The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12) - J.R. Ward Page 0,172

that nobody had caught him at. And after he’d been discovered fighting downtown, he’d agreed anew to put up the daggers but for ceremonial work—and since then, the scent of his shellan’s disappointment had been enough to keep him in line.

Well, that and the fact that he’d lost his remaining eyesight entirely at about that time.

The bunch of them hadn’t been wrong. The King needed to be breathing most of all; taking down slayers in the back of an alley in Caldwell could not be the primary directive anymore.

And no sparring with the brothers, either.

None of them wanted to roll the dice with possibly hurting him.

Except then Payne had presented herself, and though he’d first assumed she was a male, when her true identity had been discovered, he’d been given a pass … precisely because she was a female.

He thought of her sneaking into the males’ locker room and putting that knife to his throat.

He supposed now … he could fight with anyone he liked. And that he owed her an apology.

Reaching down, he increased the treadmill’s speed. This one machine had been retrofitted with hooks on the console and a padded belt that had been made for him. With bungee cords strung between the two, he could go hands off and still keep on the machine, the subtle pulls on his waist telling him where he was in relation to the running surface.

Handy on a night like tonight. Oh, wait … it was daytime, now.

Falling into a faster rhythm, he found that as always, his head had a way of floating above the exertion, as if with his body engaged and working, it was free to drift. Unfortunately, like a helicopter with faulty gauges, it kept ramming into rocky cliffs: his parents, his shellan, the possibility of a future young, all the empty years stretching out before him.

If he only had his eyesight. At least then he could credibly go out and engage with the enemy. But now he was trapped—by his blindness, by his Beth, by the chance that she was with young.

Of course, if she hadn’t been in his life? He would have gone on a killing bender until he died honorably in the field. Although, hell, without her, he probably wouldn’t have bothered doing anything about ascending in the first place.

He knew he should never have tried that fucking crown on his head.

After everything his father had done in such a tragically short time, he should have followed his first instincts and walked the fuck away. The race had been fine going rudderless for a couple of centuries; probably could have kept that shit up indefinitely.

He thought of Ichan. Maybe that SOB was going to discover that modern populations didn’t need kings.

Or more to the point, maybe Xcor and the Bastards were going to learn that lesson.

Whatever.

Wrath went to increase the speed again—and found that he’d tapped the machine out on velocity. Cursing, he resettled into his already breakneck pace, and thought of his father, sitting behind the very desk that he himself could no longer see or use, parchment rolls and ink pots, quill pens and leather-bound volumes covering the carved surface.

He could just picture that male behind it all, sporting a half smile of contentment as he melted wax himself and pressed the royal crested ring into it—

“Wrath!”

“Wha—” Cue the squealing of rubber as he yanked out the safety key and jumped to the side rails. “Beth—?”

“Wrath, oh, my God—”

“Are you okay—”

“Wrath, I’ve got the solution—”

He could not fucking breathe. “About … what?”

“I know what we have to do!”

Wrath frowned as he panted and braced his hands on the rails in the event his jelly legs gave up the ghost and he torpedoed. And yet even through the hypoxia, his female’s scent was strong with purpose and conviction, her natural undertones sharpened so they got through to him clearly.

Grabbing the towel he’d slung over the console, he mopped his face. “Beth, for the love of Christ. Will you please stop—”

“Divorce me.”

In spite of all the exercise-induced suffocation, he stopped breathing. “I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “But I did not hear that.”

“Dissolve our mating. Effective yesterday—when for all intents and purposes you were still King.”

Wrath started shaking his head, all kinds of thoughts jamming up his brain. “I’m not hearing you say that—”

“If you get rid of me, you get rid of the grounds they used. No grounds, no removal. You have the throne and—”

“Are you out of your fucking mind!” he bellowed. “What the