“I’m so sorry,” Beth said. “Are you sure there aren’t some things you can put off?”

Wrath sat up, brushing his long hair back. As he stared off ahead, seeing nothing, he wanted to be out fighting.

Not an option. In fact, the only thing on his dance card was going back to Caldie and rechaining himself to that desk. His fate had been sealed many, many years ago, when his mother had gone into her needing, and his father had done what a hellren should … and against all odds, the heir had been conceived, and birthed, and then nurtured long enough so he could see both of them killed by lessers right in front of his still-functional, pretrans eyes.

Crystal clear, the memories were.

It hadn’t been until after his change when the ocular defect had begun to manifest itself. But that weakness was, like the throne, part of his hereditary due. The Scribe Virgin had had a prescribed breeding plan, one that had amplified the most desirable traits in males and females and created a caste-like system of social hierarchy. Good plan, up to a point. As usual with shit like Mother Nature, the law of unintended consequences had decided to slap a bitch—and that was how this King with his “perfect” lineage had ended up blind.

Frustrated, he jacked out of bed—and naturally hit one of those pillows instead of the floor. As his foot flipped out from underneath him and his balance went carnival funhouse, he threw out hands to catch himself, but didn’t know where he was in space—

Wrath slammed into the floor, the pain exploding on his left side, but that wasn’t the worst part. He could hear Beth scrambling through the messed-up sheets to get to him.

“No!” he barked, shoving himself out of her range. “I got it.”

As his voice ricocheted around the open space of the loft, he wanted to put his head through a plate-glass window. “Sorry,” he muttered, yanking his hair back.

“It’s okay.”

“I didn’t mean to bite your head off.”

“You’ve been under a lot of stress. It happens.”

Christ, like they were talking about him going soft during sex?

God, when he’d started in with the King shit, he’d done that internal-resolution bullcrap and made a commitment to rock that crown, be a standup guy, step into his daddy’s boots, blah, blah, blah. But the unfortunate reality was, this was a marathon that was going to last his entire breathing life—and he was flagging after only two years. Three. However long it had been.

What the hell year was it anyway?

Shit knew he’d always had a short fuse, but being locked in the midnight of his blindness with nothing except demands he didn’t jones over was making him volcanic.

No, wait, that was a little more temperate than where he was at—and the underlying issue was his personality. Fighting was his first and best calling, not ruling from a chair.

The father had been a male of the pen; the son was of the sword.

“Wrath?”

“Sorry, what?”

“I asked if you wanted something to eat before we leave.”

He pictured going back to the mansion, doggen everywhere, Brothers in and out, shellans all around … and felt like he couldn’t breathe. He loved them all, but goddamn, there was no privacy there.

“Thanks, but I’ll just catch something at my desk.”

There was a long silence. “All right.”

Wrath stayed on the floor as she got dressed, the soft shifting of her jeans going up those long, luscious legs like a funeral dirge.

“Is it okay to wear your muscle shirt?” she asked. “My blouse is done for.”

“Yeah. Abso.”

Her sadness smelled like autumn rain and felt just as cold in the air to him.

Man, to think there were people out there who wanted to be King, he thought as he got to his feet.

Fucking. Crazy.

If it weren’t for his father’s legacy, and all those vampires who had truly, deeply loved his sire, he would have blown it all off and not looked back. But pulling out? He couldn’t do that. His father had been a King for the history books, a male who had not just commanded authority by virtue of the throne he sat on, but had inspired honest devotion.

Wrath lost the crown? He might as well piss all over his sire’s grave.

When his shellan’s palm slid into his own, he jumped. “Here are your clothes,” she said, putting them into his hands. “And I have your wraparounds.”

With a quick shift, he pulled her against him, holding her to his naked body. She was a tall female, but even so she barely came up to his pecs, and as he closed his eyes, he curled himself around her.

“I want you to know something,” he said into her hair.

As she went still, he tried to pull something worth hearing out of his ass. Some string of words that were even in the same zip code as what was doing in his chest.

“What,” she whispered.

“You are everything to me.”

It was so incredibly, totally not enough—and yet she sighed and melted into him like that was all she’d wanted to hear. And a bag of chips.

Sometimes you got lucky.

And as he continued to hold her, he knew he’d do well to remember that. As long as he had this female by his side?

He could get through anything.

CALDWELL, NEW YORK

“Long live the King.”

As Abalone, son of Abalone, spoke the words, he tried to gauge the response of the three males who had knocked upon his door, marched into his home and were standing in his library, staring at him as if measuring him for a shroud.

Actually, no. He tracked only one expression—that of the disfigured warrior who stood far behind the others, lounging against the silk wallpaper, combat boots solidly on the Persian carpet.

The male’s eyes were hidden beneath the overhang of a heavy brow, the irises dark enough so there was no telling what color they were, blue or brown or green. His body was enormous, and even at rest, it was a bald-faced threat, a grenade with a slippery pin. And his response to what had been said?

No change in his features, that harelip nothing but a slash, the frown the same. No emotion shown.

But that dagger hand flexed wide-open and then curled into a fist.

Clearly, the aristocrat Ichan and the lawyer Tyhm, who had brought this fighter over, had lied. This was not a “conversation about the future”—no, something like that would suggest that Abalone had a choice in the matter.

This was a warning shot across his bloodline’s bow, an all-aboard call to which there was but one answer.

And yet, even still, the words had come out of his mouth as they had, and he could not change them.

“Are you certain of your reply?” Ichan asked with an arched brow.

Ichan was typical of his breeding and financial net worth, refined to the point of femininity in spite of his gender, dressed in a coordinated suit and tie with every hair in place. Beside him, Tyhm, the solicitor, was the same only even thinner, as if his considerable mental prowess sapped his caloric intake.

And both of them, as well as the warrior, were prepared to wait for the answer they’d been given to change.

Abalone’s eyes went to an ancient scroll that had been framed and mounted on the wall by the double doors. He couldn’t read the small Old Language characters from across the room, but there was no need to go in for a close-up. He knew each one by heart.

“I was unaware that there was a question posed of me,” Abalone said.

Ichan smiled falsely and strolled around, fingering a sterling silver bowl of red apples, the collection of Cartier desk clocks on a side table, the bronze bust of Napoleon on the desk by the windowed alcove.

“We are, of course, interested in your position.” The aristocrat stopped in front of a pen-and-ink drawing on a stand. “This is your daughter, I believe?”

Abalone’s chest got tight.