Ten-digit vacancies aside, and fortunately for his possessive nature, none of what he was worried about—initial attraction turning into lust that transitioned into a lifelong bonded love and adoration between Sarah and Rhage or Phury or Tohr—seemed to be happening as she took the young over to the hospital bed: The Brothers were keeping it all strictly professional, and if anything, the only carbon-based life form his woman seemed to notice, apart from the young, was Murhder himself.

But eternal vigilance and all that—although, really, what was he going to do if he saw something he didn’t like? It wasn’t as if the woman was his to claim—

As his upper lip twitched and his fangs threatened to drop down, he tried to reason with the male beast inside his skin—and didn’t get far. It was kind of like throwing a math problem at a grizzly bear: You got frustrated and the bear didn’t give a shit.

“—rest for a little while,” Manny, the human doctor—human?—said. “I’ll be right back with some eats for everyone. You want anything in particular, Dr. Watkins?”

“Whatever you have is fine for me. And it’s Sarah. Just Sarah.”

As the doctor smiled and then left, Murhder shook himself back to attention. The Brothers had stepped out, the young was lying down against the pillows, and the woman who was not his was removing the blue bag of plastic from her body.

And what do you know. As she finally stepped out of the loose, flapping outer shell she’d had on, what was revealed was beautiful to him—although not because of what it necessarily looked like, but because it was her. Those long legs, the graceful curves of her torso, the proportion of shoulder to hip, all of that could have fit together in any particular way, been any-whatever-size, had more or less in any place, and he still would have wanted to touch her, taste her, take her.

“I’m scared,” Nate said.

Murhder and Sarah both turned to the young, and Murhder became very aware that he was the only one who knew what the boy was talking about. The change was coming to him. Soon.

“Would you like me to stay in here with you?” she asked the young.

“Yes, please.”

When Nate looked over at Murhder, the answer was easy. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll stay with you, also.”

There were two chairs along the long wall opposite the bed, and Murhder let Sarah choose the one she liked first. He wasn’t particular because either way, he was going to get to sit close to her. As they settled in, he wanted to hold her hand. She looked worried.

Especially as she stared at Nate. The young did seem wiped out, his skin too pale, his breathing shallow, his eyes fluttering to a close so hard, the tortured wince turned his face into a death mask.

That was the transition for you.

“God, what they did to him in that lab,” she muttered under her breath.

Yes, he thought. But it was also what the young was about to go through—and as the reality of Nate’s impending transition really hit, Murhder wondered how the hell all this was going to work when it came to Sarah. She was bound to learn about the race now, either from her trying to treat John Matthew’s wound or from what was going to happen here in this hospital room very soon.

And then what? Was she going to be repulsed by it all?

By Murhder, himself?

Without conscious thought, he did reach for her hand—and it wasn’t until he felt her warm palm against his own that he realized what he’d done. Glancing over, he met her eyes and waited for her to pull away, look away …

She squeezed his hand and held on.

As a feeling of warmth spread throughout Murhder’s chest, the two of them went back to staring across at the young, so small and fragile in the big, clinical bed. Sometime soon thereafter, food was brought in by a doggen in uniform, steak and steaming potatoes for him and Sarah, white rice with ginger sauce for the young’s sensitive stomach.

The pair of them ate in silence—Nate couldn’t seem to tolerate anything, not even that signature fare for those about to go through the change—and the next thing Murhder knew, the trays had been cleared, the young was back asleep, and he and Sarah were staring at each other.

He knew exactly what was on her mind. It was what was on his.

But now was not the time for sex. And here was not the place—

“Will you tell me what’s going on with this?” she said quietly. “All of you. These facilities. The staff. This is not a casual, cobbled-together operation, and I want to understand what the hell’s happening here.”

Okay … so maybe they weren’t thinking about the same thing.

As Sarah put the demand out there, she didn’t expect her commando to answer with total honesty. Something as extensive as all this? Something as expensive as all this? They didn’t want to be known, and they had the resources to keep it that way—so he wasn’t going to spill any secrets to a woman he’d just met. But … dayum.

And there was another reason she’d asked. She wanted to hear his voice, have that strange accent of his in her ear … watch his lips move as he enunciated his words.

Like he was doing right now.

Shoot, she needed to pay attention.

“—take care of our own, that’s all,” he said with the kind of finality that suggested he wasn’t going to go any further with the discussion.

Before she could do any kind of follow-up, Nate tossed and turned over on the bed, his frail legs moving under the blankets, his head going back and forth on the pillow. Just as she was wondering if she shouldn’t go and get help, he resettled, seeming to sink back into sleep.

“Who are you, though,” she said absently as she stared across at the boy. When there was no reply, she looked back to her commando. “I mean, what group are you affiliated with?”

The man looked down at his hands. “Does it really matter?”

“I just want to know who you are,” she said. And funny, as she spoke, she wasn’t sure what worried her more: whatever his answer was going to be—or how desperately she wanted to know it.

She thought of Gerry and shifted uneasily in her chair.

“Can you tell me your name at least?” she asked.

At that moment, there was a knock on the door, and they both said “enter” as quietly as they could. What came in was … utterly unexpected.

The woman was tall and slender, and instead of being dressed in street or even hospital staff clothes, she was draped in a fall of white fabric that started at her shoulders and went all the way down to the floor. With her dark hair swept up and away from her face, and her hands tucked into the sleeves of the robing, she seemed like something out of a religious ceremony. From Greece or Rome. Back in, like, 1500 BCE.

A vestal virgin.

But that wasn’t the half of it. She had an ethereal, unnatural beauty, her skin seeming to glow, an aura surrounding her and somehow charging the air with heavenly electrons.

A saint.

Abruptly, the woman stopped just inside the doorway, recoiling as she saw the commando.

“’Tis you.” At that, she bowed very low, such that Sarah could see the complicated twist that her hair had been wound into on the top of her head. “Sire, you have returned.”

Her voice had the timbre of a concert violin being played by a master, her speech not so much words, but musical notes.