“No, I’m not staying here.”

Axe made a move to sit up in the hospital bed, and the chorus of whatthefuckdoyouthinkyouredoing from just about every single bone, sinew, stretch of skin, and muscle was so loud, he couldn’t hear Dr. Manello’s no doubt highly reasonable explanation as to why he had to chill.

“Nope.” Axe started to go for the IV in his arm. “I’m out.”

Dr. Manello snapped a hard grip on Axe’s wrist. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m taking this out if you won’t.”

“Listen, kid, I want to remind you that I operated on you, in a fucking alley, about an hour ago.”

“I feel fine.”

“Your lips are blue.”

“My body, my choice.”

As they bickered back and forth, the stark decor of the hospital room and the reclinable bed he was in irritated the hell out of him. As did the johnny he was wearing. The fact that his feet were bare. And also the idea that he might get trapped here during the day.

Actually, pretty much everything irritated him.

“Really.” At least the surgeon let go of his arm as the guy spoke. “That’s your comeback. Your body, your choice?”

Wait, was that what he had said? He couldn’t remember.

Whatever.

“I thought it was a good one.” Axe shook his head. “And come on, I fed from a Chosen back there. Within six hours, everything will be healed up. Inside and out. I have no broken bones, you yourself said I didn’t have a concussion, and I saved the life of a member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.”

“And you believe that gives you carte blanche to AMA yourself?”

“Okay, I don’t know what AMA is—”

“Against. Medical. Advice. Asshole.”

“Actually, that would be AMAA, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re making me want to hit you in the thigh, FYI.”

“That rhymes, and isn’t there a hypothetical oath or something you human doctors take?”

“Hippocratic. And hypothetically, you could leave here and have a complication in the next three hours where you could need to be opened up again, but there you’ll be, at home with your thumb up your ass, bleeding out for no good reason.”

“My thumb has never been near that area.”

“Maybe you should try it. It might stimulate your brain to work right.”

Axe couldn’t help it. He started to laugh, and then Dr. Manello followed along—at least until Axe ended up coughing and grabbing for his side where he’d been stabbed.

“See?” Dr. Manello said grimly.

“Just sore.” Axe took a deep breath and mostly hid his wince. “Look, Doc, just let me go. I’ll catch the shuttle out and—”

“You won’t be able to dematerialize.”

Shit. The guy was probably right.

“What the hell you got at home?” Dr. Manello demanded. “A cat? Some kind of house-eating dog?”

“I just want my own bed.” Even though he slept on the floor. “It’s that simple.”

As Dr. Manello leaned back against the wall, the guy frowned as if someone who spoke a different language than he did was about to drop an anvil on his foot—and he had to figure out how to tell them no, please don’t do that.

“You’re really going to leave,” the surgeon muttered.

“Even if I have to walk all the way home.”

There was a long pause. And then Dr. Manello said, “Fine, I’ll drive you in the surgical unit.”

“What? Oh, shit, Doc, I can’t ask you to do that—”

“What’s my other option, you hardheaded pain in the ass. You’re just going to limp out of here, hide on that fucking bus if you have to, and then get out somewhere in Caldie—only to discover when you’ve been left there that you can’t walk much at all and you die an overcooked pancake from sun exposure. After I wasted seven feet of my best suturing thread and twelve gray hairs Humpty Dumptying your goat fuck back into place.”

“Wait, didn’t Humpty Dumpty fall and break? I think the metaphor you’re shooting for is more along the lines of Elmer’s glue? Duct tape?”

Dr. Manello smiled and pointed at the IV bag. “Do you have annnnnnnny idea the kind of shit I can put in your bag?”

“That sounds dirty. And I like females recently, so you’re not my type.”

The surgeon was laughing as he headed for the door. “Gimme ten minutes to get organized. Ehlena will be here to unplug you—and if you touch that line into your vein? I’m not letting you go. We do this right, on my terms, clear?”

“Clear.”

Just as the human opened the door, Axe said gruffly, “Can I see Rhage. You know, before I leave.”

Dr. Manello looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, he’s been asking for you. And you can take your time in there—you’re going in in a wheelchair. Oh, and shut the fuck up with the complaining on that, will you.”

“I haven’t bitched about it.”

“Yet.”

As the door eased shut, Axe thought, Well, at least the guy seemed to get him.

And what do you know, after he was “unplugged” and had shifted his bare feet to the floor, standing up turned out to be reallllllly tricky.

Turned out that surgeon had had a point about him not being able to go far.

Ehlena, his nurse, was patient as he grunted and shifted himself from the bed down to the wheelchair, and then she pushed him two doors closer to the exit and knocked.

“Come in,” a female voice said.

The nurse opened things up and Axe rolled himself in. The tableau over at the hospital bed was totally Norman Rockwell, Rhage on his back looking like death warmed over, his loving shellan and his dark-haired daughter by his side.

And it was funny, even though Axe didn’t believe in the nuclear anything, unless it was a bomb … the three of them together made him a little sentimental. After all, it was the kind of thing anyone would want—because he could tell the family was close, Rhage holding the little girl’s hand, and Mary, who Axe had met in passing once or twice, with her arm around their daughter.

“Don’t mean to interrupt private time,” Axe muttered.

“No”—Rhage motioned forward—“come here.…”

Axe wheeled over as close as he could and thought, Fuck it. He put the brake on, struggled to get out of the chair, and used the handrails of the bed to hold himself up.

Wow. Nauseous.

“Thank you, son,” Rhage said hoarsely. “You saved my life.”

Man, those eyes were so blue, they almost looked fake. And they shone with tears unshed.

“Nah, it’s good. I’m just glad, you know.…” Fuck, wait, what the hell, was he tearing up, too? “Look, I got to go—”

Rhage caught his arm in a shockingly tight grip, and repeated, “Thank you. For saving my life. And do us both a favor and don’t try to pretend you didn’t. You’re the only reason I’m alive right now.”

Axe just stood there like a planker. He had no idea what the hell to do.

Mary broke the silence, speaking up from the other side, her voice wavering. “I don’t know how to repay you.”

“Nothing. I don’t want anything, ma’am.” Axe looked up, way up, in an attempt to create more surface area for his welling eyeballs. “I better go. I’m going home.”

“They’re releasing you?” Rhage asked. “No offense, son, but you don’t look well enough to be breathing on your own, much less going home unsupervised.”

“I’ll be fine.”

The Brother laughed. “You sound just like one of us.”

There was another moment of quiet, during which Axe desperately tried to keep from leaking.

“Come here, son.”

Rhage grunted as he sat up, and for some stupid, insane, inane reason … Axe leaned down with a groan. As the two embraced, Axe heard himself say, “What if I hadn’t gotten there on time? That’s what I … that’s what I keep replaying in my head.”

“But you did.”

“What if I hadn’t, though? You’d have died and it would have been my fault.”

Rhage let go and collapsed back against the raised half of the bed. “No, it would have been mine. We’ll go into it later, but trust me, as someone who knows that pattern of thought well? It’s the definition of stupidity to beat yourself up over something that fate decided was going to happen or not.”

“Yeah.”

“You know,” the Brother exhaled roughly, “I’d like to tell you war gets easier. It doesn’t. But you do get used to how awful it is. That much I can promise you. And hey, check it. You’re starting out on a win. Better than having your ass—” He glanced in the direction of his daughter. “You know. With a broomstick. Plunger. Hockey stick. Tent pole. Tent pole. Tent pole.”

Axe laughed and eased back down into the wheelchair … which was both a relief and as painful as Rhage’s pain-in-the-ass point—literally.

And damn it, you’d think his thigh would appreciate not having to carry any weight? Why was it doing that heartbeat thing again?

“No class tomorrow night,” Rhage said.

“Yeah, listen, is it true no one else got hurt, just you and me?”

“There were some other brief engagements, but no one saw real action. The other slayers just ran off? It was as if they were afraid of getting sent home. I think the Omega’s in some kind of flux. I don’t know.”

Axe nodded like he had something to contribute to any kind of discussion about the Omega, the Lessening Society, or the ins and outs of the war. He really didn’t. He’d just happened to be at the right place at the right time tonight and hadn’t fucked everything up.

He felt like people were making him out to be some kind of hero—and he was anything but.

He alone knew exactly what a lie that was.

“So, ah, I’m going to take off now. Dr. Manello’s driving me back home.”

“You sure that’s a good idea, son?”

Axe glanced at Rhage’s family. “I, um … I got someone waiting for me.”

Rhage’s smile was slow and knowing. “Well, good for you, son.”

“Too good for me, is more like it.”

“Oh, I know that one. Again, I’ll say, trust me.”

Axe nodded at the two females and then started rolling himself back from the bed so he could K-turn and—

The little girl came around and stood in front of him. She was so tiny and frail looking, with wrists that seemed no bigger than one of his fingers and shoulders that were barely wider than the span of his palm. But her lovely brown eyes were bright and intelligent and her hair was thick and shiny. In her leggings and her cozy red Christmas sweater with its snowflake pattern …

… she was more terrifying than a pack of lessers.

What if he broke her? And not that anyone was asking him to pick her up. But what if, like, he breathed the wrong way, and she shattered like glass?

Well … for one thing, half dead or not, Rhage would get out of that bed and turn him into floor polish.

“Ahhh …” Axe glanced to the parents in a panic. “Ahhh …”

“Can I give you a hug? For saving my father?” the little one said.

Axe immediately looked at Rhage again. And yeah, Axe might possibly have shaken his head back and forth real tight. Kind of like you would if someone said, Hey, how’d you like to hold this snapping turtle? Or … How about you volunteer for malaria? Or the all-popular, How about you jump into this alligator-infested cesspool?

With pork chops tied around your neck and a rib roast shoved down your—

Axe frowned. Mary and Rhage both seemed like somebody had died all of a sudden. What the hell?

Jeez, he didn’t want to offend them.

He glanced back at the tiny female. “Ah … um, yeah. Sure—”

The kid was on him the next moment, her surprisingly strong hold taking his breath away. Reaching up, he patted her bird-like shoulder blades.

And then froze as she whispered in his ear, “He saved my life. I wish I could do what you did for him someday.”

She broke away from him just as quickly as she’d come at him, and it was weird. In the center of his chest, he felt this bizarre kernel of … he didn’t know what it was. But it was warm and seemed like the complete opposite of the freezing-cold self-hatred he usually carried around behind his sternum.

The kid went back to her parents. And before shit got even more too-much-emotion than it already was, Axe gave the family one last wave—and then the little girl had to come over again and open the door for him because he had no idea how to get out of the room without help.

Dr. Manello was outside in the corridor. “You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s do this.”

The pair of them ambulated together, the good doctor on his feet in some kind of fancy loafers, him in his ass cruiser that had wheels that squeaked on the polished floor.

For the trip to the cottage, Dr. Manello made him ride in the back of the RV, in the surgical bay, because the front of the thing didn’t have tinted windows.

And Axe was more than fine without knowing the precise location of the training center.

It gave him time to think.

For some reason, that shit Rhage said was sticking in his head.

It’s the definition of stupidity to beat yourself up over something that fate decided was going to happen or not.

Axe groaned and rubbed his eyes. God, he was tired—

“Hey, we’re here.”

Axe jumped—and promptly cursed as his body lit up with agony, all of his pain receptors simultaneously firing.

Dr. Manello was in the back of the RV, standing over the wheelchair. “You want me to help get you out?”

“No.” Axe gritted his teeth and put his palms on the padded armrests. “I’ll do it.”

The surgeon stepped back, those keen, miss-nothing eyes of his checking for all kinds of organ and structural failures as Axe managed to haul himself up onto his two feet.

“You can keep the johnny and the slippers. Hell, take the wheelchair—please.”

Axe grunted as he shuffled to the rear doors. “Like they’re door prizes? And yeah, I’m leaving the chair.”

As the surgeon hopped around with admirable ease and opened the rear doors, Axe felt like he was a hundred and eighty thousand years old. But he managed to get himself to the ground with only a little help … and then he was doing the old man over to—

Why was there smoke coming out of the cottage’s chimney?

It was only three in the morning?

Shoving all of his owies aside, he focused on who was in his house—yup, it was his Elise.

Not that she was his.

Guess she had decided to come early—

“You got this?” the surgeon asked, puffs of white breath leaving his mouth in the cold. “You want me to help you get settled in there?”

“No, thanks, Doc.” Axe looked at the human and put out his palm. “I owe you a lot.”

“Yup, you do. But the service with a smile is free. Just make sure you come see me first thing at nightfall, ’kay? I know there isn’t class, but we’ve got to take those stitches out.”

“Deal.”

After they clapped hands, the surgeon shut his mobile unit back up, and took off while Axe headed for the front door.

Crap. He could have used a minute to brush his hair and his teeth before he saw Elise. And then there were all the bandages.…

Ha, and she thought that cut by his eye had been a thing.

At least she couldn’t accuse him of not keeping things between them spicy. Or at the very least … surprising.