Born of Shadows Read Online Free PDF

sense.
    Shit…
    I am royalty.
    erwhelmed by his new reality, he looked up at the father he’d never met and wondered about the rest of his blood family. “That’s my mother?”
    His father nodded as sadness darkened his gaze. It was obvious that even after all this time, the event still hurt him. “She died trying to fight off your kidnappers. I found her in your nursery, and…” He clenched his eyes shut as if trying to blot out that memory. “I lost everything that mattered to me that day. And I do mean everything. What good is it to rule the world when you can’t even protect the ones you love?”
    Caillen turned his attention back to the smiling image of the mother he’d never known—he’d been just a kid when his adoptive mother had died. Even though he’d lived with her, he barely remembered her either, and he had no memory whatsoever of the woman who’d given him life and then died trying to protect him. He didn’t know which one of those scenarios saddened him most.
    His father blinked back his tears and swallowed hard. “I loved your mother, Radek. She was beauty incarnate. And I’ve never remarried. No woman ever came close to her in any way and I didn’t want to shame her memory by marrying someone else to fulfill an obligation. Even a royal one. Not when she gave her life for us.” He closed the wallet and held it over his heart. “I wish she’d lived to see this moment. To see you . You favor her so much that it’s like I have you both back at once. I can’t believe I finally found you after all these years.”
    What should he say to that?
    Thanks?
    Yeah, no, that was stupid. For the first time in his life, words failed him.
    It was so surreal. Things like this didn’t happen to people like him. Kicks in the groin. Imprisonment. Clients turning you into the authorities. Collectors shooting you dead in the street… that was what happened to third-generation smugglers.
    They didn’t wake up from an execution to become a prince. It just didn’t happen.
    Caillen tried to reach for the photo wallet and cursed at his bound hands. “Why am I restrained?”
    The doctor came forward to free him. “Sorry, Your Highness. It was only a precaution. We didn’t want you to wake up and hurt yourself.”
    Right… more likely they were afraid he’d wake up and attack them.
    As soon as his arms were freed, Caillen rubbed his wrists and stared at his father. “This isn’t some weird-ass joke or prank one of my friends is pulling on me, right?”
    There was no feigning the sincere offense on his father’s face or in his stance. “I would never joke about something like this.”
    No, he guessed not. Still, it was a hard fact to accept. Everything he thought he knew about himself was now brought into question. It was such a strange, lost feeling. Everyone he’d ever trusted had lied to him. His parents. His sisters.
    He wasn’t who and what he thought. Everything he’d been told about his family and his past was a lie…
    Everything.
    But for one freak event that’d happened at a point in his life he couldn’t remember, his entire childhood and past would have been completely different. He would have been completely different. There would have been no poverty. No hiding.
    He wouldn’t have had any of his teen trauma. He wouldn’t have been there to help his sisters…
    It was overwhelming to contemplate that he was now someone else.
    Someone he didn’t know.
    I have a father…
    Caillen glanced to the doctor before he returned his gaze to his father’s. “So what does this mean exactly?”
    His father smiled. “This means you’re about to have a whole new world, my boy. You’re finally going to live the life you were born to.”
    Caillen wasn’t sure that was a good thing. In his experience, change came in with a furry harbinger that usually sprayed crap all over him. Seldom was change for the better.
    But at least he wasn’t dead.
    Yet.
    One second more though, according to the doctor,