Antonia Juarez rubbed the back of her neck and wished she could remove her clogs and rub her feet instead. She was on shift for another hour, and those sixty minutes were far fewer than the hundreds she’d started out with this morning, but still, she wanted home.  

Stat.  

It had been a shitty night. She was used to the worst, had dealt with many, and would deal with thousands more before she retired, but still. This had been shittier than most.  

Halfway through her shift, the victims of a car crash had been rushed in. Two joyriding idiots had smashed into a family sedan. The selfish bastards had survived with minor cuts and bruises, but the family sedan, which had been shepherding a mother, father, and three children, all under six, hadn’t been so lucky.  

If the father walked again, he’d be fortunate. Maybe if his healthcare coverage extended to some epic physio, he’d rehab better, but she’d seen the clothes they’d had to cut off to access his wounds. There was no way this guy was an exec with the best kind of insurance benefits. The mother was in a bad way; she’d been in surgery since registration. Only the kids were doing fine. By some miracle, broken bones and mild concussions were the worst of it, but emotionally? They were as bad as the parents.  

Even down here in the restroom, a good hundred feet away from where the kids were being tended to, terrified grandparents at their sides, she could still hear their sobs… their terror. She couldn’t blame them. How could she? She’d lost her parents when she’d been a little older than them, and to this day, she could feel that horror, the fear of being alone, of having her entire world ripped apart, never to be sewn back together again.   

Those feelings were slamming her square in the gut and had been since she’d started working on the family’s case. It was why she was here in the restroom, taking a time out when the ER was jam-packed and crazy, desperately needing more hands on deck. But Toni knew when to back off, knew when she needed space and a few moments to breathe, and now she needed it more than ever.  

Leaning over the sink, she gripped the edges and stared into the mirror. Dark circles rested under her eyes thanks to a shitty sleep schedule. She’d been on nights for the past two weeks, with a further two weeks still to go. Her manager had shoved her on this roster as punishment for two reasons: one, for not putting out—it never ceased to astonish her that he could get away with harassing her, and her complaint could still be ignored by the upper administration—and two, because there were four members of the night team on staff this month.  

She hated nights. Always had. During her residency, it had been a nightmare working once dark hit. Because the truth was, thirty-four or not, Toni was terrified of the dark. She hated it. With a passion. She hated looking out of the windows and seeing pitch black. She liked being at home, curtains tightly closed, hiding her from the oppressive blanket of night.  

Here, on the rare occasions she had the chance of looking out onto the parking lot, she saw nothing but that.  

True, she started and ended before night fell and as morning broke. But that didn’t stop her from falling prey to the darkness around the hospital. When she took her break, it was in the window-encircled canteen. When she had to run outside to grab a gurney from an ambulance, she had to go out and be in the dark.  

It was crazy. She was too old for such a ridiculous fear, but that was the insanity of a phobia. It was irrational. It made no sense to anyone else. And it could and would overtake every other part of a person’s life.  

She rarely dated because most people wanted to date at night. Sure, a few guys were content to start dating at lunchtimes, catching up for coffee meets and the like. But eventually, they wanted longer than an hour with a prospective partner. Then, when she explained why that wasn’t a possibility, unless they came around to her place with no expectation of her putting out, they usually laughed at her. Or stared at her in astonishment.  

Sometimes, she couldn’t blame them.  

She wasn’t four and afraid of the monsters under the bed or in her closet.  She had three decades on that but still feared the night could swallow her up whole, as it had done her parents.  

Shuddering, Toni lifted a hand and rubbed at her eyes with pointer finger and thumb. They were gritty, aching, and when she grasped the sink again, she winced at the sight of how bloodshot they were. Sleeping through the day went against everything she stood for, which was why she hadn’t been sleeping great since she’d started on night shifts. But today, something was going to have to give.  She needed rest. ASAP.

Wondering if she should pop an herbal remedy or down a couple of shots of whiskey, she splashed some water on her face then patted it dry with some toilet tissue she grabbed from a cubicle. Her silver-streaked black hair was still tight and neat in her high bun and her green eyes were as bright as they could be after the shock of the cold water, but tension bracketed her nose and mouth, making her look a lot older than thirty-four.  

She wasn’t a vain woman, but that shit stunk.  

Who wanted to look older than their years? And all because of restless sleep and a stupid phobia that paralyzed her world.  

She pinched her cheeks, dragging some color into them, rubbed at the lines either side of her nose and mouth in dismay, then swiped on some lip balm she kept in the pocket of her lab coat.  

Toni didn’t look much better, but she felt it. A little. At least she’d tried.  

Grimacing and discarding the fact that pinching her cheeks was a temporary measure and that the paleness of her naturally tanned skin was down to fatigue, nothing else, she headed out of the restroom as a gaggle of nurses walked in. They immediately stopped chattering when they noticed she was there, but she was used to that. The staff didn’t like her because she was anal retentive and a control freak. 

The irony of her life was that her inability to control her fear of the night made her hyper-controlled everywhere else.  

They called her the ‘Robot.’ 

Not the most original of names, but it had stuck hard and fast.  

She heard them whisper it as she nodded at them in greeting then continued her retreat to the ER. The instant the door closed, she jolted a little in surprise when she saw the corridor was empty. That was unheard of. The place always heaved, but this little pocket of paradise was wonderful. She took time to head down the hall, spying through the glass inserts in the doors at the bottom of the corridor that the quiet was coming to an end.  

An hour.  

That was it.  

Just another hour to go.  

The cacophony of noise had her grimacing when she walked into her station, but she ignored it and headed toward a cubicle that had been empty when she’d gone to the restroom but was occupied now.  

A nurse waited there, clipboard in hand, notes already jotted down. She smiled in relief when she saw Toni, which had her jolting again in more surprise. People rarely smiled at her. Certainly not in relief. If anything, they groaned under their breath in irritation at having to work with such a stickler.  

Toni knew her reputation and wasn’t ashamed of it.  

Better to be known for being too damn good at her job than sucking at it.  

The nurse, Betsy, passed the clipboard over, and Toni took it, scanning down the case history. Her brows rose in bewilderment, and she glanced over at the cubicle’s occupants for the first time. The minute she did, she understood why Betsy had been relieved at the sight of her.  

Six men, all of them huge, were crammed inside the small cubicle. One of them lay on the gurney, unconscious, and another, a younger one, sat at his side in the only chair.  

“Are these all relatives?” she asked Betsy.  

“Yeah. We’re brothers,” one of the blondest guys she’d ever seen said.  

“Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait outside.”  

Betsy cleared her throat. “They’re unhappy with that suggestion. Quoted Article 45 of the Shifter-Human Ethics Treaty.”  

Toni frowned, scanned through her memory for the article, then winced. “You’re only going to get in the way,” she tried to compromise, then realized her words weren’t exactly conciliatory. So, she tried again. “I mean, it will be detrimental to…” She scanned the sheet again. “Justiss’s recuperation if you’re all hanging around. I need space to examine him.”  

“Look, you know the article, you know our rights. We’re not moving.”  

The youngest there cleared his throat but kept his gaze trained on the supine man. “Mars, Kiko, back down. You guys don’t need to be here. Only I do. Let the healers do what they gotta do. Let’s not get in her way. Then we can go home.”  

The instant he murmured the words, Toni felt something, she didn’t know what, unravel inside her.  

Jesus, what the hell was it? 

It was like drinking a glass of wine after a long shift. It was like tasting the first spoonful of ice cream after being on a diet for twelve weeks.  

It was… everything. 

But it was nothing.  

Her mouth worked, and to her embarrassment, nothing came out, only a low moan. All the men swerved their attention her way, but she didn’t care, not when the youngest man trapped her in his gaze, his own eyes widening.  

She licked her lips, saw his glance track the movement, then whispered, “What’s going on?”  

The guy the younger man had called Mars cleared his throat. “Are you all right, ma’am?”  

“She’s looking at him the way Annette looks at you.”  

“Shut up, Jarvis,” Mars spat at one of the cubicle’s occupants. 

“No, she is, Prez.”  

“Kiko, don’t be ridiculous.”  

The names whirled past her in a raucous twister that dragged at her ears but didn’t lodge in her brain. All she knew, all she could see, was the man on the chair. He was gorgeous. So handsome her lower belly burned with a heat she hadn’t felt for a long time. He was dark, as dark as her. His eyes were a rich green like shamrocks, and his skin was a golden bronze that was only enhanced by the dullness of the light in the cubicle.  

His nose was strong, his chin square and stubbled. He was tall, and large—barrel-bodied with muscles on top of muscles hidden beneath an MC cut. Squashed into the small stool reserved for relatives, he looked ridiculous. And yet, he looked divine.  

Betsy coughed. “Dr. Juarez? Is everything okay?”  

The noise had her blinking free of the daze and turning to face the nurse. Her features were alive with a curiosity that had Toni grimacing. This would be all over the staff room before she clocked off her shift. The Robot had been fascinated with one of the new patients.  

Gossip. Just what she needed.  

“Have you run blood work?”  

“We’re just waiting on the results.”  

Toni nodded her approval because Betsy’s foresight saved her time. Ordinarily, Betsy would have had to wait for a doctor’s agreement, but in this, where Shifters were concerned, all protocol was different.  

On any ER team in any hospital around the country, each shift had to have at least one attending healer and aid on staff. They had extra training, extra skillsets, and followed a different rule book.  

On this rota, Toni and Betsy were the Shifter healer and aid.  

“You can leave me to handle this,” she told Betsy. “Show the other gentlemen where they can wait, then come back for further instruction.”  

The nurse made no complaint, took a step back from the cubicle, and waited for the four men to follow her.  

They did so but weren’t happy and dragged their feet until the younger man said, “Go on. It’s okay. He needs me. As long as I’m here, that’s fine.”  

They all grunted, but the guy called Mars bit off, “You take care of him, doc. This man’s prized in my Clan.”  

Toni, feeling her eyes widen at what was obviously a threat, shrugged off his aggression. She was used to being spoken to with sharp tones, but it didn’t stop her from being surprised by the words. Shifters rarely discussed their Clans, even in passing. Rather than show him her shock, she murmured, “I can only do what I’m trained to do.”  

He sneered but kept silent, especially when the young guy pointedly cleared his throat.  

Closing the curtain behind the other brothers, Toni stepped closer to the fallen man. Opposite the young Shifter male, who could have been anything from twenty to sixty, as they aged differently than humans, she had to fight to focus her attention on the injured Shifter.  

“It’s okay,” the other guy murmured. “They’re just concerned. Justiss will be all right. I know he will.” She blinked at him, and his answering smile was tender. Beautiful. Pussy-melting. “I’m Graver.”  

“Graver?” she asked, voice a little hoarse because it had been a long time since she’d met anyone who had made her core burn enough to melt.  

“Yeah. It’s my surname. Not a weird MC nickname. We’re not emos or Goths or anything. Just Bear Shifters.” 

She checked the case notes even though she could remember the history verbatim. “And you’ve been involved in a blood sacrifice?” Talk about unique.

He ducked his head in silent confirmation.  

“What happened?” She remembered the tiny segment in her training on Shifter healing that had been about blood sacrifices. There had been little to no information on the infrequently held ritual. Hell, it had been more a case of learning that they happened. Period. That one Shifter gifted blood via a bite to a mated female, and on rarer occasions, another Shifter.  

She had no idea what it meant when something rare happened within something rare, but it probably wasn’t good.  

Jesus, she’d never felt the lack of information as she did now. She hated being kept out of the loop. But it was a loop in which no one seemed to know anything anyway. As far as she’d ever been able to discern, even Shifters were in the dark when it came to this unique practice.

“Justiss was attacked. When I found him, he was bleeding out. I gave him blood. He survived the attack. I don’t think we even need to be here really, but by the time I woke up after giving him blood, we were en route, and I think the guys would prefer you to check us over because our usual healer is AWOL.”  

She blinked at him again. “Graver, you were unconscious?”  

“Yeah. For a short while.”  

“Enough to be transported to a vehicle and actually travel from one place to another in a moving car without knowing it?”  

He nodded.  

Toni grunted. Lifted her hand and rubbed at her temples once more. Why had they had to come in at the tail end of her shift? Why not at the start of the next or at the beginning of hers?  

And then, when she looked at Graver once more and felt the weight of the punch he packed, regrets and wishes fled.  

This man was… She gulped. She didn’t know what he was to her, but she knew she’d never had this reaction to any other person before. 

Since her parents’ deaths, she’d never been able to connect to anyone.  

The double tragedy had been compounded by that. 

Not one of her grandparents had been able to break through the ice she’d bricked around herself. Not an uncle or aunt had been able to get through to her, to warm her up.  

And yet, this stranger was making her feel flushed with his attention.  

Earlier, she’d pinched her cheeks to bring color to their paleness. Now? They were burning up. 

The contrast wasn’t lost on her, because the heat was more than just in her face but in her chest and stomach too.  

This was bizarre.  

“Graver?” She cleared her throat and decided to just throw it out there, “Do you feel this too?”  

She wasn’t sure how to describe this… didn’t know what this actually meant. She just knew that most women would have avoided this kind of conversation with a man they’d met mere moments before. Hell, it could simply be sexual arousal. Nothing more, nothing less. But as Toni had spent most of her sexual maturity in an asexual haze, bored more than intrigued, to suddenly be feeling so much, meant something.  

Clinically, she had no choice but to see if he shared these sensations. Even if his answer was a mortifying ‘no.’ 

“Yes.”  

The one-word answer had her swallowing roughly. She put the clipboard on the bottom of the bed by the patient’s feet and pressed her hands to the blankets for support. Letting her head fall, she sucked in a breath as relief flooded her.  

Whatever this was, she wasn’t alone.  

He felt it too. 

Gulping in another breath, she sought him out once more, not stopping until he was locked in her stare. “What’s going on?”  

His grin was sheepish and all the more delicious for it. God, he was handsome. “I think we’re mated.” 

Her mouth fell open, and as she was about to squeak and demand what the hell he was going on about, Justiss moaned and started rolling his head from side to side in agitation. Then, before she even had time to reach his side, his eyes opened, and he shot up into a seated position. 

“Oh, dear, that was the worst thing you could have done,” she said, her tone loaded with sympathy for the hammers that were about to start pounding at his temples and behind his eyes. His groan was all the confirmation she needed to press a gentle hand to his shoulder, the other to his back, and help him fall back against the mattress. The move involved her brushing closely against him, a move that she’d done a thousand times before and would do a thousand times in the future. Only this time, it was different.  

Graver different.  

What the hell? 

The burn from Graver’s presence seemed to be torn down in a fiery explosion when she got a chance to breathe in this man’s scent. Jesus, it was like a firestorm. It rained down over her, cascading her in a heaven-like hell she’d never known before.  

A moan escaped her, a moan that had Justiss’s eyes popping open. As he stared at her, she fell into his foamy blue eyes, part hazel part blue-green, and knew she could get lost in them. Forever. Another moan fell from her lips, the sound urging her to pull her gaze from his. Toni Juarez did not make sexual noises in front of patients.  

Only, these weren’t regular patients.  

Her mouth watered with how irregular they were, and as she swallowed, she turned to Graver, got caught up in his gaze once more, and knew she was drowning.  

She didn’t know why, but now that both men were awake, it was like a one-two punch to the ovaries.  

Before, she’d felt a connection. Now? It was… indescribable. She could almost see the lines uniting the three of them, the energy that cocooned them in a haven that was their own making.  

“What the hell’s going on?” she whispered on a breath.  

Justiss’s voice was croaky, but it drew her attention back to him. “You’re my mate.”  

Unfortunately, Graver said it at the same time as he did.  

 

* * *

Justiss’s head banged like a bitch. 

In fact, that was bullshit. It banged like a hangover, burned like he’d been pistol-whipped, and managed to combine every single migraine he’d had in his one-hundred and sixty years into an explosion of cerebral torture.  

The pain was irrelevant though. All that counted was that scent.  

The scent of a woman. His woman. The woman he’d been seeking for nearly the entirety of those one-hundred and sixty years. His mate.  

“I-I can’t be your mate,” the intoxicating creature whispered, her beautiful caramel-chocolate eyes blinking owlishly between him and someone else in the room.  

After letting his gaze drift about the tiny cubicle, he identified he was in hospital, a fact confirmed by the stench of ill humans and death. He also identified that the other person to have laid claim to this dazzling woman was Graver, the youngest sibling of two men he’d considered not just brother by MC but by blood too.  

“What’s going on?” he asked, voice groggy as he posed the question to Graver.  Anyone else, he’d have been angry if they’d have dared to call his female theirs, but Graver didn’t fuck around. For someone with so few years, Graver was the least likely person to joke about any damn thing. Never mind this in particular. He was solemn to the point of ridiculousness. It was like sitting with a vicar or a priest sometimes.

The younger man flinched at his question then ducked his head. “Moses attacked you. You nearly died.” 

“I figured I felt rough,” he rumbled, amusement lacing his tone. When a man hit his years, he stopped being so goddamn afraid of death. Few Shifters actually feared passing. What scared them was leaving someone behind or, if they were mated, dying and robbing their mates of the years they should have had on Earth.  That’s how a mate bond worked. Once united, if one lived, so did the other. If one died, then the other passed too.

Graver’s mouth twitched, but his usual solemnity spilled over any humor he’d found in Justiss’s words. “I saved you, brother.” 

It was the double dose of solemnity that had him narrowing his eyes and studying his brother. “How?” 

“You were nearly dead.” He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling the silky black locks before dragging his hand down over his jaw and cupping his chin. “I had no choice. I couldn’t let Ma lose you. It would kill her. It would kill me, J.” 

Justiss frowned and tried to sit up again and then immediately regretted it when agony spliced through his head. “What did you do, Graver?”  

“I initiated a blood sacrifice.” 

Feeling his mouth drop open, J recognized that for the first time in his life, in a life where his mother accused him of having the gift of the gab and being able to sell ice cream to the Inuit, he was speechless.  

“Mr. Justiss?” The doctor, his mate, hesitantly whispered his name then took a step closer to the bed. “You need to rest. The minutiae of blood sacrifices have never been shared with us, but I can assume they’re wearing for both parties.” To Graver, she shot a glance and murmured, “I think we should get you onto a stretcher too. You’ve both probably lost a lot of blood.” 

His mate’s beautiful voice, as smooth as the chocolate color of her eyes, was enough to prod his brain into functioning. His tongue too. “No, guapa, we don’t need to rest. We probably need to shift.” 

She frowned at him, but he sensed it was more at the endearment than his instant disregard of her dictate. “You can’t do it here.” 

“No. There are too many eyes, J.” 

“I wasn’t suggesting we shift here, Graver. Jesus.” He rolled his eyes. He’d been injured, but that didn’t rob him of all fucking brainpower. “I don’t think the humans would appreciate having a bear appear in one of these cubicles.” He grunted. “What did the council bring me here for anyway? What the fuck did they think a human healer could do for me?” 

“You know all hospitals have healers trained for our kind. None of us wanted to lose you, man.” 

“The way I’ve been treated these last couple of years? You’d never guess.” He was too tired to really be bitter about the way his brothers had abandoned him. And the truth was, Mars, Kiko, Mundo, Major, and even Jarvis, had never really cut ties with him. Even Mars, who’d been second in command under that dickhead Jefferson’s rule, had always made it a point to slap him on the back in the rec room or shoot some pool at night.  

No, Justiss couldn’t begrudge the current council for their treatment of him. They’d done their best with a brother who hadn’t exactly been exiled but was still as far out of the loop as a new goddamn patch.  

He sat up, relief flooding him when the dull throb in his head didn’t make him want to puke again, but he felt the sting of new wounds healing, as well as the weird energy buzzing through his veins that he could only register as being magic.  

Or, he supposed, holy, if Graver wasn’t talking out of his ass.  

Hunching his shoulders and letting his neck take the weight of his head, he was about to speak when the doctor murmured, “I really don’t advise you sitting up, sir. Whether or not your wounds are healing, any sudden movements will pull on the newly mended tissue.” 

He peered over at her and smiled then felt his own cheeks flush a little when she let out a sharp gasp at the sight of his smile. For a second, the atmosphere between them pulsed with life, an oscillation that tugged and swayed between them. That weird energy riding him, the one which could have been magical or holy, seemed to ping off him though. Not just heading her way, but tri-angling its way toward Graver too.  

He cut a glance toward his brother and saw that whatever was going on, it definitely had something to do with the blood sacrifice. Which meant a Goddess (or plural) was involved, so this issue wasn’t going anywhere.  

Shit, he was too old for this crap. Sure, he’d shared women in the past, but he’d never intended on sharing his fucking mate.  

As he watched, Graver stared with longing at the doctor, and it was a glance that was reciprocated. The connection was there, burning like live wire between them all.  

There was no avoiding it. He saw it in that look.  

Whatever the fuck Graver had started, it was ending with the two of them sharing the one woman.  

Anger tried to pulse its way through him. He’d have been a liar if he’d said it didn’t. But the truth was if it wasn’t for mini-G, as he’d always called Aaron, Justiss wouldn’t be here to see his mate. Period. Never mind claim her.  

And that was supposing that the beautiful little Latina was even his mate at all. She could have been meant for Graver. They’d never know, and he guessed that was for the best.  

The doctor cleared her throat when the temperature in the cubicle seemed to swelter like a tropical jungle. And though it got fucking hot this side of Houston, it didn’t burn up like the heat the three of them were stoking. She took a shaky step back from his bed, took a quick glance behind her, saw a shitty stool, and plunked herself down on the plastic seat with a heavy gulp.  

“This is crazy,” she mumbled then peered over his legs to stare at Graver, when her cheeks burned, she coyly ducked her gaze, then peeked up at J. A small shiver seemed to rattle down her spine as she stared at him before she returned to looking at her scrub-covered lap. “How can two Shifters share a mate?” 

Graver cleared his throat. “It’s not usually possible.” 

“Anything’s possible where a blood sacrifice is concerned,” J retorted, lifting a hand to rub his eyes with his fingers. “Jesus, my head’s banging.” 

“All the more reason for you to rest.” 

The doctor’s prim tone had J’s lips twitching. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.” 

“Which you could have been. Do as the doctor says, jerk-face,” Graver ordered.  

J reared back at the annoyance in his little brother’s tone. If anything, he should be the one who was annoyed. He’d been attacked by one of his MC kin, nearly killed, and then dragged back to life without any say so.  

Okay, that made him sound ungrateful, when he was anything but. Still, he wasn’t used to Graver being anything other than cordial with him. They were buddies, always had been since his elder brothers had passed on. J had made it a point to watch over the whole family. Graver’s dad had always been a bit of a shithead to his mate. Not that he’d been handy with his fists or anything—no Shifter, friend or family, would have allowed that to continue—but he’d been shit with money and drink. Both had slipped through his fingers like they were running out of supply.  

It had been J’s honor to watch out for the Graver family, and it seemed he’d been repaid with a blood sacrifice.  

The thought had him sitting back against the raised support of the stretcher. It wasn’t showing Graver the gratitude he deserved by screwing up his healing, was it?  

Aaron seemed to sense the reason why J had moved back, because he smiled softly then looked over at the doctor who also appeared to be a little more content with Justiss taking it easily.  

“I need to run some tests on you.” 

J shook his head. “That’s not necessary. I can feel the wounds, and I know they’re healing.” To Graver, he said, “You must have lost a lot of blood. You probably need to shift as badly as I do.” 

“My head aches too. Do you think the Shift will stop that?” 

J shrugged. “Can’t make it any worse, can it?”  

“Are you sure I shouldn’t run a blood panel or something?” the little doctor asked, clenching and unclenching her fingers on her knees. “I mean, you’re here now. Would it do any harm to make sure you’re both okay?” 

J shot Graver a look, which prompted the younger man to round the foot of the bed, drop down to a crouch in front of the woman, and murmur, “I swear to you now, if we needed medical assistance, I’d let you do whatever you needed to get us better. But magic has healed us. It’s why I did what I did to save Justiss. It was the only way he’d survive.” 

She studied Graver a second, staring at him intently before she swallowed. “He was that close to death?” 

“Closer,” the younger man said with no hesitation.  

Her fingers shook as she lifted a hand to rub her temple. “This is crazy.” 

“It’s really not,” Justiss inserted, a tad wryly. “The truth is, our world gets a whole helluva lot crazier.” 

Graver shot him a look, one that was supposed to quell him, but he just shrugged. Shaking his head, Graver grumbled, “I wouldn’t have picked this particular moment to tell you, but he’s right. There’s crazier stuff that goes down in our world, but this is one of the rare few. Blood sacrifices aren’t common—certainly not between men.” 

Her head tilted to the side at that, and Justiss knew her curiosity had been struck. That made sense though. Only the best doctors were invited to learn about healing Shifters, and the ones who applied usually did so because they were curious as hell about the supernatural. So, it made perfect sense that this little doctor would be intrigued by Graver’s words.  

“Why don’t blood sacrifices happen between men?” 

“Because the Goddesses usually want something wacky in return,” Justiss inserted, trying to lighten the mood before it got too serious. The very fact the woman was reacting to both of them told him what the Goddesses wanted in return: for the two of them to share a mate. He wanted to stall the conversation before things got too tense or serious.  

“Something wacky?” she asked, brow puckering.  

Graver shot him a look. “Usually, they want something humans would consider outrageous,” he conceded. “But between a mated pair, for example, they just drain some of the Shifter’s magic, take some of his power and give it to the injured party.”  

Her frown deepened. “So, that means that blood sacrifices, technically, are to save the human females mated to Shifters.” She looked to Justiss, who nodded, and his response had her whistling. “So, you really broke the mold by saving another Shifter, didn’t you?” 

Graver scraped a hand down his stubbled jaw. He made a face. “The jackass means a lot to me.” 

“I can only imagine.” She blew out a breath then let her fingers play with the hem of her shirt as she murmured, “My name’s Antonia. But you can call me Toni or Tonia. Either suits.” 

Graver smiled. “I’m Graver, but my given name is Aaron. He’s Justiss. If he ever had a given name, I doubt he’d remember it. The old bastard’s been Justiss since before the nineteenth century became the twentieth.” 

“Thanks for that, Graver,” J grumbled, but he wasn’t really pissed. Tonia—he tasted the name and found it more delicious than a stack of freshly prepared buttermilk pancakes—would find out how old he was soon enough. There was no point in hiding it. No point at all. Still, didn’t mean he couldn’t grouse. “Jesus. Talk about making me feel old.” 

“You’re really over one hundred years old?”  

The awe in his mate’s tone had his lips twitching. “Trust me, it’s not that great.” His smile blossomed a little more as he allowed himself to study her. “Although, it was worth it just so I could set my eyes on you.” 

She blushed and he sighed at the delicious sight. Everything about her was creamy and caramel. Her skin had hints of gold, and her chocolate eyes speckled with amber striations. Her hair was a long swathe of dark chestnut, but there were shots of red in the mix, even though it was all constrained tightly in a bun. She was smooth and supple and soft, never mind beautiful, to boot.  

And that wasn’t just the mate bond talking. The woman could have been a supermodel with those cheekbones of hers and an innate sensuality he could sense she repressed behind her scrubs, some godawful sneakers, and her stethoscope.  

Repression he could deal with; denial was another matter entirely.  

“I thought Shifters only had one mate. I don’t understand why I feel...” She let out a deep breath. “I feel like I’m connected to both of you.” 

“That’s because you are, sweetness,” Graver admitted, his tone a touch too close to solemnity for Justiss’s liking.  

Rather than discuss the details with their confused and bewildered mate present, Justiss let out a moan that had both Graver and Tonia’s attention swinging his way. “I really need to shift,” he whispered, aware he was laying it on a little thick but uncaring because he wanted to talk to Graver alone about the Goddesses’ demands before Tonia was made aware of the ins and outs of the situation. 

His mate jumped to her feet and approached his bed, immediately reaching for her stethoscope. She tried to place the pad on his chest, but he grabbed her hand and stopped her. The instant their fingers collided, her eyelids and lips began to tremble. He understood, because the sense of unity was so overwhelming, he felt like he was drowning in it. It felt like nothing else he’d never known. It combined them, connected them, made them one.  

But the crazy thing was, Justiss felt the lack of Graver. He knew that for good or ill, they’d have no choice but to work this weird fuckery out because they were a trio not a duo. Now that his hand was held by his mate, he could sense the connection wasn’t complete.   

He realized Tonia, even though she had less understanding of this situation than either man did, felt the same, because he watched her hold out her hand, her fingers scrabbling with the blankets as she blindly sought Graver’s atop them. He reached out, linked hands with her, and then did the unthinkable—sought and found J’s.  

The instant the three of them were united, Justiss’s headache cleared. He’d been bullshitting before, lying about the urgent need to shift, but his head had been hurting him. Now? It was like his injuries had totally disappeared. Energy flooded their union, blinding them with its bright effervescence and making them all groan with delight.

It was a moment of wonder, of peace, and most definitely, Justiss realized, the calm before the storm.