at this meeting. I would be enough to protect my father until he did.

The meeting place was a pizza joint well beyond the boundaries of my father's area. I knew when we had arrived. I caught his scent, Eric was here. I went weak all over. Just the scent of him alone had me so twisted that for the first time in days, I wanted to break down and weep even though I was sure I had no tears left to cry. Surely if he saw me cry, he would know what he was doing to me. He would come back; that was my heart talking. I took that weakness and locked it away.

My father got out of the car and came over to help me as I got out, making a great show of it for anyone who was watching. Hand in hand we walked into hole in the wall. We bypassed the half drunken hostess and made way to the farthest corner, where the Queen of Oklahoma was waiting. Her face offended me even from this distance but that wasn't what got to me. She was alone, but I was so certain that I had caught Eric's scent. It took everything I had not to search for him.

"I am glad you have come," My father said and he gave her a nod of his head.

It took Freyda a while longer than acceptable to respond. Her eyes were on me. I didn't know what she was thinking, but I didn't really care.

"Her presence here means nothing, it proves nothing," Freyda stated.

If I had to guess, I would bet my father had told her I was his daughter and in taking something from me, she had taken something from him. Freyda was apparently not buying it. However her response did tell me that in addition to being a home-wrecking, hussy vamp, she was also a rude troll. I knew these were just my emotions talking. I knew it, so I didn't allow them to show on my face.

The King shrugged. If she didn't want to believe him about what I was to him, she didn't have to. He wasn't about to break out baby pictures as proof, such a thing was beneath him. Over the ages he had proven that his word was infallible.

"Have you reconsidered your position?" he asked.

"No," she said.

There was a tense pause that engulfed their half of the restaurant. My father broke it with a dramatic sigh. "So, old friend, where does that leave us?" he asked.

"On opposite sides of a conflict," Freyda said plainly.

"That is most unfortunate," My father said sincerely sad. "I respect you Freyda. Even now as you have made yourself my enemy without provocation I respect you still, so I make you this offer before any permanent harm is done. End Ocella, release Eric and marry me."

By her wide eyes it was clear that Freyda wasn't expecting that. She wasn't the only one. If not for the promise I had made my father about not feeling, my head might have exploded.

"I will be generous with the terms of the union." He continued. "But you must decide now."

Please, say 'no'. Please, say 'no'.

Freyda looked at me with a lot more interest and intensity than she had when I came in. Then she eyed my father. I knew when she made her choice because she sat just a little bit taller, an attempt to show that she wasn't afraid of the consequences of her actions.

"I have made my choice."

Yes!

My father nodded. "Then I wish you luck although I know it would do you no good."

Her brows arched in question. "You would go to war with me over a human?"

He didn't dignify her with a response. With a final nod of his head, my father rose from his seat and pulled me up with him. I went, albeit reluctantly. Their little back and forth wasn't enough for me. I wanted to know where Eric was. He had to be close. I just wanted to see his face, hear his voice no matter how much it hurt. That didn't happen. I was back in the car, on the highway, and I couldn't decide how I felt about it.

'Lover,'

I felt the mental call and it hit me so hard I almost fell apart all over again.

'Eric,'