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Wrath lowered his thick arm, his pec bunching up from the movement. “I’m sorry. I should have been there for you. For L.W.”
With a swipe of her hand, she wiped tears from both eyes. “How are you apologizing for your own death?”
“I can feel your pain like it’s my own, and I don’t know what the fuck else to do.”
Her feet started moving before she even thought about going back over to him. “I’m not hurting. How could I be?”
“You’re lying, but I don’t blame you for the denial. Here, let me make room for you—”
“I’ll just sit down here—”
They both laughed, and she lowered herself into the space he made as he shifted onto his side. Reaching out, she hovered her hand over the curve of his hip.
“Why do you hesitate to touch me?”
She smiled through her tension. “How do you know that when you can’t…”
“See?” His black brows tightened over the bridge of his aquiline nose. “You can say it. I’m still as blind as ever. That hasn’t changed.”
Lowering her hand to his skin, she felt the warmth and smoothness of his flesh, and underneath, the ropes of power that wrapped around the curving bone of his pelvis. Her eyes shifted to his sex as it twitched, even though he had come five times in a row, deep inside of her.
“I just can’t believe it’s you,” she whispered. “After all these years.”
He brushed her cheek with his forefinger and rubbed the wetness away with his thumb. “It’s a good thing, right? That I’m back.”
Beth closed her eyes and turned her face into his palm. “Of course. God, why would you question that—”
“It’s okay.”
“What is.”
“If something… if you found someone. You know. Thirty years is a long time.”
Beth stiffened. “What the—”
“I mean, I’m trying to imagine what it was like for you. Moving out of the mansion, raising L.W. all by yourself, years going by, then decades. After a while, I wouldn’t blame you for looking for some companionship—”
She put her forefinger on his lips.“Shh.”
His sensuous mouth moved under the soft pressure she put on it. “I’m just saying. Thirty-three years is a long, long time.”
Shaking her head, she went back to the worst scene of her entirelife, the one that, in spite of all the grief that had followed, had been the source of her deepest pain: the moment she had been told he was gone. She’d been with L.W. in the young’s playroom, their son working with his blocks, stacking them high as he had always done, the one-on-top-of-the-other like a compulsion for him. The door to the bright, cheerful room had opened, and she had known even before the Brotherhood had walked in wearing the black leather of war, and smelling of fresh blood, gunpowder, andlessers. But worse? When Tohr had come through them with George. The sight of Wrath’s service dog, at the side of anybody other than his master, had destroyed her.
She had screamed until she had lost her voice, and for years afterward, she’d been woken up in the middle of the day by the image burned into her mind of Tohr’s dagger hand locked on the grip of George’s harness.
No one else had ever touched that except Wrath.
“There wasneveranyone else,” she said roughly. “You were never far from me, whether it was in my memory or because I was looking at our son… or because I was watching Rahvyn be you in front of all the civilians, keeping the ruse up so that we could hold on to power until L.W. was old enough to rule. And then on top of that I had our son to raise on my own—and he was a handful, trust me. Plus I was ultimately responsible for the species. They all deferred to me—the Brotherhood, the fighters, Rahvyn. The last thing on my mind was sex, especially because it couldn’t possibly compare to—”
A masculine chuckle came from deep in her mate’s throat. “You say the sweetest things.”
“Well, you are very good… at what you do,” she said with a smile.
But then she thought back to the special kind of hell it had been to watch a three-dimensional, totally corporeal image of herhellrentake those audiences with the civilians, speaking, blinking, breathing. The decisions had all been hers, whether it was making laws or ruling on cases or setting up precedents, but the mouthpiece had been Rahvyn’s.
Or the image Rahvyn had projected.
The two of them had held the throne together, canceling the democratically elected provision for royal appointment that Wrath had put in place, making sure that the birthright was protected as L.W. had matured and gone through his transition.
