“When are you seeing her next?”

“She is having a dinner on the eve and I shall attend with my cousins. I shall endeavor to discover more at that time.”

“That’s tight. Good job.”

“I haven’t performed yet.”

“Not true. How many times did she come?”

“I lost count after seven.”

Another dark laugh came over the connection. “A male after my own heart. And don’t knock perversion, you judgmental little fuck. You never know when you might find it appealing. Call me tomorrow.”

“We keep this up and I’ll talk to you more than I speak with my own mahmen.”

“Isn’t she dead?”

“Yes.”

“Some bastards have all the luck.”

* * *

After the meeting with Wrath and the Brotherhood broke up, Rhage returned to his and Mary’s room, and as he opened the door, he was hoping she was asleep—

“Hi.”

Okay, right. Mary was anything but in a doze. She was sitting up in their bed, leaning against the headboard, knees tucked to her chest, arms linked around them.

As if she had been waiting for him.

“Ah, hi.” He shut the door. “I thought maybe you’d be resting.”

She just shook her head. And stared at him.

In the awkward silence that followed, he remembered another night that seemed like forever ago—when he’d walked into this room after he’d taken his edge off with a human woman. Mary had been staying with him, and it had killed her to see him afterward—hell, it had killed him to come back to her like that, too. But at the time, it had been a case of him either giving his body some sex or him mounting Mary and risking the beast coming out while he was inside of her. After all, his Mary had juiced him up so high, so fast that his curse had threatened to emerge just in her presence alone, and he had been terrified of hurting her. Scared to reveal that part of his nature to her. Convinced that his unworthiness would emerge and ruin everything.

So he had returned here and had had to look her in the face, knowing what he had done with another.

Short of the night he had learned she was dying, it was the single worst memory in his whole life.

Funny, this felt the same in some ways. A reckoning he didn’t want, but could do nothing to prevent.

“I talked to Beth,” she said grimly. “She told me you sat with L.W. when she was getting her hand treated.”

Rhage closed his eyes and wanted to curse. Especially as there was a long pause, as if she were giving him a chance to explain.

“Do you want to tell me why holding L.W. made you so emotional?”

Her tone was even. Controlled. Gentle, might even be apt.

So it made his truth seem especially cruel and unfair. But she wasn’t going to let him off the hook, change the subject, push this aside. That was not his Mary’s way, not when it came to stuff like this.

“Rhage? What happened down there.”

Rhage took a deep breath. He wanted to go over to her by the 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.