The Beast (Black Dagger Brotherhood #14) - J. R. Ward Page 0,76

bed, but he needed to walk around—the churn and burn in his skull required some kind of physical expression or he was going to start screaming. Or punching walls …

He just had to figure out how to phrase this so it didn’t sound as if he were blaming her. Or catastrophically unhappy. Or—

“Rhage?”

“Just gimme a minute.”

“You’ve been pacing around for over twenty.”

He stopped. Glanced across at his mate.

Mary had changed positions, and was now sitting with her feet dangling off the high mattress. She was dwarfed by the size of the bed, but they needed a mattress the size of a football field; he was so big, he couldn’t really stretch out on anything smaller.

Shit. He was losing focus again—

“Was it because you…” Mary stared down at her feet. Then looked back over at him. “Is it because you want to have your own baby, Rhage?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

Stood there like a plank as his heart thundered in his chest.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “Your brothers are starting to have families—and watching the people you love do that stirs up things. It brings up … wants … that maybe people weren’t aware of—”

“I love you.”

“But that doesn’t mean you aren’t disappointed.”

Backing up so his shoulders hit the wall, he let himself slide down until the floor caught him in the ass. Then he hung his head because he couldn’t bear looking at her.

“Oh, God, Mary, I don’t want to feel this way.” When his voice cracked, he cleared his throat. “I mean … I could try to lie, but…”

“You’ve felt like this for a while, haven’t you. That’s why things have been a little off between us.”

He shrugged with defeat. “I would have said something, but I didn’t know what was wrong. Until down there in the kitchen when I was alone with L.W. It just came out of nowhere. Hit me like a ton of bricks—I don’t want to feel this way.”

“It’s perfectly natural—”

He drove his fist into the floor hard enough to crack the wood. “I don’t want this! I don’t fucking want this! You and I are all I need! I don’t even like young!”

As his voice thundered in the room, he could feel her staring at him.

And couldn’t stand it.

Jumping up again, he pounded around and felt like tearing the paintings off the walls and lighting the drapes on fire and breaking the highboy into kindling with his bare hands.

“I meant it,” he barked. “When I told you I would get you a baby if you wanted one, I fucking meant that shit!”

“I know you did. What you didn’t expect was to be the one who had the hollow pit in the middle of his chest.”

He stopped dead and talked to the Oriental rug. “It doesn’t matter. This doesn’t matter. It’s going to go away—”

“Beth told me something else.” Mary waited for him to look over, and when he did, she brushed away a tear. “She said that Vishous came to you before the attack. She said … he told you that you were going to die. That he tried to get you to leave the field—but you wouldn’t.”

Rhage cursed and resumed walking around. Dragging a hand over his face, he found himself just wanting to go back to the early days of their relationship. When it had been easy. Nothing but good sex and greater love.

Not all this … life bullshit.

“Why did you go out there?” she asked in a halting way.

He waved away the question. “He could have been wrong, you know. V doesn’t actually know everything or he’d be a god—”

“You went out early into the fight. You didn’t wait … you went out there by yourself. Into a campus full of the enemy. Alone—right after one of your Brothers, who hasn’t been wrong yet, told you that you were going to die out there. And then you were shot. In the chest.”

Rhage didn’t mean to crumble.

It was weird, though. He was upright … and then he was down on the floor, his legs collapsing under him at bad angles, his torso following suit in a sloppy fall of arms and shoulders. But that was what happened when a warrior lost his fight—he was nothing more than a gun dropped from a shooting hand, a dagger let loose from a palm, a grenade released, not thrown, into thin air.

“I’m sorry, Mary. I’m so … sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

He just kept saying the words over and over again. There was nothing