by J. R. Ward
“Don’t…leave…” she said. “Look…at me.”
Scrubbing his face with his palm, he focused on her eyes…her beautiful, direct, intelligent eyes. And somehow, it was not a surprise that as weak as her body was, her stare was, as ever, alert and burning with purpose.
“I am so sorry,” he whispered. “For what I did.”
“It’s…okay…”
“No, I was wrong.” As his voice cut out, he forced strength into it. “I wanted to save Paradise, and she didn’t need saving. She doesn’t need it. She’s as strong a fighter as any one of us. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“You…love her.” Novo’s face tightened. “Not your fault. Emotions are…what they are. Trust me, I know this.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I know…”
As her eyes closed, Peyton panicked like she was dying in front of him, and he turned to those monitors with their graphs and their numbers and their blinking lights. None of them were showing any alarms. Were they working right?
But Novo didn’t seem in any kind of distress. Her breathing stayed shallow, granted, but it was even, and her face didn’t show any kind of pain.
She really was beautiful, he thought. So strong and unwavering, even in her weakened state.
“You can’t leave the program,” she mumbled. “Everything will fall apart. Brothers…will cancel us all—”
“I’m not in love with her,” he blurted. “I’m not. I just didn’t realize it until tonight.”
Novo’s eyes flipped back open. And then she shook her head a little on the thin pillow. “Doesn’t…matter.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t.”
“Promise…me. No leaving…”
“We’ll see—”
“My fault, too.” As he frowned, she said, “I should have…stabbed lesser. Should have…finished job. I got distracted, too. Part…my fault.”
“You’re wrong about that—”
She put her hand out, like she wanted to stop the argument and lacked the energy to talk over him. “I made mistakes…too. First rule is finish the job. I failed. I got…hurt because…of me, too.”
Peyton had to blink a couple of times before he could be sure he wouldn’t leak. “Let me take the responsibility. The Brothers can do what they want with me.”
“We will fight again…together in field…” She took a deep breath and winced. “Soon as I’m…out of bed…”
You are such a female of worth, he thought.
And the more he dwelled on that conviction, the more everything in the room receded, the monitors, the antiseptic smell, the too-bright lights, and the too-hard chair. And then the airbrushed effect extended out even further, wiping clean the existence of the training center, the mountain they were on…Caldwell, the Northeast…the fucking planet itself.
Novo became all he knew, from the specks in her teal-blue eyes to the way her braid curled around and lay on her shoulder to how she put her hand out as if she wanted him to take it.
Extending his own palm, he clasped what she offered him and felt her squeeze with surprising strength.
“We will fight together again,” she vowed.
—
Novo fought the ten-thousand-pound drag of pain and drugs in her body and tried to force what will she had into Peyton. The training program had to continue. Without it, she had no purpose and no outlet for all the shit she refused to feel and deal with: If she didn’t accept her part in what had happened in that alley, and if she didn’t forgive Peyton, the class was going to be divided, the Brotherhood was going to lose confidence and patience with them, and then she was going to be stuck going to her sister’s fucking half-human mating ceremony with no battle armor against everything she had lost.
Without this work, these fights, her nightly routine, there was nothing to ground her. Pull her through. Keep her going.
And her salvation from oblivion all started with Peyton.
Forgiveness by her, here and now toward him, was the kind of thing that would spread to everyone else and re-bind the group. The other trainees would have to follow her lead—and p.s., she hadn’t made up the shit about her being part of the problem. She should never have let the enemy just lie there on her like it had. Those slayer bastards were like rattlesnakes, capable of biting you even after you cut them in half. Peyton had definitely set the bad result in motion, but she had provided the slope.
It was a mistake neither one of them was going to make again.
Assuming they got the chance.
With what was left of her strength, she tried to keep her eyes focused on Peyton’s face, but she could only get halfway to goal. Everything was fuzzy, as if there were panes of dusty glass between them.
What was clear? The scent of his tears.
And that was a shocker. Sure, she had needed open-heart surgery, but he was the perpetual joker, the playful resister who bobbed on top of everything. Not even a brush with death could make him get real…or at least, she wouldn’t have thought it could—
I’m not in love with her.
That was totally not relevant, she told herself.
The door to the room swung open and Dr. Manello came in, his hospital scrubs traded for workout gear, a water bottle under his arm and a set of earbuds dangling from his hand.
“And we’re awake.” The human smiled. “Better than I thought you’d be.”
“Fighter,” she said in a voice that was more sandpaper than syllable.
God, she fucking hated to sound weak.
Dr. Manello came over and pounded knuckles with Peyton. Then he leaned against the base of the bed. “Yeah, as a soldier, you are absolutely in the right line of badass work. You flatlined twice on our table, which, to be honest, pissed me off. But you had your reasons. And there was one point when I was convinced I was going to lose you for good—you came back, though. Guess you decided you weren’t done with your work here on earth—well, and that six-chambered heart of yours just kept working with us. Somehow, it hung on so I could do what I needed to to fix that hole.”
“Maybe it was more because my surgeon”—she took a deep breath—“is talent? I mean, talented.”
“Nah, I’m just a mechanic in scrubs instead of overalls.”
He was lying, of course. Just as she had been coming out of anesthesia, she had heard Vishous say that there were only two surgeons that he knew of who could have saved her—Doc Jane and Dr. Manello. Especially because they hadn’t had a bypass machine in the surgical unit.
Whatever the hell that meant.
“So here’s the plan.” Dr. Manello did that thing medical people do, scanning the monitors that were all around the bed like he was updating her chart in his head. “You’re going to stay here for the next forty-eight hours. And don’t frickin’ bitch to me about how long that is or how amazing your species’ regenerative powers are and how you can go home at nightfall.” He put his palm up as she opened her mouth. “Nope, there will be no discussion. In another twelve hours, I want you walking yourself up and down the corridor. All the way to the exit and back every two or three hours—”
“Hoping…back to…work forty-eight hours.”
Dr. Manello shot her an are-you-fucking-serious. “After you had open-heart surgery. Yeah, right.”
“Feeding? But I could…feed more.”
“That’ll help, sure. But you know what else is ammmmaaaazing?” He lifted his head to the ceiling and got rapturous. “Staying the fuck in bed.”
“I heal faster…if I feed.”
“What’s the rush? None of you are going back out in the field anytime soon.” Abruptly, the surgeon shut his mouth, as if that were information he was not authorized to share. “Anyway, take a load off, eat chocolate pudding to soothe that throat I intubated, and we’ll see how you go.”
“Feeding, too.”
“Fine, yeah, sure, take as many fucking veins as you want. But whether you turn yourself into Frank Langella or not, I’m
only clearing you when I’m good and goddamn ready.”
“Do you always curse…at your patients?”
“Only the ones I like.”
“Lucky…me.” But she smiled. “Do I…say thank…you…now?”
“Are you going to cry like a sissy if you do? ’Cuz, no offense, I’m a sympathetic weeper and I’d just as soon not have to go into the weight room looking like someone Mayweather’d me in the face.”
“I never cry.”
“Well, you’ve got a big heart, I’ll tell you that much. I’ve seen it up close and personal.” Dr. Manello put a hand on her foot and gave her a little squeeze. “You hit that call button if you need anything. Ehlena is right next door. I’m working out for the next hour or so, and then I’ll be sleeping across the hall just in case you spring another leak. Not that I’m expecting that.”
“Thank…you.”
“You are so welcome,” the surgeon said. “I love a good result. And let’s keep it that way during recovery, okay?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Good girl.” He smiled. “I mean, good badass boss lady.”
As her surgeon headed for the door, Novo admitted to herself that he was right. It was way too ambitious on her part to think she’d be able to fight in two days. The pain in her chest was incredible, the kind of thing she felt up in her molars and down to her toenails, even with all the drugs she was on. There was no way that was backing off by next nightfall.
She looked at Peyton. He was sitting in that chair like he was on the verge of bursting to his feet, his torso leaning forward, his hands planted on his thighs as if he were going to push himself up.
“What?” she asked him. “You look…as if you want…to be called on in class.”
“Chocolate pudding.”
Novo tried to take a deep breath and just ended up wheezing. “What…?”
“He said you’re supposed to eat it for your throat. I’ll get you some.”
“No.” In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to gag. “Oh, no. Stomach…no.”
“I just want to help somehow.”
She stared at him for a while. In all the ways that mattered, Peyton was the very thing she detested in a male, all that glymera bullshit wrapped up in a package that, as much as she tried to deny it, even she recognized as attractive.
He was her sister’s type, as a matter of fact.
Good thing Sophy was never going to meet him. Or Oskar would learn firsthand how it feels when someone you think loves you treats you like you’re an iPhone 5 in an X world.
Actually, wasn’t that a tempting fantasy…
What was the question? God, her brain was fuzzy. Oh, right…Peyton was everything she hated about wealthy high-society types who were too good for everyone else around them—but there was one part to all that which did work for her.
His blood was liable to be hella pure, to the point of being medicinal.
“What can I do?” he asked. “And if it’s leave you in peace, I can do that for you, too.”
In the back of her mind, a warning went off, the little ring-a-ding-ding pointing out that maybe, just maybe, it might be better for her to never know what he tasted like.
Although, come on, she’d already learned her lesson with males, and it had cost her a piece of herself. Literally.
She was not that stupid—and she really fucking wanted out of this bed.
“Let me…take your vein.”
As she said the words, Peyton’s eyes flared like that was the last thing he had ever expected her to say.
“Please,” he said roughly as he extended his wrist to her.
Except he immediately retracted his arm and brought his own flesh to his lips. His brows tightened only a fraction as he bit into himself, and then he extended the punctures over to her.
Her jaw cracked as she tried to open her mouth, and things seemed hinged in a bad way by her ears, maybe part of the whole emergency intubation. But she forgot about all that as a drop of his blood landed on her lower lip.
The scent alone was like food in a stomach when you were weak from hunger, everything waking up with vitality—no, fuck that. It was like a hit of cocaine. And then she was extending her dry tongue and licking—
Dimly, she was aware of groaning as her eyes rolled back in her head…and not because she was dying. Oh, no, she was suddenly very alive. His taste. His taste was like a crash cart hooking up to her sliced-and-diced heart, the jolt that went through her chest, cranking her entire circulatory system into a gear with so much more power.
“Take from me,” he said from a great distance. “Take it all…”
As he lowered his arm down, she formed a seal around his vein. Her first couple of draws were sloppy and uncoordinated—she cured that quick, though. Before long, she was taking the kind of long pulls you might if it had been years since you had been properly nourished.
Holy…shit…she had never had this kind of sustenance before. Craeg and Boone had volunteered earlier, back when she had been in and out of consciousness. And prior to that? It had been other civilians, just like herself. But Peyton was high-test to all that discount gas, to the point where the singeing path burning its way into her gut made her break out in a sweat—and sure enough, alarms began to go off, her heart thundering behind that recently sawed-open sternum of hers.
She really didn’t care if she stroked out. Or if her cardiac muscle exploded all over everything. Or if her head popped off her spine, her feet grew fifteen sizes bigger, or she went blind, deaf, and mute.
Instinct, bred into her species, took over, the hunger owning every part of her.
And then her eyes locked with Peyton’s.
She told herself this was about getting well, triumphing over her injury, making herself stronger. But the more she drank of him, the more she took of him into herself, it was clear there was another drive at work.
He was a meal she feared she was going to want again. Even when her survival was not at stake.
And she wasn’t going to need only blood.
Down the corridor, in the weight room, Ruhn lay with his upper body on a padded bench, his legs bent, his feet planted on the floor mats. The bar he gripped with his hands weighed fifty pounds or more and was made of iron. The disks racked on either end totaled some seven hundred pounds.
As he popped the load off the supports, he held it up above his chest and breathed deep as he steadied all that weight. Then he brought the bar down to his pecs, controlling the descent, a triumph of strength over gravity. With first the right hand and then the left, he realigned his grips a little…and then he pushed up, taking the bar high as he exhaled with a schhhhhhhhht. And then down. And then up. And then down…
He kept going until those pectorals began to seize and his biceps and triceps trembled and his elbows burned…and still he continued, to the point where he need to arch his spine to get the bar to its apex.
Sweat dotted his brow and then ran down into his hair and his ears. His thighs ached. His lungs ceased to work. His heart didn’t so much pound as blow up with every beat.
And still he did not stop.
The idea that he had been attracted to someone of the same sex was something he had never confronted before. Sure, he was aware that those liaisons occurred, but he’d always assumed it was just something the aristocracy indulged. Where he came from? As a lowly civilian from a traditional background?
No, his parents would never have approved of this, his father especially. That male had been very adamant about what the proper roles were for both sexes, and they had not included masculine coupling. He had also been clear about the expectations for each person in the family, mahmen, father, daughter, son.
And you wanted your elders to approve of you, especially after a youth where you were bigger than everybody else and shy as a fawn in social situations.
In fact, Ruhn had nearly killed himself to live up to what his father had needed from him, what his family had required. T
he idea of letting them down—
Wait, why was he thinking like this? As if he had already had sex with someone of the same…well, sex, as it were?
Because you want to kiss him. Admit it.
As the thought went through his head, he threw his no-I-don’t into the bar, shoving the weights up with the same kind of power he’d had when he’d first started. He absolutely did not want anything from that male. At all. Because if he did? Well, he’d already been through the nightmare of discovering a new, unacknowledged part of him, and that had been a horrible experience, to say the least.
He was not going through that again.
Nope—
All at once, his arms gave out on him, the muscles failing, the weight going in a free fall that resulted in the bar landing directly on his chest. The pain was instant and paralyzing, those seven hundred and fifty pounds compressing his lungs as sure as if a building had fallen on him.
Instantly, a face appeared overhead. “Help me get this off you—come on, push! Goddamn it, PUSH!”
It was the surgeon, Dr. Manello.
As Ruhn began to black out, he was dimly aware of a piercing alarm in the weight room—no, it was a whistle. The human was whistling through his front teeth as he tried to relieve some of the pressure by straddling the bench and pulling up on the bar with both hands.
It did help. Ruhn could breathe some and his vision cleared a little.
Two more people came running in and then the crushing load was gone off of him. He still couldn’t inhale right, though. Had he broken his entire upper torso?
Dr. Manello’s face came back, real close. “I am not opening another chest cavity up tonight, do you hear me?”
And then there was a mask over his nose and mouth, a forceful stream of oxygen making his cheeks blow out and his throat go dry. The air tasted weird, like there were pencil shavings in it or flecks of tin—and that, coupled with the plastic form-fitting piece over his mouth and nose, made him feel like he was suffocating worse than he had been when he’d been left alone.
When he tried to push the mask away, strong hands prevented him.
