Chapter Five
As Beth sat on the rough planks of Luchas House’s attic, she had a throw blanket from downstairs around her shoulders, and her nose tickled from dust and the chill.
She wasn’t sure exactly how long she’d been up here, but she was clear that she wasn’t making much headway.
She was supposed to be putting things in the Home Depot boxes she’d set up.
Instead, she was on her ass, surrounded by volumes of old photos.
Sure, she’d managed to get two of them into the medium-sized number next to her, but then she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. All it had taken was cracking the front cover of—
Turning the next stiff page, she held her breath.
And there was more.
Her fingertips trailed over one of the seven or eight color photographs that had been tucked into sets of corner brackets.
The main focus of the image was of a group of dancing civilians she didn’t really recognize—but that wasn’t what got her attention.
Off to the side, just barely in frame, was her…
in Wrath’s arms. The two of them were spinning around, and she was smiling up at him as if he were her whole world.
Which of course he had been.
Still was.
Things got blurry as tears flooded her eyes while she read the careful cursive script underneath: Apple Festival, and the date.
Three years before he…died.
So they’d been just at the start of their mating.
Brushing at her cheeks, she couldn’t look away from the image of the two of them.
They’d been dancing at the time, on the verge of a stolen kiss, and his head was lowered as if he could see her, too.
God, she could recall how it had been to be held against him and sent on a twirl, her hair taking flight from her shoulders and flaring out, her back arched as she let him have all her weight.
The joy on her face transformed her into a stranger she wanted to claim.
Yet it was her, and that was him.
“I remember you,” she whispered as she ran her forefinger around the pair of them.
Wrath’s smile was his secret one, the one that he only ever shared with her. Even his Brothers had never gotten that easy lift to his lips, that flash of his front teeth, that gentle arch of those usually slashed brows. And indeed, on her side she was beaming. Positively beaming.
They’d had no idea they were getting their picture taken. That was the beauty of these albums.
According to what Rahvyn had told her, the elderly female who’d taken the pictures and had them printed out in the old-fashioned way—and who’d taken the time to label and date each one—had gifted the volumes to the species upon her death about ten years ago.
The collection had been put up here because no one had wanted the family to be offended by the gift being turned down, even though there’d been some confusion as to why the whole thing was being given to the Brotherhood in the first place.
But no one had gone through the pictures properly. The civilians in the foreground hadn’t been the point. It was because every single photograph had images of the King and Queen in them—and sometimes she and Wrath had been front and center.
Now the bequest made sense, and thank God she hadn’t gone through them earlier. This would have been too painful. Hell, given where things were between her and Wrath tonight, it was still almost too much.
God, she remembered going to all of those festivals so clearly. Right after Wrath had taken the throne properly, he’d felt it was important to make appearances at festivals and celebrations, so they’d gone to many of them…
Back to the pictures.
When she got to the end of the album, she immediately pulled the next one into her lap. As she continued along, it was like an Easter egg hunt, her eyes sifting through the static figures, penetrating the background.
“Another!” She laughed. “There you are…”
This time, Wrath was standing in a crowd next to a happy family holding a young.
Except he wasn’t focused on the camera. He was looking through all the people off to the side, his profile carving bold lines out of the background, his wraparounds a black panel that made him look like he was glowering, even when he wasn’t.
He really did have resting murder face, didn’t he.
Her eyes followed what would have been his gaze if he’d had any sight, and she tried to see what he was paying so much attention to—
“Me.” Her forefinger hovered over a blurry image of herself all the way in the back. “You found me in the crush of males and females. You were focused on…me. And I remember that sweater.”
It was similar to the one Rahvyn had been wearing tonight, an Irish knit made by Cormia, and she wondered what had happened to the thing. Maybe it was still in the closet up at the mansion in the First Family’s quarters. Probably.
“And you came over and found me right after this, didn’t you.”
She hadn’t known he’d been watching her, but she definitely remembered what happened next.
Wrath had approached her, put his arm around her waist, and after a few congenial words to the females she’d been talking to, he’d piloted her away from the party.
The event had been held in a celebration hall owned by the species, and there’d been an extensive basement.
They’d had sex in a utility closet on the lower level, with the mops and the empty buckets on wheels, next to containers of floor cleaner the size of beer kegs and stacks of folded rags.
She could remember holding on to his heavy shoulders and dropping her face into the crook of his neck as he pumped hard and fast. His hair had draped over her as he’d thrust until he came inside of her, and she’d had to bite the lapel of his leather jacket to keep from yelling his name.
There had been Brothers outside in the corridor, after all. She hadn’t seen them or particularly thought about it at the time…but they’d definitely been there.
They’d always been there.
Those males had been like ghosts, moving through those festivals on the fringes, and though she hadn’t noticed it then, she realized in retrospect that they’d never brought their females, never enjoyed the celebrations. They’d only watched over her hellren and herself.
Prepared to die for him. For her.
And meanwhile, she and Wrath had had a stolen moment in that basement.
Taking the picture out of its little four-corner tether, she brought the glossy Kodak photograph up closer. Squinting, she wished she had a magnifying glass....
“And there you all are.”
Vishous was in the far background, standing next to a closed door.
She could make out his Boston Red Sox hat, his goatee, and the hand-rolled he’d brought to his lips with his gloved hand.
Next to him, Phury was grim, his long, multi-colored hair looking so lush in comparison to his hard eyes and locked jaw.
And there were others. Zsadist in the other corner.
And Butch hovering by the buffet. And Rhage by the bar.
They’d been heavily armed. And definitely not there to enjoy themselves.
With a hand that started shaking, she dragged the heavy weight of the previous album back over. Flipping to the photograph where Wrath had been swinging her around, she ignored the pair of them.
Rhage and Phury were standing on the periphery, their faces locked into masks, their leather jackets open, a hand tucked inside—no doubt on their gun or a dagger.
Butch and Vishous were at a right angle to them, in the same positions.
And this was even after every person going to the festival had been registered, double-checked, and sent through metal detectors just to get into the place.
There had been guards outside, too. Zsadist and Tohr.
And meanwhile, she and Wrath had been dancing. Or talking with the civilians.
It was as something was tickling the edges of her awareness that she smelled chocolate chip cookies.
Lifting her head, she breathed in deep just as the pull-down stairs started to creak with someone coming up them.
“Now, those smell good.” She put a smile on her face for Rahvyn. “You know, I should be making more progress, but these albums are incredible—”
It wasn’t the mysterious female who’d been called into a staff meeting as soon as they’d arrived.
Rhage’s head popped through the access box cut into the attic floor, and whereas of all the Brothers, he’d be the first that she’d mention something like old pictures to, the expression on his face was so composed. So professionally fucking…composed.
Her whole body immediately started trembling. “What.”
If Wrath was dead, all of the Brotherhood came, she told herself. She’d lived that nightmare before.
Except whatever this was…it was bad. Very bad.
Beth held the picture she’d taken out to her heart. “Tell me,” she croaked.
“Wrath’s gone. We have no idea where he is.”