Lover Avenged(43)

“I’m fighting.”

As Beth went silent, he was glad the study door was closed. He saw the math she was doing in her head and knew the sum of what she was pulling together added up to one and only one thing: She was thinking about all those “nights up north” with Phury and the Chosen. All those times he’d worn long-sleeved, bruise-hiding shirts to bed because he had “a chill.” All the “I’m limping because I worked out too hard” excuses.

“You’re fighting.” She plugged her hands into the pockets of her jeans, and even though he couldn’t see a hell of a lot, he knew damn well that black turtleneck was a perfect complement to her stare. “Just to clarify. Is this as in, you’re going to start fighting. Or have been fighting.”

That was a rhetorical, but clearly she wanted him to present the full lie. “Have been. For the last couple of months.”

Anger and hurt rolled off her, spilling toward him, smelling to him of scorched wood and burned plastic.

“Look, Beth, I have to-”

“You have to be honest with me,” she said sharply. “That’s what you have to do.”

“I didn’t expect to be going out for more than a month or two-”

“A month or two! How the hell long-” She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “How long have you been doing this?”

When he told her, she went quiet again. Then, “Since August? August.”

He wished she would let loose with her temper. Yell at him. Call him a cocksucker. “I’m sorry. I…Shit, I’m really sorry.”

She didn’t say anything else, and the scent of her emotions drifted away, dispersed by the hot air blowing up through the heating vents on the floor. Out in the hall, a doggen was vacuuming, the sound of the carpet attachment whirring up and back, up and back. In the silence between them, that normal, everyday sound was something he clung to-the kind of thing you heard all the time and rarely noticed because you were busy dealing with paperwork, or distracted by the fact that you were peckish, or trying to decide whether you wanted to decompress by watching TV or hitting the gym… It was a safe sound.

And during this devastating moment in his mating, he hung on to the Dyson’s lullaby with a death grip, wondering if he was ever going to be lucky enough to ignore it again.

“It never occurred to me…” She cleared her throat once more. “It never occurred to me that there was something you couldn’t talk to me about. I’ve always assumed that you were telling me…everything you could.”

As she stopped talking, he was chilled to the bone. Her voice was now the one she used to answer wrong numbers on the phone: She addressed him as if he were a stranger, without warmth or particular interest.

“Look, Beth, I have to be out there. I have to-”

She shook her head and raised her hand to stop him. “This isn’t about you fighting.”

Beth stared up at him for a heartbeat. Then she turned and went for the double doors.

“Beth.” Was that strangled croak his voice?

“No, leave me alone. I need some space.”

“Beth, listen, we don’t have enough fighters in the field-”

“It’s not the fighting!” She wheeled around and faced off at him. “You lied to me. Lied. And not just once, but for four months straight.”

Wrath wanted to argue, to defend himself, to point out that he’d lost track of time, that those 120 nights and days had flown by at the speed of light, that all he’d been doing was putting one foot in front of the other in front of the first, going minute by minute, hour by hour, trying to keep the race afloat, trying to keep the lessers back. He hadn’t meant it to go on for so long. He hadn’t set out to deceive her for that long.

“Just answer me one thing,” she said. “One thing. And it had better be the truth or, so help me, God, I’m going to…” She put her palm to her mouth, catching a soft sob in her gentle hand. “Honestly, Wrath…did you honestly think you were going to stop? In your heart, did you truly think you were going to-”

He swallowed hard as her words choked off.

Wrath took a deep breath. In the course of his life, he had been wounded many, many times. But nothing, no pain ever inflicted upon him, hurt a fraction of what answering her felt like.

“No.” He inhaled again. “No, I don’t think…I was going to stop.”

“Who talked to you tonight. Who was the one who made you decide to tell me.”

“Vishous.”

“I should have known. He’s probably the only person other than Tohr who could have…” Beth crossed her arms around herself, and he would have given his dagger hand to have him being the one holding her. “Your being out there fighting scares the shit out of me, but you forget something… I mated you without knowing that the king isn’t supposed to be in the field. I was prepared to stand by you even though it terrified me…because fighting in this war is in your nature and in your blood. You fool-” Her voice cracked. “You fool, I would have let you do it. But instead-”