Abruptly, like the universe was sending him a shot in the nuts, a young’s cry rippled out. “Ah, listen, I was just getting her up. You mind?”
Wrath dragged a hand through his hair. “No, no, yeah, it’s cool.”
“You want me to come to your office afterward?”
He wondered what the room looked like, and painted the space according to what his Beth had said was in it. Cluttered, he thought. Homey. Cheerful.
Pink.
Nothing that Z would have been caught dead in before he’d met Bella.
“Wrath? What’s going on here?”
“You mind if I come in?”
“Ah … sure. Yeah, I mean, Bella’s working out so we’ve got some privacy. But you’re going to want to—”
Chhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
“—watch where you step.”
Wrath lifted up his shitkicker and whatever toy he’d crushed reinflated with a wheeze. “Fuck, did I break it?”
“I think it’s a dog toy, actually. Yeah, I’m pretty sure she picked it up from George downstairs. You want it back?”
“He’s got plenty. She can have it.”
As he shut the door, he was painfully aware that they were each talking about their young—only Wrath’s had four paws and a tail.
Least he didn’t have to worry about George succeeding him or being blind.
Z’s voice came from deeper in the room. “You can sit on the foot of the bed if you go fifteen feet straight ahead of you.”
“Thanks.”
He didn’t particularly want to park it, but if he stayed standing, he was going to want to pace and it wouldn’t be long before he tripped over something that wasn’t a toy.
Over in the corner, Z spoke softly to his daughter, the words rolling into some kind of rhythm like he was talking through a song. In reply, there were all kinds of cooing.
And then came something that sounded terrifyingly clear: “Dada.”
Wrath winced behind his wraparounds, and figured he might as well get this over with. “Beth wants me to talk to you.”
“About?”
As he imagined the Z he knew so well, he pictured the brother he’d been convinced was going to implode and take out half a dozen of them with him: skull trim, scarred face, eyes that had been black and opaque as a shark’s until Bella had come. Then they had gone yellow—at least as long as he wasn’t pissed off, and that didn’t happen anymore unless he was out in the field.
Big turnaround.
“Are you holding her?” Wrath asked.
There was a pause. “As soon as I get this bow tied in the back—hold on, girlie. Okay, up you go. She’s in a pink dress that Cormia made her by hand. I hate pink. I like it on her, though—but keep that to yourself.”
Wrath flexed his hands. “What’s it like?”
“Not totally hating pink? Pretty f**k—ehrm, frickin’ emasculating.”
“Yeah.”
“Do not tell me Lassiter’s been metrosexualizing even you. I heard he talked Manello into going for a pedicure with him—but I’m praying that’s just gossip.”
It was hard to ignore how easily the brother was talking. Like normal, really. Then again, he had his family, his shellan was safe, and he’d been disappearing into the basement with Mary on a regular basis for how long now?
Nobody knew precisely what they talked about down there. But everyone could guess.
“Actually, I don’t know why I’m here,” Wrath said roughly.
Liar.
Footfalls came forward, and then there was a regular creaking, like the male had taken a seat in a rocking chair and was going back and forth. Apparently, Nalla liked whatever positioning had occurred, the young doing more of that cooing.
A soft squeaking suggested Z had picked up another toy and was keeping her occupied.
“This about Beth spending time with Layla?”
“Am I the only person who didn’t know?”
“You don’t leave your office much.”
“One more reason not to want to have a kid.”
“So it’s true.”
Wrath bowed his head and wished his vision was working so he could pretend to inspect something. The bedspread. His boots. A watch.
“Yeah, Beth wants one.” He shook his head. “I mean, how did you do it? Getting Bella pregnant—you must have been terrified at the idea.”
“There was no planning involved. She went into her needing, and when push came to shrug … I mean, I had the drugs. I begged her to let me take care of her that way. In the end, though, I did what a male does to see his female through it. The pregnancy was rough, but the birth scared me more than anything I’ve ever been through in my life.”
And considering the guy had been a sex slave for how long? That was saying something.
“Afterward,” Z said slowly, “I didn’t sleep for a good forty-eight hours. It took that long for me to be convinced Bella wasn’t going to bleed out and Nalla was alive and going to stay that way. Hell, maybe it was more like a week.”
“Was it worth it?”
There was a long quiet, and Wrath was willing to bet his left nut the brother was staring at his daughter’s face. “I can say yes because they both survived. If that hadn’t been the case? My answer would be different—even as much as I love my daughter. Whatever, like all bonded males, Bella is the one I focus on before everything, even including my young.”
Wrath popped the knuckles of one fist. Went to work on the other hand. “I think Beth was hoping you’d change my mind.”
“I can’t do that. No one can—it’s the hard wiring of the bonded male. The one you really need to talk to is Tohr. I fell into this—and I am the luckiest bastard on the face of the planet that it happened to work. Tohr, on the other hand, he chose it. He somehow had the balls to roll the dice—even knowing the risks. And then his Wellsie died anyway.”
Abruptly, Wrath remembered going down to the training center’s office, looking for the fighter with all of the Brotherhood behind him. He had found Tohr sitting with John, a phone up to the brother’s ear, an aura of desperation marking everything from his pale face to the grip he’d had on that receiver to the way his expression had frozen as he’d looked up to find them all there, in the doorway.
Jesus Christ, it was fresh as if it had happened yesterday. Even though in the intervening time, Tohr had mated Autumn and moved on, to the extent that any male would be able to.
Wrath shook his head. “I don’t know if I can go there with the brother.”
Cue another long stretch of quiet, as if maybe Z were thinking of that night, too. But then Zsadist said softly, “He’s your brother. If he’d do it for anyone … it would be for you.”
The minute Beth walked into the mansion’s magnificent foyer, she stopped dead in her tracks.
At first, she couldn’t put a name to the splintered pile of wood that was on its side under the billiard’s room archway. But then the ragged green skin gave it away: It was the pool table. Looking like someone had had at it with a chain saw.
Going over, she peered in and felt her jaw unhinge.
Everything was trashed. From the sofas to the light fixtures, the TV to the bar.
“He’s okay,” a male voice said from behind her.
Wheeling around, she looked up into Z’s yellow eyes. In the Brother’s arms, Nalla was dressed in a darling pink dress with an empire waist and a flaring skirt she was going to grow into in a couple months. Talk about the cuteness. Little white Mary Janes flashed on her feet, and an off-center white bow tied back her multicolored curls.
Her eyes were yellow, just like her dad’s, but her smile was all Bella, wide-open, trusting, and friendly.
God, it hurt to see them. Especially as she knew the cause of the destruction in that other room.
“He called me,” she said.
“That why you came home?”
“I was going to anyway.”
Z nodded. “Good. Last night was a thing.”
“Clearly.” She glanced over her shoulder. “How did he…”
“Stop? Lassiter darted him. He went down like a stone and had a good, long nap.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to ask, but … yeah.” She rubbed her cold hands together. “Ah, do you know where he is?”
“He told me you asked him to talk to me.”
As she stared across at Z, she thought of meeting him for the first time. God, he’d been terrifying—and not just because of the scar. He’d had a glacial glare back then, as well as the kind of deadly focus that had gone straight into the center of her chest.
Now? He was like a brother to her … except when it came to Wrath. Wrath would always come first for him.
It was true for all the Brothers. And considering what Wrath had done to the game room, that was not a bad thing.
“I thought maybe it would help.” God, that seemed lame. “What I mean is—”
“He’s gone to find Tohr.”
Beth closed her eyes. After a moment, she said, “I don’t want any of this, you know. Just so we’re clear.”
“I believe that. And I don’t want this for the two of you, either.”
“Maybe we’ll figure it out.” As she turned to the stairs, a wave of exhaustion hit her like a ton of bricks. “Listen, if you see him … tell him I’ve gone up to have a shower. It was a long day for me, too.”
“You got it.”
As she passed by the Brother, she was shocked when his hand landed on her shoulder and squeezed in support.
Good Lord, if you’d told her a couple of years ago that the fighter would be offering anyone anything other than a gun to the head? NFW. And the fact that he was currently holding a total Gerber baby in his heavily muscled arm, said daughter staring up at his scarred face with absolute and total adoration?
Pigs flying. Hell freezing over. Miley Cyrus keeping some clothes on.
“I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely, knowing that the flip side to the Brotherhood’s closeness was that they all truly worried about each other.
The problems of one were the problems of all.
“I’ll let him know you’re home safe,” Z said. “Go have a rest. You look wiped.”
She nodded and hit the stairs, dragging her tired body up one step at a time. As she came to the second floor, she stared through the open double doors into the study.
The throne and the huge desk it sat behind loomed like monsters, the old wood and ancient carvings a tangible representation of the lines of succession that had served the race for how long? She didn’t know. She couldn’t guess.
So many couples sacrificing their firstborn sons to a position that, from all she’d seen, was not just thankless, but downright dangerous.
Could she put her own flesh and blood there? she wondered. Could she sentence something she herself had had a hand in creating to where her husband sat and suffered?
Stepping over the threshold, she crossed the Aubusson rug and stood before just two of the symbols of the monarchy. She pictured Wrath there, with the paperwork and the grind, like a tiger trapped in a zoo, fed well, cared for relentlessly … nonetheless caged.
She thought back to working at the Caldwell Courier Journal, for Dick the Prick as a copyeditor for his boys’ club while he tried to look down her shirt. She’d wanted to get out so badly, and her transition and meeting Wrath had been her saviors.
What was Wrath’s?
How would he ever get out of this?
Short of abdicating, his only saving grace … was getting killed by Xcor and the Band of Bastards.
Wow. Great future there.
And her solution was to threaten her own life by trying to get pregnant. No wonder he’d lost his shit.
Running her fingertips across the complicated edging of the desk, she discovered that the curlicues actually formed a vine. And there were dates inscribed along the leaves …
The Kings and the queens. Their children.
A long legacy of which Wrath was the current manifestation.
He wasn’t going to give this up. No way. If he felt impotent now, walking away from the throne was going to send him right over the edge. He’d already lost his parents too soon—to release their legacy over to another? That would be a blow he’d never get past.
She still wanted to have a child.
But the longer she stood there, the more she wondered whether it was worth it if she had to sacrifice the man she loved. And that was going to be the result—plus, assuming she could get pregnant and deliver a healthy baby, if they had a son, he was going to end up here.
And if she had a daughter? Whoever she married was going to take over—and then her daughter would have the pleasure of watching her man go insane from the pressure.
Great inheritance either way.
“Damn it,” she breathed.
She’d known Wrath was the King when she mated him—but for her, by then, it had already been too late. She’d been head over heels in love, and whether his job had been security guard or supreme head of state, she was getting hitched.
She hadn’t thought of the future back then. Just being with him had been enough.
But come on, even if she had been aware of all the implications …
Nope. She still would have thrown on Wellsie’s gorgeous red gown and marched down to have the crap scared out of her as Wrath had her name carved in his back.
Thick or thin. Richer or poorer, in human terms.
Child-filled … or childless.
When she finally turned away, she straightened her shoulders and walked out of the room with her head level. Her eyes were clear, her heart was calm, and her hands were steady. tly, like the universe was sending him a shot in the nuts, a young’s cry rippled out. “Ah, listen, I was just getting her up. You mind?”
Wrath dragged a hand through his hair. “No, no, yeah, it’s cool.”
“You want me to come to your office afterward?”
He wondered what the room looked like, and painted the space according to what his Beth had said was in it. Cluttered, he thought. Homey. Cheerful.
Pink.
Nothing that Z would have been caught dead in before he’d met Bella.
“Wrath? What’s going on here?”
“You mind if I come in?”
“Ah … sure. Yeah, I mean, Bella’s working out so we’ve got some privacy. But you’re going to want to—”
Chhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
“—watch where you step.”
Wrath lifted up his shitkicker and whatever toy he’d crushed reinflated with a wheeze. “Fuck, did I break it?”
“I think it’s a dog toy, actually. Yeah, I’m pretty sure she picked it up from George downstairs. You want it back?”
“He’s got plenty. She can have it.”
As he shut the door, he was painfully aware that they were each talking about their young—only Wrath’s had four paws and a tail.
Least he didn’t have to worry about George succeeding him or being blind.
Z’s voice came from deeper in the room. “You can sit on the foot of the bed if you go fifteen feet straight ahead of you.”
“Thanks.”
He didn’t particularly want to park it, but if he stayed standing, he was going to want to pace and it wouldn’t be long before he tripped over something that wasn’t a toy.
Over in the corner, Z spoke softly to his daughter, the words rolling into some kind of rhythm like he was talking through a song. In reply, there were all kinds of cooing.
And then came something that sounded terrifyingly clear: “Dada.”
Wrath winced behind his wraparounds, and figured he might as well get this over with. “Beth wants me to talk to you.”
“About?”
As he imagined the Z he knew so well, he pictured the brother he’d been convinced was going to implode and take out half a dozen of them with him: skull trim, scarred face, eyes that had been black and opaque as a shark’s until Bella had come. Then they had gone yellow—at least as long as he wasn’t pissed off, and that didn’t happen anymore unless he was out in the field.
Big turnaround.
“Are you holding her?” Wrath asked.
There was a pause. “As soon as I get this bow tied in the back—hold on, girlie. Okay, up you go. She’s in a pink dress that Cormia made her by hand. I hate pink. I like it on her, though—but keep that to yourself.”
Wrath flexed his hands. “What’s it like?”
“Not totally hating pink? Pretty f**k—ehrm, frickin’ emasculating.”
“Yeah.”
“Do not tell me Lassiter’s been metrosexualizing even you. I heard he talked Manello into going for a pedicure with him—but I’m praying that’s just gossip.”
It was hard to ignore how easily the brother was talking. Like normal, really. Then again, he had his family, his shellan was safe, and he’d been disappearing into the basement with Mary on a regular basis for how long now?
Nobody knew precisely what they talked about down there. But everyone could guess.
“Actually, I don’t know why I’m here,” Wrath said roughly.
Liar.
Footfalls came forward, and then there was a regular creaking, like the male had taken a seat in a rocking chair and was going back and forth. Apparently, Nalla liked whatever positioning had occurred, the young doing more of that cooing.
A soft squeaking suggested Z had picked up another toy and was keeping her occupied.
“This about Beth spending time with Layla?”
“Am I the only person who didn’t know?”
“You don’t leave your office much.”
“One more reason not to want to have a kid.”
“So it’s true.”
Wrath bowed his head and wished his vision was working so he could pretend to inspect something. The bedspread. His boots. A watch.
“Yeah, Beth wants one.” He shook his head. “I mean, how did you do it? Getting Bella pregnant—you must have been terrified at the idea.”
“There was no planning involved. She went into her needing, and when push came to shrug … I mean, I had the drugs. I begged her to let me take care of her that way. In the end, though, I did what a male does to see his female through it. The pregnancy was rough, but the birth scared me more than anything I’ve ever been through in my life.”
And considering the guy had been a sex slave for how long? That was saying something.
“Afterward,” Z said slowly, “I didn’t sleep for a good forty-eight hours. It took that long for me to be convinced Bella wasn’t going to bleed out and Nalla was alive and going to stay that way. Hell, maybe it was more like a week.”
“Was it worth it?”
There was a long quiet, and Wrath was willing to bet his left nut the brother was staring at his daughter’s face. “I can say yes because they both survived. If that hadn’t been the case? My answer would be different—even as much as I love my daughter. Whatever, like all bonded males, Bella is the one I focus on before everything, even including my young.”
Wrath popped the knuckles of one fist. Went to work on the other hand. “I think Beth was hoping you’d change my mind.”
“I can’t do that. No one can—it’s the hard wiring of the bonded male. The one you really need to talk to is Tohr. I fell into this—and I am the luckiest bastard on the face of the planet that it happened to work. Tohr, on the other hand, he chose it. He somehow had the balls to roll the dice—even knowing the risks. And then his Wellsie died anyway.”
Abruptly, Wrath remembered going down to the training center’s office, looking for the fighter with all of the Brotherhood behind him. He had found Tohr sitting with John, a phone up to the brother’s ear, an aura of desperation marking everything from his pale face to the grip he’d had on that receiver to the way his expression had frozen as he’d looked up to find them all there, in the doorway.
Jesus Christ, it was fresh as if it had happened yesterday. Even though in the intervening time, Tohr had mated Autumn and moved on, to the extent that any male would be able to.
Wrath shook his head. “I don’t know if I can go there with the brother.”
Cue another long stretch of quiet, as if maybe Z were thinking of that night, too. But then Zsadist said softly, “He’s your brother. If he’d do it for anyone … it would be for you.”
The minute Beth walked into the mansion’s magnificent foyer, she stopped dead in her tracks.
At first, she couldn’t put a name to the splintered pile of wood that was on its side under the billiard’s room archway. But then the ragged green skin gave it away: It was the pool table. Looking like someone had had at it with a chain saw.
Going over, she peered in and felt her jaw unhinge.
Everything was trashed. From the sofas to the light fixtures, the TV to the bar.
“He’s okay,” a male voice said from behind her.
Wheeling around, she looked up into Z’s yellow eyes. In the Brother’s arms, Nalla was dressed in a darling pink dress with an empire waist and a flaring skirt she was going to grow into in a couple months. Talk about the cuteness. Little white Mary Janes flashed on her feet, and an off-center white bow tied back her multicolored curls.
Her eyes were yellow, just like her dad’s, but her smile was all Bella, wide-open, trusting, and friendly.
God, it hurt to see them. Especially as she knew the cause of the destruction in that other room.
“He called me,” she said.
“That why you came home?”
“I was going to anyway.”
Z nodded. “Good. Last night was a thing.”
“Clearly.” She glanced over her shoulder. “How did he…”
“Stop? Lassiter darted him. He went down like a stone and had a good, long nap.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to ask, but … yeah.” She rubbed her cold hands together. “Ah, do you know where he is?”
“He told me you asked him to talk to me.”
As she stared across at Z, she thought of meeting him for the first time. God, he’d been terrifying—and not just because of the scar. He’d had a glacial glare back then, as well as the kind of deadly focus that had gone straight into the center of her chest.
Now? He was like a brother to her … except when it came to Wrath. Wrath would always come first for him.
It was true for all the Brothers. And considering what Wrath had done to the game room, that was not a bad thing.
“I thought maybe it would help.” God, that seemed lame. “What I mean is—”
“He’s gone to find Tohr.”
Beth closed her eyes. After a moment, she said, “I don’t want any of this, you know. Just so we’re clear.”
“I believe that. And I don’t want this for the two of you, either.”
“Maybe we’ll figure it out.” As she turned to the stairs, a wave of exhaustion hit her like a ton of bricks. “Listen, if you see him … tell him I’ve gone up to have a shower. It was a long day for me, too.”
“You got it.”
As she passed by the Brother, she was shocked when his hand landed on her shoulder and squeezed in support.
Good Lord, if you’d told her a couple of years ago that the fighter would be offering anyone anything other than a gun to the head? NFW. And the fact that he was currently holding a total Gerber baby in his heavily muscled arm, said daughter staring up at his scarred face with absolute and total adoration?
Pigs flying. Hell freezing over. Miley Cyrus keeping some clothes on.
“I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely, knowing that the flip side to the Brotherhood’s closeness was that they all truly worried about each other.
The problems of one were the problems of all.
“I’ll let him know you’re home safe,” Z said. “Go have a rest. You look wiped.”
She nodded and hit the stairs, dragging her tired body up one step at a time. As she came to the second floor, she stared through the open double doors into the study.
The throne and the huge desk it sat behind loomed like monsters, the old wood and ancient carvings a tangible representation of the lines of succession that had served the race for how long? She didn’t know. She couldn’t guess.
So many couples sacrificing their firstborn sons to a position that, from all she’d seen, was not just thankless, but downright dangerous.
Could she put her own flesh and blood there? she wondered. Could she sentence something she herself had had a hand in creating to where her husband sat and suffered?
Stepping over the threshold, she crossed the Aubusson rug and stood before just two of the symbols of the monarchy. She pictured Wrath there, with the paperwork and the grind, like a tiger trapped in a zoo, fed well, cared for relentlessly … nonetheless caged.
She thought back to working at the Caldwell Courier Journal, for Dick the Prick as a copyeditor for his boys’ club while he tried to look down her shirt. She’d wanted to get out so badly, and her transition and meeting Wrath had been her saviors.
What was Wrath’s?
How would he ever get out of this?
Short of abdicating, his only saving grace … was getting killed by Xcor and the Band of Bastards.
Wow. Great future there.
And her solution was to threaten her own life by trying to get pregnant. No wonder he’d lost his shit.
Running her fingertips across the complicated edging of the desk, she discovered that the curlicues actually formed a vine. And there were dates inscribed along the leaves …
The Kings and the queens. Their children.
A long legacy of which Wrath was the current manifestation.
He wasn’t going to give this up. No way. If he felt impotent now, walking away from the throne was going to send him right over the edge. He’d already lost his parents too soon—to release their legacy over to another? That would be a blow he’d never get past.
She still wanted to have a child.
But the longer she stood there, the more she wondered whether it was worth it if she had to sacrifice the man she loved. And that was going to be the result—plus, assuming she could get pregnant and deliver a healthy baby, if they had a son, he was going to end up here.
And if she had a daughter? Whoever she married was going to take over—and then her daughter would have the pleasure of watching her man go insane from the pressure.
Great inheritance either way.
“Damn it,” she breathed.
She’d known Wrath was the King when she mated him—but for her, by then, it had already been too late. She’d been head over heels in love, and whether his job had been security guard or supreme head of state, she was getting hitched.
She hadn’t thought of the future back then. Just being with him had been enough.
But come on, even if she had been aware of all the implications …
Nope. She still would have thrown on Wellsie’s gorgeous red gown and marched down to have the crap scared out of her as Wrath had her name carved in his back.
Thick or thin. Richer or poorer, in human terms.
Child-filled … or childless.
When she finally turned away, she straightened her shoulders and walked out of the room with her head level. Her eyes were clear, her heart was calm, and her hands were steady.