The King

by J. R. Ward

  "I don't know if I've ever told you much about my parents," Wrath said. "Other than how they were..."

  Killed, she finished for him in her mind.

  "They were a match made in heaven, to use a human term. I mean, even though I was young, I remember them together, and the truth is, I figured, when they died, that kind of thing was over with them. Like they were a once-in-a-millennium kind of love or something. But then I met you."

  Beth's tears were hot as they continued to laze their way down her cheeks, some dropping off softly onto the pillow, others finding her ear. Reaching out, she snagged a Kleenex and mopped up without making a sound.

  But he knew she was crying. He had to know.

  Wrath's voice became thin, like he was having trouble keeping it together. "When I got shot that night a couple of months ago, and Tohr and I were hauling ass back from Assail's house, I wasn't afraid I was dying or anything. Sure, I knew the wound was bad, but I've been in a lot of bad shit before--and I was going to get through it ... because no one and nothing was going to take me away from you."

  Bracing the phone on her shoulder, she folded the wet tissue in precise little squares. "Oh, Wrath..."

  "When it comes to you having a young..." His voice cracked. "I ... I ... I ... oh for shit's sake, I keep trying to find the words, but I just don't have them, Beth. I simply don't. I know you want to try, I get that. But you haven't spent four hundred years seeing and hearing about how vampire females die on the birthing bed. I can't--like, I can't get that out of my head, you know? And the problem is, I'm a bonded male, so while I'd like to give you what you want? There's a side of me that isn't going to listen to reason. It just isn't--not when it comes to risking your life. I wish I were different because this is killing me, but I can't change where I'm at."

  Leaning to the side, she pulled another tissue out of the box. "But there's modern medicine now. We have Doc Jane and--"

  "Plus what if the kid's blind. What if they have my eyes?"

  "I will love him or her no less, I can assure you of that."

  "Ask yourself what we're exposing them to genetically, though. I manage to get along in life, sure. But if you think for an instant I don't miss my sight every day? I wake up next to the female I love and I can't see your eyes in the evening. I don't know what you look like when you dress up for me. I can't watch your body when I'm inside of you--"

  "Wrath, you do so much--"

  "And the worst of it? I can't protect you. I don't even leave the house--and that's as much about my fucking job as it is the blindness--oh, and don't kid yourself. Legally, if we have a male young, he's going to succeed me. He will not have a choice--just like I didn't and I hate where I'm at. I hate every night of my life--Jesus Christ, Beth, I hate getting out of bed, I hate that fucking desk, I hate the proclamations and the bullshit and being penned in the cocksucking house. I hate it."

  God, she'd known he wasn't happy, but she'd had no idea it went this deep.

  Then again, when was the last time they'd actually talked like this? The nightly grind coupled with the stress of the Band of Bastards and their bullshit ...

  "I didn't know." She sighed. "I mean, I was aware that you were unhappy, but..."

  "I don't like talking about it. I don't want you worrying about me."

  "But I do anyway. I know you've been stressed--and I wish I could help in some way."

  "That's my point. There's no help for it, Beth. There's nothing anyone can do--and even if I had perfect eyesight and the risks of pregnancy were no BFD? I still wouldn't want to dump this shit on the next generation. It's a cruelty I wouldn't do to someone I hate, much less my own fucking child." He laughed harshly. "Hell, I should let Xcor have the goddamn throne. Serve him right."

  Beth shook her head. "All I want is for you to be happy." Actually, that wasn't true. "But I can't lie. I love you, and yet I still..."

  Boy, did she get an idea of how he felt about the no-words thing.

  He'd found a way to talk, though.

  "I almost can't explain it." She curled a fist over her heart. "It's like this emptiness in the center of my chest. It has nothing to do with you or how I feel about you. It's inside of me--it's like a switch got flipped, you know? And I wish I could be more articulate than that, but it's hard to describe. I didn't even know what it was ... until one of those nights, when Z took Bella down to our place in Manhattan and I babysat? I was hanging out in that suite of theirs, with Nalla asleep in my lap, and I just kept looking at all of the stuff they had in their room. The changing table, the mobiles, that crib ... all the wipes and the bottles and the pacis. And I just thought ... I want this. All of it. The Diaper Genie, and the rubber ducks, and the late days. The poop and the sweet bath-time smell, the crying and the cooing, the cliched pink and the robin's-egg blue--whatever we get. And listen, I sat on it. I really did. It was such a shock that I thought--it's a mood, a phase, a rose-colored delusion I was going to snap out of."

  "When did you..." He cleared his throat. "How long ago was this?"

  "Over a year."

  "Damn..."

  "Like I said, I've felt like this for a while. And I thought you'd change your mind. I knew it wasn't a priority for you." She was trying to be diplomatic on that one. "I thought ... well, now that I'm saying it, I realize I never did talk to you about where I was at. There just hasn't been time."

  "I'm sorry. I know I already apologized, but ... goddamn it."

  "It's all right." She closed her eyes. "And I know where you're coming from. It's not like I haven't seen you every night looking like you wanted to be anywhere else but where you were."

  There was another long silence.

  "There's something else," he said after a while.

  "What?"

  "I think you're going into your needing. Soon."

  Even as Beth's jaw dropped open, in the back of her mind, something kindled. "I ... how do you know?"

  The mood swings. The chocolate cravings. The weight gain ...

  "Shit," she said. "I, ah ... oh, shit."

  Annnnnnnnd that just about summed it up, Wrath thought as he eased back in the library's desk chair. At his feet, George was stretched out on the rug, that big, boxy head resting on one of Wrath's shitkickers as if offering support.

  "I can't be sure." Wrath rubbed his aching temple. "But as your mate, I'm going to be affected as soon as your hormones start fluxing--my blood runs hotter, my emotions are stronger, my temper gets really touchy. Like, you're out of the house now, right? And I feel more myself than I have in about two weeks. But during that argument we had? I was kinda nuts."

  "Two weeks ... that's about the time I started checking in and then sitting with Layla. And yeah, you were really out there."

  "Now"--he held up his forefinger to make the point even though she wasn't with him in person--"this is not to excuse the way I behaved. It's just context. I can talk to you over the phone like this and keep it together enough so I can explain myself. When you're with me? Again, not an excuse and not your fault, but I'm wondering if it didn't play a part in all of that."

  As he leaned to the side and put his hand on his dog, George lifted his head, the golden seeking, sniffing, giving a little lick. Stroking the long waves that grew from that barrel chest, Wrath pulled them out and flattened them on George's forelegs.

  "God, Wrath, when I didn't wake up with you just now..."

  "Horrible. I know. It was the same for me--or maybe even worse. I wasn't sure whether I'd really fucked things up. Like, no-going-back-fucked-up."

  "You haven't." There was a rustling, like she was shifting around on the bed. "And I guess I knew we've been kind of working in parallel for the last while. I just hadn't realized how much time we've lost--and other things. Going down to Manhattan, getting away together, really talking. It's been a while."

  "Honestly, that's another reason I don't want a kid. I can barely keep connected with you at this point. I don't have anything to offer a young."

  "That
's not true. You'd make a wonderful father."

  "In another universe, maybe."

  "So what do we do?" she asked after a moment.

  Wrath rubbed his eyes. Damn, he felt hungover as hell. "I don't know. I really don't."

  They'd each said their piece in the way it should have been done in the first place. Reasonably. Calmly.

  Actually, he'd been the problem on that one, not her.

  "I'm so sorry," he said again. "It doesn't go far enough, on so many levels. But there's nothing else I can ... man, I'm getting really fucking tired of feeling impotent."

  "You are not impotent," she said dryly. "We've well established that."

  All he could do was grunt in response. "When are you coming home?"

  "Now. I'll drive in--I think there's an extra car here somewhere."

  "Wait until after dark."

  "Wrath, we've been through this before. I'm perfectly fine in the sunlight. Besides, it's nearly four-thirty. There's not much left."

  As he pictured her out in the bright light of day, his stomach churned--and he thought of Payne calling him out on being a closet chauvinist. Compared to worrying about his shellan, it was so much easier to lay down an I forbid. The problem was what it did to Beth.

  He really couldn't put her in a gilded cage just so he didn't have to freak out about her safety.

  And maybe this pregnancy thing for him was just a deeper shade of that color of cowardice ...

  "Okay," he heard himself say. "All right. I love you."

  "I love you, too--Wrath, wait. Before you go."

  "Yeah?" When there was only silence, he frowned. "Beth? What?"

  "I want you to do something for me."

  "Anything."

  It was a while before she spoke. And when she was done, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back.

  "Wrath? Did you hear what I said?"

  Every word. Unfortunately.

  And he was on the verge of throwing out a no-way, when he thought about what it was like waking up with her not beside him.

  "Okay," he gritted out. "Yeah, sure. I'll do that."

  TWENTY-SIX

  As Saxton stared at himself in his dressing room's mirror, he pinched the butterfly ends of his bow tie and tugged the knot tighter. When he released the patterned silk, the thing kept its form and its symmetry like a pup well trained.

  Stepping back, he smoothed his freshly shorn hair and pulled on his Marc Jacobs cashmere winter coat. He gave one sleeve then the other a tug; then he stretched out his arms so that the cuff links under his suit jacket showed.

  They were not the ones with the family's crest on them.

  He didn't wear those anymore.

  No, these were VCA from the forties, sapphire and diamond, platinum setting.

  "Did I do the cologne?" He looked at his Gucci and Prada and Chanel bottles, all of which were lined up on a mirrored tray with brass handles. "No comment from you all?"

  A quick sniff of one wrist. Yes, that would be Egoiste, and it was fresh.

  Turning away, he walked across the heavily veined cream marble floor and out into his white-on-white bedroom. Passing by the bed, he had an instinct to remake the whole thing, but that was nerves talking.

  "I'll just double-check."

  Plumping the pillows and rearranging the throw into the exact position it had been in when he'd gone in to dress, he glanced at the vintage Cartier clock on the bed stand.

  There was no putting things off any longer.

  And yet he looked around at the white chaise lounge and the white armchairs. Inspected the white mohair throw rugs. Walked over and made sure the Jackson Pollock over the fireplace was perfectly plumb.

  This was not his old house, the Victorian that Blay had once spent a day in. This was his other place, a Frank Lloyd Wright single-story that he'd bought the second it had come on the market--because how could he not? There were so few of them left.

  Of course, he'd had to do some clandestine remodeling and expansion of the basement, but vampires had long been working their way around humans and their pesky little building inspectors, et al.

  Double-checking his Patek Philippe, he wondered why he was making this dreadful pilgrimage. Again.

  It was like a horrible Groundhog Day thing. But at least it didn't happen with great regularity.

  As he ascended the stairs, he was dimly aware of fiddling with his bow tie once more. Unlocking the door at the top, he emerged into a sleek forties kitchen with fully functional, modern repros of all those Hello, Lucy appliances.

  Every time he walked through the house, with its Jetsons furniture, and complete and utter lack of frills, it felt like he was back in post-WWII America--and it calmed him. He liked the past. Liked the different footprints of the various eras. Enjoyed living in spaces that were as authentic as he could make them.

  And it wasn't like he was going back to that Victorian anytime soon. Not after he and Blay had essentially started things there.

  As he went out the front door, just the thought of that male made his chest tighten--and he paused, concentrating on the sensation, the memories that came with it, the change in his blood pressure and thought patterns.

  After the two of them had broken up, which had been at his instigation, he'd done a lot of reading on grief. The stages. The process. And it had been funny ... oddly enough, the best resource had been a little booklet he'd found on getting over the loss of a pet. It had questions that you were supposed to answer about what the dog had taught you or what you missed most about the cat or what your favorite moments with your cockatoo had been.

  He wouldn't have admitted it to anybody, but he'd answered each one of them in his diary about Blay--and it had helped. Up to a point. He was still sleeping alone, and though he'd had sex, instead of wiping the slate clean, it had just made him ache even more.

  But things were better than they had been. At least he had an operating principle that was halfway normal now: He'd been walking dead for the first couple of nights. Now, though, he had a scab over the wound and he was eating and sleeping. There were still triggers, though--like every time he had to see Blay or Qhuinn.

  It was so hard to be happy for the one you loved ... when he was with someone else.

  Like all of life, however, there were things you could change and things you couldn't.

  On that note ...

  Closing his eyes, he dematerialized and re-formed on a snow-covered lawn that was easily as big as a city park--and just as carefully maintained. Then again, his father hated anything out of order: plants, grass, objets d'art, furniture ... sons. The grand manor house beyond was some fifteen thousand square feet in size, the different wings having been added over time by generations of humans. Staring up at it through the winter night, Saxton was reminded of exactly why his father had purchased the estate when some alumnus had left it to Union College--it was the Old Country in the New World, home away from the motherland.

  A traditionalist, his father had relished the return to roots. Not that he'd ever truly left them.

  Approaching the front entrance, the gas lanterns on either side of the mile-wide door flickered, casting ancient light on stone carvings that had actually been done in the nineteenth century as part of the Gothic Revival style. As he halted, he thought perhaps he would not ring the bell because the staff would be waiting for him.They, as with his father, were always in a hurry to get him in and out of the house--as if he were a document to be processed or a dinner to be served and cleaned up hastily.

  No one opened the door preemptively, however.

  Leaning in, he pulled on an iron chain with a velvet cover to generate the bell sound.

  There was no answer.

  Frowning, he stepped back and looked to the side, but that got him nowhere. There were too many manicured bushes to see into any of the diamond-paned, leaded-glass windows.

  Being locked out of the house was such a testimony to their relationship, wasn't it: The male requests him to come on hi
s birthday and then leaves him out in the cold at the front door.

  Actually, Saxton had decided that his existence was now a fuck-you to his father. From what he understood, Tyhm had always wanted a young--a son, specifically. Had prayed to the Scribe Virgin for one. And then he'd been granted his wish.

  Unfortunately, there had been a caveat that had turned out to be a deal breaker.

  Just as he was debating whether to ring again, the door was opened by the butler. The doggen's face was frozen as always, but the fact that he did not bow to the firstborn and only begotten son of his master was plenty of commentary on his opinion of who he was about to let in.

  It hadn't always been like this in the household. But his mother had died, and then his little secret had come out so ...

  "Your father is currently engaged." That was it. No, May-I-take-your-coat?, How fare thee?, or even, Verily, how cold is this night?

  Not even a conversation about the weather would be spared for him.

  Which was fine. He had never cared for the guy, anyway.

  When the butler stepped aside, and focused on the silk-covered wall opposite him, walking through that fixed gaze was like getting stung by an electric fence--although at least Saxton was used to it. And he knew where to go.

  The lady's parlor was on the left, and as he entered the frilly room, he put his hands into the pockets of his coat. The lavender walls and lemon-yellow rug were bright and cheerful, and the truth was, even though putting him here was intended as an insult, he much preferred it to the wood-paneled gentlemale's equivalent across the foyer.

  His mother had died about three years ago, but this was no shrine to the loss. In fact, he didn't have the sense that his father had missed the female.

  Tyhm had always been most interested in the law--even over matters of the glymera--

  Saxton stilled. Pivoted toward the rear of the room.

  Distantly, voices mingled--and that was unusual. The house was typically silent as a library, the staff tiptoeing around, the doggen having developed a complex system of hand signals with which to communicate so they did not disturb their master.

  Saxton approached a second set of doors. Unlike the ones leading out to the foyer, they were closed.

  Cracking a panel, Saxton slipped through into the lofty, octagonal room where his father's leather-bound volumes of the Old Law were kept. The ceiling was some thirty feet high, the molding of all those shelves dark mahogany, the cornices over the doorways carved into proper Gothic relief--or at least a nineteenth-century reproduction of it.