Axe’s adrenaline didn’t stop flowing until Dr. Manello’s mobile surgical unit pulled into some kind of downtown garage and the surgeon opened the sliding door.

And even then, Axe was on a hair trigger. Natch.

As he got out, he looked around at a dim, industrial interior that smelled like oil, gas, and old metal—and tried to pretend he wasn’t losing his fucking mind.

He couldn’t believe that not only had Elise gotten ambushed with the rest of them, but that she had discharged about a pound and a half of lead into a lesser who had a gun—and worse, it was all his own fucking fault. If he and Peyton hadn’t been going at it, playing dick toss in that bar, the three of them, and then Novo, and then Rhage, never would have ended up outside, exposed, and wrong-place-wrong-timing it with all those slayers.

And yeah, then her fucking cousin, Peyton the Golden Boy, never would have gotten popped in the head. Plus, what if Rhage didn’t get out of that human cluster-fuck okay? What if the cops got him or another lesser or—

That open-ended nightmare was solved when a side door got thrown wide and the stench of vampire blood and lesser death wafted in.

“How is Peyton?” the Brother Rhage said as he came into the light thrown by the surgical unit. “And what do I need to do to help.”

As Rhage passed by, he clapped Axe on the shoulder in acknowledgment, but focused on Dr. Manello, who had laid Peyton out on the operating table and was hooking up all kinds of shit to him. Before there were any answers, Doc Jane came in through that same door. She was in surgical scrubs, just like Manello, and she was not interested in anyone other than her patient.

Inside the van, Novo was standing against the far wall with her arms crossed over her chest and her head down. Blood was dripping off her chin. She’d been cut there. Also on the forearm.

Someone’s phone started to ring.

“That’s me,” Elise said next to him.

Snapping to attention, Axe put his arm around her as she fumbled with the thing and put it up to her ear.

“Troy? No, I’m so sorry, I can’t talk right now. Tomorrow? Sure. What? Well … I’ve got … a friend who’s in trouble. We’re at the ER right now. No, it’ll be fine. I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye.”

She hung up and leaned against him as if the interruption had never happened. Which made it less likely he’d stalk across Caldwell to find her professor and black-eye him on principle.

Okay, fine. He wouldn’t do that. At least not in a world outside of his jealous streak.

And why the fuck was he thinking like this right now?

“Is he going to be all right?” Elise asked nobody in particular.

“We just have to wait,” Axe heard himself reply. “We just have to pray.”

After all, he didn’t particularly like Peyton, but that didn’t mean he wanted the bastard to go brain dead or into an early grave. Especially if Elise was even tangentially involved.

After a little while, Rhage ducked his head out of the SUV. “Listen, I want you two to head home. There’s nothing you can do here. We’ll let you know what happens with him, okay?”

“Is he …” Elise just let the sentence drift as if she recognized its futility.

“We’ll do everything we can for him.” Rhage looked over at Axe. “You were a huge asset again, son.”

“It’s my fault.”

“How you figure that? You send up a flare or some shit? Put an ad in Craigslist for your buddy to get shot in the head? Don’t think so. G’on now, get her home and you do the same.” Rhage then met Elise’s eyes. “And you were amazing. You really showed up when you had to.”

“I don’t know how to shoot a gun,” she mumbled. “I’ve never shot one before.”

“Well, you have now. And I’m sorry you had to learn the skill.”

With his head thumping, Axe led her over to the door and opened the way out. He stepped through first, and as he glanced around, he saw that they were close to the river under the bridges, the highway elevated up on pylons, the sound of the occasional car and truck above echoing around.

“You go now,” he said to her. “And I’m right behind you. To your house.”

She nodded in a way that broke his heart. And then she closed her eyes.

It took her at least a minute, maybe two, to ghost out.

And then he was on her tail, traveling through the cold night in a loose collection of molecules that seemed to represent better who he was as opposed to the more organized, corporeal version of himself.

Scattered was his very definition.

When he re-formed, it was right beside her, something made possible because of the blood they’d shared.

As she took his hand and started for the front door, he pulled her to a stop. “You have blood on your clothes. Is there a back way we can use?”

Elise looked down at herself like she had forgotten what clothes were at all, much less what she was currently wearing and what condition it was in.

“Funny,” she whispered. “This was how it all started.”

“I’m sorry?”

She looked up at him. “With you. I walked into the house through the front door by mistake and that’s how my father saw me. And if I hadn’t done that … I never would have met you.”

Yeah, and how’s it working for you, he thought grimly. You shot a lesser, nearly got killed yourself, and you’re covered with the stains of war.

“Tell me where the back door is,” he said in a grim voice. “And I’ll take us in.”

There was nothing Rhage could do.

As Doc Jane and Manny went to work on Peyton, stitching up the streak by his temple, assessing his concussion, trying to fix his too-low blood pressure, Rhage was pretty fucking tired of being in situations where he couldn’t do shit.

He glanced at Novo. The female trainee hadn’t moved the whole time. It was as if she had turned to stone. “You want to go?”

“No.”

In other circumstances, he might have argued, but she was tough. No matter what happened, she could handle it—

His phone went off and he grabbed for it. “Oh, shit … I gotta go,” he said as he read the text. “It’s Mary.”

“We’re safe,” Manny said.

“I’ll send some people over.”

“That’d be good.”

Rhage was out the side door and dematerializing a split second later. As he re-formed in front of the Audience House, he didn’t think twice about running up the front walkway and shoving open the door—

Lot of people in the foyer and everyone turned to him—

Complete. Fucking. Chaos.

Mary gasped. Bitty yelled. Somebody started cursing—V, by the sound of it. And then his females were coming at him, talking a mile a minute, pointing, gesturing to his chest.

He couldn’t fathom what they were going on about.

“Hold up,” he said, putting his palms out. “How was it with Ruhn—are you okay, Bitty?”

“You’re shot! You’re bleeding!”

“Huh?”

Except then he looked down at himself. Sure enough, there were bullet holes through the front of his shirt and his leather jacket; there was bright red blood on his hands and all over his clothes … and black lesser blood dripping off his daggers, which he’d restrapped.

Oh. Right. That whole, you know, fighting thing.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m—”

“I’m calling Doc Jane now!” Mary said as she went for her phone.

“No!” He put his hand out again. “They’re operating. And I’m not hurt—”

“I just lived through you getting shot in the chest! Why are you still standing! Rhage—”

He stepped in front of his mate and ripped his shirt clean down the middle.

As buttons went flying and then skipped across the marble floor, he exposed what used to be his shiny new bulletproof vest. But that now had more in common with Swiss cheese.

Rhage pounded on his chest. “Kevlar.” He picked another bullet out and let the thing fall to the floor—where it obligingly bounced along to play with all those buttons. “I’ve been wearing them since I got shot, you know, the last time. I mean, yes, we agreed you’d stay with her after I die, but there’s no reason to rush that.”

All at once, he became aware of Ruhn standing in the far corner, his eyes missing nothing.

Rhage cleared his throat. “Or, you know, there was no reason to rush that.”

There was a pause. And then Mary and Bitty were on him, his females hugging him and talking a mile a minute, nervous energy being burned off, the fact that he was sweaty and bloodstained not seeming to matter to them in the slightest.

“Z,” he said over Bitty’s head as she poked her fingers into the holes. “You need to get down to the garage. They’re unprotected and operating on Peyton. And V, I’m pretty sure they could use another set of hands.”

There was conversation at that point, and someone suggested Ruhn head off to wherever he was staying.

And that totally changed the vibe. Bitty turned to her uncle and so did Mary.

“When do I see you again?” Bitty asked with her customary directness.

“Tomorrow night?” Ruhn said in his quiet way.

“Okay.”

At least they didn’t hug, Rhage thought uncharitably as the male bowed, murmured a few words to Marissa and Mary, and then walked to the door—

“Wait,” the little girl said.

Without warning, she burst forward … and embraced Ruhn.

It was just the way she had done it when she had been getting to know Rhage and Mary: Fast as a blink, but the first sign she was opening her heart.

Rhage felt tears spear into his eyes. More than any detail of the meeting, more than any he said/she said, this-was-discussed, that-was-explained, Bitty’s actions told him exactly how her time with Ruhn had gone.

Funny, when he and Mary had been in the process of adopting the girl, Rhage had gotten flashes of insight that things were happening between the three of them, were changing, were going in a certain direction. Like his showing her the GTO and her liking the way it smelled … he and Mary taking her to T.G.I. Friday’s in Lucas Square and him explaining that it was okay if they had to leave if it was too much for her to handle … that trip to the ice cream parlor …

He was getting exactly one of those flashes now.

Except instead of it showing him an open road …

… it was all about a brick wall.