The King(65)

Maybe you should take a break. Like … get away until you aren’t so pissed off. Then come back and talk it out.
She put her hand on her stomach, and as she measured the fat padding that was now there, she felt so damned dumb for sitting on her ass eating ice cream with Layla. She wasn’t any closer to her needing—whenever, if ever, that came, it was clearly going to be on its own schedule. All she’d done was make her pants tight and drive a wedge between herself and her husband.
In the words of Dr. Phil, How’s that working for ya?
Great, Phil. Just awesome.
Hell, maybe she should watch OWN more often. Dr. Phil reruns were on for, like, five hours every morning, Monday through Friday. Surely he’d done a show on couples who disagreed over the baby thing.
Why don’t you go stay at our father’s house, John signed.
She thought of the mansion. “Yeah, no. I don’t want to even think about that place.”
As if on cue, images of her and Wrath from back in the beginning hit her hard—especially the memory of their first official date. God, things had been so perfect back then, the two of them falling in love so easily. Wrath had had her over to the house and dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit for the one and only time in their relationship. They’d sat at the dining room table and Fritz had waited on them.
That’s when Wrath had told her she tasted like—
With a groan, she put her head in her hands and tried to breathe calmly. Didn’t work. Her brain seemed to have the mental equivalent of an arrhythmia, thoughts and memories from the happy past and worries about the grim future mixing into a jumpy, jerky mess.
The only thing she was clear on?
John was right. She couldn’t go back home yet: The instant she saw Wrath, she was going to light into him, and that was going to get them nowhere.
God knew they’d already had that conversation once. A repeat was just going to make things harder.
“Okay,” she heard herself say. “All right. But I need something to eat first.”
It’s a deal, John signed.

SIXTEEN
As Wrath took form by the race’s clinic, he sensed Vishous materializing beside him—and resented the fact that he was required to have a fucking babysitter. But at least V’s medical knowledge was going to be a value add.
“Fifteen feet straight ahead,” his brother announced. “Four feet of cleared pavement in front of you. Then it’s snow-covered ground.”
Wrath threw out one stride and hit hard asphalt. With his next step forward, the snow absorbed his shitkicker.
There was no bringing George to this. Blindness was not a virtue in times of peace for a ruler. During war? It was a critical weakness—and nothing said lights-out better than a Seeing Eye service dog.
Naturally, the retriever had been apoplectic at being left behind—but with Beth already pissed off at him, of course he’d had to alienate his damn dog. Next thing to work on? The Brotherhood. Although that set of hardheaded motherfuckers was too tenacious to be put off by anything less than an H-bomb.
“Stop,” V said.
Wrath came to a halt even though he had to grit his molars. But it was better than walking into the side of the building.
There was a pause, during which V put in the code that changed every evening, and then they entered the shallow lobby, that trademark antiseptic hospital smell announcing that they were indeed in the right place.
And shit knew he felt sick: His chest was aching, his head was pounding, and his skin felt too small for his bones.
Clearly a case of asshole-itis.
And it was probably terminal.
“Greetings, my lords,” came a tinny female voice—and even through the speaker, it was filled with awe. “We’re sending the elevator for you at this moment.”
“Thanks,” V gritted.
Yeah, the brother hated Havers for a variety of reasons. Then again, so did Wrath.
Just think, when the good doctor had tried to kill him a couple of years ago, it had seemed like such a big deal. Now? Compared to the likes of Xcor and the Band of Bastards, one white coat with a bow tie and horn-rimmed glasses coming after him was a goddamn cakewalk.
Shit, he wished he could go back to his father’s era, when people respected the throne.
There was the sound of an elevator opening and then V touched the back of Wrath’s arm. Together, they entered the compartment, and after a bing and slide of the doors, a sinking feeling confirmed they were heading underground.
When the doors reopened, Vishous got careful with the leading: He closed in so he was shoulder-to-shoulder and stayed that way, no doubt looking to casual viewers as if he were just a bodyguard doing his duty to the King of the race.
Instead of functioning as a surrogate set of eyeballs.