His right arm tingled and itched as if a massive army of tiny ants marched across it. Cage reached over with his left hand to scratch it and…it wasn’t there.

Bloody hell. Robin hadn’t offed him during his daysleep as he’d asked. She’d promised…or had she? He couldn’t remember. His brain must be lying in the corner with his useless arm.

“Hey, you’re awake.” The mattress jostled when she sat on it next to him. She leaned over and gave him a gentle kiss, which he didn’t return. It was a pity kiss, all he’d get from now on. “How are you feeling?”

“I wanted you to end this during daysleep, Robin. I didn’t want to wake up. I can’t live like…”

He stopped when Robin turned away from him to look at something on the other side of the storage area in Nik’s safe house. “I told you,” she said.

Cage struggled to sit up, pushed Robin away when she tried to help him, and finally used his legs to push his body against the wall and into a semi-sitting position. Across the room, lounging on the concrete floor, sat Glory Cummings and that big cat shifter who used to work with Nik and Robin. Archer.

He rose with the grace of the feline he was and walked over to sit on the corner of Cage’s mattress. Glory followed him.

Cage edged as far away from them as possible. “Well isn’t this cozy?”

He felt like a crippled king surrounded by his pitying acolytes. Well, okay, two pitying acolytes and a green-eyed, perfect specimen of manhood that even Robin said she’d considered as a bedmate before deciding being one more notch on his oversized bedpost would make her feel common. Although, to be fair, that was before Robin had become his mate.

Archer Logan was about six-four, broad shouldered, and narrow hipped. He had the face of an angel and the heart of a predator.

He swiped a hand through his mane of black hair, even darker than Nik’s, and leaned forward. “Welcome back to the living, Cage. Are you hungry? Robin said you could feed from me when you woke up.”

“Oh did she now?” Cage cast an annoyed glance at his mate, who was trying to give Archer a zip it motion.

“He’s a really big shifter, and a powerful one.” Robin snuggled next to Cage’s left arm. His right—what was left of it—had begun to throb. That freaking giant of a vampire must have had a sword blade coated in silver so he could heal nice and slow. “Mirren has forbidden anyone from feeding from him, for obvious reasons. But it might help you heal faster than feeding from me. And we need to get Nik.”

Cage raised an eyebrow at the feral look on Archer’s face. When Mirren and Aidan had bonded Robin, which involved a blood exchange, they’d discovered that feeding from a shifter was a lot more powerful than from a regular human. Robin’s blood gave him a rush of adrenaline unlike anything he’d ever known. Archer was a rare black jaguar shifter in his prime. What would that be like?

“Did my generous mate tell you what to expect?”

“Yes, I’ll get the orgasm of a lifetime.” Archer grinned. “Let’s get started.”

He was an alley cat. Cage frowned and looked over at Robin. “What do I not know that it’s such a bloody rush for me to feed? Have you heard from Nik?” He looked at Glory. “And I can’t believe Mirren let you come.”

Glory laughed. “He didn’t. He ordered me not to.”

Despite his best efforts to maintain his well-deserved air of self-pity, Cage had to return her smile. “Well, our return to Penton should be interesting.”

“As for your other question, we did hear from Nik,” Robin said. “He and the woman named Shay have been in a crypt in one of the New Orleans cemeteries since dawn. Simon Landry’s people have been prowling the area. We need to get them out.”

“A crypt? The ironies never cease.” Cage sighed and jerked his head in Archer’s direction. “Come on, then, kitty-cat.”

Archer climbed up the length of the mattress next to Cage and tilted his head to the side, baring his neck.

As if.

“Oh hell no. Give me your arm.” Cage ignored the sniggers from Glory and Robin as Archer grumbled. But the man pushed up the sleeve of his forest-green sweater and held the inside of his forearm in front of Cage’s face.

Cage raised his right hand to steady Archer’s arm…or he tried. There was no hand. He raised his left instead and gripped Archer tighter than necessary. Without prelude, he licked the spot over the vein running up the inner arm and bit.

The blood tasted wilder and richer than Robin’s, so rich that Cage felt a feeding high after only two pulls. The room grew warmer, and he could smell motor oil and Drywall and paint. Night birds sang outside the house and, somewhere nearby, a car backfired.

Beside him, Archer moaned.

“Cage, stop. You’re taking too much.” Robin’s voice assaulted his eardrum; his enhanced hearing made her sound as if she were using a megaphone.

With effort, he pulled away from Archer’s arm. He turned his head to look at the big shifter, and figured the dazed, sated expression on Archer’s face was mirrored in his own. That was so fucking wrong.

“Okay, chop-chop.” Glory stood up and clapped her hands. Cage tried to focus on her but the world moved in slow-motion. “We need to rescue Nik and Shay and get back to Penton. I have a big vampire waiting to fight with me.”

It took Archer three tries to stay upright. Cage stood, but he wasn’t sure if he was swaying on his feet or if his own vision was swimming. After a moment, though, he felt like a good fuck and a good fight, in either order. If he only had a hand.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Robin said. “I’m doing flyovers to keep the path clear through the cemetery. Glory will stay near the cemetery entrance and use her telekinesis to toss some trees or cars around if she needs to, but that’s a last resort since it’s an endangered site. Archer, you’re the muscle.”

Cage got a mental punch in the gut that almost drove him to his knees. In a normal operation, he would have been the both the strategist and the muscle. Now, what was he? Useless. The plans had been made before he woke from daysleep. He couldn’t shoot a gun or wield a knife. He couldn’t even sign his own fucking name, at least not legibly.

“I guess I’ll sit in the car and wait.” He wouldn’t meet Robin’s gaze even though it rested on his face with a palpable weight.

“Wrong, Mr. Pity Party,” she said in a brisk tone that held not a trace of empathy, and he said a prayer of thanks for that. “You are not going to sit in that car and wallow, thinking about how fucked up your life is and what you can and can’t do.

“You are going into that cemetery with Archer and bring out Nik and Shay. Nik has a stab wound and hasn’t just guzzled a gallon of shifter blood, unlike someone we know, so he’s probably weak. Nik would starve before he’d feed from a pregnant woman. And that pregnant woman has been trapped in a musty old crypt with a vampire all day. You get them to the car while we run interference. Got it?”

Cage gave her a left-handed salute and finally shifted his gaze down to meet hers. “I’m sorry, little bird.” Sorry he couldn’t see his way out of this black hole he’d fallen into. Sorry he couldn’t be the man she had bonded herself to.

Robin smiled at him—the sweet smile she gave no one else. Her voice turned soft. “We’ll figure this out, vampire. Just don’t give up.”

Easier said than done.