Chapter One
The Wheel, BDB Underground Residence
Present Day
Wah-BAM!
It was straight out of some old-school Marvel comic shit, the cracking impact leading to a red-hot shocker of pain as well as a sharp, rapping sound that echoed around the little bedroom like a lightning strike.
As Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath, jacked down and covered his shin with both hands, the protective crap was a day late and a dollar short.
“Motherfucker.”
He took two hobbling steps back, ran into George, his service dog, and even though he was lost in a dark sea of obstacles, he was not about to pancake his golden. He pitched to the side, stomped a foot down, twisted his ankle—
The free-fall face-plant filled him with rage, but at least he landed on the bed and not the hardwood floor. After he bounced a couple of times, he stayed right where he was. Because it was either that or he was going to start kicking things.
George immediately came over, his sweet, snuffling worry the ambulance siren of all dogs, and Wrath put an arm around his boy before rolling over and sitting up.
For a minute, his brain tried to create a 3D road map of where the dresser, bed, and side table in the room were, where the doors were, where his body was, but the mental diorama was like trying to make fog solid. He just couldn’t see it.
FFS, he’d been back for a month now, and he was still running into things.
Which shouldn’t have been a newsflash. Blindness was a fact of his life, a condition he’d been volunteered for by virtue of his DNA, and after his almost four centuries of existence, he should have been used to the shit that came with it.
This was a new world he’d been thrown into, however.
Literally.
He was also an impatient sonofabitch, so he was fucking tired of being lost in space, even while he was back on the fucking planet.
“Wrath? You okay?”
The muffled call from the kitchen brought his head around. “Yes, leelan,” he hollered back.
Given what he’d done to her last week, he took it as a good sign that his Beth still cared whether or not he was hurt.
Getting to his feet, he reviewed the landscape script in his head: Five steps from the end of the new queen-sized bed to the door, and as he counted strides, he put his hand forward.
He missed the knob—because, of course, he missed the knob.
This new residence, which to Beth wasn’t new at all, was a foreign country full of out-of-the-blue corners, doors that opened the wrong way, and corridors that led to nowhere.
And no, he was not fucking talking about his confusion and disorientation to anybody.
He was fine.
Opening the way out, he followed the scent of bacon down to the kitchen. To keep himself on track, he ran the knuckles of his left hand along the smooth wall, and when he came up to the bump of a doorjamb, he stopped at L.W.’s room.
Not that their son lived there anymore. The male stayed with Shuli, his ahstrux nohtrum, now, and given the heir to the throne’s bad attitude, that should have been a relief. Instead, Wrath missed the young he had sired and did not know at all.
Another loss he was coming to grips with, he thought as he kept going.
It was all too fucking hard to fathom. Thirty some years ago, he’d been blown apart by a bomb—except he hadn’t been.
In the blink of an eye, he’d gone from shoving Fritz out of the way at the old Audience House in town…
to being up on the mountain, walking through snow drifts, heading for the front door of the mansion.
Except surprise! Nobody was living there anymore.
Reeling from confusion, the Scribe Virgin showed up as his welcome party, and she’d given him yet another complicated gift. She’d let him see the son he’d known as a toddler as the full grown male L.W. had become.
Three decades lost.
During which everyone else, especially his mate and his son, had lived their lives without him, thinking he was dead.
There had been happy reunions, sure. But his door prize to resurrection? Caldwell was the exact same shithole he’d left, the Lessening Society still stalking and slaughtering vampires, the glymera still making power grabs, the humans still absolutely fucking everywhere.
The only new territory he had managed to cover? Total estrangement from his son backed up with alienating his mate.
The latter had only taken a week, too.
As he arrived at the archway into the kitchen, he flared his nostrils and located his mate in the space.
Beth was over by the stove, where the sizzle and smell of bacon was.
In his mind, he pictured her in blue jeans that had been washed so many times they were soft as bedclothes and a turtleneck that was loose-hemmed at her hips, tight on her throat.
Her long brunette hair would be tucked behind both ears to keep it out of her way while she worked over the pan, and her feet would be stuffed into UGG slippers, the practical, brown colored ones that had the fuzzy on the inside.
God only knew what she was actually wearing.
Reaching down, he stroked George’s boxy head. “Smells good.”
He pictured her looking over her shoulder and edited in the smile, even though he could tell by her scent that there was not a lot of happy going on.
Hadn’t been any, since last Wednesday night.
“You hungry?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he lied as George wandered off to have a lick from his water bowl.
“Are you limping?”
“No.” He shuffled over while trying to hide his uneven stride. As he sat down at their two-top table, he tacked on, “Thanks for cooking.”
“I heard a thump.” There was the scrape of the pan moving off the flame, and then the sizzle decreased. “Just making sure you’re all right.”
“I’m good.” Then he added, “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Wow. Talk about intimacy. Add a couple of gin and tonics and a Triscuit tray, and you had a cocktail party going on here.
Over in the corner, the golden let out a sigh as he settled on his bed.
George knew the drill. Soon enough, he’d be getting his first meal as they had their First Meal.
It was what the three of them had been doing every nightfall, and up until a week ago, it had been Wrath’s favorite time of the evening…
the calm before he went to the Audience House, the last moment to be in his shellan’s presence until he had to spend nine hours away from her.
Annnnnd then he’d gone and fucked everything all up.
“Here you go.”
A plate was put in front of him, but he didn’t pay attention to what was on it. All he clocked was how fast his leelan moved away from him. With a quick shift, she was back to the counter, a flare of vanilla scent rising up along with a tap on a hard rim…and another tap. A third.
He sniffed the air. “Your Greek yogurt.”
“Smoothie time, you know me.” Then her voice warmed. “Yes, George. Yours is coming, too.”
Actually, he didn’t know this part of her.
Back when they’d been at the BDB mansion, she’d always eaten a full First Meal in the grand dining room with him and all the other brothers, as well as the rest of their family of fighters and mates and young.
And there was a common area here at the Wheel, too, one where that kind of communal dining still happened. She never went, though.
Now, she was a smoothie drinker—
The whirring of the blender took up all the bandwidth in the whole world, and he had to focus through the high-pitched sound to hear Beth murmuring to the dog as she got his scrambled eggs, ground beef, and vegetables into a bowl.
“What’s that you add to his meal?” Wrath asked over the din as he heard a lid getting twisted off.
“His supplements,” she said loudly. “For immune support.” Then, “This is a probiotic. And he gets a little CBD. He’s an anxious boy, and I really think it helps him. Isn’t that right? Yes, sir, that’s my boy.”
Thump, thump, thump went the bushy tail on something.
“My good boy.” There was a solid sound as she put the dog bowl down. “Yes, he is…”
A soft flupping threaded through the whirring of the fucking blender, which meant she had her hands under the golden’s ears and was doing that thing she did, flapping them up and down while she kissed the slope between his eyes.
“Rahvyn saved him,” Wrath remarked. “That’s why he’s still here. Thirty years later.”
The flupping stopped, and he heard her go back to the counter.
“So that means I shouldn’t care about his health?
Let’s just feed him Alpo and forget the way his stomach hurts if he eats too much processed stuff?
Hey, while we’re at it, maybe we shouldn’t bother to keep his nails clipped, or make sure he doesn’t get swamp ear.
Magic keeps him alive, so let’s just not worry about—”
“That’s not what I said.” He closed his useless eyes behind his wraparounds and let his head fall back. “I’m glad he’s still here after all this time—”
“—him. He’s fine because magic takes care of everything.”
Wrath took off his sunglasses and rubbed his face. “How long’s this going to go on.”
“That’s up to Rahvyn. Ask her.”
“I’m not talking about the dog.” He pushed his plate away. “How long until you forgive me.”
And could we maybe turn off the damn blender? His nerves were fucking shot.
As he kept that last one to himself, there was a sudden flush of blueberry scent, the whirring of the machine dropping an octave as she added the frozen fruit.
It was a while before she finally killed those spinning blades, and then there was the scraping of a metal spoon on glass and the plop, plop, plop as she filled her traveler.
There were easier ways to do the blending, he thought, starting with letting Fritz make the thing. But Beth liked to do it herself.
She’d done a lot of things for herself while she’d been all alone.
“I don’t know how long.” She came over and sat across from him. “I guess until I stop wondering where you really go when you leave here.”
“It’s just the Audience House.”