He turned around, his hand raised to strike her, too. Just as she thought he’d put her through the wall behind her, he caught himself. His breathing ragged, he stared at her and lowered his hand. The agony on his beautiful face hit her like a blow. He cupped her head in the palm of his hand, then gently pulled her into his arms.
She hugged him close as his heart pounded fiercely against her breasts. He continued to cradle her head and hold on to her like she was his lifeline.
Maris approached them slowly. “Are you better?” he whispered to Darling.
His eyes started jerking. “No. I didn’t get a chance to kill the bastard.” He turned in Giran’s direction. “No one insults my lady. No one.”
Nykyrian wiped the blood from his lips as he neared Darling with a look that said he craved retaliation. Luckily, he didn’t give in to his anger. “We need to get you both out of here. And whatever you do,” he said to Darling, “say nothing else.” That last sentence came out as a fierce growl.
Darling inclined his head to him.
As they started walking, the gerents noticed Darling’s eyes.
“He’s blind?”
“No wonder he had on sunglasses.”
“How can a blind, insane man lead an empire as powerful as ours?”
“I wouldn’t trust him to lead a herd of dogs to water. Never mind lead us.”
His jaw locked to keep from responding to their erroneous speculations, Darling allowed his friends to escort them from the room. He kept his arm around her waist as if he was afraid of letting her go.
Once they were clear of the building, Caillen released a low whistle. “That was a strategic blunder the kind of which I normally make. You know, Dar… the ones you usually crawl my ass over when I do them?”
“Yeah,” Ryn agreed. “That little explosion of temper just cost us every nano-inch of ground we’d taken.”
Darling glared at Ryn. “I don’t care.”
Ryn scoffed. “Hope you feel that way in the morning.”
“I will. Trust me.”
Hauk tested his teeth with his thumb. “I forgot how hard you punch, you little bastard. If I lose a tooth, I’m taking it out of your hide.”
Kiara cast Darling an evil grimace. “Better be glad I’m pregnant. I’m not exactly fond of seeing my husband thrown into walls, especially since we were only trying to help you.”
Drake sighed. “I understand why you did it, Dar. But damn… this is one ugly mess.”
Darling glanced at her. “You want to pile on here with your opinion against me, too?”
Zarya shook her head. “Not at all. I totally get why you did it. I just wish I’d punched a couple of them for what they said about you. It seriously pains me that I didn’t. Can I please go back and break on them?” She started back for the building.
Smiling, Darling caught her against him and turned her around to keep her moving forward.
Damn him. It wasn’t fair that he got to pound on them when she was the one who really wanted a piece of their hides.
“We all get why he did it,” Syn said. “There’s not a one of us who wouldn’t have done it had it been our better half they insulted. Honestly, I’m only surprised you kept him from killing them.”
Nykyrian put his arm around Kiara. “Me, too.”
“But,” Ryn inserted, “it doesn’t change the fact that it was a political blunder on an epically stupid scale.”
And by the time they made it back to the palace, the extent of that blunder was making itself known. The gerents had called a press conference the moment they’d left the CDS, and were using videoed outtakes of the fight to show Darling attacking Giran for what appeared to be no reason whatsoever.
Darling cringed every time Zarya pulled up a feed to view it. If I’m not deposed over this, I’m banning all mobiles from the meetings from here on out.
The commentator smirked at the camera. “As everyone can clearly see, the new governor is out of control. We have reports that he drove the League High Command out of the meeting and threatened to go to war with them, as well as his own gerents. Senator Giran has been released from the hospital. According to witnesses, he was blindsided by the governor for making a passing comment to a friend that had nothing to do with politics. The governor and his staff have refused to take any of our calls or to comment on the matter in any way…”
Zarya shut the newsfeed off. She couldn’t take any more of their one-sided slant. Dear gods, the journalists didn’t care at all about the truth. They only cared about persecuting an innocent man.
Darling lay on his bed with the heel of his hand pressed against his jerking eyes. Wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms, he held a bloodied cloth in his other hand from the nosebleed that had finally slowed down.
She crossed the room to sit beside him on the bed. “I’m so sorry, Darling.”
He removed his hand from his head to pin her with a grimace. “Sorry for what?”
“Causing this awful mess. I should have stayed here and let you go alone.”
Darling hesitated at the catch in her voice. The last thing he wanted was for her to think that any part of this was her fault when it wasn’t.