The Beloved – Black Dagger Brotherhood Read Online J.R. Ward

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Fantasy/Sci-fi, Paranormal, Vampires Tags Authors:
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Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
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Reducing? Closing mind to… “What the hell has that guru put in your head?”

Bitty zipped up her parka. “Like I said, if you’re choosing this isolation, fine. I’m just not buying into the idea that martyrdom to your dad’s shadow ban on dating is superior to any other form of delusion. At least I’m prepared to leave the house.”

As the door banged shut, Nalla glanced around at the pictures that had always made her so happy.

“What just happened here?”

CHAPTER FOUR

Thirty-three years,” the great Blind King said softly. “Thirty-three fucking years…”

Several underground living units over from where Nalla was standing barefoot in numb shock, Elizabeth, née Randall, mated of Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath, turned the light off in her own bathroom and leaned against the jamb. Across the shallow space of her little subterranean suite, her hellren was naked and stretched out on the twin bed she always slept on… and in spite of the way they’d spent the last hour, the sight of his heavily muscled, still semi-erect body was the kind of thing that she kept expecting to wake up from.

How is this not a dream, she thought for the hundredth time as she searched his aristocratic face.

Licking her lips, she could still taste the dark wine of her mate’s pure blood, and the burn in her belly was the sustaining kind, something she had not known for—

“Thirty-three years, nine months, and three days,” she corrected him. “Not that I was counting.”

Wrath’s pale green eyes, with their pinpoint pupils, narrowed on the glowing fixture overhead, as if he could actually see the dimmed light. “I was gone that long.”

“You didn’t… know?”

He shook his head and appeared to focus on her. “When the explosion went off, I felt the heat and the blast, and thought I was dead.” He snapped his fingers. “The next thing I knew, I was walking in snow, up on the mountain at the mansion.”

Beth could only shake her head at what Rahvyn had managed to pull off. Then she revisited the past that had, for her, seemed like a lifetime ago. “You saved Fritz’s life that night. How did you know to go down to the Audience House?”

Those dark brows tightened. “Boo led me to where a couple of doggen were talking. They said he’d gone there even though I’d told everyone that Lash had discovered the location and it was no longer secure. I had this fucking awful feeling something was going to happen. Thank God I got there in time to push him out of the way. And Rahvyn never told you? What she did?”

“She just said I had to trust her.” Tears flooded her eyes. “When you walked through my door tonight, with L.W. at your side, it all came together. But it’s been… thirty-three years and an eternity for me.”

“I can’t fucking imagine what you’ve been through. And now that I’m here”—he gestured around the stark bedroom, the expression on that beautiful, harsh face turning tentative in a way she’d only seen once before, when he’d held his infant son for the first time—“I can sense all the years in the change of environment. Everything smells different… sounds different. I used to know where I was when we were in the mansion. Here? I’m lost in a forest of doorjambs and furniture, and the passage of time is in each step I blindly take and everything I bump into.”

She remembered moving into these underground living quarters, along with the rest of the Brotherhood. There had been a sense of relief that she didn’t need to sleep in the bejeweled First Family’s quarters anymore, in that king-sized bed they’d shared… and also a total despair and ice-cold loneliness that first day when she’d put her head down on the pillow. Thank God George had been with her. Wrath’s golden and she had curled up and she had stared at the ceiling for eight hours straight, Beth holding the dog as they’d both remembered the master they had loved so much.

God, that was forever ago, she thought.

At least L.W. had been able to sleep in his crib right beside them, but that was an infant for you. Their needs were fundamental, their awareness basic, and there had been such a kindness to all he hadn’t been conscious of back then.

Not that things hadn’t caught up to him later, sadly.

“Hidden in… time,” she murmured. “Like it’s something physical you can take cover behind. I’m never going to think of minutes and hours the same again.”

“And I’m sure as shit not going to argue with how everything turned out.”

Instantly, Wrath’s harsh face was transformed by the love he’d always felt for her. Though his fangs were like a saber-toothed tiger’s even when sheathed, and in spite of the fact that his black hair falling from that widow’s peak was right out of the Dracula catalogue, he looked almost approachable…


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