The Beast (Black Dagger Brotherhood #14) - J. R. Ward Page 0,195

dark and silent. The principles of others were so fucking inconvenient.

Especially when one was trying to kill oneself.

SIXTY-EIGHT

As Rhage went back home after his meeting at I’ve Bean, he was feeling like a fucking boss.

Rhym had even given him a hug at the end of the interview. And that had to mean something, right?

The first thing he wanted to do, as he headed up the mansion’s grand staircase, was call his Mary, but she was in her meeting now, so he’d have to wait. Whatever, he could get changed and maybe go downtown to do some hunting and burn off some—

His phone went off with a bing! just as he hit the second floor and saw that the King was sitting on the throne at his desk—as opposed to being at the Audience House, where he should have been.

Ignoring the text, Rhage strode forward and knocked on the open door. “My Lord?”

Wrath’s head jerked up as if he’d been surprised by the interruption—which was the first clue that something big had happened: That brother might have been blind, but he had the instincts of the keenest predator.

“You’re early,” Wrath muttered. “The meeting doesn’t start for another twenty minutes.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You get V’s text?”

Rhage entered the frilly pale blue room with its French furniture and its air of butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth. The study or parlor or whatever it was the most ludicrous environment to plan fights and wars and strategy in, but now, like so much of Darius’s mansion, it was a tradition that no one wanted to change.

Patting his chest where his phone had vibrated, he murmured, “Guess that’s what just came through. What’s doing?”

Wrath sat back in his father’s great ornate chair, and beside him on the floor, George lifted his boxy blond head in inquiry, as if the dog wanted to know whether they were going somewhere or staying put.

The King reached down and stroked the retriever. “You’ll find out soon enough with the others. You got something on your mind, my brother? You came by when V was talking to me earlier.”

Rhage glanced around the empty room. “Actually, yeah.”

“Talk to me.”

The story came out in a rush of sound bites: Bitty, her mom, Mary, him, the GTO—yup, for some reason, the fact that the girl liked his car made it in there. He also explained that he’d had his interview with Rhym, that Mary was having hers, that they needed Wrath’s approval.

Blah, blah, blah.

When he ran out of nouns and verbs, he discovered that he’d wandered around and ended up sitting in the chair on the far side of the throne, he and his brother separated by the expanse of desk, all those carved figures and sacred symbols marking the divide between their stations.

And yet he felt as though he and Wrath were one and the same as the male smiled. “You got it, my brother. Whatever you need, it’s yours. And if they want to do a site visit, or whatever you call it, the social worker is welcome here. We’ll have Fritz bring her in.”

Rhage was exhaling a fuckload of tension as Butch and Phury walked in. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “Thank you so much.”

“You’ve come a long way from being that asshole I once knew and tolerated.”

When Wrath extended the black diamond ring of the King, Rhage got up and leaned over to kiss it. “Yeah, we all have—”

Just as he was straightening, someone goosed him so hard in the ass, he nearly face planted all over that desk. Wheeling around, he saw Lassiter smiling.

“Sorry,” the angel said. “Couldn’t help it.”

Rhage bared his fangs. “Lass, seriously, could you be anymore annoying.”

The fuck-twit put his forefinger to his chin and tapped as he tilted his head. “Hmm, I don’t know. But I’m willing to try.”

“I swear to God, one of these days…”

Except it was a lie. He wasn’t going to do shit. The trouble with the current asshole crown holder was that it was impossible to truly hate him. Not when on a regular basis he proved there was a stand-up guy under all that goddamn, fucking irritation.

The rest of the Brotherhood filed in and took their customary places in the room. As Rhage camped out with Butch on one of the spindly sofas, it took him a minute to realize someone was missing.

Nope, here was Vishous. With Payne at his side.

One look into the pair of grim faces, and Rhage cursed under his breath. And he wasn’t the only one.

The doors were shut, and then everyone