His eyes snapped in her direction. “My mother told me. In a dream.”

For some reason, that made her cry, that image of her husband growing wavy as the out-of-control nature of life came home to roost in the worst possible way: She cared about nothing except the baby, but there was not a single thing she could do to affect any outcome. Her body and the young were rolling those dice.

Her mind, her will, her soul? All her dreams and desires, hopes and follies?

Not even at the table.

Doc Jane’s face came back. “…eth? Beth? Are you with me?”

As she lifted her hand to get some hair out of her face, she realized they’d put a blood pressure cuff on her and run an IV. And that was not hair in the way; it was tears.

“Beth, the ultrasound is not showing me what I was hoping to see. The baby’s heart rate is slowing and you’re still bleeding heavily. We need to get him out, okay? I’m very sure you have an abruption and you’re in danger as well as him. Okay?”

All she could do was look at Wrath. “What do we do?”

In a voice that was so cracked it was barely understandable, he said, “Let her operate with Manny, okay?”

“All right.”

Doc Jane came back in view. “We’re going to have to put you asleep—I don’t want to do an epidural because we don’t have the time.”

“All right.”

“I love you,” she said to Wrath. “Oh, God … the baby…”

SEVENTY-FOUR

All Wrath had to go on was the smells in the room. Antiseptic in the air. Blood—that terrified him. Fear—from his Beth and the others all around him. Calm, cold reasoning on the parts of Doc Jane, Manny, and Ehlena.

Hopefully, that last one was going to be a lifesaver.

Abruptly, a new fragrance entered the mix. Astringent.

Then there was a squeak beside him, as if someone had pulled up a chair. After which a broad hand shoved him down so he was sitting, and took his own in a grip so hard the bones nearly crushed.

John Matthew.

“Hey, man,” he said, aware that time had ground to a halt. “Hey … man.”

In the end, all Wrath could do was squeeze her brother’s palm back—and so the two of them stayed side by side together, frozen as medical terms were traded back and forth and there were metal clanging sounds and hisses and suction noises.

Doc Jane’s voice was so even. Manny’s replies were the same.

They were like the inverse of the situation: As things got scarier, they became more focused and in control.

“Okay, I’ve got him—”

“Wait, is it happening already?” Wrath demanded.

The ascending whistle next to him was the only reply he got.

And then … the sound of a young’s first wail.

“Is he alive?” Wrath asked like a dumb-ass.

Another whistle.

And then he forgot about his son entirely. “Beth? What about Beth?”

No one answered.

“Beth?” he barked. “John, what the f**k is going on?”

The scent of blood was thick in the air. So thick. Too thick.

He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t think. He wasn’t even alive.

“Beth…” he whispered into the darkness.

It was forever until Doc Jane came over to him. And by the closeness and direction of her voice, he knew she had knelt in front of him.

“Wrath, we’ve got a problem. The baby’s fine, Ehlena’s checking him out. But Beth is continuing to bleed even after I closed her uterus from the C-section. She’s hemorrhaging very badly and there’s no sign that she’s clotting. The safest thing to do is a hysterectomy. Do you know what that is?”

She was talking to him like he was stupid—good thing, too.

“No.” Even though he’d heard the word before. Hell, at this point, she would have had to define even the most common of terms.

“I need to take her uterus out. She’s going to die, Wrath, if I don’t. It means she won’t be able to have any more children—”

“I don’t give a f**k about anything but her. Whatever you need to do. Do it—now.”

“Okay, let’s move, Manny.”

“Where’s my son!” he called out abruptly. “Give me my son!”

Not even a moment later, a small bundle was placed into his arms. So light. Too light to be alive—and yet his son was warm and breathing. Vital.

He wanted to hold him because his shellan was in this child. In every molecule of his living body, she was with him—and that meant, as he kept the young up against his heart … he was holding his Beth.

“What’s happening?” he whispered, not expecting a response.

He let the tears fall as they might. Probably on his son’s face.

Who the f**k cared.

SEVENTY-FIVE

Beth came out of the fuzzy neverland like a cork surfacing on still water. Bobbing along, things came and went out of focus.

But the second her brain flipped back on, she yelled, “Wrath—!”

“Right here, we’re right here.”

Recoiling, she wrenched around in the hospital bed and felt an instant oh, hell, no from her belly.

And then nothing mattered. Sitting beside her bed, in a chair that wasn’t big enough, her husband and her son were like two peas in a pod.

The weeping that came out of her was utterly uncontrollable, welling up so fast it all but exploded from her soul. And, man, her belly hurt like a bitch.

As she reached over the side of the bed, her IV pulled, but she didn’t care. And her menfolk came to her, Wrath standing up with that newborn and easing down right beside her on the hospital bed.

“Oh, my God, that’s my baby,” she heard herself say.

Little Wrath—yup, she really had named him already—was the spitting image of his father. Even the dusting of hair formed a widow’s peak in the center of his forehead. And like he recognized her somehow, he opened his eyes as his father let her take the precious bundle.

“Hey, there, big man.”

Because even though he weighed how much? Seven pounds or something? The way that little one stared up at her, it was like he was already taller than his father.

“You are beautiful,” she said to him.

And then she saw his eyes. The pupils were normal, the irises dark blue, not light green.

She looked over at her husband. “He’s perfect.”

“I know. They told me he looks like me.”

“He does.”

“Except for the eyes. But I would have loved him anyway.”

“Me, too.”

She cooed and fussed with the red fabric that the foreman’s shellan had made by hand. Until she became aware that something wasn’t right.

Her husband was way too reserved for this special moment. “Wrath? What aren’t you telling me?”

When he rubbed his face, that terror she’d felt came back. “What. Is there anything wrong with him?”

“No.”

“Where’s the but?”

“They had to take your insides out. You were bleeding too heavily.”

She frowned and shook her head. “I’m sorry?”

Wrath patted around until he found her arm. “Your insides are gone.”

A cold rush hit her. “A hysterectomy?”

“Yeah. That’s what they called it.”

Beth exhaled. Another thing that hadn’t been part of the plan. And it was a shock to realize that part of what defined her as a woman … as a female … was no longer with her.

But then she looked down at her perfectly formed, perfectly healthy little boy. The idea that she might not have had this moment? That she wouldn’t be here with her husband and her son?

Screw the uterus.

“Okay,” she said. “That’s all right.”

“I’m sorry—”

“No.” She shook her head sharply. “No, we’re not sorry. We have our family and we’re very, very lucky. We are not sorry.”

And that was when Wrath teared up, the crystal drops falling off his hard jaw onto the tattoos of his inner forearm.

As she stared at all the names, she smiled and pictured little Wrath, big and tall, strong as his father.

“We did it,” she announced on a sudden rush of optimism. “We did it!”

Wrath started to smile, and then he found her mouth, kissing her. “Yeah. You did.”

“It takes two.” She stroked his face. “You and me. Together.”

“I just got to do the fun part,” he said with a grin.

A number of hours later, Beth got out of bed and had a sponge bath in the loo. Then she put on a Lanz nightgown and, with Wrath’s help, walked out of the room with little Wrath in her arms—

To a standing ovation.

She’d intended to return to the mansion to find the household, but they had come to her. Nearly fifty of them, from the Brothers to the doggen, were crammed into the training center’s concrete hallway, lining it all the way down and back.

Hard not to tear up.

But then, whatever. They were family.

“All hail the King!” came the chanting.

Cradling her son against her breast and covering L.W.’s ears, she started to laugh. And that was when she saw her brother. He was beaming, his smile so wide and proud, his hands locked in front of his heart like he was dying to hold the baby.

Limping over to him, she didn’t say a word. She just passed L.W. over.

The joy she got in return as John awkwardly held the red bundle was pretty much the best thing in the world. Second only to Wrath’s.

Abruptly, the crowd started chanting in the Old Language. “All hail the King—”

“Well, not really.”

As Wrath said the three words, it was like he’d unplugged the sound to the whole world.

Frowning over her shoulder, she and everybody else just stared at the last purebred vampire on the planet.

Wrath cleared his throat and popped his wraparounds up to rub the bridge of his nose. “I abolished the monarchy last night.”

Cue the crickets.

“What …?” she said.

“You told me you didn’t want to be the cause of my giving up the throne. You weren’t. In the end, it was my choice. Sooner or later, someone else is going to make a run at me—and by extension you and him. And then if I die? My son’s going to end up having to fight to keep something that shouldn’t be decided by bloodline. It should be decided by merit.”

Beth put her hands up to her face. “Oh, my God…”

“So we’re a democracy now. Saxton helped make it legal. And elections are going to take place in a little while. I’ve talked to Abalone—he’s going to coordinate it all. Hell, the guy already had a good slate of candidates. Oh, and the best thing? The glymera’s out of a job. I did away with the Council. See ya, motherfuckers.”

“I’m so happy to be retired,” Rehv cut in. “For real.”

Wrath looked in Beth’s direction. “It’s the best thing for us. For L.W. And who knows—maybe he’ll decide to run. But it will be his choice. Not a burden—and no one, from any segment of any society, will be able to tell him that the female he chooses isn’t worthy. Ever.”

At that, Wrath shoved his hand in the pocket of the black combat pants he was wearing … and took out a handful of … shavings?

No, they were fragments of parchment.

As he sprinkled them onto the floor, he said, “Oh, and I tore up that fake-ass divorce decree, too. Human ceremony’s absolutely legal. But I figure our son has two kinds of blood in him, and I wanted both traditions to count.”

Beth opened her mouth to say something. In the end, though, all she could do was step in against her husband’s hard body and hold on.

Naturally, there wasn’t a dry eye in the training center.

But that was what happened when an ordinary mortal … did something worthy of a superhero.

SEVENTY-SIX

It was a good month later when Wrath realized what V’s vision had been all about. The face in the heavens, the future in his hands …

L.W. was already on a schedule, sleeping during the day, up all night—which was just perfect. Beth had bounced back from the C-section like a rocket, feeding well, eating well, and being the best damn mother on the planet.

Talk about your total natural. She was incredible … and so happy, so damned happy.

The reality of having a son was better even than the dream had been.

And oh, yeah, L.W. was taking to the on-the-planet stuff like a total trooper. Eating, pooping, sleeping, pooping, eating. He rarely fussed or cried, and had no problem being passed around at meals so each member of the household got a chance to hold him.

Even the dog and the cat liked him. The kid slept in a crib in the First Family suite, and apparently, George and Boo both thought of it as a guard station. When the retriever wasn’t helping Wrath get around, he was right with the kid, lying in front of the damn thing, on guard twenty-four/seven. And when George was on duty with his other master? That feline was on shift as the baby slept.

So yup, it was on a blissfully normal night in June that Beth said she was going for a run after First Meal, and Wrath decided to take L.W. and his dog and the cat on a promenade around the first floor. The kid always seemed to like that, and as usual, the minute they started walking, his head began to crane around as if he were checking out the real estate.

They were in the library, going by the French doors, when L.W. let out a squawk and strained as if something had caught his eye.

“What is it, big man?”