The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12)(177)

Wrath let his head fall back with a curse. “Are you sure she needs this?” he said, not really certain who exactly he was talking to.

“Yes,” Doc Jane answered gravely. “I’m totally sure.”

iAm spoke up again. “Nothing will happen to her on my watch. On my honor.”

He had a feeling the Shadow was offering him his palm—and sure enough, as Wrath reached out blindly—natch—the other male caught hold of it.

“What can I do for you?” Wrath heard himself say as they shook.

“Nothing right now. Just let me take her.”

“Okay. All right.” Except as Wrath let go and stepped back, he was not at peace with any of this. What other choice did he have, though?

Shaking his head, he thought, see, this was precisely why he hadn’t want a young. This pregnancy shit was not for him.

What the hell was he going to do if he lost her—

“Wrath,” Beth said weakly. “Wrath, where’d you go?”

As if she knew he was two thoughts past sanity—heading into the weeds of wigging out.

“I’m right here.”

“Will you take me upstairs? I think I should try and feed first, and I don’t want to do it out in the open.”

“Plus,” Doc Jane murmured, “I need to call and see when she can fit us in.”

“Wrath? Take me upstairs?”

Snapping into action, he went forward and gathered his beloved gently in his arms, lifting her from the floor.

And what do you know, instantly, he was grounded. Calmed. Prepared to hold his shit together if only to spare Beth the worry over him.

“Thank you…” she whispered as her head lolled into the crook of his arm.

“What for?”

She didn’t answer him until George had guided them over to the base of the stairs and Wrath had begun their ascent.

Her reply was just one word: “Everything.”





SIXTY-TWO


It was seven twenty-three in the morning when Sola stepped out on her terrace and saw the ocean properly.

“Almost worth the drive,” she murmured to herself.

With the sun rising, the vast blue expanse of water melded with the color of the early sky, only the peach clouds of dawn marking the horizon in between the heavens and the earth.

Settling into a lawn chair, she groaned as every joint she had, and some she didn’t know about, let out a holler. Man, she was stiff. Then again, a full twenty-four hours behind the wheel of a car would do that to a girl. And it wasn’t just her bones that were aching. Her right calf was spasming? as if it were considering a full-on charley horse—in spite of the fact that she’d used cruise control a good eighty percent of the time.

Wow, the air was soft and nice down here, even in December.

And the humidity was awesome. Her skin was positively drinking up the moist air—her hair as well, her ponytail already corkscrewing at the end.

“I go sleep now,” her grandmother announced.

Sola looked back through the screen door. “Me, too. I’ll be in soon.”

“No smoking,” came the scold.

“I gave that up two years ago.”

“And you’re not doing it again.”

On that note, her grandmother nodded and walked out of the shallow living area.

Sola refocused on the ocean. Her Miami place was on the fifth floor of an older building, the condo just an unassuming, fifteen-hundred-square-foot space that she’d bought a couple of years ago for all cash and then decorated out of Rooms To Go on the cheap. The complex had a pool and tennis courts, though—and it was mostly dead, what with the holidays approaching and the snowbirds yet to fly down for the rest of the winter.

Arching her back, she tried to give her spine a little relief. No such luck. She was probably going to need a chiropractor after that drive.

Good thing she was never going to have to worry about doing it again.

Shit, that was depressing.

Putting a hand into her back pocket, she took out her iPhone. No calls. No texts.

She hadn’t thought leaving Assail would hurt this much. And yet, she couldn’t say she regretted it.

What was he doing right now, she wondered. Probably settling in after a night of wheeling and dealing in the dark underbelly of the Caldwell economy.

Would he go back to that woman? The one she’d watched him f*ck?

Closing her eyes, she breathed in deep a couple of times—and the fact that she could smell the brine in the air helped. She was not up there anymore, she reminded herself. She was not with him anymore—not that they’d really been together.

So what he did and who it was with? Not her issue.

Anymore.

This was going to be okay, she told herself as she put her phone back and stared at the ocean. She had done the right thing …

And yet, even still, snapshots of Assail dogged her mind, barging in and taking over the beautiful view in front of her.

Bending down, she felt around her thigh and then pressed her fingers into the bandage. As pain shot up into her torso and raced her heart, she told herself to remember how she’d ended up here. Why she’d relocated.

Exactly how her prayers had been answered.

Yeah, the drive had given her something other than a sore body and a tired brain: all those highway miles had done wonders for her perspective on everything.