As all kinds of demands bubbled up around him, the rumbling of the bay’s door panels was perfectly timed. The instant the cold rushed in, along with the diesel fumes of the mobile surgical unit, Wrath ghosted out, accomplishing that which hadn’t been an option just an hour or whatever earlier.
But with clarity came strength: There were so many things that were outside of his control. Not everything, though.
And he was not going to live a life where his mate was no longer taking his phone calls.
Whatever happened next with his Beth, he was not going to let anything come between them on his side of things.
Not even the throne.
Chapter Five
As Beth sat on the rough planks of Luchas House’s attic, she had a throw blanket from downstairs around her shoulders, and her nose tickled from dust and the chill. She wasn’t sure exactly how long she’d been up here, but she was clear that she wasn’t making much headway. She was supposed to be putting things in the Home Depot boxes she’d set up. Instead, she was on her ass, surrounded by volumes of old photos.
Sure, she’d managed to get two of them into the medium-sized number next to her, but then she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. All it had taken was cracking the front cover of—
Turning the next stiff page, she held her breath.
And there was more.
Her fingertips trailed over one of the seven or eight color photographs that had been tucked into sets of corner brackets. The main focus of the image was of a group of dancing civilians she didn’t really recognize—but that wasn’t what got her attention. Off to the side, just barely in frame, was her…in Wrath’s arms. The two of them were spinning around, and she was smiling up at him as if he were her whole world.
Which of course he had been.
Still was.
Things got blurry as tears flooded her eyes while she read the careful cursive script underneath:Apple Festival, and the date.
Three years before he…died.
So they’d been just at the start of their mating.
Brushing at her cheeks, she couldn’t look away from the image of the two of them. They’d been dancing at the time, on the verge of a stolen kiss, and his head was lowered as if he could see her, too. God, she could recall how it had been to be held against him and sent on a twirl, her hair taking flight from her shoulders and flaring out, her back arched as she let him have all her weight.
The joy on her face transformed her into a stranger she wanted to claim.
Yet it was her, and that was him.
“I remember you,” she whispered as she ran her forefinger around the pair of them.
Wrath’s smile was his secret one, the one that he only ever shared with her. Even his Brothers had never gotten that easy lift to his lips, that flash of his front teeth, that gentle arch of those usually slashed brows. And indeed, on her side she was beaming. Positively beaming.
They’d had no idea they were getting their picture taken. That was the beauty of these albums.
According to what Rahvyn had told her, the elderly female who’d taken the pictures and had them printed out in the old-fashioned way—and who’d taken the time to label and date each one—had gifted the volumes to the species upon her death about ten years ago. The collection had been put up here because no one had wanted the family to be offended by the gift being turned down, even though there’d been some confusion as to why the whole thing was being given to the Brotherhood in the first place.
But no one had gone through the pictures properly. The civilians in the foreground hadn’t been the point. It was because every single photograph had images of the King and Queen in them—and sometimes she and Wrath had been front and center.
Now the bequest made sense, and thank God she hadn’t gone through them earlier. This would have been too painful. Hell, given where things were between her and Wrath tonight, it was still almost too much.
God, she remembered going to all of those festivals so clearly. Right after Wrath had taken the throne properly, he’d felt it was important to make appearances at festivals and celebrations, so they’d gone to many of them…
Back to the pictures.
When she got to the end of the album, she immediately pulled the next one into her lap. As she continued along, it was like an Easter egg hunt, her eyes sifting through the static figures, penetrating the background.
“Another!” She laughed. “There you are…”
This time, Wrath was standing in a crowd next to a happy family holding a young. Except he wasn’t focused on the camera. He was looking through all the people off to the side, his profile carving bold lines out of the background, his wraparounds a black panel that made him look like he was glowering, even when he wasn’t.
