“It’s okay,” he murmured.

She wasn’t sure what exactly he was reassuring her about. But for some reason … the fact that he cared enough to try warmed the center of her chest.

Forcing her mind away from … well, everything, she focused on the doctor and then walked away with the woman.

“How long have you been … here?” Sarah asked.

“Awhile now.” The doctor pushed open an unmarked door. “It’s a long story.”

As they entered another clinical room, the tall commando—um, vampire—with the shoulder injury looked up from the exam table. He had his shirt off, and he was poking at the nasty black stain on his skin.

It was much larger, Sarah thought.

“It’s bigger,” the doctor muttered.

The solider looked over and nodded grimly.

Sarah approached the man—vampire—oh, God—and leaned in for a closer inspection. “It’s like cellulitis.” She glanced over at the doctor. “And you’ve tested it for fungus?”

“I’ve tested it for everything.”

All at once, Sarah’s researcher brain came fully online. Sure as a football stadium would turn its lights on at night, section by section, her mind blazed with questions, thoughts, observations, ideas.

Dimly, she realized she had been on autopilot at work for quite a while, going through the motions at the lab, being competent, although not extraordinary.

It was only now as her enthusiasm got her buzzing that she recognized the slump she’d been in.

She straightened and addressed the doctor. “I want to see everything you’ve got.”

The blond woman looked at the solider. “John, would you consent to—”

When he nodded vigorously, the doctor smiled a little. “Come on, Sarah, let’s go to my computer. We can start there.”

Xhex strode through the subterranean tunnel that connected the Brotherhood mansion to the training center at a fast walk. She wanted to run, but she didn’t have the energy for that, even though her nerves were live wires under her skin, her body was a tuning fork for anxiety, and her head was a cocktail blender full of Holy Fuck Frojitos. She had only gone back to her and John’s room to shower and change, but even that felt like too much time away from him.

When she came up to the entrance to the training center, she put in a code, the lock sprang, and she stepped into a supply closet that had OfficeMax written all over it. On the far side of all the shelves of printer paper, Scotch tape and Bic pens, she exited through the facility’s office and hit the corridor.

Only to stop short.

Murhder was halfway down to the parking area. Leaning against the wall. Arms crossed, one foot over the other. Head lowered.

Resuming her stride, she approached the former Brother, and he looked over, his red-and-black hair fanning across his shoulder.

“How we doing with the young?” she asked.

“Nate’s good. Well, good as can be expecting. Expected, I mean.” He rubbed his eyes like his head hurt. “Jane and Sarah are in with your male. Two doors up.”

Xhex still wasn’t sure how she felt about some random human messing around with the single most important person in her life. But it wasn’t like anyone on the vampire side had a bright idea about what could be done. And everything would be vetted first. Or rather, it better be.

As Murhder went back to staring at the concrete floor, she was struck by how familiar that pose of his was to her. This was what he’d always looked like when he was working through shit in his head.

Even though she wanted to get to John, she eased back against the cold concrete wall, crossing her arms just as Murhder had.

“Are you going to ask if the woman can stay?” Xhex rubbed her nose as it itched from the underground. “Does she want to?”

“Well, if she can find a way to help John … maybe she won’t have to leave?” He shrugged. “I mean, there are humans all around here now. The rules have clearly changed from my time.”

Yes and no, Xhex thought. “So, are you planning on hanging around, then,” she prompted.

As he opened his mouth, but closed it quickly, she had the impression he hadn’t thought any of this through: not his obvious attraction to the human woman, not his presence here in the Brotherhood’s orbit, not the longer term of anything.

“I don’t have a role here anymore,” he said after a moment.

“You were really effective on that lab infiltration.”

“Old habits.” He glanced over. “I’m going to go back to South Carolina. After … I mean, as soon as …”

“You’ll take her with you, then?”

“Ah … I haven’t gotten that far.”

As Xhex measured the cut of his jaw, she could feel the tension in his body, sure as if it were her own.

“You deserve to be happy,” she murmured.

He shook his head. “Don’t waste time pitying me. I’m fine.”

“It’s not pity.” She thought of her relationship with her mate—and wanted him to find that with someone. “It’s only fair.”

He frowned and lowered his eyes again. “I have a question.”

“Talk to me.”

When a silence stretched between them, she thought about where they had started out, two people in a club in the ’90s, drawn to each other because they had been the only vampires there. A one-night stand had turned into a habit—which had somehow gotten back to her symphath kin. And then chaos and torture and dark, dark places for them both.

No way she would have put them here, in the Brotherhood’s training center, her mated, him interested in a human.

“That stuff that was done to me.” He motioned around his head. “Up in the colony. The things that they … uncovered and leveraged against me.”

Xhex closed her eyes and cursed her bloodline. “Yeah.”

“Is it permanent. The damage, I mean. Did they break me or just wound me?”

Fucking symphaths. Their weapons left no outward scars, no tears in the skin that bled, no bones that were broken, no disfigurements that didn’t heal. But the destructiveness of what they wrought was almost worse than all that.

The mind was a delicate, dispositive instrument in any person’s life, capable of defining their entire mortal experience.

You fucked with that shit? Most people ended up a wasteland.

Murhder’s voice dropped to a whisper. “They took me to places … even as my body wasn’t moved.”

She could only imagine.

“Of course they didn’t break you,” she heard herself say.

When she reopened her eyes, she found him staring at her, and she was struck by how strong he had to have been to get over the torture as much as he had.

“You never lied to me before,” he said grimly. “Given what’s at stake, I’ll ask you to pay me the respect of not starting now.”

Xhex took a deep breath and felt like the floor was opening beneath her feet so some version of Dhunhd could swallow her down. She was responsible for everything that had been done to him.

“The truth is …” Xhex wished she had a better answer for him. “I don’t know. Everyone’s different. Some people rebound, eventually. Some …”