The Black Dagger Brotherhood_ An Insider's Guide - J. R. Ward [51]
Enough on craft, let’s talk about the King and Beth. . . .
Wrath was the first of the Brothers to turn up in my head, and he was the one who showed me the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. The thing I like best about him is summed up in the beginning of Dark Lover:
With a face that was both aristocratic and brutal, he looked like the king he was by birthright and the soldier he’d become by destiny.
—DARK LOVER, p. 3
I love that combination—a blueblood who’s also a fighter—and I believe Wrath is the perfect leader for the vampires: strong, brutal when necessary, possessing both logic and passion. He just needed to wake up to the fact that he could lead.
And Beth was the one who helped him get there.
Beth was and is Wrath’s perfect match. She’s strong-minded, warm, and willing to stand up to him. Their dynamic is shown to perfection in what is one of my favorite scenes between them. The two of them are talking about his take on what happened when his parents were slaughtered in front of him. He condemns himself for not saving them, but he was a physically weak pretrans, so realistically there was nothing he could do. Beth loses it and hammers him for being too hard on himself—which is something he needed to hear, even if he clearly wasn’t receptive to what she was saying. The thing I love is that she wasn’t dissuaded from speaking her mind even with him looming over her. And Wrath, even though he doesn’t agree with her, becomes still more attracted to her. When she’s finished being frustrated with him, there’s an awkward stretch:
Ah, hell. Now she’d done it. The guy opens up to her and she throws his shame back at him. Way to encourage intimacy.
“Wrath, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
He cut her off. Both his voice and his face were like stone.
“No one has ever spoken to me as you just did.”
Shit.
“I’m really sorry. I just can’t understand why—”
Wrath dragged her into his arms and hugged her hard, talking in that other language again. When he pulled back, he ended the monologue with something like leelan.
“Is that vampire talk for bitch?”
—DARK LOVER, p. 248
The thing is, Wrath is all about strength, and the fact that Beth can stick up for herself and what she believes puts them on equal footing. The gift of his respect is as significant as the gift of his love, and she’s worthy of both.
Another of my favorite scenes in the book is when Beth comes up from Wrath’s underground bedroom at Darius’s, fresh from her transition. She’s wondering how he’ll be with her in front of his Brothers and is prepared to play it cool as she comes into the dining room where the warriors are. Turns out Wrath’s just fine with PDA (public displays of affection), and he embraces her in front of a stunned Brotherhood, who had never seen him with a female before. After he explains her significance in the Old Language, he leaves to get her the two things she’s craving, chocolate and bacon, and the Brothers greet her in a special way:
There was a loud scraping noise as five chairs slid backward. The men rose as a unit. And started coming for her.
She looked to the faces of the two she knew, but their grave expressions weren’t encouraging.
And then the knives came out.
With a metallic whoosh, five black daggers were unsheathed.
She backed up frantically, hands in front of herself. She slammed into a wall and was about to scream for Wrath when the men dropped down on bended knees in a circle around her. In a single movement, as if they’d been choreographed, they buried the daggers into the floor at her feet and bowed their heads. The great whoomp of sound as steel met wood seemed both a pledge and a battle cry.
The handles of the knives vibrated.
The rap music continued to pound.
They seemed to be waiting for some kind of response from her.
“Umm. Thank you,” she said.
The men’s heads lifted. Etched into the harsh planes of their