The Beast

It was as if he were once more lying there gasping for breath he could not quite catch, bleeding inside his chest, slipping away even as his body stayed before her.

Then she thought of Bitty in the back of the GTO, crying, lost, alone.

“Yes,” Mary said roughly. “I will stay. For her. For however long she is alive, I’ll stay with her.”

Rhage exhaled long and slow. “That’s good. That’s . . .”

They met in the middle, each walking toward the other, and when they embraced, she put her head to the side of his heavy chest, hearing his heartbeat right next to her ear. Staring off across the dimly lit gym, she hated the choice she had just made, the vow she had just taken . . . and at the same time, she was so very grateful for it.

“She can’t know,” Mary blurted as she pushed back a little and looked up. “Bitty can’t know about me—at least not until after she makes her decision. I don’t want her fear of being alone coloring the choice she’s going to have to make. If she wants to come with us, it has to be because she chooses to freely. All the death in her life can be part of it, but it can’t be all of it.”

“Agreed.”

Mary went back to being close to him. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

They stood there in the gym for the longest time. And then Rhage switched his hold on her, extending one set of their arms out to the side, and snaking his other around her waist.

“Dance with me?” he said.

She laughed a little. “To what kind of music?”

“Anything. Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Just dance with me here in the dark.”

For some reason, tears pricked her eyes as they started to move, swaying at first, the shuffle of their feet over the smooth floor and the rustle of their clothes the only auditory accompaniment. Soon, they found a rhythm, and then he was leading her in a waltz, an old-fashioned, proper waltz that he was far better at than she was.

Sweeping around the empty space, she discovered that a symphony started to play in her mind, the strings and the flutes, the timpani drums and the trumpets giving majesty and power to their dancing.

Around and around they went until she was smiling up at him even as a tear fell.

She knew what he was doing. She knew exactly why he had asked her to do this.

He was reminding her that the future was unknown and unknowable.

So if you had the chance . . . even if there was no music and no ballgown, no tuxedo or gala . . . when your true love asked you to dance?

It was important to say yes.

SIXTY-THREE

Vishous stood outside of the gym, looking through one of the steel doors that had the glass windows with chicken wire running through them.

Rhage and Mary were dancing in the empty space, twirling around, the female’s smaller body held tightly and led by her male’s much, much larger one. They were looking at each other, staring into each other’s eyes. Shit, you could swear there was a quartet or maybe a full orchestra playing in there, the way they moved so well together.

He wasn’t much of a dancer himself.

Besides, you couldn’t waltz to Rick Ross or Kendrick Lamar.

Taking out a hand-rolled from the ass pocket of his leathers, he lit up and exhaled as he leaned a shoulder on the jamb and continued to watch.

You had to respect the two of them, he thought. Going after that kid, trying to make a family happen. Then again, Rhage and Mary were always on the same page, nothing ruffling their relationship, everything always perfect.

Which was what happened when you paired a levelheaded therapist with Brad Pitt and Channing Tatum’s love child: cosmic harmony.

God, in comparison, his and Jane’s relationship seemed kind of . . . clinical.

No dancing in the dark for them, not unless it was the horizontal kind—and when was the last time that had happened? Jane had been flat-out at the clinic, and he’d been dealing with all kinds of shit.

Okay, this was weird. Even though he was not one for envy—it, along with so many emotions, was just a waste of fucking time—he did find himself wishing he was a little closer to normal. Not that he apologized for his kink, or the fact that he was predominantly a head guy, not a heart guy. Still, when he stood like this on the outside looking in at what his brother had, he did feel broken in some unnamed way.

It wasn’t that he wanted to turn into the male version of Adele or some shit.

Yeah, file that under Good-bye.

But he did wish . . .

Oh, fuck, he didn’t know what the hell he was going on about.

Changing gears—before he ended up with a pair of lace panties on—he thought of Qhuinn’s daughter, of that tiny little thing that had come back from the dead.

How had Payne known what to do? Shit, if she hadn’t . . .

Vishous frowned as a memory of Mary surfaced and refused to sink back down. She had been talking about when she had saved Rhage’s life . . . when she had moved the dragon around to the center of his chest so his beast could somehow heal the gunshot wound.

I don’t know how I knew what to do, she had said to him. Or something to that effect.

He thought of himself confronting his mother as Rhage had been dying, demanding that she do something before he’d stormed off, all pissed and shit. And then he recalled the demand that he’d sent out as he’d worked on the lifeless body of Qhuinn’s daughter.

Shit.

Leaning down, he stamped out his half-smoked cigarette on the sole of his boot and tossed the butt in the trash.