The King(163)

After everything his father had done in such a tragically short time, he should have followed his first instincts and walked the fuck away. The race had been fine going rudderless for a couple of centuries; probably could have kept that shit up indefinitely.
He thought of Ichan. Maybe that SOB was going to discover that modern populations didn’t need kings.
Or more to the point, maybe Xcor and the Bastards were going to learn that lesson.
Whatever.
Wrath went to increase the speed again—and found that he’d tapped the machine out on velocity. Cursing, he resettled into his already breakneck pace, and thought of his father, sitting behind the very desk that he himself could no longer see or use, parchment rolls and ink pots, quill pens and leather-bound volumes covering the carved surface.
He could just picture that male behind it all, sporting a half smile of contentment as he melted wax himself and pressed the royal crested ring into it—
“Wrath!”
“Wha—” Cue the squealing of rubber as he yanked out the safety key and jumped to the side rails. “Beth—?”
“Wrath, oh, my God—”
“Are you okay—”
“Wrath, I’ve got the solution—”
He could not fucking breathe. “About … what?”
“I know what we have to do!”
Wrath frowned as he panted and braced his hands on the rails in the event his jelly legs gave up the ghost and he torpedoed. And yet even through the hypoxia, his female’s scent was strong with purpose and conviction, her natural undertones sharpened so they got through to him clearly.
Grabbing the towel he’d slung over the console, he mopped his face. “Beth, for the love of Christ. Will you please stop—”
“Divorce me.”
In spite of all the exercise-induced suffocation, he stopped breathing. “I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “But I did not hear that.”
“Dissolve our mating. Effective yesterday—when for all intents and purposes you were still King.”
Wrath started shaking his head, all kinds of thoughts jamming up his brain. “I’m not hearing you say that—”
“If you get rid of me, you get rid of the grounds they used. No grounds, no removal. You have the throne and—”
“Are you out of your fucking mind!” he bellowed. “What the fuck are you talking about!”
There was a slight pause. Like she was surprised he wasn’t all into her bright idea.
“Wrath, seriously. This is the way to get the throne back.”
As the bonded male in him started screaming at the top of its lungs, he was an inch from exploding—but he’d already trashed one whole room in the compound. And the brothers would kill him if he smashed up their weight room.
Attempting to keep his voice level, he failed miserably: “No fucking way!”
“It’s just a piece of paper!” she hollered back. “What the hell does it matter?”
“You’re my shellan!”
“It’s all about carrots!”
Annnnnnnnnnd that stopped him dead. Shaking his head to clear it some, he said, “I’m sorry—what?”
Little hard to transition from ending their relationship to root frickin’ vegetables.
“Look, you and I are together because we love each other. A piece of paper one way or another is not going to change us—”
“No, absolutely not—I’m not going to give those assholes the satisfaction of fucking you over—”
“Listen to me.” She grabbed onto his forearm and squeezed. “I want you to calm down and listen to me.”
It was the weirdest thing. As wound up as he was, when she gave him a direct order like that? He followed like a foot soldier.
“Predate the dissolution of marriage—mating—whatever. Don’t give them any rationale, you don’t want to look like it’s reactionary. Then decide whether or not you want to stay King. But that way? It’s not my fault. Right now, like it or not, I’m the reason you’re losing the throne, and I can’t go through the rest of our lives feeling responsible for something like that. It’ll kill me.”
“Sacrificing you is not the way—”
“We’re not sacrificing me in the slightest. I don’t care about being queen. I care about being by your side—and no crown or edict or whatever is going to change that.”
“You could be carrying our offspring right now. Are you saying you want to bring that young into the world a bastard?”
“They wouldn’t be to me. They wouldn’t be to you.”
“But to others…”
“Like who? You telling me Vishous would think the kid’s something less? Tohr? Rhage? Any of the Brothers—their shellans? What about Qhuinn and Blay—Qhuinn’s not mated to Layla. Does that mean you’d look down on that child?”