Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Oh, so we’re going to do this, huh. Fucking fine.
L.W. jerked forward on his hips. “I know you weren’t supposed to go out that night. But you did, and you fucked everybody by making the choice that suited you.”
The laughter was low and nasty. “Just like what you did to Shuli last night. Guess that biology runs real deep, doesn’t it.”
As L.W. locked his own set of teeth, he deliberately unhinged his chin.
“I’m out of here.” He wheeled around. “I’ve said what I need to say—”
“If this happens again, I’m taking you off rotation. You’re out in the field with Shuli or you can stay the fuck home.”
L.W. glared over his shoulder. “I’m not a teenager you can ground. And I’m not on your rotation anymore—I quit.”
That expression got so dark it had its own gravitational pull. “Why are you so fucking determined to fight everything.”
“There’s a war going on out there. It’s what we all need to do.”
“Not if you’re fighting the wrong people.”
L.W. went over to the door, and when he hit the knob, the thing refused to turn. “Let me out.”
“You’re breaking your mahmen’s heart, you know that.”
He looked back across the Audience Room. “Naw, that was your job. All I had to do was watch her suffer and hate you for it for all these years.”
He tried the knob again.
Before he could holler something about broken hinges and flying wood, his father growled, “I might have hurt her by accident, but you’re doing it on purpose now. Be as angry with me as you want. She doesn’t deserve it, though. She never did.”
L.W. yanked at the knob. Then he lowered his head and told himself to shut his fucking mouth—
“I grew up in the cold shadow of your throne. There was no time for anybody or anything else, other than worshipping the ghost of you.”
“Don’t blame her for what she had to do—and she was keeping the power structure in place for you. She never knew I was coming back. Everything was done to give you the chance to lead—”
“I didn’t ask for that fucking favor.” He pulled at the door again and then sent another glare back toward the fireplace and the armchairs. “And bullshit she did it for me. All that crap about ruling was the only way to be close to you. She sacrificed all that time and energy for herself and the memory of her dead fucking hellren, her one true love. It had nothing to do with me. None of it.”
“Yes, it did—”
“You weren’t here! So quit with the recap of all the years you were gone.” He jabbed a finger at the center of his own chest. “I was here, I lived through it, all the Brothers dragging themselves around, my mahmen weeping herself to sleep every day—for thirty fucking years it was a goddamn wake around here. And now you’re back, and everybody’s soooo happy. Well, I’m not, because I don’t need you in my life and I remember all too clearly what everybody seems to have forgotten. You made a decision and you fucked us all. The fact that you’ve returned doesn’t change that math.”
He thought of the moment he’d seen his father actually standing in the study at the mansion. The great male, back from the dead.
There had been a spontaneous embrace between them. But it had been the lost and scared child who’d hugged the hero he’d needed to believe his father had been.
Not the grown-ass adult who knew better.
“Now, I’m telling you,” he snapped. “If you don’t order them to open this fucking door, I’m going to break it down.”
“So much hate in you,” Wrath said roughly. “And you’re missing the point.”
“Really? Tell me what I got wrong, Dad.”
“I didn’t set that bomb, son. Lash did.”
L.W. finally felt the door give way. As he stepped out, he tossed over his shoulder, “Don’t worry. I hate him, too.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Of course it was her goddamned phone.
Laying under Dev, on the verge of the kind of pleasure that made you believe in magic, Lyric squeezed her eyes shut in frustration. But then she remembered all the reasons someone could be trying to call her.
And one in particular.
“I think it’s me,” she mumbled as she scooted out from under the human man who hovered over her with every promise of multiple orgasms that she’d ever heard about.
Her legs were like rubber, and her balance was wonky on the way over to her parka, and she couldn’t decide whether the interruption was a good thing or not. Pro? It slowed things down from warp speed to what might be more reasonable. Con? Well, duh. It slowed things down.
At the dresser, she fumbled through her pockets—how were there so many?—and then she dropped the phone, but caught the slippery weight just before it hit the floor. As she turned the cell over, she frowned.