Lover Avenged(229)

It was…a very good system, actually.

As he and George descended, the Brothers gathered down below, checking their weapons and talking. In the midst of the group, V was smoking his Turkish tobacco and Butch was saying some Hail Marys under his breath and Rhage was unwrapping a Tootsie Pop. The two females were with them, and he recognized them by their scents. The nurse was nervous, but not hysterical, and Xhex was itching for a fight.

When Wrath stepped off onto the mosaic floor, he gripped the handle in his palm hard, the muscles in his forearm cranking tight. Shit, he and George were staying behind. And that just sucked.

Ironic, wasn’t it. Not so long ago, he’d been upset about leaving Tohr home like a dog. What a role reversal. The Brother was the one going out into the night…and he was the guy staying behind.

A sharp whistle from Tohr shut everyone up. “V and Butch, I want you with Xhex and Z on team one. Rhage, Phury, and I are on team two and will be backing up you four with the boys. According to the text I just got from Qhuinn, he and Blay and John have arrived up north and are in position about two miles from the entry to the colony. We’re ready to go-”

“What about me,” Ehlena said.

Tohr’s voice was gentle. “You’re going to wait with the boys in the Hummer-”

“The hell I am. You’re going to need a medic-”

“And Vishous is one. Which is why he’s going in first with the others.”

“Along with me. I can find him-he fed from-”

Wrath was about to jump in when Bella’s voice cut through the argument.

“Let her go in with the others.” There was a quick, breathless silence from everyone as Rehvenge’s sister spoke sharply. “I want her to go in.”

“Thank you,” Ehlena said in a small voice, like it had been decided.

“You’re his female,” Bella murmured. “Aren’t you.”

“Yes.”

“You were on his mind the last time I saw him. It was clear how he felt about you.” Bella’s voice grew even stronger. “She has to go. Even if you can find him, he’ll live only for her.”

Wrath, who’d never really been on board with that nurse joining the team, opened his mouth to can the idea…but then he thought back a year or two, remembering when he’d been shot in the stomach and Beth had been beside him. She had been the reason he’d survived. Her voice and her touch and the power of their connection had been the only things that had pulled him through.

God knew what the symphaths had been doing to Rehv up there in the colony. If he was still breathing, chances were good he was hanging by a thread.

“She should go,” Wrath said. “It might be all that gets him out alive.”

Tohr cleared his throat. “I don’t think-”

“That’s an order.”

There was a long, disapproving pause. Which was broken only when Wrath raised his right hand and flashed the massive black diamond that had been worn by every king of the race.

“Okay. Fine.” Tohr cleared his throat. “Z, I want you guarding her.”

“Roger that.”

“Please…” Bella said roughly. “Bring my brother home. Bring him back where he belongs.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then, Ehlena vowed, “We will. One way or the other.”

No clarification was needed for that. The female meant alive or dead, and everyone, including Rehvenge’s sister, knew it.

Wrath said some things in the Old Language, things that he could remember hearing his father speak to the Brotherhood. Wrath’s voice had a different tone to it, though. His father hadn’t minded staying home to be on the throne.

It ate Wrath alive.

After some good-byeing, the Brothers and the females left on a chorus of boots hitting the mosaic floor.

The vestibule’s door shut.

Beth took his free hand. “How you doing?”

By the tightness of her voice, she knew exactly how he was, but he didn’t begrudge her the question. She was concerned and worried, just as he would have been in her position, and sometimes the only thing you could do was ask.

“I’ve been better.” He pulled her against him, and as she fit her body to his, George pressed his head in for a stroke.

Even with both of them, Wrath was lonely.

It seemed to him, as he stood in the grand foyer whose depths and colors and wonder he could no longer see, that he had ended up in the very place he hadn’t wanted to ever find himself: Going out to fight even though he was king had not been just about the war and the species. It had been for himself, too. He’d wanted to be more than a paper-pushing aristocrat.

Evidently, however, fate was bound and determined to shove him in that peg hole of a throne one way or the other.