He laughed. "I would love to, but Darling would kick my ass if I did."

"I'm going to kick it if you don't."

Darling pulled her back against him. "It's okay, Z. They always do this. I really am used to it."

"You're their governor. They should respect you."

He gave her a teasing grin. "This from the leader of the Resistance?"

Guilt over that gnawed at her. How could she have ever sanctioned anyone to fight against him? She wanted to beat her own butt for that.

Meanwhile the jokes echoed around them until she wanted to scream.

"C'mon," Darling said quietly. "Let's go. We're done here."

Still, it infuriated her.

But in the end, she knew he was right. Attacking them over those insults would be a bad mistake. If Darling went crazy on them, they could petition the League to have him removed from power. Even jailed.

Or institutionalized.

Most likely, that was why they were doing it. They wanted to goad him into attacking.

Unwilling to give them any kind of satisfaction, she followed Darling and tried to ignore them, too.

With his friends and family in tow, he led her down the hallway to where they'd checked her wrap on her arrival.

Darling had just put it on her when another gerent laughed at them.

"Yes, but you have to envy him that ass. You know, she'd have to be one hell of a lay to get him hard for her. I bet that whore can suck the glaze off porcelain."

Even though Darling wore those dark glasses, she saw the flash of unmitigated fury in his eyes. Now, she finally understood where his strength came from. She could take insults against her. They didn't matter. It was only the ones against him that made her livid.

Zarya cupped his face with her hands and forced him to look at her and not the man who'd insulted her. "Let it go, Darling. He's not worth it."

Darling forced himself to listen to her and to calm down. She was right. He needed to walk away. He couldn't afford to attack them.

That was his thought until the gerent spoke up again. "Make sure to give her your number, then. A cheap skank ass bitch like that would hike her skirt and open her legs for anyone."

With a snarl of rage, Kere slammed down on him. One second, Zarya held him.

In the next...

21.

Darling went for the gerent's throat so fast that no one could stop him. By the time they realized he'd made it past Zarya, he had the man on the ground, repeatedly pounding his head against the floor with a fury so strong, it crackled in the air around them.

Zarya was amazed the man's head didn't split open given the force Darling used. While she had seen Darling fight as Kere many times, she'd honestly forgotten just how ferocious he could be. This was a side of him that she never saw in private.

And he was about to kill the man on the ground.

Moving with an incredible speed, Nykyrian pulled Darling off the gerent and hauled him back. But that didn't last long.

Using a move and strength no one expected, Darling flipped Nykyrian off him with an ease that was nothing shy of a miracle, especially given how much larger Nykyrian was. The throw caused Darling's dark glasses to fly off his face and shatter on the floor.

Stunned by the unexpected counterattack, Nykyrian landed against the far wall in an unceremonious lump. When Hauk went in for a try, Darling caught him by one arm and slung the Andarion in the opposite direction. He cut through two of the gerent's bodyguards before he returned to ruthlessly beat the man who'd insulted her.

"He's going to kill Giran," Maris breathed by her side.

By Darling's lethal expression, she believed it. But what could they do? She glanced over to Nykyrian who was back on his feet and trying to assure his wife that he wasn't hurt.

Three gerents moved in to stop Darling. Bad mistake on their part. It was only then that she realized he'd been holding back when he fought the gerents' guards and Nykyrian and Hauk.

There was no such mercy for the nobles. Obviously, he'd been wanting a piece of them for a long time.

Darling caught the first one with a punch so hard, it made a resounding thud against the man's chest and sent him straight to the floor. The second one took a hit to the nose that shattered it. The gerent staggered back, screaming like a girl on a playground as he cupped his face with both hands. The third lost his knee to one swift quick.

And as Darling cut through them with an ease that was scary, the nobility around them panicked more.

"He is insane!"

"You see! He has no right to rule."

"Where did he learn to fight like that?"

"Did you see him throw the assassin and his own guard?"

"May the gods help us with him in power."

"We're doomed!"

"No wonder Arturo kept him in institutions. He must have been terrified of him since he was a kid."

As their comments and anger against Darling built, she knew she had to do something.

Fast. But what?

Suddenly, a stupid idea came to her.

Before she could think better of it, she grabbed Darling's arm as he went for Giran again.

He turned around, his hand raised to strike her, too. Just as she thought he'd put her through the wall behind her, he caught himself. His breathing ragged, he stared at her and lowered his hand. The agony on his beautiful face hit her like a blow. He cupped her head in the palm of his hand, then gently pulled her into his arms.

She hugged him close as his heart pounded fiercely against her breasts. He continued to cradle her head and hold on to her like she was his lifeline.

Maris approached them slowly. "Are you better?" he whispered to Darling.

His eyes started jerking. "No. I didn't get a chance to kill the bastard." He turned in Giran's direction. "No one insults my lady. No one."

Nykyrian wiped the blood from his lips as he neared Darling with a look that said he craved retaliation. Luckily, he didn't give in to his anger. "We need to get you both out of here. And whatever you do," he said to Darling, "say nothing else." That last sentence came out as a fierce growl.

Darling inclined his head to him.

As they started walking, the gerents noticed Darling's eyes.

"He's blind?"

"No wonder he had on sunglasses."

"How can a blind, insane man lead an empire as powerful as ours?"

"I wouldn't trust him to lead a herd of dogs to water. Never mind lead us."

His jaw locked to keep from responding to their erroneous speculations, Darling allowed his friends to escort them from the room. He kept his arm around her waist as if he was afraid of letting her go.

Once they were clear of the building, Caillen released a low whistle. "That was a strategic blunder the kind of which I normally make. You know, Dar... the ones you usually crawl my ass over when I do them?"

"Yeah," Ryn agreed. "That little explosion of temper just cost us every nano-inch of ground we'd taken."

Darling glared at Ryn. "I don't care."

Ryn scoffed. "Hope you feel that way in the morning."

"I will. Trust me."

Hauk tested his teeth with his thumb. "I forgot how hard you punch, you little bastard. If I lose a tooth, I'm taking it out of your hide."

Kiara cast Darling an evil grimace. "Better be glad I'm pregnant. I'm not exactly fond of seeing my husband thrown into walls, especially since we were only trying to help you."

Drake sighed. "I understand why you did it, Dar. But damn... this is one ugly mess."

Darling glanced at her. "You want to pile on here with your opinion against me, too?"

Zarya shook her head. "Not at all. I totally get why you did it. I just wish I'd punched a couple of them for what they said about you. It seriously pains me that I didn't. Can I please go back and break on them?" She started back for the building.

Smiling, Darling caught her against him and turned her around to keep her moving forward.

Damn him. It wasn't fair that he got to pound on them when she was the one who really wanted a piece of their hides.

"We all get why he did it," Syn said. "There's not a one of us who wouldn't have done it had it been our better half they insulted. Honestly, I'm only surprised you kept him from killing them."

Nykyrian put his arm around Kiara. "Me, too."

"But," Ryn inserted, "it doesn't change the fact that it was a political blunder on an epically stupid scale."

And by the time they made it back to the palace, the extent of that blunder was making itself known. The gerents had called a press conference the moment they'd left the CDS, and were using videoed outtakes of the fight to show Darling attacking Giran for what appeared to be no reason whatsoever.

Darling cringed every time Zarya pulled up a feed to view it. If I'm not deposed over this, I'm banning all mobiles from the meetings from here on out.

The commentator smirked at the camera. "As everyone can clearly see, the new governor is out of control. We have reports that he drove the League High Command out of the meeting and threatened to go to war with them, as well as his own gerents. Senator Giran has been released from the hospital. According to witnesses, he was blindsided by the governor for making a passing comment to a friend that had nothing to do with politics. The governor and his staff have refused to take any of our calls or to comment on the matter in any way..."

Zarya shut the newsfeed off. She couldn't take any more of their one-sided slant. Dear gods, the journalists didn't care at all about the truth. They only cared about persecuting an innocent man.

Darling lay on his bed with the heel of his hand pressed against his jerking eyes. Wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms, he held a bloodied cloth in his other hand from the nosebleed that had finally slowed down.

She crossed the room to sit beside him on the bed. "I'm so sorry, Darling."

He removed his hand from his head to pin her with a grimace. "Sorry for what?"

"Causing this awful mess. I should have stayed here and let you go alone."

Darling hesitated at the catch in her voice. The last thing he wanted was for her to think that any part of this was her fault when it wasn't.

Or worse, for her to think that he blamed her for it when he was more than aware of who the moron was.

Pulling his palm away from his eyes, Darling laid his hand against her cheek. "Baby, you didn't do anything wrong. I was the dumbass who let his temper get the better of him when I knew better. The only thing I regret was that you had to hear them insult you."

And he hated the fact that she'd heard the ugliness about his past. Why couldn't people just let it go? Why did they have to use a past mistake as a weapon against him to...

Is that not what you've done to Zarya?

He froze as that realization slapped him hard across the face. Zarya had made one mistake in their relationship-granted it was a doozy, but... he was still judging her for it and occasionally, holding it against her.

For the first time, he saw things through her eyes. What would he have done had he been their leader, and she the one who was missing-in-action while he had no idea where to search for her? Right now, his soldiers could be torturing someone and he'd have no knowledge of it whatsoever.

My office isn't across the room from them.

Still...

Even if it was, he wouldn't know. He got that now. Fully.

I'm such a krikken idiot...

"Z?" He pulled the cloth away from his nose to make sure it wasn't bleeding anymore.

Zarya sat next to him with his computer on her lap. "What, baby?"

"Can I ask you something?"

Zarya looked up immediately at his change of tone. There was a note of such seriousness, that it made her heart pound. Had she done something to hurt or offend him? "Sure," she said while every part of her dreaded whatever was on his mind.