FIFTY-FIVE
As with all great shifts in life, the sun and the moon paid no attention to the drama on the planet, their schedules unaffected by the changing destinies down below.
It was well past midnight when Wrath woke up next to his shellan in their mated bed, his arm around her waist, his hand cupping her breast. And for a moment, he wondered whether any of it had happened—the needing, that shit from the Council, the response.
Maybe it had all just been a fucked-up nightmare.
Cozying in closer, he kept his arousal back. He was going to leave the sexual instigation to his leelan, at least until they knew whether she was pregnant. And if she was … well, then he wasn’t sure what he was going to do— Holy fuck, was he really thinking like this?
“You’re awake,” Beth said.
“How did you know?” he murmured into her hair.
She turned in his arms. “I just do.”
They lay there for the longest time, and fucking hell, he wished he could see her properly. Instead, he settled for running his fingertips over her features.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Victorious.” He could hear the smile on her face. “God, I love Rehvenge. He really took it to the Council.”
When he didn’t say anything, she sighed. “This is a good thing, Wrath. I promise you.”
“Yeah, it is.” He kissed her on the mouth, and then pulled away. “I’m starved. You want to eat?”
“Actually—no. I’m not hungry, but it’s got to be time for First Meal. Unless we slept through it?”
“I think that time is past. And you guys call it breakfast, right?” He got out of bed and went over to let George in from the bathroom. “I doubt anyone else is up. That party went till five in the afternoon.”
As he popped the door, the golden tackled him with the hellos, collar jangling, tail whapping into the doorjambs, Wrath’s leg, the wall as he circled, circled, circled, and sneezed from smiling.
“Wrath?”
“Hey, my man,” he said as he knelt down. “What’s up, big man? Who’s the big man—”
“Wrath.”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s go to work after you eat.”
“You trying to get me back on the horse?” He stroked that smooth head as the dog sneezed again.
“Yes. I am.”
He rubbed his own face. “Shower. Food. Then we’ll talk.”
“Work, you mean.”
The good news, he supposed, was that no one was going to want anything from him in the loo. And as he stepped under the spray before it went warm, he didn’t know why he was hurrying. That wife of his was going to snap his chain until he was back on the throne, pushing papers.
With that prospect hanging over his head? He should be hand-washing himself in the sink and using a lady’s fan to dry off— At first he wasn’t sure what he was hearing. But then, over the drone of the shower, he recognized it as retching.
He jumped out of the marble stall so fast, he nearly yard-saled on the slippery floor. “Beth! Beth—”
“I’m fine,” she said from around the corner.
Rushing over to the toilet’s separate little room, he threw out his palms and felt around, finding his mate on her knees in front of the bowl, one hand holding back her hair, the other braced on the seat.
“I’ll get Doc Jane.”
“No, you won’t—”
She was cut off by a series of heaves, and as he stood over her, he wanted to be the one going through the gasping and the straining.
“Screw this,” he muttered, stumbling forward as he went for the house phone— Except it rang before he could pick the thing up to dial the clinic’s extension. Shit, maybe V’s wife was reading minds, too, now.
“Jane?”
“Ah, no, sire, ’tis Fritz.”
“Oh, listen—could you get me—”
“Wrath, stop it. I’m fine,” Beth said from directly behind him.
He wheeled around. His wife’s scent certainly didn’t suggest a health emergency—and that tone of hers was annoyed, not panicked. “Ah…”
“Whom may I bring for you?” the butler asked over the connection.
Beth cut in again: “Wrath, seriously. Don’t bother the woman, okay? There’s nothing going on.”
“Then why were you throwing up?”
“I’m sorry?” Fritz said. “Sire?”
“Not you,” Wrath muttered. “And either she comes here or—”
“Fine, fine, I’ll go down to the clinic,” Beth murmured. “Just let me get dressed.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“I had a feeling you were.”
Exhaling a curse, he wondered how in the hell he was going to make it through this—either she was pregnant, in which case he was going to be scared shitless for how long? Eighteen months? Or she wasn’t, in which case he was going to have to help her through her disappointment.
Or … shit, she could lose the young, too.