The King(45)
I will keep you safe. I will take care of you.
Okay, file that under WTF. Normally, Wrath had no beef with John Matthew. In fact, he’d always liked the kid—to the point where it was kind of creepy how easily the mute fighter had entered all their lives—and stayed there.
Great solider. Good head on those shoulders. And the lack of a voice wasn’t a problem except for with Wrath because obviously he couldn’t see to read ASL.
Oh, and as for the blood test that said he was Darius’s son? The more time you spent around the kid, the more obvious the connection was there.
But he drew the motherfucking line when any male tried to come between him and his mate, blooded brother or not. He was the one who was going to keep Beth safe and cared for. Nobody else. And he would have confronted John afterward … except the oddest thing was, the kid didn’t seem to know what he’d said either: John wasn’t well versed in the Old Language enough to hold a conversation in it, and yet Blay and Qhuinn had both confirmed that that was what he’d appeared to be mouthing.
But whatever. John was going for some treatment, and on the Beth front, he was ultimately not going to be a problem. This baby stuff, however …
It was a long while before Wrath peeled his clawed hands free of the throne’s armrests, and as he fanned them out, the joints burned.
At the rate you’re going, that desk and that hard chair are all you’re going to have.
What a mess. But the bottom line, granite truth was … he just couldn’t lose her in pregnancy. And as bad as it was to have this rift between them, at least they were both still on the planet and going to stay that way: There was no way in hell he was going to voluntarily risk her life just for some hypothetical son or daughter—who, by the way, assuming they survived into adulthood, was liable to suffer under this royal legacy as much as he did.
And that was the other big part for him. He wasn’t in a hurry to condemn an innocent to all this King crap. It had ruined his life—and that was not an inheritance he wanted to share with someone he would undoubtedly love almost as much as his shellan—
Shifting in the throne, he looked down at himself—and frowned.
Even though he couldn’t see anything, he realized … he had an erection. A throbbing, straining arousal was pushing against the fly of his leathers.
As if it had somewhere to go. Like, now.
Putting his head in his hand, he knew exactly what that meant.
“Oh … God … no.”
“Would you like to feed?”
As the Chosen Selena waited for a response to her question, she did her best to ignore the fact that the incredible dark-skinned male in the bed before her was naked. He had to be. With the sheeting rolled down to his waist, his chest was bare, his chiseled pecs and his roped shoulders illuminated by the soft light in the corner.
It was difficult to imagine why he would bother with anything below the hips.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, what a sight to behold he was. And a revelation—although not because she was ignorant or naive. She might have been sequestered up in the Sanctuary since her birth a century ago, but as an ehros, she was familiar with the mechanics of sex.
Regardless of training, however, the act had not yet been her destiny. The previous Primale had been killed in the raids just after she had matured, and his replacement hadn’t been named for decades and decades and decades. Then when Phury had assumed the mantle, he’d changed everything and freed them all whilst taking a shellan to whom he was monogamous.
She had always wondered what sex was like. And now, looking at Trez, she knew viscerally why females submitted themselves. Why her sisters had primped and prepared for their “duty.” Why they had returned to the dormitory afterward with an incandescence to their skin, their hair, their smiles, their souls.
It was overwhelming to experience this firsthand—
Abruptly, she became aware that he had not answered her.
As he continued to just stare up at her, she wondered if she’d offended him. But how? It was her understanding that he was without a mate: He’d come into this house with his brother, not a shellan, and there was never a female up here in these quarters.
Not that she’d noticed his every move.
Just most of them.
As her cheeks flushed, she told herself that surely he must need a vein after all he had suffered? In fact, the toll of his illness showed in his face … his hard, beautiful face with its almond-shaped dark eyes and prominent, carved lips and high cheekbones and strong, heavy jaw …
Selena lost her train of thought.
“You can’t mean that,” he said roughly.
His words were deeper than usual, and had the strangest effect on her. All at once, that blush on her face bloomed inside her entire body, warming her from the core out, loosening her in way that made her fear her future a little less.