For a man who could barely stand upright a few minutes ago, a man who’d almost been assassinated by a hired set of fangs, Aidan was hauling ass from where he’d met them at the edge of the old medical clinic parking lot. Mirren had no trouble keeping up with him—at six-foot-eight, he could outwalk even the speediest vampire. Will, however, was struggling.

“Slow down, A.” Mirren looked back at Will. “You’re leaving Junior in the dust.”

Vampires could heal just about anything except removal of a heart or head or a serious fire. But an attack on Penton had mangled Will’s right leg so badly that even after rebreaking and setting it twice, it still had failed to heal properly. Penton’s resident playboy—well, before he’d found his mate, Randa—had been left with a permanent limp.

“I’m fine.” Will shot a glare at Mirren, but his jaw unclenched a little after Aidan slowed down.

“When did Krys wake up? Has she said anything? Has she been able to feed?” Aidan shot out questions faster than his stride. He hadn’t been this energized since the accident.

Mirren and Will exchanged looks, and Mirren hoped the worry he saw in Will’s eyes wasn’t mirrored in his own. This wasn’t a matter of accompanying their friend and leader to see his mate; this was an intervention. A benevolent kidnapping. Whatever you wanted to call it.

A damn lie. That’s what it was, and it made Mirren a fucking turncoat. No way around it.

“Don’t know for sure.” Mirren kept his voice noncommittal. Will couldn’t lie his way out of a bed, so he hoped the younger man understood the keep it zipped look Mirren had sent his way.

They walked toward the Penton Clinic, or what was left of it after a fire and a couple of grenades had done their worst. A Tribunal ally who managed to slip through their patrols would consider it a killing blow to taking out Penton’s leader and two senior lieutenants in one attack, so they moved in shadows, stopping at each corner as they got closer to the building to scent the air and scan their surroundings.

Finally, they reached the front door. The entrance had been retrofitted with steel doors that entered into a lobby area filled with chunks of plaster, hanging wires, dust, and more shadows. The less used it looked, the better. The faint smell of burned electrical systems and smoke still hung in the air.

Mirren locked the door behind the others and followed them into the gloom. This part, he and Will had planned, even rehearsed. Will would lead the way and Mirren would take the rear. As soon as Aidan saw Krys, he’d know his best friend had lied to him in a way that would hurt him the most.

As Will had pointed out, however, a lesser lie wouldn’t have brought Aidan here. Krys hadn’t awakened; if anything, she was weaker. The woman hadn’t moved in months and they’d been keeping her nourished with a daily supply of intravenous infusions of unvaccinated blood donated by most of the scathe’s human familiars. But this standoff, or whatever you wanted to call Aidan’s refusal to act, would end up killing both of them.

Will used a flashlight to illuminate their way to the back office in the central hallway. When the clinic had been functional, Aidan had kept an office here, and the light-safe subsuites below the basement level had been maintained for guests.

Will knelt, his movements awkward due to his leg, and worked the intricate sliding wooden puzzle that unlocked the opening to the basement level. They descended carefully, and Mirren closed the hatch above them once his head had cleared the opening. At the bottom of the ladder, Will flipped a switch to illuminate the basement floor. It showed little signs of the fight that had taken place in the town, except that it was empty. Once, it had been filled with foodstuff for Penton’s humans, plus basics like batteries and candles. All survival materials had been moved to the town’s underground shelter called Omega.

Mirren hoped to hell the whole community would never again have to flee underground, but Omega had been rebuilt and reinforced, just in case. They had also double-timed the work on the new training center to make it secure as a fortress.

“Okay, you ready?” Will opened the hatch to the subsuites and stood with his feet on the top ladder rungs descending into the subbasement.

“What do you think?” Aidan was wound tighter than a hangman’s noose. “Holy hell, would you hurry it up?”

Will gave Mirren a pointed look and descended the ladder. Originally, there had been a dozen well-appointed suites stretched along the hallway below, but the far end of the corridor had collapsed in one of the explosions. Six rooms remained undamaged and were again set up for visitors or anyone needing secure quarters, and the tunnel collapse had been partially cleared. Krys was in the first room on the right, in a queen-sized four-poster bed with an IV in her arm.

Earlier today, Will had overseen some modifications, and Mirren had checked out the setting before they’d retrieved Aidan from his perch in the woods—and just in time. Not much scared Mirren, but his stomach muscles tightened at the thought of how close Aidan had come to dying at the hand of some two-bit vampire.

Now, in the softly lit room where Melissa or Hannah brought fresh flowers each night, a second, narrower bed had been tucked into the corner, not visible until one fully entered. Around the sturdy iron bedrails, in three places, lengths of silver-laced rope had been tied. Everything was set.

Most nights, Krys was tended by Melissa Calvert, another of Penton’s vampire inner circle. During the day, one of the Penton humans—often, Melissa’s husband, Mark—did nursing duty. Before she’d been turned vampire following an attack last year, Mel had been Aidan’s and Krys’s familiar. Today, Melissa had agreed to leave the dirty work to Mirren and Will, but not without a warning: “If this doesn’t work…if Aidan lives and Krys dies, he will never forgive you,” she’d told Mirren. “Never.”

Mirren got it. If he’d been spared at the cost of his mate Glory’s life, he didn’t think he could live with it himself, much less forgive whoever forced it to happen. Hell, he loved Krys and respected her. He’d respect her even if she wasn’t his best friend’s mate. But Krys wasn’t a strong vampire. If nothing changed, Aidan’s master vampire nature would slowly kill her, no matter what he wanted. In the meantime, they’d have another six months or a year or more of misery and Aidan would be just as wrecked at the end. Worse, Aidan would give up in some attempt to save Krys and they’d both die.

This way, with Aidan forced out of commission, maybe they’d both live. And if only one of them could survive, God help him but Mirren would choose Aidan whether he received forgiveness or not.

Will opened the door to the suite and disappeared inside. Mirren followed close behind Aidan, who stopped at the foot of the bed.

“Krys?” He watched her a moment, with Mirren looking over his right shoulder. Behind them, Mirren tracked Will’s movement as he closed the door and stood sentry in front of it.

Aidan didn’t turn. “I don’t see any difference, Mirren. Did Melissa actually see her waking up?”

Krys’s heart-shaped face remained as pale and unmoving as porcelain, her dark auburn hair almost sable against the white bedding. The hand into which the IV needle had been fixed remained as still as it had been since she’d been brought into the room.

Finally, Aidan turned, his blue eyes troubled. He looked at Mirren, then slid his gaze to the corner, where the empty bed awaited. In two heartbeats, those eyes lightened to an arctic, icy blue. “What the hell are you doing? You lied to me?”

He tried to shove Mirren, and Mirren wished his friend had been strong enough to move him, but he wasn’t. Further proof this intervention was needed.

“Aidan, something had to give,” Will said from the doorway. “You’re getting weaker and Krys isn’t getting stronger. We had to do this.”

Damn, but Aidan’s eyes got downright creepy when he was this pissed off. At least he’d pointed those icy daggers toward Will for the moment.

“This? By this you mean tying me to that bed? Well, forget it. Fuck you both.” He edged around Mirren and charged at Will, but they’d been prepared for this. With Mirren standing behind Aidan, it was easy to slip his right hand around Aidan’s throat and pinch the vagus nerve tightly between his thumb and index finger before his friend could prevent it.

Aidan struggled but slumped back against Mirren as the oxygen deprivation set in. Mirren had to keep pressure on the nerve; otherwise, that little trick wouldn’t work more than a couple of seconds on a vampire. It was mostly panic; they didn’t have to breathe, but it was a hard habit to break.

Still, time was limited.

Will helped drag Aidan to the bed and made quick work of tying him down. “Seems like we just did this with Nik,” Will said, wincing as he knelt next to the rails and secured the ropes. His bad leg popped and crackled when he stood again. “Okay, that should do it. Well, except for the temper tantrum. Should we gag him?”

“Are you fucking crazy?” Mirren finally released his fingers’ grip on the nerve in Aidan’s neck and stepped back. “Once he calms down, he needs to talk to her. It might help both of them.” Besides, the guy deserved to give their asses a good chewing.

Aidan stirred, and mumbled something a few seconds before his eyes, almost white now, popped open and his focus speared Mirren like a bug. “Scaoil mé anois, nó beidh mé a mharú fucking agat.” His voice rasped but grew stronger the more he cursed.

“What’s he saying?” Will’s voice drew that wintry glare in his direction. Mirren would swear the younger vampire flinched.

“Let’s just say Aodhan has reverted to his native language and is not a happy vampire.”

Will leaned over Aidan. “I’m going back on patrol. Listen to Dr. Mirren. He’s smarter than he looks.”

“Get the hell out, Junior. I can take it from here.”

Mirren kept the scowl on his face until Will had left, then pulled a wooden chair from the corner to sit next to Aidan. Aidan was yelling now, still in some garbled form of language from his native Ireland, watered down from a couple of centuries in the South. Mirren crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair. It creaked beneath his weight.

At least two or three minutes passed before Aidan finally wore himself out.

“You done?” Mirren noted the slight darkening of Aidan’s irises. At least now they were recognizable as some pale shade of blue; he was calming down.

“Don’t do this, Mirren. If I’m inactive, my body will try to heal and I could kill her. Think how you’d feel if it was Glory in that bed.”

Those words hurt, and Mirren looked at the floor a few seconds. “Aidan, you’re the strongest master vampire I’ve ever met, and if we don’t do something, she’s eventually going to die anyway or go into such a deep space she can’t wake up. She’s not strong enough to overpower your inborn will to live, even though you’ll kill yourself trying to avoid it.”

Aidan gave him a stony look but didn’t respond, so Mirren pressed on. “Look at you. If we hadn’t shown up tonight, you’d have been blindsided by that half-assed rogue vampire. The bombing in Atlanta was sloppy work. Nik is sharp; otherwise, you’d be dead from going into a limited-exit space.”

“You’re saying I can’t lead Penton?” Aidan’s voice had almost returned to its normal tone. “Do I need to remind you who built this town? Who it is these people follow?”

Mirren stood up and pushed the chair back into the corner. “You don’t have to remind me of a damned thing. But you’re going to lose those people unless you can come back at full strength.”

“And in the meantime, who will lead? I never saw you volunteer for that responsibility.”

Aidan had reverted to sarcasm, and that, Mirren could handle. “You’re goddamned right, I’m going to lead. I might lead them all straight to hell.”

Mirren paused at the door. “And I don’t want the job permanently.”