Manning up, he turned to face the love of his life across the expanse of the frilly-ass room. "I'm fighting again."
"You're what?"
"I'm fighting."
As Beth went silent, he was glad the study door was closed. He saw the math she was doing in her head and knew the sum of what she was pulling together added up to one and only one thing: She was thinking about all those "nights up north" with Phury and the Chosen. All those times he'd worn long-sleeved, bruise-hiding shirts to bed because he had "a chill." All the "I'm limping because I worked out too hard" excuses.
"You're fighting." She plugged her hands into the pockets of her jeans, and even though he couldn't see a hell of a lot, he knew damn well that black turtleneck was a perfect complement to her stare. "Just to clarify. Is this as in, you're going to start fighting. Or have been fighting."
That was a rhetorical, but clearly she wanted him to present the full lie. "Have been. For the last couple of months."
Anger and hurt rolled off her, spilling toward him, smelling to him of scorched wood and burned plastic.
"Look, Beth, I have to-"
"You have to be honest with me," she said sharply. "That's what you have to do."
"I didn't expect to be going out for more than a month or two-"
"A month or two! How the hell long-" She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. "How long have you been doing this?"
When he told her, she went quiet again. Then, "Since August? August."
He wished she would let loose with her temper. Yell at him. Call him a cocksucker. "I'm sorry. I...Shit, I'm really sorry."
She didn't say anything else, and the scent of her emotions drifted away, dispersed by the hot air blowing up through the heating vents on the floor. Out in the hall, a doggen was vacuuming, the sound of the carpet attachment whirring up and back, up and back. In the silence between them, that normal, everyday sound was something he clung to-the kind of thing you heard all the time and rarely noticed because you were busy dealing with paperwork, or distracted by the fact that you were peckish, or trying to decide whether you wanted to decompress by watching TV or hitting the gym... It was a safe sound.
And during this devastating moment in his mating, he hung on to the Dyson's lullaby with a death grip, wondering if he was ever going to be lucky enough to ignore it again.
"It never occurred to me..." She cleared her throat once more. "It never occurred to me that there was something you couldn't talk to me about. I've always assumed that you were telling me...everything you could."
As she stopped talking, he was chilled to the bone. Her voice was now the one she used to answer wrong numbers on the phone: She addressed him as if he were a stranger, without warmth or particular interest.
"Look, Beth, I have to be out there. I have to-"
She shook her head and raised her hand to stop him. "This isn't about you fighting."
Beth stared up at him for a heartbeat. Then she turned and went for the double doors.
"Beth." Was that strangled croak his voice?
"No, leave me alone. I need some space."
"Beth, listen, we don't have enough fighters in the field-"
"It's not the fighting!" She wheeled around and faced off at him. "You lied to me. Lied. And not just once, but for four months straight."
Wrath wanted to argue, to defend himself, to point out that he'd lost track of time, that those 120 nights and days had flown by at the speed of light, that all he'd been doing was putting one foot in front of the other in front of the first, going minute by minute, hour by hour, trying to keep the race afloat, trying to keep the lessers back. He hadn't meant it to go on for so long. He hadn't set out to deceive her for that long.
"Just answer me one thing," she said. "One thing. And it had better be the truth or, so help me, God, I'm going to..." She put her palm to her mouth, catching a soft sob in her gentle hand. "Honestly, Wrath...did you honestly think you were going to stop? In your heart, did you truly think you were going to-"
He swallowed hard as her words choked off.
Wrath took a deep breath. In the course of his life, he had been wounded many, many times. But nothing, no pain ever inflicted upon him, hurt a fraction of what answering her felt like.
"No." He inhaled again. "No, I don't think...I was going to stop."
"Who talked to you tonight. Who was the one who made you decide to tell me."
"Vishous."
"I should have known. He's probably the only person other than Tohr who could have..." Beth crossed her arms around herself, and he would have given his dagger hand to have him being the one holding her. "Your being out there fighting scares the shit out of me, but you forget something... I mated you without knowing that the king isn't supposed to be in the field. I was prepared to stand by you even though it terrified me...because fighting in this war is in your nature and in your blood. You fool-" Her voice cracked. "You fool, I would have let you do it. But instead-"
"Beth-"
She cut him off. "Remember that night you went out at the beginning of the summer? When you stepped in to save Z and then stayed downtown and fought with the others?"
He sure as hell did. When he'd come back home, he'd chased her up the stairs and they'd had sex on the rug in the second-floor sitting room. A number of times. He'd kept the cutoffs he'd ripped from her hips as a souvenir.
Jesus...come to think of it...that was the last time they had been together.
"You told me only for one night," she said. "One night. Only. You swore to it, and I trusted you."
"Shit...I'm sorry."
"Four months." She shook her head, her gorgeous dark hair swinging around her shoulders, catching the light so beautifully even his piss-poor eyes registered its glory. "You know what hurts the most? That the Brothers knew and I didn't. I've always accepted this secret-society stuff, understood that there are things I can't know-"
"They didn't have a clue either." Okay, Butch had known, but there was no reason to throw him under the bus. "V only found out tonight."
She wobbled, steadying herself against the pale blue walls. "You've been going out alone?"
"Yes." He reached out for her arm, but she tore it away from him. "Beth-"
She yanked open the door. "Don't touch me."
The thing clapped shut behind her.
Rage at himself had Wrath spinning toward his desk, and the instant he saw all the papers, all the requests, all the complaints, all the problems, it was like someone hooked jumper cables up to his shoulder blades and hit him with a charge. He shot forward, swept his arms across the top, and sent the shit flying everywhere.
As papers fluttered down like snow, he took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes, a headache spearing into his frontal lobe. Robbed of breath, he stumbled around, finding his chair by feel and collapsing into the damn thing. With a ragged grunt, he let his head fall back. These stress headaches were becoming a daily occurrence lately, wiping him out and lingering like a flu that refused to be cured.
Beth. His Beth...
When he heard a knock, he gave the f-word a workout.
The knock came again.
"What," he barked.
Rhage put his head around the jamb, then froze. "Ah..."
"What."
"Yeah, well...Ah, going by the door slamming-and, wow, the stiff wind that clearly just blew by your desk-do you still want to meet with us?"
Oh, God...how was he going to get through another one of these conversations.
Then again, maybe he should have thought about that before he'd decided to lie to his nearest and dearest.
"My lord?" Rhage's voice became gentle. "Do you want to see the Brotherhood?"
No. "Yes."
"You need Phury on speakerphone?"
"Yeah. Listen, I don't want the boys in this meeting. Blay, John, Qhuinn...they're not invited."
"Figured. Hey, how about I help you clean up?"
Wrath looked down at the carpet of paperwork. "I'll deal with it."
Hollywood proved he had half a brain by not offering again or pulling an are-you-sure. He just ducked out and shut the door.
Across the way, the grandfather clock in the corner tolled. It was yet another familiar sound Wrath didn't hear on a regular basis, but now, as he sat alone in the study, the chimes rang out as if they were broadcast over concert speakers.