Abruptly, he relived that civilian’s anguish. “Nah, never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Sometimes, information wasn’t a good thing. If that commoner could have seen the future, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome. He would have just spent the remaining time with his female and his young terrified of what was coming.
“I’ll clear the decks,” the brother said after a moment.
The flap door closed with a thump-bump.
For no apparent reason, he thought of his father and his mother, and wondered what the night of his birth had been like. They’d never spoken of it, but he’d never asked, either. There had always been something else going on—plus, he’d been too young to care about that stuff.
As he tried to picture his own child’s arrival, he couldn’t imagine the stream of events. It was a hypothetical too emotionally charged to resonate.
But there was one thing that was abruptly crystal fucking clear.
He just wasn’t sure how to get around it.
As he stewed on things, memories from the last couple of months filtered into him. Stories and problems, gifts given and received. After all the struggle he’d brought to doing the King’s job before, it had been such a revelation to actually love what he was doing.
He hadn’t even missed the fighting.
Hell, there had been too many other challenges to confront and overcome: Battles, after all, weren’t always waged in the field, and sometimes enemies weren’t armed with conventional weapons. Sometimes they were even ourselves.
Finally, he knew exactly why his father had gotten so much out of being on the throne. He totally fucking got it.
And it was funny: The one thing that so many of the people had in common was love for their family. Their mates, their parents, their children; all that seemed to come first.
Always.
Family first.
The next generation … first.
He thought back to the night his parents had been slaughtered. The one thing they had done before that door had been broken down? Hide him. Keep him safe. Preserve him—and it hadn’t been about ensuring the future of the throne. That was not at all what they’d said as they’d locked him in that crawl space.
I love you.
That had been the only message that had mattered when their time had run out.
Not, Be a good King. Not, Follow in my footsteps. Not, Make me proud or else …
I love you.
It was the tie that bound, even across the divides of death and time.
As he imagined his son coming into the world, he was pretty damn sure one of the first things he was going to say was, I love you.
“Wrath?”
He jumped and turned toward the sound of Saxton’s voice. “Yeah? Sorry, just a little in my head.”
“I’m finished with all my paperwork from last night and tonight.”
Wrath turned back to the windows he could not see. “You worked fast.”
“Actually, it’s three in the morning. You’ve been sitting there for about five hours.”
“Oh.”
And yet he didn’t move.
“Most of the Brothers left hours ago. Fritz is still here. He’s upstairs cleaning.”
“Oh.”
“If you don’t need anything—”
“There is something,” he heard himself say.
“Of course. How can I help?”
“I need to do something for my son.”
“A bequest?”
As Wrath started working the whole thing through in his head, he was a little freaked out. God, you’d think that great corners in life should come with a warning sign at the side of the proverbial road, a little yellow number that announced which direction you were going to go in, and maybe offered a “reduce speed” kind of advice.
Then again, he and his shellan had been pregnant months before her needing.
So life did its own thing, didn’t it.
“Yeah. Kinda.”
SEVENTY-TWO
It was as he had promised.
Wrath was good to the word he had given his shellan. He was, in fact, back at dawn.
As he rode toward home upon his horse, he was exhausted to the point of agony, unable to hold himself up for more than a walking gait. But then again, there was another reason for his slow progress.
Though he had gone out on his own, he did not return as such.
There were six dead bodies being dragged over the ground behind him and his steed, and two more to the rear of his saddle. The former he had tied with ropes at the ankles; the latter were secured to the horse with hooks and netting.
And the others he’d killed had not had enough left of their remains to take with him.
He could smell nothing but the blood he’d shed.
He heard nothing but the muffled rush of the bodies over the dirt of the road.
He knew nothing except that he had murdered each one of them by hand.
The wooded glen he proceeded through was the last distance to be crossed before the castle … and indeed, as he came out into a clearing, there it was, rising ugly out of the earth.
He did not relish what he had done. Unlike a barn cat who enjoyed his duty, the mice he had slain had not been a source of sly happiness for him.
But as he thought of his unborn young, he knew that he had made the world a safer place for his son or daughter. And as he considered his beloved mate, as well as the death of his own father, he was well aware that that which had been uncharacteristic to his nature had been very necessary indeed.
The drawbridge o’er the moat landed in a rush, providing him entrance as if he had been waited for.
And he had been.
Anha ran out onto the planks, the fading moonlight catching her dark hair and her red robes.
He had known her for so little time when judged by the passage of seasons. But through the course of events, he believed they had been together for lifetimes.
The Brotherhood was with her.
Pulling up on the reins, he knew she saw everything as her hands went to her mouth and Tohrture had to take her elbow to keep her upright.
He wished she had not come. But there was no going back now on any of it.
Dismounting, even though he was not even upon the bridge, he left his horse where it was and crossed onto the thick planks.
He thought perhaps she might run from him, but, no, it was the opposite.
“Are you well enough?” she said as she threw herself at him.
His arms were weak as they went around her. “Aye.”
“You lie.”
He dropped his head into her sweet-smelling hair. “Aye.”
At least with her, he did not have to pretend. The truth was, he as yet feared for the future. He may have taken his revenge out on these traitors, but there would be more.
Kings were targets for the ambitions of others.
That was reality.
Closing his eyes, he wished there was a way out of the legacy—and he worried for his future son, if he had one. Daughters had a chance. Sons were cursed.
But he could not change who he was born to be. He just prayed for the courage that had served him this night to come again when it was needed most.
At least now he had proved to himself and his beloved that he was not just a leader in peacetime. In war, he could wield the sword if he had to.