The words were all the right ones on both sides, but they didn’t change the fact that he felt like a piece of shit, and she was still hurting—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Tohr’s here.” Beth got up and went to the sink. “Time for you to go.”
Wrath rose to his shitkickers and brought his full plate over to her. “I’m going to make this right. Somehow.”
“My Lord?” came the query on the other side of the door.
Wrath hovered his hand where he thought her shoulder might be. But maybe she stepped away from him.
Ah, hell, she probably didn’t want him to touch her.
“I’ll see you at the end of the night.”
“I’ll be here,” she answered with defeat.
The last thing he wanted to do was leave her. But civilians were waiting for him, bringing their young and their matings for blessings, their disputes for resolution, their crimes for solving, their complaints for sorting.
Yeah, but what happened when the King had his own fucking disputes with his young, who wasn’t talking to anybody, and his mate, who had every reason not to talk to him?
He’d traveled through time and space to return to her and their son, and the life they lived with him as King had wedged a throne-sized divide right between them.
As George bumped into his thigh and his hand automatically locked onto the golden’s harness, he was aware of a striking loneliness. And holy fuck, if this was what she’d felt all those years, how had she managed to exist in hollow grief for as long as she had.
Which was her point, wasn’t it.
Somehow, he had to find a way for them to reconnect. And until he did that, he was so angry, he wanted to put his head through a plate-glass window.
Fortunately, he was long familiar with hating himself.
Welcome fucking home.
Chapter Two
Thirty years and six months ago…
Three years from the very night Beth decided to move out of the mansion, she drove herself up to a nice house in a nice suburban development of six homes that had a similar vaguely American, nuclear-family-ish vibe. She was in the Volvo that Wrath had bought her the year before he’d died, and as she put the engine in park, her eyes happened to sweep past the instrument panel. There were still only twenty-four thousand miles on the station wagon, and the majority of them had been put on in the last thirty-six months.
Even though dematerializing was always an option, she’d liked driving back and forth during construction. The in-between sing-alongs were the only reprieve she got from her thoughts.
“We’re home,” she said flatly.
When there was no response, she wrenched around. “Oh, you’re asleep.”
Her son’s dark head was tilted into the padded side of the car seat, his mouth slightly open, his brows relaxed for once. And seeing them sitting in a gentle arch above those closed eyes, as opposed to slanting into the bridge of his nose, was a reminder that most of the time, he was frowning.
God, even though he was five years old now, he was still so small that he couldn’t use a booster seat safely. His size was just another thing on the list of things she worried about.
“Time to wake up, L.W.”
Stretching her arm out, she tugged on his foot.
Her son came awake instantly, his lids popping open, pale green eyes locking on her with the kind of focus that, were he anything less than a child, you might think would come with reprisals of the physical kind. But no crying for him—now or ever. Just an instantaneous, aggressive alertness that told her more than she wanted to know about just how he was going to handle adulthood.
“Hi,” she said softly.
He blinked at her and she measured his pupils as she always did. They were still normal, and she could only hope they stayed that way. Not that his father hadn’t made his way very well without his sight.
