The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12)(60)
Author: J.R. Ward

To think she’d assumed that all she needed was to get out of Caldwell.

Nope. Her change had been coming, and without Wrath, she would have died. No doubt.

He had saved her in so many ways. Loved her with his body and soul. Given her a future she hadn’t even dreamed of.

Right now? All she wanted to do was go back to their beginning. Things had been so easy then …

Going over to the floor-to-ceiling depiction of a French king, she hit the hidden switch that released the oil painting in its two-ton gold-leaf frame. As the thing swung open, she half expected the way down to be pitch-black—after all, no one had lived here for how long? But as with the way everything was still vacuumed and dusted and polished, the gas lanterns flickered in their wrought-iron cages, the rough stone steps and walls curving down into the cellar.

Jesus, it still smelled the same. A little musty and damp, but not dirty.

Trailing her hand over the uneven stone, she descended into the underground. The two bedroom suites at the bottom gave her a left and a right choice, and she picked the one on the left.

The one that had been her father’s old hideaway from the sun.

The pictures of her were still where he had placed them, all kinds of photos in so many different frames covering the writing desk, the side tables by the bed, the mantel over the fireplace.

The particular image she was looking for was by the alarm clock.

It was the only one of her mother, and yup … just a quick glance at the woman and she was reminded of where she’d gotten her thick black hair and the shape of her face and the set of her shoulders.

Her mother.

What kind of life had the woman lived? How had Darius come to her? From what Wrath had said back in the beginning, the pair of them hadn’t been together for very long before she’d found out what Darius really was—and bolted fast. It wasn’t until she’d discovered she was pregnant that she’d gone back to see him, scared of what she was bringing into the world.

She had died in childbirth.

And Darius had stayed on the sidelines after that, hoping that their daughter wouldn’t take after the vampire side of things.

Some half-breeds never went through the change. Some didn’t survive the transition. And those who did make it through and came out the other side as vampires were subject to different, unpredictable biological rules. Beth, for example, could go out in the daylight as long as she wore sunscreen and sunglasses. Butch, on the other hand, couldn’t dematerialize.

So God only knew about the pregnancy stuff. But if she was lucky, she would go into her needing and Wrath would somehow come around and she’d give birth to …

Well, then again, that was how her mother had died, wasn’t it.

“Crap.”

Sitting down on the mattress, she put her head in her hands. Maybe Wrath had a point. Maybe the whole conception thing really was too dangerous to mess around with. But that didn’t excuse the way he’d treated her, and it didn’t end the discussion.

Christ, as she sat down here, surrounded by pictures Darius had had taken of her, she was even more convinced she wanted a child.

Dropping her arms, she took out her BlackBerry, put her password in, and checked to see if any messages had come through that she hadn’t heard. Nope. Turning the thing over and over in her hands, she idly wished it was an iPhone. V, however, was not just anti-Apple; he was convinced Steve Jobs’s legacy was the root of all evil in the world …

Sometimes couples did better over the phone.

And whereas Wrath hadn’t played nice, that didn’t mean she had to follow the example. If she intended to have some space for the next twelve hours or so, she really needed to pay him the courtesy of telling him herself—not use her brother as a messenger.

The trouble was Wrath didn’t have a cell phone anymore. No need for one—when he’d officially taken over the King duties, he’d been “retired” from the Brotherhood by custom, law, and common f-in’ sense. Not that it had kept him from getting shot.

There were plenty of phones at the mansion, however.

Six a.m. He was probably still working at his desk.

Dialing the digits, she listened to one ring. The next. A third.

There was no voice mail for Wrath anymore because the glymera had so totally abused the number they’d been given. Which was how he’d ended up with the e-mail account from hell.

The next number she tried was for the handset by their bed, the one that was so unpublished, she’d never actually heard it ring before. No answer.

She had several choices at this point. Training Center’s clinic—in case he was injured. But how would that happen? He didn’t leave the house anymore. Kitchen—except Last Meal was almost on the table and Wrath probably wasn’t going to be in all that chaos without her: Even though he’d never said so, she had the feeling that crowded, noisy rooms made him uncomfortable because his senses of hearing and smell got overloaded, making it difficult for him to place people in space.

There was only one other number to try.

As she got the person out of her contacts, another slice of the past came back to her.

She pictured Tohr coming in through the sliding glass door of her old apartment, the Brother looming large as any nightmare should. But he had been, and always was, an ally. That night that they’d shared Sam Adams and oatmeal cookies and Godzilla had been the start of a true friendship.

He was in such a different place now. Losing Wellsie. Finding Autumn.

And Beth wasn’t the same, either.

As the call went through, there was only one ring before things were answered: “Beth.”

She frowned at the odd tone in Tohr’s voice. “You okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely. I’m glad you called.”

“Ah … why?” Had Wrath told the Brotherhood she wasn’t coming home? Probably not. “Never mind. I just … I’m looking for Wrath. Do you know where he is? I tried the study and our rooms and he didn’t pick up.”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely.”

WTF? “Tohr. What’s going on.”

As true fear took root in the center of her chest, her mind got away from her. What if—

“Nothing. Honest—well, we’ve got an unexpected VIP coming into the clinic, so I’m scrambling to get coverage.”

Ah, snap. She was being paranoid. Better than being right, though.

“As for Wrath, last I saw, he was…” There was a pause. Then a shuffle like the guy was switching the phone to his other ear. “He was taking a little breather.”