Lover Avenged

SIXTY-TWO

ONE MONTH LATER…

Ehlena woke up to the sound of china on china and the scent of Earl Grey tea. As her eyes opened, she saw a uniformed doggen struggling under the weight of a massive silver tray. On it was a fresh bagel capped by a crystal dome, a pot of strawberry jam, a scoop of cream cheese on a tiny porcelain plate, and, her favorite part, a bud vase.

Every night it was a different flower. This evening it was a sprig of holly.

“Oh, Sashla, you really don’t have to do this.” Ehlena sat up, pushing back sheets that were so fine and well made they were smoother than summer air against the skin. “It’s lovely of you, but honestly…”

The maid bowed and offered a shy smile. “Madam should wake up to a proper repast.”

Ehlena lifted her arms as a stand was put over her legs and the tray set on top of it. As she stared down at the lovingly polished silver and the carefully prepared food, her overriding thought was that her father had just gotten the same, served to him by a butler doggen by the name of Eran.

She stroked the fine curling base of the knife. “You are good to us. All of you. You’ve made us so welcome in this grand house, and we thank you very much.”

When she looked up, there were tears in the doggen’s eyes, and the maid hastily patted them away with a handkerchief. “Madam…you and your father have transformed this house. We are of great joy that you are our masters. Everything…is different now that you are here.”

It was as far as the maid would go, but given how she and all the other staff had flinched for the first two weeks, Ehlena gathered that Montrag had not been the easiest head of household.

Ehlena reached over and gave the female’s hand a squeeze. “I’m glad it’s worked out for all of us.”

As the maid turned away to resume her duties, she seemed flustered, but happy. At the door, she paused. “Oh, and Madam Lusie’s things arrived. We’ve settled her in the guest suite next to your father. Also, the locksmith is coming in a half hour, as you requested.”

“Perfect on both accounts, thank you.”

While the door was shut quietly and the doggen went off humming a tune from the Old Country, Ehlena took the dome off her plate and knifed up some cream cheese. Lusie had agreed to move in with them and function as a nurse and personal assistant to Ehlena’s father-which was fantastic. Overall, he’d taken to the new estate with relative ease, his demeanor and mental stability better than they had been for years, but the close supervision did much to ease Ehlena’s lingering worry.

Being careful with him remained a priority.

Here in the mansion, for example, he didn’t require tinfoil over the windows. Instead, he preferred to look out at the gardens that were beautiful even after having been put to bed for the winter, and in retrospect, she wondered if part of shutting out the world hadn’t been because of where they’d been living. He was also much more relaxed and at peace, working steadily in the other guest bedroom next to his. He still heard the voices, though, and preferred order to mess of any kind, and he needed the medication. But this was heaven compared to what the last couple years had been like.

As Ehlena ate, she looked around the bedroom she’d chosen and was reminded of her parents’ former manse. The curtains were the same kind that had hung back in her family’s house, huge swathes of peach and cream and red falling from ruched headers with fringe. The walls were likewise done in luxury, the silk paper showing a pattern of roses that matched perfectly with the curtains, as well as coordinating with the needlepoint rug on the floor.

Ehlena, too, was at home in the surroundings, and yet utterly ungrounded-and not just because her life seemed like a sailboat that had capsized in cold water, only to abruptly right itself in the tropics.

Rehvenge was with her. Relentlessly.

Her last thought before she slept and her first upon waking was that he was alive. And she dreamed about him, seeing him with his arms at his sides and his head hanging down, silhouetted against a shimmering black background. It was a total contradiction, in a way, the belief that he was alive measured against that image of him-which seemed to suggest he was dead.

It was like being haunted by a ghost.

Make that tortured.

With frustration, she put the tray aside, got up, and showered. The clothes she changed into were nothing fancy, just the same ones she’d gotten from Target and on sale from Macy’s online before everything had changed. The shoes…were the Keds Rehv had held in his hand.

But she refused to think about that.

The thing was, it didn’t seem right to run out and spend a lot of money on anything. None of this felt like hers, not the house or the staff or the cars or all the zeroes in her checking account. She was still convinced Saxton was going to show up at nightfall with an oh-my-bad-all-this-should-have-gone-to-someone-else.

What a whoopsie that would be.

Ehlena took the silver tray and headed out to check on her father, who was down at the end of the wing. When she got to his door, she knocked with the tip of her sneaker.

“Father?”

“Do come in, daughter mine!”

She put the tray down on a mahogany table and opened the way into the room he used as his study. His old desk had been brought over from the rental bed, which had been placed next door, and her father was sitting down to his work as he always had, papers everywhere.

“How fare thee?” she asked, going over to kiss his cheek.

“I am well, very well indeed. The doggen has just brought my juice and my repast.” His elegant, bony hand swept over a silver tray that matched the one she’d been brought. “I adore the new doggen, don’t you?”

“Yes, Father, I-”

“Ah, Lusie, dearest!”

As her father rose to his feet and smoothed his velvet smoking jacket, Ehlena glanced over her shoulder. Lusie came in dressed in a dove gray sheath and a knobby hand-knitted sweater. She had Birkenstocks on her feet and thick, bunched-up socks that had likely been homemade as well. Her long, wavy hair was back from her face, pinned in a sensible clip at the base of her neck.

Unlike everything that had changed around them, she was still the same. Lovely and…cozy.

“I’ve brought the crossword.” She held up a New York Times that was folded in quarters, as well as a pencil. “I need help.”

“And, indeed, I am at your disposal, as always.” Ehlena’s father came around and gallantly angled a chair for Lusie. “Ease yourself herein and we shall see how many boxes we may fill.”

Lusie smiled at Ehlena as she sat down. “I couldn’t do them without him.”

Ehlena’s eyes narrowed on the female’s faint blush and then shifted over to her father’s face. Which was showing a distinct glow.

“I’ll leave you two to your puzzle,” she said with a smile.

As she left, two good-byes were given to her, and she couldn’t help but think the stereo effect sounded very nice to the ear.

Downstairs in the grand foyer, she went left into the formal dining room, and paused to admire all the crystal and china that were set out on display-as well as the gleaming candelabra.

There were no candles topping those graceful silver arms, though.

No candles in the house. No matches or lighters either. And before they had moved in, Ehlena had had the doggen replace the gas-powered restaurant range with one that ran on electricity. Likewise, the two televisions in the family part of the house had been given to the staff, and the security monitors had been moved from an open desk in the butler’s pantry to a closed room with a locked door.

There was no reason to tempt fate. Especially given that any kind of electronic screen, including those on cell phones and calculators, still made her father nervous.

The first night that they had come to stay at the mansion, she had taken pains to walk her father all around and show him the security cameras and the sensors and the beams not just in the house, but on the grounds. As she wasn’t sure how he would handle the change in address or all the safety measures, she’d given him the tour right after he’d had his medications. Fortunately, he’d viewed the better accommodations as a return to normalcy, and had loved the idea that there was a system looking out all over the estate.

Maybe that was another reason he didn’t feel the need to have the windows covered up. He felt as if he were being watched over in a good way now.

Pushing through the flap door, Ehlena went into the pantry and out to the kitchen. After chatting with the butler who had started cooking Last Meal, and complimenting one of the maids on how beautifully she’d polished the handrail of the big staircase, Ehlena headed for the study that was on the other side of the house.

The trip was a long one, through many lovely rooms, and as she went she trailed a gentle hand over the antiques and the hand-carved jambs and the silk-covered furniture. This lovely house was going to make her father’s life so much easier, and as a result, she was going to have a lot more time and mental energy to focus on herself.

She didn’t want it. The last thing she needed was empty hours with nothing but the crap in her head to keep her company. And even if she were in the running to win Miss Well-Adjusted, she wanted to be productive. She might not need the money to keep a roof over what was left of her family, but she’d always worked, and she’d loved the purpose and heart of what she’d been doing at the clinic.

Except she’d burned that bridge and then some.

Like the other thirty or so rooms in the mansion, the study was decorated in the manner of European royalty, with subtle damask patterns on the walls and sofas, plenty of tassels on the drapes, and lots of deep, glowing paintings that were like windows open to other, even more perfect worlds. There was one thing off the mark though. The floor was bare, the couches and the antique desk and every table and chair sitting directly on the polished wooden floor, the center of which was slightly darker than the edges, as if it had once been covered up.

When she’d asked the doggen, they had explained that the carpet had suffered a stain that was not removable, and thus a new rug had been ordered from the household’s antiques dealer in Manhattan. They didn’t go into any further detail about whatever had happened, but given how worried they all had been about their jobs, she could just imagine what Montrag would have done if there had been any kind of deficiency in performance, no matter how reasonable. One spilled tea tray? No doubt they’d had a big problem.

Ehlena went around and sat behind the desk. On the leather blotter, there was the day’s Caldwell Courier Journal, a phone and a nice-looking French lamp as well as a lovely crystal statue of a bird in flight. Her old computer, which she’d tried to give back to the clinic before she and her father had come to the house, fit perfectly in the big flat drawer under the top-kept there always just in case he came in.

She supposed she could afford a new laptop, but again, she wasn’t going to buy another one. As with her clothes, what she had worked just fine, and she was used to it.

Plus, maybe she was grounded a little by the familiar. And, man, she needed that.

Putting her elbows on the desk, she looked across the room at the spot on the wall where a spectacular seascape should have lain flat. The painting was angled out into the room, however, and the face of the safe that was exposed was like a plain female who’d been hiding behind a glamorous ball mask.

“Madam, the locksmith is here?”

“Please send him in.”

Ehlena got to her feet, and went over to the safe to touch its smooth, matte panel and its black-and-silver dial. She’d found the thing only because she’d been so taken by the depiction of the sun setting over the ocean that she’d put her hand on the frame on impulse. When the whole picture popped forward, she’d been horrified that she’d hurt the mounting in some way, except then she’d looked behind the frame…and what do you know.

“Madam? This is Roff, son of Rossf.”

Ehlena smiled and walked over to a male who was dressed in black coveralls and carrying a black tool case. As she went to put her hand out, he took off his cap and bowed low, as if she were someone special. Which was beyond strange. After years of being just a civilian, the formality made her uncomfortable, but she was learning that she had to let others honor the social etiquette. Asking them not to, whether they were doggen or workmen or advisers, just made things worse.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

“It is a pleasure to be of service.” He looked over at the safe. “This is the one?”

“Yes, I don’t have the combination to it.” They headed for the thing. “I was hoping there was some way you could get into it?”

The wince he tried to hide was not encouraging. “Well, madam, I know this kind of safe, and it’s not going to be easy. I’d have to bring in an industrial drill to get through the pins and release the door, and it would be noisy. Also, when I’ve finished the safe would be ruined. I mean no disrespect, but is there no way of retrieving the combination?”

“I wouldn’t know where to look for it.” She glanced around at the shelves of books and then over to the desk. “We just moved in, and there were no instructions.”

The male followed her lead and ran his eyes around the room. “Usually owners leave such a thing in a hidden place. If you could only find it, I could show you how to reset the combination so that you could reuse the safe. As I said, if I have to drill in, it will have to be replaced.”

“Well, I’ve been through the desk when I was exploring after we first came here.”

“Did you find any hidden compartments in it?”

“Er…no. But I was just going through random papers and trying to make some space for my things.”

The male nodded across at the piece of furniture. “In a lot of desks like that, you’ll find at least one drawer with a false bottom or back that hides a small place. I wouldn’t want to presume, but I could try to help you find one? Also, the moldings in a room like this might conceal spaces as well.”

“I’d love another set of eyes on this, thanks.” Ehlena went over and, one by one, removed the drawers of the desk, laying them side by side on the floor. As she went along, the male took out a penlight and looked into the holes that were revealed.

She hesitated when she got to the big drawer on the bottom left, not wanting to see what she’d stored there. But it wasn’t as though the locksmith could see through the damn thing.

Muttering a quick curse, she pulled on the brass handle and did not look at all the sections she’d kept from the Caldwell Courier Journal, each folded in on itself to hide the articles she’d read and saved even though she didn’t want to read them yet again.

She put that drawer as far away as she could. “Well, that’s the last one.”

With the male’s head wedged under the desk, his voice echoed. “I believe there’s a…I need my tape measure from my tool-”

“Here, I’ll get it.”

When she passed the thing over, he seemed astonished that she was helping. “Thank you, madam.”

She knelt down beside him as he ducked backed under. “Is something off?”

“There appears to be…Yes, this is more shallow than the others. Let me just…” There was a squeak and the male’s arm jerked. “Got it.”

As he sat up, he had a rough-cut box in his workworn hands. “I believe the lid flips open, but I’ll let you do it.”

“Wow, I feel like Indiana Jones, just without the bullwhip.” Ehlena lifted the top panel off and…“Well, no combination. Just a key.” She took the slip of steel out, looked it over, then replaced it. “Might as well leave it where we found it.”

“Let me show you how to put the hidden drawer back.”

The male left twenty minutes later, after the two of them had knocked on all the walls and shelving and molding in the room and found nothing. Ehlena figured she’d search around one last time, and if she still ended up empty-handed, she’d have him come back with his big guns to bust the safe open.

Returning to the desk, she put the drawers into their slots, pausing when she got to the one that held all the newspaper articles.

Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t have her father to worry about. Maybe it was the fact that she had some free time.

More likely, she was just having a weak moment in fighting back the need to know.

Ehlena took all the papers out, opening the folds and spreading them across the desk. All of the articles were about Rehvenge and the ZeroSum bombing, and no doubt when she cracked today’s edition, she would find another to add to the collection. The reporters were fascinated by the story, and there had been a ton of coverage on it in the last month-not just in print, but on the evening news as well.

No suspects. No arrests. Skeleton of a male found in the rubble of the club. Other businesses he’d owned now run by his associates. Drug trade in Caldwell brought to a halt. No more murders of dealers.

Ehlena picked up an article off the top. It wasn’t among the more recent ones, but she’d looked at it so much, she’d smudged the newsprint. Next to the text was a blurry picture of Rehvenge, snapped by an undercover police officer two years ago. Rehvenge’s face was in shadow, but the sable coat and the cane and a Bentley were all clear.

The past four weeks had distilled her memories of Rehvenge, from the times they’d been together to the way things had ended with that trip she’d taken to ZeroSum. Instead of time dissolving the images in her head, what she remembered was becoming even clearer, like whiskey strengthening over time. And it was strange. Oddly enough, of all the things that had been said, good and bad, what came back to her most often was something that female security guard had barked at her as Ehlena had been on her way out of the club.

…that male has put himself in a rat-hole situation for me, his mother, and his sister. And you think you’re too good for him? Nice. Where the hell do you come from that’s so perfect?

His mother. His sister. Herself.

As the words banged around her head yet again, Ehlena let her gaze wander around the study until it reached the door. The house was quiet, her father busy with Lusie and the crossword puzzle, the staff working happily.

For the first time in a month, she was by herself.

All things considered, she should take a hot bath and cozy up to a good book…but instead, she took her laptop out, cracked the screen open, and fired the thing up. She had the sense that if she followed through with what she wanted to do, she was going to end up going down into a deep, dark hole.

But she couldn’t help herself.

She’d saved the clinical record searches she’d done on Rehv and his mother, and as both of them had been declared dead, the documents were technically part of public record-so she felt less as if she were invading their privacy as she called both files up.

She studied his mother’s records first, seeing some familiar things from having previously scanned it, when she’d been curious about the female who had birthed him. Now, though, she took her time, searching for something specific. Although God knew what it was.

The recent notes that had been entered were nothing remarkable, just Havers’s comments on the female’s yearly checkups or her treatment for the occasional virus. Scrolling through page after page, she began to wonder why she was wasting time-until she got to a knee operation that had been performed on Madalina five years ago. In the pre-op notes, Havers had mentioned something about the degradation in the joint being a result of chronic-impact injury.

Chronic impact? On a female of worth from the glymera? That sounded more like what you’d get on a football player, for chrissakes, not Rehvenge’s high-bred chatelaine mother.

Made no sense.

Ehlena went back farther and farther through more nothing-specials…and then starting twenty-three years from the present she started to see the entries. One after the other. Broken bones. Bruises. Concussions.

If Ehlena didn’t know better…she’d swear it was domestic violence.

Each time, Rehv was the one who brought his mother in. Brought her in and stayed with her.

Ehlena went back to the last of the entries that seemed to indicate a female who was being abused by her hellren. Madalina had been accompanied by her daughter, Bella. Not Rehv.

Ehlena stared at the date as if some sudden breakthrough were about to come from the line of numbers. When she was still fixated five minutes later, she felt like shadows of her father’s illness were once again moving across the floors and walls of her mind. Why the hell was she obsessing over this?

And yet even with that thought, she followed an impulse that would only make her obsession worse. She cracked open the search on Rehv.

Back, back, back through the entries…He’d started needing dopamine right around the time his mother had stopped coming in injured.

Maybe it was just a coincidence.

Feeling half-crazy, Ehlena shifted over to the Internet and went into the race’s public-records database. Typing in Madalina’s name, she found the registry of the female’s passing, then hopped over to that of her hellren, Rempoon-

Ehlena leaned forward in the chair, her breath leaving on a hiss. Not willing to believe it, she went back to the record on Madalina.

Her hellren had died on the night of the last time she’d come in hurt to the clinic.

With a sense that she was on the verge of answers, Ehlena considered the matching dates in light of what the female security guard had said about Rehvenge. What if he’d killed the male to protect his mother? What if that security guard knew that? What if…

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the picture of Rehvenge from the CCJ, his face in shadow, his fancy car and his pimp cane so very obvious.

With a curse, she slapped the laptop shut, put it back in the drawer, and got to her feet. She might not be able to control her subconscious, but she could take charge of her waking hours and not encourage this craziness.

Instead of driving herself more nuts, she was going to go up to the master bedroom Montrag had slept in and poke around trying to find the combination to the safe. Later, she would have Last Meal with her father and Lusie.

And then she needed to figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

“‘…suggests that the recent killings of area drug dealers might have come to an end with the likely death of club owner and suspected drug kingpin Richard Reynolds.’” There was a rustle as Beth put the CCJ on the desk. “That’s the end of the article.”

Wrath shifted his legs around to more comfortably support his queen’s weight in his lap. He’d been to see Payne about two hours ago, and his body was beat to shit, which felt really nice.

“Thanks for reading it to me.”

“My pleasure. Now let me go tend the fire for a second. We’ve got a log that’s about to roll out onto the carpet.” Beth kissed him and stood up, the pansy chair creaking with relief. As she went across the study toward the fireplace, the grandfather clock started to chime.

“Oh, this is good,” Beth said. “Listen, Mary should be coming in a minute. She’s bringing you something.”

Wrath nodded and reached forward, running his fingertips across the desk’s top until he got to the glass of red wine he’d been drinking. By its weight, he knew that he’d almost finished it, and given his mood, he was going to want more. The shit about Rehv had been bothering him. Badly.

After he polished off his Bordeaux, he put the glass down and rubbed his eyes under the wraparounds he still wore. It might be weird to keep the sunglasses on, but whatever-he didn’t like the idea that other people could look at his unfocused pupils and he couldn’t see them staring at him.

“Wrath?” Beth came over to his side, and he could tell by her tense tone that she was trying to keep the fear out of her voice. “Are you all right? Does your head hurt?”

“No.” Wrath tugged his queen back into his lap, the little chair creaking once again, its spindly legs wobbling. “I’m okay.”

Her hands brushed his hair from his face. “You don’t seem that way.”

“I just…” He found one of her hands and took it into his own. “Shit, I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

He frowned hard and tight. “It’s not about me. At least, not really.”

There was a long pause, and then they both spoke at once:

“What is it?”

“How’s Bella?”

Beth cleared her throat as if she were surprised by his question. “Bella’s…doing the best she can. We don’t leave her alone much, and it’s good that Zsadist has taken some time off. It’s just so hard that she lost both of them within days of each other. I mean her mother and her brother…”

“That shit about Rehv was a lie.”

“I don’t understand.”

He reached around for the Caldwell Courier Journal she’d been reading him, and tapped the article she’d just finished. “I find it hard to believe that someone blew his ass up. Rehv was no dummy, and those Moors who guarded him? That head of security? No fucking way they’d let some cocksucker with a bomb anywhere near that club. Plus, Rhage said that he and V went to the Iron Mask the other night to drag John home, and the three of them are working there-iAm, Trez, and Xhex are still together. Usually people scatter after tragedy. Except that bunch is right where they always were, like they’re waiting for him to come back.”

“But there was a skeleton in the ruins, wasn’t there?”

“Could be anyone’s. Sure, it was male, but what else do the police know? Nothing. If I wanted to disappear from the human world-hell, even the vampire one-I’d plant a body and blow up my building.” He shook his head, thinking of Rehv lying in his bed up at the Great Camp, so fucking ill…and yet well enough to have his assassin take care of the guy who’d wanted to kill Wrath. “Man, that SOB was there for me. He had every chance in the world to fuck me when Montrag met with him. I owe him.”

“Wait…why in the world would he fake his own death? He loved Bella and her young so much. Hell, he practically raised his sister, and I can’t believe he would ever hurt her like that. Plus, where would he go?”

The colony, Wrath thought.

Wrath wanted to tell his queen everything that was on his mind, but he hesitated, because he’d been flirting with a decision that was going to complicate the shit out of things. Bottom line was, that e-mail about Rehv? Wrath’s intuition was telling him the guy had lied about it. It was just too coincidental that the thing came in and the next night Rehv “dies.” It had to have been legit. But with Montrag dead, who could have-

There was a sharp crack and a free fall and a hard-ass landing.

As Beth shrieked, Wrath cursed. “What the fuck?”

He patted around, feeling splinters of old, delicate French wood all around them.

“Are you okay, leelan?” he said sharply.

Beth laughed and got up to her feet. “Oh, my God…we broke the chair.”

“Pulverized it might be more accurate-”

The knock on the door had Wrath struggling up to his feet with grunts of pain. Which he was getting used to. Payne always went for the shins, and his left leg was killing him. But it wasn’t like he didn’t return the favor. After this last session, it was quite possible that she was nursing a concussion.

“Come in,” he called out.

The instant the door opened, he knew who it was…and that she was not alone.

“Who is with you, Mary?” he demanded, reaching for the knife he wore on his hip. The scent wasn’t human…but it wasn’t a vampire.

There was a subtle clinking and a long, lovely sigh from his shellan, as if she were looking at something that pleased her greatly.

“This is George,” Mary said. “Please put your weapon away. He won’t hurt you.”

Wrath kept his dagger in the palm of his hand and flared his nostrils. The scent was…“Is that a dog?”

“Yes. He’s trained to assist the blind.”

Wrath recoiled slightly at the b-word, still struggling to accept that classification as pertaining to him.

“I would like to bring him over to you,” Mary said in that level voice of hers. “But not until you put the weapon away.”

Beth stayed silent, and Mary stayed back, which was smart of them. His neurons were firing in all kinds of directions, thoughts racing everywhere. The past month had had a lot of triumphs and a lot of shitty losses: Back when he’d returned from his first meeting with Payne, he’d known it was going to be a tough road ahead, but it had been longer and steeper than he’d thought.

The two biggest problems were that he hated having to rely so much on Beth and his brothers, and he found relearning simple things was curiously exhausting. Like…for fuck’s sake, making toast for himself was now a production. He’d tried it again yesterday and succeeded in breaking the glass dish the butter was kept on. Which naturally had taken him forever to clean up.

Still, the idea of using a dog to get around was…too much.

Mary’s voice eased across the room with the vocal equivalent of an ambling, nonthreatening gait. “Fritz has been trained to handle the dog, and together he and I are prepared to work with you and George. There’s a two-week trial period, after which, if you don’t like it or it isn’t working, we can return the animal. There is no obligation here, Wrath.”

He was about to tell them to take the dog away when he heard a soft whine and more of that jingle.

“No, George,” Mary said. “You can’t go over to him.”

“He wants to come to me?”

“We’ve trained him using a shirt of yours. He knows your smell.”

There was a long, long period of silence, and then Wrath shook his head. “I don’t know if I’m a dog person. Besides, what about Boo-”

“He’s right here,” Beth said. “He’s sitting next to George. He came downstairs as soon as the dog entered the house, and he hasn’t left George’s side since. I think they kind of like each other.”

Damn it, even the cat wasn’t on his side.

More silence.

Wrath slowly sheathed his dagger and took two wide steps to the left so he could clear the desk. Walking forward, he stopped in the center of the study.

George whimpered a little, and there was that quiet ringing of a harness again.

“Let him come to me,” Wrath said darkly, feeling as if he were getting squeezed and not liking it in the slightest.

He heard the animal approach, the padding of paws and the chinking of the collar moving closer, and then…

A velvet-soft muzzle nudged at his palm, and a rasping tongue licked quickly over his skin. Then the dog ducked under his hand and eased up against his thigh.

The ears were silky and warm, the nap of the animal’s fur curling slightly.

It was a large dog with a big, boxy head. “What kind is he?”

“A golden retriever. Fritz was the one who picked him.”

The doggen spoke up from the door, as if he were afraid of entering the room, given how tense things were. “I thought it was the perfect breed, sire.”

Wrath felt along the dog’s flanks, finding the harness that went around his chest and the handle that the blind person would hold on to. “What can he do?”

Mary spoke up. “Anything you need. He can learn the layout of the house, and if you give him the command to take you to the library, he will. He can help you get around the kitchen, answer the phone, find objects. He’s a brilliant animal, and if you two are a fit, you and he can be as independent as I know you want to be.”

Frickin’ female. She knew exactly what had been bothering him. But was an animal the answer?

George whined softly, as if he desperately wanted the job.

Wrath let go of the dog and stepped back as his whole body started to shake. “I don’t know if I can do this,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I don’t know if I can…be blind.”

Beth cleared her throat a little, as if she were choking up because he was.

After a moment, Mary, in her kind, firm way, said the hard thing that needed to be said: “Wrath, you are blind.”

The unspoken so-deal-with-it resonated in his head, throwing a spotlight on the reality he’d been limping through. Sure, he’d stopped waking up every day hoping his vision would come back, and he’d been fighting with Payne and making love to his shellan so he didn’t feel physically weak, and he’d also been working and keeping up with the king shit and all that. But none of it meant things were fantastic: He was hobbling around, running into shit, dropping crap…clinging to his shellan-who hadn’t been out of the house for a month because of him…using his brothers to get him places…being the kind of burden he resented.

Giving this dog a chance didn’t mean that he was all gung ho about being sightless, he told himself. But it might help him get around on his own.

Wrath turned so that he and George were facing the same direction, then stepped in close to the dog. Leaning to the side, he found the handle and clasped it.

“Now what do we do?”

After a shocked silence, as if he’d surprised the shit out of his peanut gallery, there was some discussion and demonstration, only a quarter of which he heard and absorbed. Evidently, though, it was enough to go with, because he and George were soon taking a trip around the study.

The handle had to be adjusted up to its limit so that Wrath didn’t have to list to the side to hold on, and the dog was much better at the whole deal than his charge was. But after a while, the two of them headed out of the study and down the hall. Next trip was hitting the grand staircase and coming back up.

Alone.

When Wrath returned to his office, he faced the group that had gathered-and it was now a big one, as each of his brothers, as well as Lassiter, had apparently joined Beth and Fritz and Mary. Wrath caught the scent of each of them…and there was a fuckload of hope and worry in the breeze as well.

He couldn’t blame them for the way they felt, but he didn’t like the attention. “How’d you pick the breed, Fritz?” he said, because he needed to fill the silence and there was no reason to ignore the pink elephant in the room.

Or the blond dog, as it were.

The old butler’s voice quavered, as if he, along with everyone else, were struggling with emotion. “I, ah…I chose him…” The doggen cleared his throat. “I chose him over the Labradors because he sheds more.”

Wrath’s blind eyes blinked. “Why would that be a good thing?”

“Because your staff enjoys vacuuming. I thought this would be a lovely gift for them.”

“Oh, right…of course.” Wrath chuckled a little, and then started to laugh. As the others joined in, some of the tension drained out of the room. “Why didn’t I think of that.”

Beth came over and kissed him. “We’ll just see how you feel, okay?”

Wrath stroked George’s head. “Yeah. Okay.” He raised his voice. “Enough of the kibitzing. Who’s on deck tonight for fighting? V, I need a financial report. Is John still passed out drunk in his bed? Tohr, I’m going to want you to contact the remaining families within the glymera and see if we can get any trainees to come back…”

As Wrath barked out orders, it was good to have answers coming back at him and people moving around to sit and Fritz leaving to clean up after First Meal and Beth settling into Tohr’s old chair.

“Oh, and I’m going to have to have something else to sit on,” he said as he and George went behind the desk.

“Wow, you dusted that bitch, didn’t you,” Rhage drawled.

“I can make you something?” V suggested. “I’m good at carving.”

“How about a Barcalounger?” Butch cut in.

“You want this chair?” Beth offered.

“If someone can just grab me that wing thing over in the corner by the fireplace?” Wrath said.

When Phury brought it over, Wrath sat down and pulled the chair forward-only to smash both his knees into the desk drawer.

“Okay, that had to hurt,” Rhage muttered.

“We need something shorter,” someone else said.

“This’ll be fine,” Wrath bit out tightly, taking his palm off George’s handle and rubbing the twin pains. “I don’t care what I sit in.”

As the Brotherhood got down to business, he found himself putting his hand on the dog’s big head and stroking the soft fur…playing with an ear…dipping down and finding the long waves that flowed from the animal’s broad, strong chest.

Not that any of that meant he was keeping the the animal, of course.

It just felt nice, was all.