The King(153)

“Your King?” He laughed harshly. “A good male?”
“Yes,” she countered with real heat. “He is an abidingly good soul who has a true love match with his mate—a male who pledges nightly to do his best for the race—”
“Truly? And how is he accomplishing that laudable goal? No one e’er sees him, you know. He ne’er goes out to mingle with the aristocrats or the commoners. He is a recluse who has failed to deliver in a time of war. If it were not me, ’twould be another—”
“It is wrong! What you did is wrong!”
He shook his head, at once admiring the principled naïveté and saddened that she was going to have to grapple with it. “’Tis the way of the world. Strength conquers weakness. It is as universal as gravity and sunset.”
Even through her outerwear, he could tell that her breasts were pumping above her locked forearms, and his eyes dipped down before closing briefly. “I have ne’er cared for innocence,” he muttered.
“Pardon the offense, then.”
Lifting his lids, he said, “But I find that, as always when it comes to you, the revelations continue apace.”
Her long hands reached out to him, pleading across the cold air. “Please. Just stop. I’ll…”
When she could only swallow hard, he found himself going still. “You’ll do what.”
With jerky movements, she paced around before him. And as yet, he could not move a single muscle.
“What exactly,” he asked deeply, “will you do?”
She stopped. Raised that lovely chin. Challenged him with her stare and her body, even though she was two hundred pounds lighter than he and utterly untrained.
“You may have me.”
“Is it hot in here—or am I crazy?”
When no one answered her, Beth glanced across the study. Saxton, Rehv, and Wrath were all quiet as they took up space on the matched set of blue sofas. The first two were staring into the dwindling fire, and she didn’t know where Wrath had directed his eyes.
Hell, even though he was in the same room with her, she didn’t have a clue where he was.
Taking off her robe, she put it on the great carved desk and read the proclamation again. The chair she’d chosen was the one Rehv usually took, the soft-seated bergère, she thought he’d called it, off to the side of where Wrath’s throne was.
She refused, in spite of what she held in her hands, to refer to the giant chair as anything but her mate’s.
Looking back down at the parchment, she shook her head at all the symbols that had been so carefully inked. When it came to the Old Language, she was slow with the literacy thing, having to think of the definition of each character before she could string a sentence together. But what do you know—on the second trip through, everything was the same as the first.
Putting the stiff, heavy paper with all its colorful fringe back on the desk, she ran her fingers over the satin lengths that were secured by wax seals. The things were as narrow and smooth as the strips of ribbon used in the hair of little girls, perfect for tying onto a pigtail.
Not that she had baby on the brain or anything.
“So there’s really nothing we can do about this?” she said after a while.
Man, she was hot. Flannel had not been a good choice—either that or it was stress.
Saxton cleared his throat when no one else volunteered to reply. “Procedurally, they have followed the rules. And from a legal perspective, their foundation is correct. Technically, as the Old Laws read now, any offspring of…” More throat clearing. And he glanced at Wrath as if to measure how volcanic things were going to get. “…the both of you would be bound for the throne, and there is a provision concerning the blood of our ruler.”
Her hand went to her lower belly. The idea that a group of people would target her child, even though it was unborn and maybe not even in existence, was enough to make her want to go down to the practice range and squeeze off a couple of clips.
Back when she’d been in the human world, she’d been discriminated against as a woman from time to time, *cough*Dickthe-Prick*cough*. She’d had no experience with any racial stuff, however. As someone who had appeared Caucasian, even though, as it turned out, she was only half-white because she was only half-human, that whole side of things had never been an issue.
Man … to have an opinion about an individual based on characteristics attached to the sperm lottery was nuts. People couldn’t help what sex they were coming out of the womb; nor could they change the composition of their parents.
“That glymera,” she muttered. “What a bunch of assholes.”