“There’s something else,” he said after a while.

“What?”

“I think you’re going into your needing. Soon.”

Even as Beth’s jaw dropped open, in the back of her mind, something kindled. “I … how do you know?”

The mood swings. The chocolate cravings. The weight gain …

“Shit,” she said. “I, ah … oh, shit.”

Annnnnnnnd that just about summed it up, Wrath thought as he eased back in the library’s desk chair. At his feet, George was stretched out on the rug, that big, boxy head resting on one of Wrath’s shitkickers as if offering support.

“I can’t be sure.” Wrath rubbed his aching temple. “But as your mate, I’m going to be affected as soon as your hormones start fluxing—my blood runs hotter, my emotions are stronger, my temper gets really touchy. Like, you’re out of the house now, right? And I feel more myself than I have in about two weeks. But during that argument we had? I was kinda nuts.”

“Two weeks … that’s about the time I started checking in and then sitting with Layla. And yeah, you were really out there.”

“Now”—he held up his forefinger to make the point even though she wasn’t with him in person—“this is not to excuse the way I behaved. It’s just context. I can talk to you over the phone like this and keep it together enough so I can explain myself. When you’re with me? Again, not an excuse and not your fault, but I’m wondering if it didn’t play a part in all of that.”

As he leaned to the side and put his hand on his dog, George lifted his head, the golden seeking, sniffing, giving a little lick. Stroking the long waves that grew from that barrel chest, Wrath pulled them out and flattened them on George’s forelegs.

“God, Wrath, when I didn’t wake up with you just now…”

“Horrible. I know. It was the same for me—or maybe even worse. I wasn’t sure whether I’d really fucked things up. Like, no-going-back-fucked-up.”

“You haven’t.” There was a rustling, like she was shifting around on the bed. “And I guess I knew we’ve been kind of working in parallel for the last while. I just hadn’t realized how much time we’ve lost—and other things. Going down to Manhattan, getting away together, really talking. It’s been a while.”

“Honestly, that’s another reason I don’t want a kid. I can barely keep connected with you at this point. I don’t have anything to offer a young.”

“That’s not true. You’d make a wonderful father.”

“In another universe, maybe.”

“So what do we do?” she asked after a moment.

Wrath rubbed his eyes. Damn, he felt hungover as hell. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

They’d each said their piece in the way it should have been done in the first place. Reasonably. Calmly.

Actually, he’d been the problem on that one, not her.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again. “It doesn’t go far enough, on so many levels. But there’s nothing else I can … man, I’m getting really fucking tired of feeling impotent.”

“You are not impotent,” she said dryly. “We’ve well established that.”

All he could do was grunt in response. “When are you coming home?”

“Now. I’ll drive in—I think there’s an extra car here somewhere.”

“Wait until after dark.”

“Wrath, we’ve been through this before. I’m perfectly fine in the sunlight. Besides, it’s nearly four-thirty. There’s not much left.”

As he pictured her out in the bright light of day, his stomach churned—and he thought of Payne calling him out on being a closet chauvinist. Compared to worrying about his shellan, it was so much easier to lay down an I forbid. The problem was what it did to Beth.

He really couldn’t put her in a gilded cage just so he didn’t have to freak out about her safety.

And maybe this pregnancy thing for him was just a deeper shade of that color of cowardice …

“Okay,” he heard himself say. “All right. I love you.”

“I love you, too—Wrath, wait. Before you go.”

“Yeah?” When there was only silence, he frowned. “Beth? What?”

“I want you to do something for me.”

“Anything.”

It was a while before she spoke. And when she was done, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back.

“Wrath? Did you hear what I said?”

Every word. Unfortunately.

And he was on the verge of throwing out a no-way, when he thought about what it was like waking up with her not beside him.

“Okay,” he gritted out. “Yeah, sure. I’ll do that.”

As Saxton stared at himself in his dressing room’s mirror, he pinched the butterfly ends of his bow tie and tugged the knot tighter. When he released the patterned silk, the thing kept its form and its symmetry like a pup well trained.

Stepping back, he smoothed his freshly shorn hair and pulled on his Marc Jacobs cashmere winter coat. He gave one sleeve then the other a tug; then he stretched out his arms so that the cuff links under his suit jacket showed.

They were not the ones with the family’s crest on them.

He didn’t wear those anymore.

No, these were VCA from the forties, sapphire and diamond, platinum setting.

“Did I do the cologne?” He looked at his Gucci and Prada and Chanel bottles, all of which were lined up on a mirrored tray with brass handles. “No comment from you all?”

A quick sniff of one wrist. Yes, that would be Égoïste, and it was fresh.

Turning away, he walked across the heavily veined cream marble floor and out into his white-on-white bedroom. Passing by the bed, he had an instinct to remake the whole thing, but that was nerves talking.

“I’ll just double-check.”

Plumping the pillows and rearranging the throw into the exact position it had been in when he’d gone in to dress, he glanced at the vintage Cartier clock on the bed stand.

There was no putting things off any longer.

And yet he looked around at the white chaise lounge and the white armchairs. Inspected the white mohair throw rugs. Walked over and made sure the Jackson Pollock over the fireplace was perfectly plumb.

This was not his old house, the Victorian that Blay had once spent a day in. This was his other place, a Frank Lloyd Wright single-story that he’d bought the second it had come on the market—because how could he not? There were so few of them left.

Of course, he’d had to do some clandestine remodeling and expansion of the basement, but vampires had long been working their way around humans and their pesky little building inspectors, et al.

Double-checking his Patek Philippe, he wondered why he was making this dreadful pilgrimage. Again.

It was like a horrible Groundhog Day thing. But at least it didn’t happen with great regularity.

As he ascended the stairs, he was dimly aware of fiddling with his bow tie once more. Unlocking the door at the top, he emerged into a sleek forties kitchen with fully functional, modern repros of all those Hello, Lucy appliances.

Every time he walked through the house, with its Jetsons furniture, and complete and utter lack of frills, it felt like he was back in post-WWII America—and it calmed him. He liked the past. Liked the different footprints of the various eras. Enjoyed living in spaces that were as authentic as he could make them.

And it wasn’t like he was going back to that Victorian anytime soon. Not after he and Blay had essentially started things there.

As he went out the front door, just the thought of that male made his chest tighten—and he paused, concentrating on the sensation, the memories that came with it, the change in his blood pressure and thought patterns.

After the two of them had broken up, which had been at his instigation, he’d done a lot of reading on grief. The stages. The process. And it had been funny … oddly enough, the best resource had been a little booklet he’d found on getting over the loss of a pet. It had questions that you were supposed to answer about what the dog had taught you or what you missed most about the cat or what your favorite moments with your cockatoo had been.