Happy Anniversary
Heading into the drafting ofLassiter, I decided I wanted to write about the Brotherhood’s young as adults who find their own HEAs. As I said, I do know how the series ends, and I just couldn’t close the big door without bringing things full circle. Maybe that’s because I’ve got a kid and I’d like to know before I go that she’s found her place in this world with a partner who truly cares for her. Or maybe it’s because I’m a beginning-middle-and-end kind of person, and I compulsively need to tie up loose threads.
Either way, the path forward was clear. We were going to have to do a time jump.
Lassiterwas a big book, for a lot of reasons (almost none of them having to do with ass-less chaps—note I said, “almost”) and the number of readers who told me they threw him across the room at a given point was not a surprise. After that, we hadThe Beloved(which features Nalla, Z and Bella’s daughter, finding her HEA with Nate). It took some reorientating for people to get into the future and what everything is like there, but now that we’re atLover Forbidden(Lyric’s HEA which has a lot of Qhuinn in it), folks seem to be super invested in the new love stories (Bitty and L.W.’s, especially).
However. One of the things that I get asked most in DMs and emails and at events is WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED DURING THE 33 YEARS??????
The story that follows is all about Beth and Wrath and where they are now, following the time jump and a stupid fucking call on the King’s part. But it also gives snapshots of what those three decades were like for Beth and L.W., and how she’s handling thetransition of power from her, back to herhellren.
I hope you enjoy another peak into where Wrath and Beth are, and like seeing them together as much as I do! For our twentieth anniversaryInsider’s Guide, of course we had to feature our original couple, the pair who started it all…
Prologue
BDB Mansion
Great Bear Mountain
North of Caldwell, NY
Thirty-three years and six months prior…
Beth Randall, a.k.a. Elizabeth, widow of Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath, sat on the end of her mated bed with her feet together, her knees touching, her palms flat on the tops of her thighs. Her spine was straight, her bobbed dark hair tucked behind her ears, her chin rigidly parallel to the floor. With every breath she drew, she was one exhale away from blowing apart.
Sometimes, all you had was your posture.
Closing her eyes, what she saw on the backs of her lids was worse than everything she had to look at, so she open-sesame’d things and blinked at the twinkle that blinded her. All she wanted to do was stop the memories, but she lost the battle. Of course, she lost. She always lost.
Lost was her new hair and eye color, her height and weight, her shoe size, her glove size, her goddamn IQ. Ever since the night, some four months ago, that herhellren’sBrothers had come to her and told her that her mate had been killed in an explosion, she had been lost because he’d been lost, and she’d been losing ever since.
And tonight was their anniversary.
With a resonant disassociation, she regarded the bejeweled galaxy around her and remembered the first time she’d walked into this suite of rooms with Wrath. Precious gems as wallpaper. Now there was a concept. Screw Joanna Gaines and the farmhouse aesthetic. This was like every jewelry store in North America had emptied their vaults and stripped their cases, just so armored cars with wheelbarrows of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds could show up here to fill all the platinum and gold settings.
Fit for a vampire King and his Queen. And their son.
She glanced over at the bassinet by her side of the bed and focused first on the golden retriever who lay curled up on the floor right below the baby. George lifted his ears in inquiry, but when she shook her head, he resettled. The fact that the service dog no longer had Wrath to lead around had sucked the joy out of the animal, but at least he’d transferred his job.
L.W. was his new charge.
Above the furry sentry, Little Wrath was sleeping still, his body pretzel’d in tight, his knees up to his chest, his arms tucked in like he was hugging himself. She knew she had to get him a proper bed. The trouble was, he only liked the bassinet, and even though he was tracking far, far behind human growth charts, at two years old, he really was pushing at the confines. She just didn’t have the fortitude to force the change on him.
God knew they’d had way too much of new-and-different lately.
None of it good.
A little blinking green light caught her eye. The baby monitor clipped to the lip of the wicker basin sent a feed to her phone and then Vishous’s cell as backup. She was pretty sure V was forwarding the image to all the members of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, too.
Just in case.
No one was taking any chances with the future King.
And to that point, the King’s private guards were never far, but they were unobtrusive. She had some sense of the schedule they’d set up, different pairs loitering around down on the mansion’s second-floor landing like they just “happened” to be standing at the door of the staircase to this private suite of rooms. But they’d never said anything, and she’d never asked because it was all too fucking awful. All of it.
They blamed themselves for what happened. Like anyone could have foreseen Wrath going out on his own that night?
Like anyone could have stopped him.
