Page 19 of Lover Forbidden (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #23)

Déjà vu.

That’s what Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath, was thinking as he materialized in the snow.

With his blindness, he shouldn’t have been able to see anything, and technically, he didn’t.

But from memory, he placed the Pit to his left, and the mansion up ahead of him, the latter being on the far side of the winterized fountain directly in front of him.

When he started forward, with his shitkickers punching through the snow, the wind’s whistles orientated him, the subtle shifts in cadence and tone confirming everything he already knew to be true about the property’s layout.

So complete was the composite created from what his brain recalled and what his senses provided, that he was able to accurately anticipate the first step of the grand entrance’s unshoveled stone stairs.

And what do you know.

Someone with big feet had already paved the way through the new drifts.

When he got to the entry, he thought of when he’d been here just the week or so before, returned from where Rahvyn had stashed him in time… with an old friend ready to meet him and let him in.

This time, he had the copper key, thanks to Fritz.

Letting himself in, Wrath stepped through into the frosty vestibule, and then did the same duty with the heavy weight of the inner door.

The foyer was not much warmer than the cold night.

His boots carried him across the mosaic design on the floor, and his brain supplied the delicate details of the apple tree in full bloom. Thanks to the echo of his treads, he once again knew where the first step was. Up, up, up… he went, and with each footfall, relief flooded through his veins.

He could smell the crackling fire. And the fresh blood of his only son.

Again.

At the top, he stopped and flared his nostrils. Given the warmth that spilled out to him, he knew the double doors were open, and when there was no greeting, not even a gruff one, he satisfied himself that at least there was the soft, rhythmic snoring of someone in a deep, healing sleep.

Wrath took out his phone, and spoke at it quietly: “Text, red alert group. Start. L.W. is found. Repeat, I have found him and he is safe at the mansion. Minor injuries only. End.”

He didn’t call his shellan yet. She’d get the message, but would want so much more information.

Which he wasn’t sure he’d be able to give her.

Walking forward in a straight line, he entered the study, and just as he had with the exterior approach, he pulled from his memory the contours of the pale blue room with its absurdly delicate French furniture and the antique rug and the glow from the fireplace…

and there was something else he could visualize.

The fighter sprawled on the floor, his son.

Back when Wrath had been restocked onto the proverbial shelf of life and shown up here, the Scribe Virgin had granted him a brief return of sight so he could see L.W.

The gift had been a surprise because the mahmen of the race was not known for her warm-and-fuzzies.

But maybe as a parent herself, she’d been aware of how much it would mean for him to see in maturity that which he had known only as an infant young.

Not great news, as it turned out—and not because his offspring was weak or shifty.

Wrath didn’t know what he’d expected, but the harsh, tortured reality of the male had saddened him—and he wasn’t feeling any better about where things were after how many nights now? He was also no closer to figuring out how to reach his son.

At least he knew where he was, though.

Even if it was just physically.

Wake him up , he told himself. Talk to him.

Yeah, and say what? L.W. had proven too apt at the whole apple-falling-from-the-tree bullshit.

Hell, the kid had landed right at the foot of Wrath’s goddamn trunk, a brooding, aggressive fighter who stalked through spaces, rarely talked, and had moved out to Shuli’s like a storm heading for new landscapes to ransack—

A creak down below had Wrath wheeling around and getting a gun out at the same time.

The mhis still surrounded the mountaintop, the buffering making it virtually impossible for anyone to get here if they didn’t know where the mansion was, but fate was a fucker, and he didn’t need to learn that lesson a second time.

Except then… he caught the scent.

As he lowered his weapon, he released his breath. “ Leelan .”

In the resonant quiet, he heard subdued movement in the foyer, his Queen coming across the hard stone floor and then ascending the plush carpeting.

“He’s here?” she whispered as she closed in on him.

“Yeah.” He held his hand out for her. “Sound asleep.”

“I figured this was where you both were.”

Beth halted beside him and left his palm dangling in the breeze, no doubt because she was rightfully focused on their son, and reassuring herself he was still in one piece.

It was impossible not to rage at the many nights she must have had to do this alone, worrying over the kid with no hellren by her side.

Maybe she was thinking of that, too, the scent of her sadness an acrid sting in the nose.

Cursing everything they had lost, he went to put his arm around her—

She stepped out of range. “I really want to call Doc Jane or Manny, but it only makes him mad when I do that.”

Frowning, Wrath turned toward her tense voice. “Are you okay?”

“I guess we have to leave him here?” He had the sense she was looking around, and then came the pacing. “I mean, I know Vishous is monitoring the property and the mhis is still up, but—”

Wrath reached out into thin air, intent on finding her shoulder—but he got the position wrong, his hand bumping into her biceps. “What’s going on.”

When she didn’t answer, he got his phone front and center. “We can call Jane and Manny right now, if it’ll make you feel better? I don’t care if it pisses him off.” Still silence. “Fine, I’ll call, right now—”

“You want to know what would make me feel better? You really want to know?”

“Fuck, yeah. Anything, what do you need me to do?”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said in a low, utterly clear voice. “That would be great.”

Grinding his molars, Wrath went over to the study’s double doors and silently closed them. “Listen, leelan —”

“Don’t leave our home, and tell me you’re going to the Audience House, like it’s business as usual. Don’t feed me a line of bullshit like that, when you’re really going out into the field.”

Behind his wraparounds, Wrath closed his eyes. “Let’s go downstairs.”

“Why? So our son doesn’t hear? He’s passed out on the floor in front of the fire because exhaustion and injury have done what nothing else can. I’ve seen this before. Nothing short of a bomb going off will wake him.”

“Nice choice of words,” he shot back. “And I did not go out to fight—”

“Yes, you did.”

“I went to a private home—”

“Oh, you mean like the one that exploded when you opened a door thirty years ago? Like that? By all means, talk to me some more about where you went tonight, it’s totally not digging you into an even deeper hole.”

As his temper curled in his gut, he told himself to calm the fuck down. “It’s not what you think, not at all—”

“Well, I guess the details are a need-to-know kind of thing, so yes, please, keep them to yourself. And no, none of your boys told me—they didn’t have to.

I went to the Audience House to bring you something, and none of you were there.

Not home, not there—so I checked in at the training center.

Not there, either, and I couldn’t find Tohr, who never leaves your side. Where were you all?”

Wrath dragged a hand through his hair and felt like ripping the shit off his goddamn head. “I had to go to—”

“I don’t care. But I will tell you that you should do yourself a favor—don’t pull that again with me.” She muttered a couple of choice words under her breath. “I’m going home now, and you can do whatever you want. God knows, that’s the way you operate—”

He caught her arm. “I did not go out to fight. That was our agreement.”

“You think you’re going to skate on a technicality? Really? The field is everywhere in Caldwell.”

“I was protected—”

“You still lied to me. You promised me you were not going to endanger your—”

“There’s a plot against my life, Beth.” He jacked over his hips. “I had to go to the asshole’s house because we can’t find him, and my guard was with me. You remember them, the ones with the fucking black daggers?”

“You think it’s going to help me that you went to a traitor’s own home ?” Beth took her arm away and laughed harshly. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? And um, no , you don’t get to throw this back on me. You made the choice when you left our home tonight, and I’m allowed to feel angry.”

Tamping down on his volume, he gritted out, “Because I went, because of me, we now have a lead on what was a very cold trail.”

“Hope it was worth it.”

Goddamn it, he could practically see her taking one last, lingering look at the study doors… before she started back down the stairs at a fast clip, her arms wrapped around her torso, her dark hair streaming behind her.

“ Fuck .”

His feet started moving before he gave them the command, and he grabbed on to the balustrade so he could go quicker.

At the bottom, he tripped as the marble floor arrived sooner than he’d anticipated—then again, his concentration was on his shellan , not the information his remaining senses were feeding him.

Rushing forward, he got to the vestibule just as the door was closing behind her.

As Wrath broke out into the night, the wind caught his waist-length hair and yanked his head to the side. “Beth!”

But she’d already dematerialized away from him.

“ Fuck ,” he shouted into the wind.

Lowering his head, he felt his rage swell. But it wasn’t at his mate. It was at the fucking war, and the fucking glymera , and the fucking throne.

He’d come back after thirty fucking years to exactly the kind of mess he’d left.

The only difference being that everyone he’d loved had suffered for three decades—and his son had grown up to be as disaffected and angry as he himself had been at his worst.

Same shit, new night.

Fuck.