J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [490]
And during this devastating moment in his mating, he hung on to the Dyson’s lullaby with a death grip, wondering if he was ever going to be lucky enough to ignore it again.
“It never occurred to me…” She cleared her throat once more. “It never occurred to me that there was something you couldn’t talk to me about. I’ve always assumed that you were telling me…everything you could.”
As she stopped talking, he was chilled to the bone. Her voice was now the one she used to answer wrong numbers on the phone: She addressed him as if he were a stranger, without warmth or particular interest.
“Look, Beth, I have to be out there. I have to—”
She shook her head and raised her hand to stop him. “This isn’t about you fighting.”
Beth stared up at him for a heartbeat. Then she turned and went for the double doors.
“Beth.” Was that strangled croak his voice?
“No, leave me alone. I need some space.”
“Beth, listen, we don’t have enough fighters in the field—”
“It’s not the fighting!” She wheeled around and faced off at him. “You lied to me. Lied. And not just once, but for four months straight.”
Wrath wanted to argue, to defend himself, to point out that he’d lost track of time, that those 120 nights and days had flown by at the speed of light, that all he’d been doing was putting one foot in front of the other in front of the first, going minute by minute, hour by hour, trying to keep the race afloat, trying to keep the lessers back. He hadn’t meant it to go on for so long. He hadn’t set out to deceive her for that long.
“Just answer me one thing,” she said. “One thing. And it had better be the truth or, so help me, God, I’m going to…” She put her palm to her mouth, catching a soft sob in her gentle hand. “Honestly, Wrath…did you honestly think you were going to stop? In your heart, did you truly think you were going to—”
He swallowed hard as her words choked off.
Wrath took a deep breath. In the course of his life, he had been wounded many, many times. But nothing, no pain ever inflicted upon him, hurt a fraction of what answering her felt like.
“No.” He inhaled again. “No, I don’t think…I was going to stop.”
“Who talked to you tonight. Who was the one who made you decide to tell me.”
“Vishous.”
“I should have known. He’s probably the only person other than Tohr who could have….” Beth crossed her arms around herself, and he would have given his dagger hand to have him being the one holding her. “Your being out there fighting scares the shit out of me, but you forget something…. I mated you without knowing that the king isn’t supposed to be in the field. I was prepared to stand by you even though it terrified me…because fighting in this war is in your nature and in your blood. You fool—” Her voice cracked. “You fool, I would have let you do it. But instead—”
“Beth—”
She cut him off. “Remember that night you went out at the beginning of the summer? When you stepped in to save Z and then stayed downtown and fought with the others?”
He sure as hell did. When he’d come back home, he’d chased her up the stairs and they’d had sex on the rug in the second-floor sitting room. A number of times. He’d kept the cutoffs he’d ripped from her hips as a souvenir.
Jesus…come to think of it…that was the last time they had been together.
“You told me only for one night,” she said. “One night. Only. You swore to it, and I trusted you.”
“Shit…I’m sorry.”
“Four months.” She shook her head, her gorgeous dark hair swinging around her shoulders, catching the light so beautifully even his piss-poor eyes registered its glory. “You know what hurts the most? That the Brothers knew and I didn’t. I’ve always accepted this secret-society