J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [489]
That was totally it.
Relieved, he put Ehlena’s number into his addy book and hit her back.
All he could think about as the phone rang, aside from, Pick up, pick up, pick up, was that he hoped like hell she was okay. Which was nuts. Like she would ever call him if she were in trouble?
So why had she—
“Hello?”
The sound of her voice in his ear did something the hot shower, the mink throw, and the eighty-degree ambient air temperature couldn’t. Warmth spread out from his chest, beating back the numbness and the cold, suffusing him with…life.
He extinguished the lights so he could concentrate all he had on her.
“Rehvenge?” she said after a moment.
He eased back down onto his pillows and smiled in the dark. “Hi.”
TWELVE
There’s blood on your shirt…and—oh, God—your pant leg. Wrath, what happened?”
Standing in his study at the Brotherhood mansion, facing his beloved shellan, Wrath pulled the two halves of his biker jacket more tightly across his chest, and thought, well, at least he’d washed the lesser blood from his hands.
Beth’s voice dropped. “How much of what I’m looking at is yours.”
She was as beautiful as she had always been to him, the one female he wanted, the only mate for him. In her jeans and her black turtleneck, with her dark hair down around her shoulders, she was the most attractive thing he’d ever seen. Still.
“Wrath.”
“Not all of it.” The cut on his shoulder had no doubt leaked all over his wife-beater, but he’d held the civilian male to his chest as well, so the male’s blood had no doubt mixed with his own.
Unable to keep still, he walked around the study, going from the desk to the windows and back. The rug his shitkickers crossed was blue, gray, and cream, an Aubusson whose colors matched the pale blue walls and whose curvilinear swirls played off the delicate Louis XIV furniture, fixtures, and swirly moldings.
He’d never really appreciated the decor. And he didn’t start now.
“Wrath…how did it get there.” Beth’s hard tone told him she knew the answer already, but was hoping there was another explanation.
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,