At that there was a soft chuckle in the room—of respect.
“They did the same to my father,” Wrath said in a dead voice. “Except they poisoned him to the point of his death.”
Anha lifted a hand to her throat. “But no … he died of natural causes—”
“He did not. And as the son, I am obliged to right that wrong—as well as yours.” Wrath wiped some of the blood off his mouth. “Listen to me now, my Anha, and hear this truth clearly … I shall not be castrated in this by you or anyone. The soul of my father haunts me the now, walking the halls of my mind, talking unto me. And you shall do the same if they finally succeed in putting you in your grave. I have been fated to live with the former. Do not expect me to do the same with the latter.”
She leaned in urgently. “But you have the Brotherhood. That is what they are for, how they serve. They are your private guard.”
As she implored her mate, the sheer heft and number of the males pressed in upon her—in the very best sense.
“Command them,” she begged. “Send them out unto the world to exact this due.”
His bloodied hand reached out, and she thought it was to clasp her palm. Instead, it rested upon her gown, below the bodice … upon her womb.
“You are with young,” he said roughly. “I can scent it.”
She too had been thinking the same, although for different reasons.
Wrath’s one working eye met hers. “So I cannot allow others to do what is my duty. Even if I could regard you knowing that I was so weak … I could never stare into the face of a son or a daughter with the awareness that I had lacked the courage to caretake for mine bloodline.”
“Please, Wrath…”
“What kind of father would I be then?”
“One who is alive.”
“For how long, though. If I do not protect what is mine, it shall be taken away from me. And I will not lose my family.”
Overcome, Anha felt tears fall down her cheeks, the paths burning her face.
Dropping her forehead to the bloodied black diamond of the King’s ring, she wept.
For in her heart, she knew he was right—and she hated the world that they lived in … and were, in time, going to bring forth a young into.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Downtown, in the urban heart of Caldwell, Xcor picked up a burst of speed in an alley, his combat boots crushing through the dirty, salted slush, frigid air rushing at his face, distant sirens and shouts offering a kind of narration to this battle.
Up ahead, the slayer he was going for was just as fast as he. The bastard was not as well armed, however—especially after he’d emptied his clip and then had, in the fit of a fifteen-year-old, thrown the autoloader at Xcor.
Great move. Right up there with crying for your mommy.
And then the chase had been on.
Xcor was content to allow the lesser to run his lack of a heart out. Provided that all the sprinting didn’t lead to the kind of complication that had gotten in his way the other night.
He had no interest in fielding another human.
After another quarter mile or so, the slayer came to the titular end of the alley—whereupon he was forced to pull a music video, throwing his body at a twenty-foot-high chain-link fence and commencing to scale it with admirable aplomb.
Then again, the Omega had given him a kind of super-power following his induction.
Not that it was going to save him.
Xcor took three leaping steps and pitched his body into the air, his weight sailing upward and landing him upon the lesser’s back just before the slayer hit the apex of the fencing. Locking on and yanking hard, he peeled the undead free of the fencing, twisting in midair such that they landed with Xcor on top.
His scythe screamed to be let out to play. But instead of releasing her, he unclipped her little cousin from his hip.
The machete had a steel handle and a rubber grip, and it felt like an extension of his arm as he lifted it over his shoulder.
Now, he could end this quickly by aiming for the middle of the chest. But where was the fun in that? Slapping a hold on the face, he wrenched the head to the side and sheared off the ear—
The resulting scream was a kind of music, echoing in his ears.
“Other side,” he grunted, forcing the head around. “One needs to match.”
The machete’s blade whistled through the air a second time, Xcor’s accuracy such that nothing save the fleshy appendage was touched. And the pain was enough to incapacitate his prey—well, that and the fact that surely the slayer knew that what was to come was going to be so much worse.
Fear had a way of leading to paralysis.
And the undead was right to be terrified.
In a fast series of hacks, Xcor worked his way down the body, striking the blade deep into each shoulder to cut the tendons and incapacitate the torso—and then following through with the backs of the knees.
Sitting back, he watched the writhing and breathed in the stench—as well as the suffering: Being the cause of pain fed his inner beast, a meal consumed by the evil side of him—that just left him hungry for more.
Time to get a bit more invasive. And he decided to cut off the left foot—slowly. With half strength, he hacked once, twice … three times before the blade cut cleanly through. The right foot was just as leisurely a pursuit.
In the midst of his work, his mind retreated to thoughts that were sure to make him even more depraved.
He kept thinking about Wrath’s end run. Tyhm, the lawyer, had made a subsequent assessment of the mating-dissolution document and deemed it legal—but Xcor knew the thing had been predated.
Do not tell him that the King hadn’t signed on that line as soon as that no-confidence parchment had landed upon his desk.
Moving up to below the knee, he resettled into his work, and the rhythm of chops reminded him of the Old Country, when he’d cut wood to take the edge off his frustration.
The question he wanted answered was, how far did that piece of paper go? Had the King in truth turned aside his mate?
It is a love match.
As he heard his Chosen’s voice in his head, a surge of power overtook him—and good timing as he confronted the lesser’s thighs. No more holding back, now: He threw his muscles into his work, whacking through skin and bone, black blood hitting his face, his fangs bared.
The slayer was clawing through the snow to the pavement, fingernails ripping into the asphalt below as the screaming dried up in his throat, shock o’ertaking his breathing and heart rate, rendering him all but inanimate.
But he would not die like this.
Indeed, there was only one way to kill him.
Xcor reduced the lesser to pieces, leaving only the head attached to a block of the torso, pools of that black blood forming under the four compass points of where the limbs had been attached.
When there was nothing else to cut off, Xcor sat back on his haunches and took a breather. It was not so fun now that the slayer was compromised. The suffering was still there, but it was not so obvious.
Yet he didn’t want this work of his to end. Like the addict holding on to a fix that was no longer sufficient for his needs, he nevertheless couldn’t finish things.
As his phone went off, he was determined to ignore it. He didn’t want to hear Ichan’s bitching—that aristocrat had been leaving message after message trying to recoup his almost-there to the throne. And then there was Tyhm, also calling.