How could a person be bone-weary and mentally amped at the same time? Yet here he was—Nik Dimitrou, the psychic, newbie vampire, almost-hybrid shifter freak who was fleeing to his room to hide the fact that he had a hard-on for a woman he didn’t even know anymore.

Or maybe he did still know her and want her, and that pissed him off even more. Vampire Nik from Penton liked Shay Underwood and wanted her. Badly. Ranger Nik from New Orleans thought she was a part of his past that needed to stay there. He had no idea what to do with a vaccinated pregnant woman.

Not fair, he had to acknowledge. She’d saved his ass back in that warehouse and afterward. It was her quick thinking that got them to safety not only before sunrise but before Simon Landry’s people had returned to finish what they’d started.

Then again, she did have that savior complex. Hell, if she could save him, maybe he should let her.

Nik turned to lock the door of his suite only to realize it was one of the “lockup” rooms where visitors got locked in instead of locking others out. The rooms had come in handy for captive Tribunal members in the past, or so he’d been told.

He didn’t care at this point. If anybody came in during the night, they could just leave him alone to sleep. He shed his clothes and left them in a heap on the floor, then took a quick shower.

The king-sized bed cried out for his attention, and after drying off, he crawled in with an almost sensual delight. This suite, like the others, had the feel of a high-end suites hotel. Designed to mimic a home, in other words, without any personal touches to make it feel as if the home belonged to someone else. The wood was rich mahogany, the textiles earth-tones, from the throw rugs on the off-white carpet to the plush sofa to the quilt spread across the bed in place of a duvet. The air was lightly scented and fresh, soft light emanating only from a lamp on the bedside table.

The opposite of the cold, musty site of his last daysleep, in other words. He didn’t ever want to spend another night in a cemetery unless he was really and truly dead, in which case he wouldn’t care.

The lethargy of approaching dawn seeped into his muscles, and he relaxed against the pillows, enjoying the feel of the soft sheets against his bare skin. His brain wouldn’t turn off yet, though. He wished he’d been able to spend some one-on-one time with Shay when he was more coherent than he’d been in the crypt. He needed to explain why he’d left her all those years ago. Yeah, he’d been a selfish ass, but he had his reasons.

What would become of Shay and her baby if it wasn’t safe to go back to New Orleans, to her life? But how could he drag her further into this mess? How could he send her away and know she’d be safe?

There was only one person whose counsel he’d trust to answer those questions, or at least give him a gut response: 11-year-old Hannah.

Then again, Hannah had been the one to tell Nik he’d love Shay. He could no longer deny he wanted Shay. But lust and love were different. Maybe Hannah didn’t know that. Regardless, she was high on his list of must-see people once daysleep ended.

Finally, minutes before dawn approached, his mind let go of its demons and drifted lazily into a comfortable space between waking and sleeping. His back hurt less already, and the feel of Shay’s hands on his skin segued into a warm, quiet sense of….

“Nik—wake up!”

A glaring beam of light seared ghost reflections into his eyelids.

“Robin?” He tried to sit up, but couldn’t make it farther than to prop on his elbows, his shoulders a few inches off the mattress. “What’s wrong? Turn off that freaking light—it’s killing me.”

Abruptly the light disappeared, the dance of the colorful ghosts in front of his eyes gradually fading. In the dim light from the hallway, he could see Robin sitting next to him, holding one of those long commercial flashlights that held multiple bulbs.

“Hi Niko. How are you feeling? Can you see me? Is your vampire vision working? I thought Shay might be in bed with you.”

Damn it. “Is this a fucking social call? Because if it is, your timing sucks. What time is it?” Her last sentence finally sank in. “And why would Shay be in my bed?”

“Oh, come on. You want her. She wants you. Why make a big production out of it? And it’s ten a.m., by the way. Want to go for a walk?”

Robin was certifiable. Then again, it’s one of the things he loved about her. But not at ten a.m. “Hell, no. Robin, I’m a vampire. I’m not supposed to be awake.”

“Exactly. And yet, here we are, having a conversation. How do you feel?”

“Like my muscles are on fire and I want to hit somebody. You’re the only one in range of my fists, by the way.”

Robin laughed, a sound that sliced sharp knives into his brain. “You wouldn’t hit me, because I’d hit you back and I can hit harder.”

Sadly, she was right. “Go away.”

“Okay, but only because I know you’re tired. Catch you later.”

The light disappeared when Robin slipped out into the hallway and closed the door behind her.

Nik figured it would take him more wind-down time to fall back into daysleep but the urge to sleep came on within seconds….

“Nik!”

The sound came to him as if from underwater. Shimmery and not quite solid or clear.

“NIK!”

The blinding light hit him again and he rolled over to escape it. “Robin, damn it. I said go away.”

“Here, put these on.” She thrust something into his hand.

Freaking sunglasses. He slid them on and blinked. They helped. A lot. What time is it now, ten-thirty?”

“Almost four-thirty. Only about forty-five minutes until daysleep is over anyway. I wanted to see how you functioned this early.”

Functioning. Robin was doing research on the waking vampire freak—him, in other words. “Did Will put you up to this?”

“Mirren, with Aidan’s blessing. They want to see what you can do.”

“I’m not a fucking science experiment.”

Robin jumped on the end of the bed with a bounce that jarred every burning nerve ending in Nik’s body. “Actually, Niko, you are a fucking science experiment.”

She grew serious. “Look, I get it. The Army tried to use your psychometry for its own purposes and you felt like a commodity. This is different. Penton is different. The vampires—of which you are one, I might remind you—are trying to survive. If you can help them, wouldn’t you want to?”

Nik hadn’t realized until last night that his waking was such an anomaly. He hadn’t had time to even think about what kind of implications it could have for the battle against Frank Greisser and the Tribunal if he could move around as a vampire when the other vamps were tucked in bed.

But he would help them however he could; Robin was right about that. “Of course. We just have to figure out what I can and can’t do, I guess.”

“Well, let’s start by seeing if you can sit up.”

It took three tries, but he finally sat up by pushing with his arms. He rested a moment before shoving the bedding aside and swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

“Ooh, naked Nik. Some things seem to be working.”

“Yeah, well, nothing you haven’t seen before.” He and Robin had enjoyed their friends-with-benefits status until she met Cage and the benefits disappeared.

She handed him a fresh pair of underwear and fatigues that she must have brought from his house. He hadn’t exactly arrived with luggage. “Why do I need these? I talked. I sat up. I showed you the package you no longer enjoy. I want to sleep another half hour.”

Robin laughed. “Well, you’re welcome to be naked if you run into Shay while we take a walk. I just thought you might want pants.”

He snatched the fatigues from her, but ended up needing her help to get his feet in the pants legs.

“Lean on me when you stand up.”

Robin could hold him up with one hand and they both knew it, but he’d be damned if she had to pull his pants up for him. He slapped his right hand on the edge of the bedside table, leveraged himself to his feet with his right arm, and jerked up the pants with his left. Okay, maybe he wobbled a bit, but he managed the zipper without help.

“Stupid vampire,” Robin muttered. “Oh, wait. Redundant.”

Uh-huh. “How is Cage, speaking of which?”

“Dunno. Unlike you, he can’t walk and talk during daysleep. But when he went down at dawn, he was excited about talking about the prosthetics Will and Gadget had been researching.” Her voice softened. “I hope they work. Otherwise, he’s going to have a hard time accepting what’s happened to him.”

Nik pulled his friend into a hug. “Cage is strong, mentally as well as physically. He needs time to adjust. And some of those prosthetics are amazing.” They made their way slowly toward the door into the hallway. After the first couple of hesitant steps, Nik no longer had to lean on Robin. “Amazing things can be done with them now. We have so many wounded veterans who are able to do things they never thought they’d do again.”

They reached the door, and Nik adjusted the sunglasses before stepping into the hallway. They were two floors underground, so he faced no danger of sunlight, but the wall sconces provided plenty of light.

He lowered them to rest on the end of his nose and blinked a couple of times. The light hurt at first, but lessened as he adjusted to it. “Don’t need the sunglasses, but maybe it’s because it’s so near sundown. Don’t know.”

He stuck them in the pocket of his pants. “Why didn’t you bring me a shirt?”

“And deprive Shay of a look at that six pack?”