The Fearless Royal: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (Annabelle's Harem Book 3) Read online

  The Fearless Royal

  Anna Hill

  Contents

  Copyright

  Follow Me!

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © Anna Hill 2018

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  This is the third book in the Annabelle's Harem series! Click here to read the first book 'The Forgotten Royal'

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  1

  “You wanted to see me?” Jacob asked, as I saw him step through a large, extravagant wooden door. It was etched with designs of flowers and leaves.

  “Yes, I did.” King Robert was sitting on the other side of the room behind an oversized desk, his hands slowly stroking the black leather of his chair. “Have a seat.” He motioned at a small couch which sat across from his desk.

  Jacob immediately looked nervous. “Is something wrong?”

  “Just have a seat.”

  Jacob looked increasingly more nervous as he sat down, anxiously tapping his fingers on the armrest of the small couch. “What is it?” he asked.

  “I wanted to first and foremost thank you for the job you’ve done for us thus far. When you told me two years ago that you’d be perfect to get Annabelle to trust you, I admit I had my doubts. But you successfully did. It really seems the girl is in love with you, and her parents even appear to like you. You’ve truly outdone yourself. You’ve been an important contributor to our cause, and at your age, that’s saying something. You’ve certainly outdone your parents.”

  Jacob nodded quickly. “I know, I apologize for them. I know they’re not exactly… dedicated to what we’re doing. Not the way I am.”

  “No,” Robert acknowledged. “They don’t like living in that town, do they?”

  “Definitely not. They’re used to a more lavish lifestyle, which I’ve assured them they’ll be able to get back to as soon as Annabelle graduates and we move in together. I’ve already gotten her to agree to move out with me, so it’s just a waiting game now. But they’ll be patient, I promise.”

  Jacob looked genuinely remorseful that his parents did not share his dedication. I was sure it was a very egregious crime to not show the king their full devotion.

  “I’m not worried about them, Jacob. I am sure they’ll comply. They are not the reason I called you here.”

  Jacob looked surprised. “Oh… they’re not?”

  “No. While it would be great if your parents shared your dedication, at this point it's not important that they don’t. They only play small roles. You are the one with the big role; you’ve given us both the progress and magic we desire.”

  “And I love that role! You have no idea how seriously I take the responsibility!”

  “Right…” Robert said slowly. “Well, that’s actually the real reason I called you in today. While we appreciate what you’ve done with your role, you no longer will be playing it.”

  Jacob’s jaw dropped. “You can’t possibly mean… You don’t want me to quit?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. So, you can tell your parents they are free to move as soon as they’d like. In fact, I insist upon it. They need to move away, and you need to completely cease contact with Annabelle. Don’t even bother to break up with her. Just… disappear.”

  Jacob shook his head. “But… why? Have I done something wrong? I thought that—”

  “No, you've done nothing wrong. This is out of your control, Jacob. We’ll find another way that you can contribute to the cause, but it’ll no longer be by interacting directly with Annabelle.”

  “But… if I’m not around, who’s going to collect magic from her and her mother?”

  "We will figure that out, don’t worry. That isn’t your concern. I’ll get my magic, trust me.”

  “I just don’t understand… Why can’t it continue to be me? Annabelle loves me. Not to question your judgement, King Robert, but I’m not sure you see what a great opportunity this is! Annabelle will marry me. I can watch her for the rest of her life. I can make sure we never lose control of her. I mean… the girl adores me. She would do anything I say. And things will be even better when she lives with me and I can isolate her from her parents and—”

  “I believe you, Jacob. Annabelle truly does love you, I can see that. Believe me, the opportunity is not wasted on me. Unfortunately, it’s no longer up to Annabelle. Things will soon be ruined by her mother.”

  "By… her mother? How?”

  “I’ve been drinking pebblerot a lot lately because I saw visions of Annabelle’s mother discovering what we’re doing. And from what I’ve learned, she’s already suspicious of you. If we continue to allow you to be around Annabelle, she will learn who you really are. And she will realize we’ve been leeching her magic for years. We can’t allow that, so we need to take you out of the equation. I’m positive that if we do that and replace you with someone else, we’ll be able to continue this for several more years without detection.”

  “So… I’ve done everything right, but I’m getting cast out because Annabelle’s mother is on to me.”

  “As I said, it’s out of your control. You’ve done great. But we always knew her mother could occasionally see the past and future in her dreams. You are soon going to be a part of those dreams. We must be careful.”

  Jacob nodded slowly. “You’re right, we should be careful…” he began to say, and I got the sense he was plotting. “And her mother is always going to be a risk. Like you said, she can see the past and future. So there’s really only one way to guarantee all of our safety.”

  "And what’s that?” Robert asked.

  Jacob shrugged. “We kill her.”

  Robert’s face went rigid.

  "I mean, think about it! It’s the perfect situation for us. With her mother dead, there's no risk of Annabelle discovering us. And unlike her mother, Annabelle doesn’t even know she's a witch. If we kill her mom before she gets a chance to tell her, then she’ll never find out!”

  "If we kill her, then I no longer have access to her magic.”

  “No… but you’ll have access to Annabelle, possibly forever! Isn’t it better to go the safer route and have some magic than potentially be attacked by both of them one day?”

  Robert was overtly annoyed. “No, it’s better to have as much power as I possibly can. I thought it was clear to you how often I utilized magic. How necessary it is to have our magic stores as high as possible.”

  “It is, but—”

  "There are no buts, Jacob. I will not kill her mother. I don’t care about the safer option. My very position requires I do not play it safe. I will always choose the route that gives me the most power.”

  Jacob looked ever more frustrated. "I can't lose this, Robert. My job with Annabelle is the only thing that’s importan
t to me. It’s what I shaped all my life goals around. I mean, I planned to marry a girl I’m disgusted by. Doesn’t that show you how dedicated I am?”

  “I never doubted your dedication.”

  “Then trust me! Kill her mother and I’ll make sure Annabelle never finds out who she truly is. I’ll make sure she never has access to her power. We’ll have access to it for as long as she lives. I’ll have children with her and we can leech their magic, too. I’m the option that leads to you having guaranteed magic forever."

  I was disgusted to hear that.

  I turned to my mother. “He wanted to have kids with me and then spend the rest of his life leeching their magic? He wouldn’t even care about his own children?”

  Though my mother and I were standing in the same room as Robert and Jacob, they couldn’t hear or see us.

  Because we weren’t really here. This was the past, this was a memory. A memory that my mom was teaching me how to access. We were never actually there when this event took place, but we could see it exactly as it happened years ago.

  “Annabelle, he murdered me and your father. Of course he wouldn’t care about his own children. He was a sociopath. He cared about one thing and one thing only: going down in history as the man who prevented you from overthrowing Robert. Even if that history was only ever known by the human elite. He was an egomaniac, obsessed with his own importance. And, ironically, as much as he hated you… nothing made him feel important like you did.”

  I looked back over at Jacob, who looked like he was about to lose his mind.

  "I don't know who I am without this job.”

  Robert wasn’t having it anymore and rolled his eyes. "Jacob, we will find another job for you. There are other important things you can do. And maybe one day in the future, it’ll be safe to re-enter Annabelle’s life. But not now. Not while her mother is still in the picture. Once again, I thank you for your service, but this is the end of the line.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?” Jacob threw his hands up in the air. "Just go back into town to tell my parents that we can move now?”

  “No, like I said, you need to tell them that they have to move. The King demands it. And then you leave. And frankly, Jacob, I won’t hear any more about it. Please leave now.”

  Jacob stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Bold move when dealing with King Robert, of course, but clearly Jacob felt like there wasn’t much left to lose. He had already lost the one thing he cared about most: his relationship with me.

  “So, he wasn’t lying,” I said quietly to my mom. “King Robert didn’t want you dead, only Jacob did.”

  “Yes, though Robert couldn't have cared less about my well-being. It was my magic he was after.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mom. I should have known. He was playing me like a fiddle.”

  My mom wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “You were a child. I was the one who should have known. I allowed myself to believe that I had escaped the grip of the human elite, like my mother did. Hell, if she even did. Maybe they found out about her too. But they used to just kill witches and wizards when they were discovered, so it was easy to believe we were safe. If we were alive, clearly we hadn’t been discovered, right? But I suppose they killed us off before they realized they could actually harness our magic. Robert probably wished there were a few other witches and wizards still alive at that point.”

  “So… this was right before Jacob came and killed you guys, then?” I tried to rack my brain to remember that time. “This was where he was when he told me he was going on a ‘work trip?’”

  “Right.”

  “And that night… he tried so hard to get me to come over and see him.”

  “Yes, because he didn’t want you to go straight home and find us. He was trying to delay that. The more time between our death and discovery, the less likely he’d be caught. Maybe he even wanted you to be his alibi for that night. But it hardly mattered, they didn’t catch him anyway. Robert saw to that.”

  “But Robert didn’t even want him to kill you guys! Why did he protect him?”

  My mom smiled. “You’re asking all the right questions. But that’s for another dream. You don’t have much time until you wake up.”

  I sighed. “I wish I could sleep all day.”

  “Well, you can’t. But you are sleeping an awful lot. I feel like we’re getting a lot of training done in a short amount of time.”

  “I don’t!” I argued. “I still can’t even have these kinds of dreams on my own!”

  I learned in the last two months that my mother was basically a master dreamer. She had cultivated her gift. She could purposefully pull up memories and dream them once she had an idea of what she was looking for. Some dreams just happened to her, though. She didn’t control it completely, but a lot of the time she was able to access specific information. But like she was always telling me… to access this information, I had to know the right questions to ask. I had to know what I was looking for to find it.

  But I didn’t feel like I was getting any better at this. I occasionally had dreams of my own, without my mother, but they were never dreams I was seeking out. I couldn’t tap into information like she could.

  “You’re doing great!” my mom assured me. “It’s not as simple as it seems. It took me my whole life to master what I did, and I still wasn’t as great as my own mother.”

  I looked at her, surprised.

  “What?” she asked.

  “My grandmother could dream like this too?”

  “Yes, she could.”

  “So… would I be able to meet her?”

  My mom smiled. “Yes. In fact, she and I have discussed it. I very much want you two to meet… but your grandma insists the timing isn’t right yet. I’m not sure when it will be or what she’s waiting for, but not yet apparently.”

  I had never met my grandma. She died before I was born, and I always hated that. I used to look at my friends with big families and was jealous of their aunts, uncles, cousins… I didn’t even have a sibling.

  And though I loved my parents, I was disappointed that outside of them, I would never meet anybody else in my family. So the idea that I might actually meet my grandma one day was hugely exciting.

  “After she passed, did she ever visit you in your dreams?”

  "She did, from time to time. But not often. She was a strong believer that we need to accept all the dreams that come to us. We need to be aware of what the universe sends us because it's important. So she did her best not interrupt my dreams. Especially when she knew how important my role was in defeating the human elite. I had the daughter that was going to save Elderan, after all. She wanted to visit me but always felt there were more important things to be done.” My mom wrapped her arms around me. “But that’s enough. Like I said, you’ll wake up shortly. I’ll meet you tonight… don’t get discouraged. Right now, our training is all about learning your own history. Learning that is going to be the key to discovering what you need to know.”

  I sighed. “But can’t you just tell me what I need to know to defeat Robert? And we can just skip right over all of this?”

  “No… I can’t. Because… I don’t exactly know yet.”

  My eyes bulged. “Seriously?”

  Lately I’d been comforting myself with the idea that although I didn't know when I’d be able to defeat Robert, my mother did. That she had all the answers and she’d share them with me.

  But… she didn’t?

  “I’m confident that you’re going to get there. I will guide you. You have the same power I do… You’re going to learn what you need to learn, Annabelle. Trust it.”

  “But I—”

  I had no time to finish my sentence because just as my mother predicted, I had woken up.

  “Ugh!” I growled in frustration as I sat up in bed.

  Angelo immediately rolled over and looked at me with concern. “What is it?”

  “I just found out that my mom has no idea when or eve
n if I’m going be able to defeat Robert. She doesn’t know when he’s going to run out of my magic either!”

  I yanked the sheet off of myself and moved to get out of bed.

  Angelo put his hand on my waist, stopping me from leaving. “Where are you going?”

  “I have to go tell Rhyion of what I just dreamed while it’s still fresh in my mind.”

  That was what I’d been doing lately. I spent most of my time with my mom while I dreamed and with Rhyion while I was awake. And Angelo and Lio got me at night when I could finally relax.

  Although relax might not be the best word for it… I was never truly relaxed these days.

  Rhyion was the history buff, and the more info he had, the better. Especially now that I knew my mom didn’t have the answers I needed… The more information I gave Rhyion, the more likely he was going to be able to figure them out.

  He was like my brain. He went over things and helped me analyze situations, which was apparently vital to my training. My mother strongly approved of my time spent with Rhyion, encouraging me to open my mind to his way of thinking when I was with him.

  Although I spent most of my time with my mother exploring the past, there were times when we were at a lull and I was able to talk about my life with her. She knew of Angelo, Lio, and Rhyion, and I honestly felt that she had come to love them all. She, at the very least, strongly approved of my relationship with Angelo and Lio. I still found that to be so weird at times, considering she was a completely monogamous woman herself.

  But I supposed she was truly a witch at heart because she didn’t judge me at all.

  Now it was Angelo’s turn to groan. “You know, your little study sessions with Rhyion are really starting to get in the way of my morning sex.”

  I laughed as I took one of his oversized shirts and slipped it on. “Well, then… it’s a good thing you get plenty of night sex, huh?”