“Are you sure about this?”
Spinning around, she glanced at Wrath. “I’ll get your jacket. We can dematerialize out together. Let’s leave George, though.”
“Beth—”
“I don’t know, okay?” She threw her hands up. “I just…there are two young males potentially in the hands oflessers. If that was L.W.? What would we be doing right now. How would we be feeling. And yes, I want to come. We’ve got to do right by those families, even if they’re aristocrats.”
He inclined his head. “All right, I’ll go organize coverage with the brothers. I don’t need to be guarded anymore, but you do.”
“If you’re not King, I’m not Queen.”
“You’re everything to me. And if I have to call in some favors to make sure you’re safe, I will.”
Wrath turned to go. Except then he came back at her and took her face in his hands. “You’re a female of worth, you know that?”
When she thought about her messy emotional crap, she could only shake her head. “I’m not feeling like that right now.”
“Well, it’s still true.” He dropped a kiss to her mouth. “Give me a couple of minutes and we’ll head out.”
After he left, she grabbed a hair tie and pulled her hair back. She was mostly out the door when she stopped and pivoted on one foot. Heading around the bed, she bent down to the floor to pick up Wrath’s leather jacket. The weight was such that she needed both hands to pick it up, and she brought the folds to her nose. Breathing in deep, the scent of her mate was everything to her, the dark spices of his skin, the shampoo, the fabric softener Fritz had used on the muscle shirt—
With a frown, she pulled the sleeve up. The left sleeve.
Oh…God. The marks were still there. Four little crescent moons, in a line. She had been the one to make them, with her clipped nails.
“Beth? You ready?”
She shook herself back to attention and turned back to the doorway. “Hi. Yes. I mean…I have your jacket.”
“Thanks. I’ll take it. There are—things—in the pockets.”
“I can tell. It’s so heavy—no, wait. I’ll come to you.”
Remembering the sound from earlier in the night, she hustled over to him. In a rough voice, she said, “You mind if I put this on you?”
One brow lifted. “Sure.”
He stretched both arms down, and she started with his dagger hand, feeding it into the right sleeve. Then she reached behind his massive torso and came out the far side, piloting his other arm into its place. Gripping the lapels, she rose up onto her tiptoes and settled the jacket properly onto his shoulders and chest.
With loving hands, she pulled out his long, black hair, that fell straight from his widow’s peak.
God, Wrath looked exactly like he had when they’d first met all those years ago. When he’d come out of the darkness in thelittle courtyard behind her apartment. When Boo had purred and scratched at the slider, and she had gone over to get her first look at him.
“Hold me?” she asked roughly. “Just for a moment.”
Those big arms wrapped around her, and she drew in a breath that inflated her soul. Blinking quick, she hugged him back, feeling the warmth of his body, the strength of it, the life inside of him.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she replied hoarsely, but honestly. Or at least…she was heading in a much better direction.
It was hard to step back. Except then she thought of the missing males. And the dead ones.
“Let’s go,” she said.
By some miracle, Tohr made it back to his bedroom suite’s loo before he threw up. He hadn’t had much for First Meal, so it wasn’t a prolonged event, and thank God Autumn had gone to Xhex’s residence. He didn’t want to worry her any more than he already had. Besides, the GI evac made him feel better.
For like, a moment.
