Arabian Nights

Simone Shirazi

Description

Book #2 in the Fairytale Series, an Aladdin/1001 Nights retelling.

Blair Bakhtiar always wanted to be royalty. Zayn al-Haydar wanted to be anything but. When one fateful summer brings them together, the two discover that maybe it's not that much better on the other side... but the journey there is always full of surprises, with love being the biggest surprise of them all.

This is a sequel to Once Upon a One Night Mistake, but can be read as a standalone.

Sujets

• Romance contemporaine
• Fiction
• Romance
• Redevance
• Contemporary
• General
• Innocent
• Fairytale
• General officer
• Royalty
• Billionaire
• Contemporary history
• Regalía
• New Adult

Informations

• Publié par: Radish Fiction
• Date de parution: 21 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9798987864104
• Langue: English

Extrait

Arabian Nights

The Fairytale Series
Book 2


Simone Shirazi
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Radish Media Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher.
Edited by Judi Lauren
Cover by Acacia Heather
Copyright © 2022 Simone Shirazi and Radish Media Inc.
Playlist



Ya Rayah - Rachid Taha
Helwa Ya Baladi - Dalida
Yabn El Halal - Haifa Wehbe
Nour El Ein - Amr Diab
La Teloum - Nancy Ajram
Man o To - Nu
I Need Your Love - Shaggy, Mohombi, Faydee, Costi
F.U.Y.A. - C2C
Donya (Peyami Remix) - Arash ft. Shaggy
Just Like a Dream - Natacha Atlas
Desert Rose - Lolo Zouaï
Kidda - Natacha Atlas
Man Amadeh-Am - Googoosh
Oul Tani Eyh - Nancy Ajram
Dooset Daram - Arash, Helena
Abdel Kader - Rachid Taha, Faudel, Khalid
Mon Bled - Mohamed Lamine
Arabian Nights - Aladdin soundtrack


Click here to listen on Spotify
Contents



PROLOGUE | It’s Hard Out There for a Sheikh

1. The Prince and the Non-Pauper

2. Virgin Territory

3. Royal Pains

4. American Values

5. Unforgiven and Unforgotten

6. Angels and Demons

7. Best Frenemies Forever

8. Lockdown Abroad

9. Body Language

10. Diplomatic Ties (i)

11. Diplomatic Ties (ii)

12. Bittersweet Seduction (i)

13. Bittersweet Seduction (ii)

14. Close Confidants

15. Conscious Uncoupling

16. Hidden Truths

17. Lies of Omission

18. Scheherazade’s Tale

19. 1001 Nights

20. Identity Crisis

21. Heart’s Desire

22. Blood Brothers

23. Father Knows Best

24. Last Mercies

25. Long Live

26. Diamonds and Rust

27. The Truth

28. Deserved Justice

29. Like Father

30. God Save

31. Father Figures

32. To Have and To Hold

33. Lovers and Leavers

34. Self Discovery

35. New Beginnings

36. Arabian Days

EPILOGUE | The Name Game


THE FAIRYTALE SERIES
PROLOGUE | It’s Hard Out There for a Sheikh

R uling a country was not a task for the faint of heart. Then again, neither was raising eleven children.
There were days when His Majesty King Mohammed al-Haydar wondered how he’d managed to get himself into such a position. With his youngest daughter turning seven in a week, a slew of international affairs to attend to, and his country’s independence celebration in just a few hours, today was one of those days.
He had been raised knowing he would one day rule Malikbahr, a tiny island country in the Persian Gulf that his family had governed for nearly a hundred years. He had not, however, considered the possibility of having so many children he could start his own football team. Overseeing a country was simple in comparison to being a father, but when combined, he wouldn’t have wished his duties on even his bitterest enemies.
That wasn’t to say he didn’t love his children or his country—he loved both so much it physically hurt. Still, it never stopped him from wondering what life would have been like had he not become king or sired eleven souls.
The former was easy to imagine. There was no escaping the fact he was of royal blood but remaining a mere prince would have meant a chance to lead a much simpler existence. While he would have had a handful of responsibilities regarding the wellbeing of Malikbahr, it certainly wouldn’t have been as many required of a king. Someone else would have been the public face of the country—the one its people turned to in times of crisis and joy; the one who shouldered the blame when things went wrong or took all the credit when the nation flourished; the one who made all the difficult decisions when it came to war, law, and the economy.
It was a beautiful dream, but it would remain just that. A weak, distant desire that would never come to fruition. He would never let it.
His children followed the same example.
Although he loved each of them dearly, Mohammed wondered what it would have been like if he’d only had one or two. It would have been much quieter, no doubt, but it was hard to envision his life without the drama they brought to it. It hadn’t been his or his wife’s original plan to have so many, but by the grace of Allah, they had brought eleven lives into the world, and each one had the ability to drive him mad.
One of his main responsibilities as king was to provide an heir to the throne, and as the proud father of five sons and six daughters, he had fulfilled that duty several times over. Unfortunately, it also presented a problem.
It was a dilemma Mohammed had been carefully considering since the birth of his second son, but it hadn’t gotten any easier by the time the third, fourth, and final fifth arrived. He had been foolish to think that just because his firstborn had been a boy that the child would end up being crown prince one day. It may have sounded perfect on paper, but in reality, it was nothing short of a disaster.
Majid had been a happy baby and a sweet little boy, but his teenage years had been unpleasant. The chubby cheeked child had morphed into a playboy who hated rules, especially those of the Western nations he frequented. Had he not been the son of a noted foreign dignitary with the ability to rescue him from most situations, the boy probably would have been sitting in a jail cell halfway across the globe. Mohammed once thought it was just a phase, that his firstborn would grow out of it once he hit his late twenties, but Majid was thirty-one now, and it didn’t look like he would be settling down anytime soon.
Fortunately, the order of succession in Malikbahr was not based on primogeniture, so the king was—thankfully—free to choose whomever he wanted as heir presumptive. Had that not been the case, Mohammed was sure the country he loved with all his heart would have become the laughingstock of the world. Majid would run the kingdom into the ground.
That was the problem Mohammed faced. With his eldest son unworthy of the throne, he had to choose who he wanted to succeed him, which meant once again going through his lengthy list of children to find a replacement.
After Majid came his beautiful twin girls, two of the six jewels that ruled his heart. However, this was not a woman’s world, and the idea of a queen regnant still wasn’t acceptable. Besides, both were already married and had started families of their own. Who was he to demand they take on a responsibility that would keep the mothers away from their children? Even if they understood the inner workings of the monarchy far better than Majid ever could, there was no way he could ask such a thing.
His next son, Rashid, would have been an excellent candidate had he not already been a professional tennis player. Mohammed didn’t particularly understand his son’s passion for the sport but supported him nonetheless. The same went for Fatima, just two years younger than her tennis champion brother. She was an athlete in her own right, a world ranked equestrian who had represented Malikbahr on numerous occasions. It was a shame neither had shown any interest in politics since their bold personalities were so well suited for it.
That was usually the point when Mohammed began to truly worry about who was going to take his place on the throne one day. At sixty-two with rather poor health, he didn’t have many years left. In all honesty, he was giving himself no more than a decade, though there were days when half of that seemed more accurate. He had gone this long without naming a successor, much to the dismay of his advisors, but there had been no one suitable for the job. This wasn’t a decision he could put off for much longer, and after a visit to his physician two days ago, he knew the time had come to finally choose.
It was plain as day that none of his older children could handle the title. Ya Allah , he was having chest pains just thinking about it. It was absurd that he couldn’t rely on any of his first five to take the crown, but the idea of granting it to one of his younger children seemed even worse. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if he died tomorrow and his almost-seven-year-old daughter somehow became queen.
Then again, the idea was far better than that of letting his brother ascend to the throne. But that was a thought for another day.
With a heavy sigh, the king lifted his gaze to one of the many pictures on his desk. It was a candid shot of himself and his now twenty-year-old son, Zayn, on the day of the boy’s birth. Mohammed could remember practically all thirty hours of his wife’s labor—the longest of all their children—most of them spent pacing the halls of the hospital. She had promised him the agony had been worth it once she was able to hold their beautiful baby boy, and Mohammed had been quick to see why.
Even though the child’s mother had wailed for hours upon hours, Zayn hadn’t immediately let out a cry upon entering the world. Instead of voicing his discontent over leaving the place that had housed him for nine long months, he had fixed his dark eyes on his father and glared as if the whole thing had been Mohammed’s fault. The look had been so jarring that he had to tell himself it was impossible for the tiny infant to actually see him. It had to have been a trick of the light; there was no other explanation for it. No newborn could look at someone in such a way.
However, knowing Zayn today made him reconsider. The boy was still able to pull off that dramatic glare he had given Mohammed all those years ago, a look he still loathed to be on the receiving end of. He could only imagine what it would be like if Zayn were to fix that stare upon a world leader who refused to do something his way. Surely, they would cave to