Chapter Six
Miles away, in the wealthiest section of Caldwell, Arcshuli, son of Arcshuliae the Younger, arched his brows and cranked off the gold faucets of his black marble tub with his toe.
In between drips, he did a double-take. “I’m sorry…the King is here?”
Before his uniformed butler answered, Shuli was already standing up from the suds and pulling on his monogrammed bathrobe. He was stoned out of his mind, limping from an injury from the night before, and he might possibly be really drunk, too.
Oh, who the hell was he kidding. He’d had to leave Bathe because his pain meds had amplified the one shot he’d done into an entire bottle of Pappy van Winkle. The world was going around like a carousel, and he was pretty sure all the warm water and suds had actually made things worse.
“Yes, Sire. The King is here.” Whillis bowed low. “I have installed him in the parlor.”
Like Wrath was a new TV.
“Here?” He looked around his agate bathroom as if any of the fancy, veined stone was going to help him out. “Is there anybody with him?”
“His dog.”
“No Brothers?” When Whillis shook his head, Shuli smoothed his hair in the mirror over the gold sinks. “Okay. Right. I’m coming.”
At least if this was a solo trip, it meant he wasn’t getting fired as L.W.’s ahstrux nohtrum. Good thing, as the pink slip that came with that happy little bodyguard job he hadn’t asked for came with a headstone as a chaser.
Striding out into his all-white bedroom, he kept his muttering to an under-the-breath. “Shit. Shit…shit…”
Whillis hurried along in his wake, a penguin all aflutter in his formal uniform. “I will bring in some amuse-bouche, then?”
“He’s not here for food.”
Taking the stairs down at as close to a dead run as his limp and lack of depth perception would let him, he started to practice lines in his head and didn’t get far with that bullshit.
What the fuck did it matter, though. He could take up tap dancing in the next four seconds if he wanted, and it wasn’t going to help.
Someone had found out what he, L.W., and Rhamp were doing illicitly in the field, and the reckoning for all that under-the-radar had arrived.
With its dog.
Hitting his foyer, he rounded the corner of his parlor—
Okay. Yup. The great Blind King was actually in his house.
Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath, was standing in the middle of the white room, his brutal figure dressed in black leather, his wraparounds hiding eyes that tracked you in spite of his blindness, his lack of obvious weapons not reassuring in the slightest. Meanwhile, George, the golden, was sitting beside his master, pretty as a picture, all blond-locked and happy-faced like the doe-eyed lion he was.
“My Lord,” Shuli said as he stopped short and bowed. Even though Wrath couldn’t see him.
Straightening, he focused on the enormous black diamond on the male’s hand. Then his gaze rode up the massive chest to that cruel, aristocratic face.
“Don’t worry, son.” The King’s voice was deep as thunder. “I’m not here for you.”
“Oh? I mean…oh. Right. Yeah.” He glanced to archway into the other hall and felt absolutely no better. “Your son, then.”
No, the fucker came for the goddamn Tooth Fairy.
“Yes. My son.”
“L.W.’s crashed out at the moment.” If only he could say the fighter wasn’t injured. “You know, sleeping—”
“I’ll see him now. If you’ll just take me to his room—or tell me the way, and George and I will figure it out.”
Shuli opened his mouth. Closed it.
The corner of the King’s lips lifted. “You really are in the habit of protecting him, aren’t you. But I can smell my son’s blood. Did he hurt himself in the kitchen here? Stub his toe? Most accidents happen in the home, you know.”
No, L.W. had been shot in the shoulder, down around Thirtieth Avenue, behind an abandoned walkup. By a lesser.
When he’d been prohibited from fighting.
“Yes, right.” Shuli cleared his throat and indicated an archway across the room. Which was stupid. “Okay, well, let me take you down to his suite, which is through—”
“Never mind.” Wrath’s nostrils flared. “He’s coming now because he knows I’m here. I’m thinking he got his nose from me.”
Sure enough, footfalls, uneven but insistent, were proceeding down the hall…
and then there he was. The heir to the throne, in all the glory that a pair of scrub bottoms, a fully tattooed torso, and a bandaged shoulder could impart.
And as L.W. stopped in the archway, an eyeball back-and-forth between the generations yielded a distorted mirror image.
The son was just as tall, just as broad, just as totally not happy-go-lucky.
But you couldn’t call him a mini-me version.
There was nothing “mini” about him. Plus, instead of letting his long, black hair fall straight from that widow’s peak, he braided the top over the crown of his head like a Mohawk and had shaved the sides.
“You’re injured,” Wrath said softly.
“What are you doing here?” L.W. demanded. Then he nodded at Shuli. “He’s done nothing wrong.”
“I didn’t come for him. So, he’s going to leave us now—”
“He stays.” That voice cracked like a whip. “He’s my bodyguard, remember? That was your idea.”
“And I’m your father.” When there was nothing coming back, those black brows dropped behind the black wraparounds. “You don’t need protection from me.”
There was a long pause between the two…during which Shuli plotted his exit. Maybe he could pretend something was on fire in the kitchen—
“Where are you hurt,” Wrath demanded.
“I stubbed my toe. Just like you guessed.”
“How long were you waiting down there, knowing I was here.”
“Since the moment you came in the house.” L.W. touched the side of his nose. “I also have a good sense of smell. As you said.”
Shuli started backing up. He’d had a bad relationship with his sire, but for different reasons. So, really, there was no reason for him to hang around while another angle on that sort of dysfunction played out.
“No, you stay,” L.W. snapped. Then he refocused on his father. “I live here now, and I stubbed my toe. That’s all I got to offer you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to bed.”
“The time has come.”
Later, much later, Shuli would remember what came next as a kind of fever dream, something that was clear and cloudy at the same time.
“For First meal?” L.W. drawled. “We’ve already eaten—”
“I’m stepping down. You’re going to be King now.”
Back in Luchas House’s attic, Beth put the old photo album aside and stood up on legs that were like threads of yarn. “What do you mean…Wrath’s gone?”
As she weaved on her feet, she felt like she was back in that playroom all those years ago, the bad news landing on her head and crushing her.
Rhage shook his head and shrugged. “He told us to cancel all of his appointments, and he just…left.”
“From the Audience House.” God, she hated the double-checking, the suspicion. “You were at the—”
“We were on our way there on the Northway.”
A cold shell locked around her chest. “So, not at the Audience House.”
“That’s where we were going—look, it doesn’t matter. We need to find him…”
The Brother went on talking, but a ringing sound inside her head drowned out his words. As she retreated internally, she stared across at Rhage’s extraordinary blond beauty and his Bahamas-blue eyes like she was seeing them for the first time.
“Sure, you were,” she heard herself say.
He frowned as if she’d driven the car of their conversation off the road. “Anyway, you feed from him, so you’ll be able to get a bead on his location.”
“What about his phone.”
“He crushed it.”
Raising her brows, she leaned forward on her hips. “I’m sorry. What do you mean, he crush—”
“He stepped on it, so it’s in pieces on the floor of the garage—”
“I thought you said you were on the highway.”
They were talking over each other, the words coming out faster and faster until they hit the brick wall of her last syllable.
“That’s why we can’t locate him using GPS or anything.” When she didn’t respond, Rhage tacked on, “We’ve also been calling and trying to reach you—”
On reflex, she slapped her own butt over both pockets. Then she closed her eyes and shook her head. So that’s what she’d been missing when she left—the little echo in her mind that she’d ignored.
“I forgot my phone.” She looked down at the scatter of photograph albums. “At home.”
“We need you. He needs you.”
She used to think both were true. Well, it used to be true for the former when she’d been doing that important job for the species with the civilians. And when it came to Wrath now?
Looking down at the photograph, she tried to connect to their past.
Shaking herself back to attention, she put the Kodak moment into the pocket her phone should have been in. “Sorry. And I’ll do what I can.”
Rhage’s perfect face relaxed, and so did his heavy shoulders under his leather duster. “Thank you.”
“Yes, of course.”
Like she was the concierge in a fine hotel and had just fielded dinner reservations for the male. Maybe she should have gone with, “My pleasure.”
Casting off the throw blanket she did what she could to hurry, given how stiff she was from sitting on the floorboards.
As she went downstairs, the delicious aroma of Toll House chocolate chip cookies was an off-note to her stress, and she was relieved when she hit the first floor and everybody was in the kitchen.
The laughter and chatter escorted her out onto the porch.
Hitting the cold, bracing air, she breathed in through her nose, and her sinuses hummed like she’d eaten ice cream too fast.
“Did you come with a coat,” Rhage asked as he paused in the open doorway.
She glanced back at him, and that’s when she saw a figure step into an archway deep inside the house. The soft glow of white hair told her who it was, and she waited for Rahvyn to come forward.
“What is it?” Rhage asked as he looked over his shoulder.
The other female disappeared, and not in a dematerializing kind of way. She broke apart and then faded.