Thank you.

He wasn’t big on hugging, but he’d been known to pull them into his arms and hold on to them for a short breath. None of them knew that it wasn’t because he was a nice guy; it was because he was one of them. The hard reality was that life had put them all where they didn’t want to be, namely on their backs for people they didn’t want to be fucking. Yes, there were some who didn’t mind the job, but like everyone, they didn’t always want to be working. And God knew the johns always showed up.

Just like his blackmailer.

Getting out of the shower was pure, undiluted hell, and he put off the deep freeze as long as he could, huddling under the spray while he argued with himself over the evac. As the debate continued, he heard the water tinkling against the marble and chattering down the brass drain, but his numbed-out body felt nothing except a slight easing of his inner Alaska. When the hot water ran out, he knew only because his shivering got worse and the beds of his fingernails went from pale gray to deep blue.

He toweled off on the way to the bed and shot under the mink duvet as fast as he could.

Just as he was yanking the covers up to his throat, his phone beeped. Another voice mail.

Fucking Grand Central with his phone tonight.

Checking his missed calls, he found the latest was from his mother, and he sat up quickly, even though the vertical shift meant his chest went bare. Lady that she was, she never called, not wanting to “interrupt his work.”

He hit some buttons, put in his password, and got ready to delete the wrong number’s confused message which would come up first.

“Your call from 518-blah-blah-blah…” He hit the pound key to shoot past the ID shit and got ready to punch seven to get rid of the thing.

His finger was on the way down just as a female voice said, “Hi, I-”

That voice…that voice was…Ehlena?

“Fuck!”

Voice mail was inexorable, however, and didn’t give a shit that a message from her was the last thing he’d choose to erase. As he cursed, the system churned on until he heard his mother’s soft voice in the Old Language.

“Greetings, dearest son, I hope you fare well. Please excuse the intrusion, but I was wondering if you might stop by the house for a moment over the next couple of days? There is a matter about which I must speak to you. I love you. Good-bye, mine blooded firstborn.”

Rehv frowned. So formal, the verbal equivalent of a thoughtful note written in her beautiful hand, but the request was out of character, and that gave it an urgency. Except he was screwed-bad choice of words. Tomorrow evening was a no-go because of his “date,” so it would have to be the night after, assuming he was well enough.

He called the house, and when one of her doggen picked up, he told the maid he’d be there Wednesday night as soon as the sun went down.

“Sire, if I may,” the servant said. “Verily, I am glad you are coming.”

“What’s going on?” When there was a long pause, his inner chill got worse. “Talk to me.”

“She is…” The voice on the other end grew rough. “She is as lovely as ever, but we are all glad you are coming. If you will excuse me, I shall deliver your message.”

The line went dead. In the back of his mind, he had a sense as to what it was, but he studiously ignored the conviction. He just couldn’t go there. Absolutely couldn’t.

Besides, maybe it was nothing. Paranoia, after all, was a side effect of too much dopamine, and God knew he was doing more than his fair share. He would go to the safe house as soon as he was able, and she would be fine-Wait, the winter solstice. That had to be what it was. No doubt she wanted to plan festivities that included Bella and Z and the young, as it would be Nalla’s first solstice ritual, and his mother took that kind of thing very seriously. She might live on this side, but the Chosen traditions she had been born into were still very much a part of her.

That was totally it.

Relieved, he put Ehlena’s number into his addy book and hit her back.

All he could think about as the phone rang, aside from, Pick up, pick up, pick up, was that he hoped like hell she was okay. Which was nuts. Like she would ever call him if she were in trouble?

So why had she-

“Hello?”

The sound of her voice in his ear did something the hot shower, the mink throw, and the eighty-degree ambient air temperature couldn’t. Warmth spread out from his chest, beating back the numbness and the cold, suffusing him with…life.

He extinguished the lights so he could concentrate all he had on her.

“Rehvenge?” she said after a moment.

He eased back down onto his pillows and smiled in the dark. “Hi.”

There’s blood on your shirt…and-oh, God-your pant leg. Wrath, what happened?”

Standing in his study at the Brotherhood mansion, facing his beloved shellan, Wrath pulled the two halves of his biker jacket more tightly across his chest, and thought, well, at least he’d washed the lesser blood from his hands.

Beth’s voice dropped. “How much of what I’m looking at is yours.”

She was as beautiful as she had always been to him, the one female he wanted, the only mate for him. In her jeans and her black turtleneck, with her dark hair down around her shoulders, she was the most attractive thing he’d ever seen. Still.

“Wrath.”

“Not all of it.” The cut on his shoulder had no doubt leaked all over his wife-beater, but he’d held the civilian male to his chest as well, so the male’s blood had no doubt mixed with his own.

Unable to keep still, he walked around the study, going from the desk to the windows and back. The rug his shitkickers crossed was blue, gray, and cream, an Aubusson whose colors matched the pale blue walls and whose curvilinear swirls played off the delicate Louis XIV furniture, fixtures, and swirly moldings.

He’d never really appreciated the decor. And he didn’t start now.

“Wrath…how did it get there.” Beth’s hard tone told him she knew the answer already, but was hoping there was another explanation.

Manning up, he turned to face the love of his life across the expanse of the frilly-ass room. “I’m fighting again.”

“You’re what?”

“I’m fighting.”

As Beth went silent, he was glad the study door was closed. He saw the math she was doing in her head and knew the sum of what she was pulling together added up to one and only one thing: She was thinking about all those “nights up north” with Phury and the Chosen. All those times he’d worn long-sleeved, bruise-hiding shirts to bed because he had “a chill.” All the “I’m limping because I worked out too hard” excuses.

“You’re fighting.” She plugged her hands into the pockets of her jeans, and even though he couldn’t see a hell of a lot, he knew damn well that black turtleneck was a perfect complement to her stare. “Just to clarify. Is this as in, you’re going to start fighting. Or have been fighting.”

That was a rhetorical, but clearly she wanted him to present the full lie. “Have been. For the last couple of months.”

Anger and hurt rolled off her, spilling toward him, smelling to him of scorched wood and burned plastic.

“Look, Beth, I have to-”

“You have to be honest with me,” she said sharply. “That’s what you have to do.”

“I didn’t expect to be going out for more than a month or two-”

“A month or two! How the hell long-” She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. “How long have you been doing this?”

When he told her, she went quiet again. Then, “Since August? August.”

He wished she would let loose with her temper. Yell at him. Call him a cocksucker. “I’m sorry. I…Shit, I’m really sorry.”

She didn’t say anything else, and the scent of her emotions drifted away, dispersed by the hot air blowing up through the heating vents on the floor. Out in the hall, a doggen was vacuuming, the sound of the carpet attachment whirring up and back, up and back. In the silence between them, that normal, everyday sound was something he clung to-the kind of thing you heard all the time and rarely noticed because you were busy dealing with paperwork, or distracted by the fact that you were peckish, or trying to decide whether you wanted to decompress by watching TV or hitting the gym… It was a safe sound.