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He arrived at the threshold of his study an eternity later. Or maybe it was just a heartbeat.
The first thing he saw, across the pale blue room, was the throne that was, for some reason, uncovered, on the far side of the desk. The next was the first aid kit on the coffee table in front of the fireplace, the thing pop-topped and surrounded by bloody gauze, surgical instruments, and a spool of black thread—as well as a stained black muscle shirt.
But it was the male sitting on the covered sofa, facing away from him, who commanded all his attention.
Walking silently forward, he could not have looked away for anything in the world. And as utter disbelief clogged both rational thoughts and crazy conclusions, he moved into position so that he could see the profile against the firelight’s restless glow.
The male’s body was corded with muscle—and covered with tattoos. From the cut of his hard jaw, down his chest and arms and hands, disappearing into the waistband of his leathers, a pattern of black ink carved out a design that was not readily apparent. Injuries—some new, some in the process of healing, and one clearly just dealt with, going by the bright white bandage—marked his ribs, his biceps, his back.
The sides of his head were shaved, and the black hair on top had been pulled back and tied in a knot.
The face was… a mirror of Wrath’s own.
And the eyes, which he could not see from his angle, were trained on the throne. Like he was staring at someone even though there was no one sitting on it—
The attack was so fast, so vicious, that there was no preparing for it in advance. One moment, the male was by the fire; the next, he was bursting forward with a steel dagger above his shoulder, his green eyes spitting fury, his upper lip peeled off enormous fangs, the hatred in his face a physical presence that was one hell of a copilot.
For a heartbeat, Wrath couldn’t move, but then instincts, training, and experience took over, and he caught the thick wrist controlling the dagger and deflected all that momentum by shoving out his other hand to the throat, stiff-arming his elbow, and spinning them around so they traded places. The energy in the attack was redirected like a pool cue into an eight ball, and he stuck with the male as he stumbled backwards, staying engaged, because it was going to be only a split second before there was a recovery and a second wave of aggression.
The impact of the male’s back against the wall was so violent, there was a crack like thunder.
And, as followed a lightning strike, there was an abrupt cessation in the storm as Wrath pinned his attacker.
The face that was in front of his own slowly transformed, the fury draining out of the features, the brows easing and then rising in shock, the mouth falling open… the dagger not lowering, but getting dropped entirely.
As it clattered to the hardwood floor at the edge of the fine antique carpet, all of the fight went out of the male, and those green eyes, eyes that were the color of Wrath’s own, grew luminous with pain.
In a small voice, the voice of a young, a single word was uttered: “Father?”
Wrath went from holding off the big body to dragging it against his own, his arms shooting around what made no sense, pulling the heavy muscularity into him.
He couldn’t breathe.
And then abruptly he couldn’t see, his vision starting to dim back into the darkness he was well used to.
In a panic, he pulled back and memorized that face, from the widow’s peak that was just like his own, to those jade eyes with the pupils that were way too small, to the tide of tattoos that crested at the jut of the jaw.
Wrath looked down at the ink pattern across the mountain of a bare chest.
It was a depiction of a skull with a dagger through the top of the cranium at an angle, the fangs viciously tipped, the empty eye sockets pits of hell, warnings in the Old Language emanating out in rows to cover all the skin there was.
He is just like I was, Wrath thought with the kind of sorrow that carved through the soul.
But then he let that go for the moment as the dots were crudely connected in his shell-shocked mind: The only thing that could explain how he had last held his son in his arms as an infant, but now L.W. was a fully transitioned male…
Was the passage of time.
“Where is your mahmen,” he choked out.
II.
Sitting at her modest kitchen table, Beth looked across to the sink. “Nalla. That pot is clean, I promise you.”
The female stopped with her scrubbing routine, her head lowering in defeat, her shoulders lifting and relenting as she took a deep breath.
