Princess had then made a Night of the Living Dead reappearance. Rehv had fucked her up. Dust had settled…and Lash and Xhex hadn’t been seen again.
That was all anyone knew.
Evidently Rehv planned on heading up to the colony at nightfall to look for her…but John knew the guy was going to come up with nothing. She wasn’t with the symphaths.
Lash had snatched her. It was the only possible explanation. After all, her body hadn’t been found on the way out, and there was no way in hell she would have taken off without making sure everybody else got to safety first. And the thing was, according to everyone who’d been in that chamber, Rehv had owned the will of all of those symphaths. So it wasn’t like any of them could have broken free and overpowered her mentally.
Lash had her.
Lash was back from the dead and aligned with the Omega somehow, and on his way out of the colony, he had taken her with him.
John was going to kill that motherfucker. With his bare hands.
As anger rose in him until he was choking on all the pissed-off, he rolled away from what was on the bureau, unable to bear the idea that Xhex might be in pain.
At least lessers were impotent, though. If Lash was a lesser… he was impotent.
Thank God.
With a plaintive sigh, John rubbed his face in a spot that smelled particularly strong of Xhex’s gorgeous, dark scent.
If he could have, he would have gone back to the day before and…he still wouldn’t have walked past her door. No, he would have come in here again. But he would have been kinder to her than she had been to him that first time they’d been together.
And he also would have forgiven her when she had said she was sorry.
Lying in the dark with his regrets and his fury, he counted the hours until nightfall and made plans. He knew Qhuinn and Blay were going to go out with him-not because he asked them to, but because they weren’t going to listen to him when he told them to mind their own business.
But that was it. He wasn’t telling Wrath or the Brothers a thing. He didn’t need them putting all kinds of safety features on this runaway carnival ride. Nope, he and his buddies were going to find Lash where he slept and slaughter him once and for all. If this got John kicked out of the house? Fine. He was on his own anyway.
Here was the thing: Xhex was his female, whether she wanted to be or not. And he was not the kind of male who was going to sit on his ass when his mate was out there in a world of hurt.
He was going to do exactly what had been done for Rehvenge.
He was going to avenge her.
He was going to bring her home safe…and make sure that the one who had taken her ended up in Hell.
SEVENTY-FOUR
When Wrath heard the knock on the study door, he stood up from behind the desk. It had taken an hour for him and Beth to empty the dainty thing out, which had been a surprise. Fucker had held a lot in its tiny drawers.
“Is it here?” he asked his shellan. “Is it them?”
“Let’s hope so.” Beth’s footsteps sounded out as the door opened, like she was trying to get a good look. “Oh…it’s beautiful.”
“Try heavy as fuck,” Rhage grunted. “My lord, didn’t you think there was a middle ground somewhere?”
“This coming from you?” Wrath said as he and George took two steps directly to the left and one back. With his hand, he felt for the drapes and anchored himself as the fringe brushed his palm.
The sound of people milling around in heavy boots got louder and was accompanied by a shitload of cursing. And more grunting. A lot more grunting. As well as some slurs about kings and their royal prerogatives being a pain in the ass.
Then there were a pair of booms as a pair of heavy things hit the floor, the sounds kind of like what you’d hear when two safes fell off a cliff and landed.
“Can we burn the rest of this nancy shit?” Butch muttered. “Like the sofas and the-”
“Oh, everything else is staying,” Wrath murmured, wondering if the path was clear to the new furniture. “I just needed an upgrade.”
“You’re going to keep shafting us?”
“The sofa has already been reinforced for your fat ass. You’re welcome.”
“Well, you got an upgrade, all right,” Vishous said. “That shit…is pretty boss.”
Wrath continued to hang back, standing to the side as Beth told his brothers exactly where the furniture needed to be rearranged.
“Okay, you want to give this a shot, my lord?” Rhage said. “I think it’s ready.”
Wrath cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
He and George went forward, and he put out his hand until he felt…
His father’s desk was hand-carved out of ebony, the fine filigree work around the edge done by a real master craftsman.
Wrath leaned down, feeling his way around, remembering what it had looked like to his young eyes, recalling how centuries of wear had only increased its imposing beauty. The massive legs of the desk were actually statues of males depicting the four seasons of life, and the smooth top they supported was marked with the same symbols of lineage that had been tattooed on the insides of Wrath’s forearms. As he traced along farther, he found the three wide drawers that ran beneath the surface and remembered his father sitting behind the thing with papers and edicts and feather quills all around.
“It’s extraordinary,” Beth said softly. “Good God, it’s-”
“The size of my frickin’ car,” Hollywood muttered. “And twice as heavy.”
“-the most beautiful desk I’ve ever seen,” his shellan finished.
“It was my father’s.” Wrath cleared his throat. “We got the chair, too, right? Where is it?”
Butch groaned and there was some heavy shuffling. “And…here…I…thought this…was an…elephant.” The sound of the thing’s legs hitting the Aubusson carpet was thunderous. “What is this fucker made out of? Reinforced concrete painted to look like wood?”
Vishous exhaled Turkish tobacco. “I told you not to try that one on your own, cop. You want to cripple yourself?”
“I did just fine. Stairs were a piece of cake.”
“Oh, really. So why are you bent over and rubbing your lower back?”
There was another groan, and then the cop muttered, “I’m not bent over.”
“Anymore.”
Wrath ran his hands up the arms of the throne, feeling the symbols in the Old Language that pronounced it not a mere chair, but a seat of leadership. It was exactly how he remembered…and, yes, at the pinnacle of the tall back he found cool metal and slick stones, and recalled the shimmering sight of gold, platinum, diamonds…and a rough, uncut ruby the size of a fist.
The desk and throne were the only surviving things from his parent’s house, and they had been brought over from the Old Country not by him, but by Darius. D had been the one who’d found the human who’d purchased the set after the lessers had sold it as loot, found them and brought them back.
Yeah…and Darius had also cared enough to make sure that when the Brotherhood had come across the ocean, the race’s throne and the king’s matching desk had come with them.
Wrath had never expected to use either.
But as he and George took up res and sat down…it felt right.
“Shit, does anyone else feel the need to bow?” Rhage asked.
“Yes,” Butch said. “But then again, I’m trying to take pressure off my liver. I think it got wrapped around my spine.”
“Told you you needed help,” V quipped.
Wrath let his brothers go on, because he sensed they needed the release and the distraction of verbal sparring.
Things had not gone well during the trip up north to the colony. Yes, Rehv was out, and that was great, but the Brotherhood did not leave fighters behind. And Xhex was nowhere to be found.