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Except the son hadn’t wanted his sire’s job.
“I never should have left you that night.” Wrath drew his dagger hand down his face. “I shouldn’t have gone out.”
“Like I said, you saved Fritz’s life.”
“And ruined yours. L.W.’s.”
She shrugged. “Our lives were gone anyway. The instant Lash set that explosive charge on the Audience House’s back door, everything changed. If Fritz had died when he’d opened it? What if it had been Tohr? V? Any one of the Brotherhood? You never would have gotten over that. You would have been a different male for the rest of your nights and that would have affected me and L.W. One way or the other, someone’s life would have been lost and none of us would have come out unclaimed by grief.”
Abruptly, she pictured the Omega’s son, the leader of the Lessening Society. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, skin the color of a porcelain sink. She was not one to hate easily, but after what he’d done to her? To all of them?
“Lash is fucking evil,” she said. “He was the one who took you from us, who cheated you out of seeing your son grow up—”
As her voice cut out, the shift in Wrath’s mood was obvious, even as his expression didn’t change: The temperature in the bedroom dropped fifteen or twenty degrees, her body shivering as her breath came out in a cloud.
He hadn’t considered that loss yet, she thought. Of L.W.’s childhood. Of the years with her, with his Brothers. He’d been so focused on the impact of it all on her and his son, that he hadn’t done the math on everything that had been stolen from him.
And she knew her mate, knew him like the back of her hand.
“No,” she started. “Please donottry to settle that score.”
“It’s all right—”
“Don’t lie to me now.” A claw of pure terror sliced through her heart. “Wrath, I have just gone through three decades of torture. Donotmake me dread another time lapse like that. I don’t have it in me. Especially now that L.W. doesn’t need me anymore.”
Herhellrenput his palm out, patting at the air until he connected with her shoulder. Following the line of her neck up, he cupped her face.
“Don’t say it,” she begged. “Don’t… do it.”
“I cannot let this go. I am the King, and the species is my responsibility. How can I look anyone in the eye if I run from our enemy?”
Breaking away from him, she got up and paced around, noticing for the first time that the white walls were all blank, and there were no knickknacks or personal anything, anywhere. There was only a bureau, a bedside table with her contraband iPad on it, and a set of louver doors into her tiny closet. There wasn’t even a dog bed for George, because he always slept with her.
When a light switch and the moldings around doorways were the extent of your decorative art, you knew you didn’t care about where you stayed. This suite was like a dorm room before the student moved in. Or right after they moved out.
It was a metaphor for what her life without him had been like.
And now that the color had come back, he wanted to take it away from her by doing something fucking stupid to get back at Lash?
If Wrath hadn’t already been dead for three centuries—okay, fine,decades—she’d be inclined to kill him all over again.
“You can lead in different ways,” she pointed out as she stared at the bedroom door. On the far side of it? The hell of the war. “You don’t have to be on the front lines.”
“I was a killer before I was a King.”
“What about L.W.”What about me?“You know nothing of him, and maybe he’s just needed you all this time.”
There was a long pause. “The Scribe Virgin let me see him,” Wrath said softly.
Beth pivoted back toward the bed. “What?”
“She met me at the front doors of the mansion. As I went inside, I could… see it all. The empty rooms, the furniture covered with sheets… the fact that there was no dust on anything even though it was uninhabited.”
“Fritz goes back there. To clean.”
“Of course he does.” Wrath’s smile was brief. His frown stuck around. “There was a glow up on the second-floor landing—and that’s where I found L.W. in my study. He was sitting on one of the sofas, facing the throne. He was looking at that old carved wood like he hated it. He was not… what I expected.”
“He’s a lot like you used to be,” she said sadly.
