“I get that she’s not your favorite person—”

“He said he can’t do it,” Lore interrupted. “Let it go.”

Eidolon tapped a pencil on his desk, the dull thud of the eraser on wood punctuating his words. “Unfortunately, there’s no ‘let it go’ option. This might be our only shot at an immediate solution.”

“I don’t understand,” Sin said. “What do you mean, a solution?”

Eidolon spun one of the papers around to show Sin and Con where he’d scrawled a lengthy column of numbers. “I can’t inject the amount of Sin’s blood required to destroy the virus into Conall without killing him. He needs to ingest it. As a dhampire, he has a double-chambered stomach, the second chamber working the way a vampire’s works—to deliver a victim’s blood almost directly into the vampire’s bloodstream. So if my calculations are correct, a normal feeding will allow him to take in enough blood to start attacking the virus. Once that’s done—”

“I can monitor his blood to learn how the virus is killed and then use my power to try to destroy it myself,” Sin finished.

“Exactly.” Eidolon grinned. “You really should be working here instead of as an assassin.”

At some point, Sin had produced a throwing knife and was now flipping it between her fingers, and Con had a feeling the speed directly related to her level of agitation. The sucker was whirling like a helicopter blade. “Bite me.”

Eidolon gestured to Conall. “That’ll be his job.”

“No,” Con said grimly. “It won’t. There has to be another way.”

“I agree.” Sin rose to her feet, her blue-black hair swishing angrily around her waist. “I don’t let anyone fang me.”

You let me, you little liar. Hot, little liar. Man, Con wanted to call her out on exactly how she’d let him, but at least two of her brothers in the room were a little on the overprotective side, and the other didn’t need an excuse to kill things. Come to think of it, none of them needed an excuse.

Neither did Con.

“If there was any other way,” Eidolon said, “I’d find it. But there’s not.” He wadded up a sheet of paper and tossed it at the overflowing garbage can in the corner. “You have the virus—it’s just not attacking you, and I don’t know why yet. It’s a slightly different strain from what’s attacking the wargs… it’s adapted to your species, but it might be trying to mutate into something that canattack you, which is why we need to eliminate it as soon as possible. As for the wargs… that’s what was so weird about the blood samples the R-XR took. It was as if the uninfected wargs were a different species and unable to catch the virus.”

“You mean like how horses don’t catch measles from humans,” Sin said, and Eidolon nodded.

“Exactly. I still don’t know what would make born wargs so different from turneds.” The frustration in Eidolon’s voice was echoed in his expression as he turned to Con. “And you, even with your vampire status, you’re somehow more closely related to turned wargs than born ones.”

A tremor of unease went through Con. That was just one of the dhampire race’s dirty little secrets, but it was one he was going to have to share with the doctor. Anything to help get this damned epidemic stopped. Well, not anything. He’d leave out the minor details. Though he supposed he didn’t owe his people the courtesy of keeping their secrets, since they’d all but exiled him. Oh, they kept track of him because, ultimately, he was too valuable to completely throw away, but he’d shamed them, and they were happy to punish him for it.

“Dhampires aren’t exactly born this way.”

Eidolon scowled. “What do you mean?”

Con leaned forward and braced his forearms on his thighs. “I mean that when we hit our late teens, our fangs come in, we start craving blood… and then we get sick. On the first night of the full moon after our fangs have fully developed, we have to be bitten by a warg or we’ll die.”

“Interesting,” Eidolon murmured. “So dhampires are basically turned werewolves who drink blood. Guess that explains why you ended up with a form of the virus, but there’s something else to consider.”

Con didn’t like his tone. Not at all. “What else?”

Eidolon paused as though searching his brain for the right words, and Con’s gut hollowed out. “The virus inside you isn’t likely to want to onlyattack you. It wants out.”

“So what you’re saying,” Con ground out, “is that I’m a carrier. I could have infected people.”

“Unfortunately, yes. The disease seems to be transmitted via both direct and indirect contact, as well as by air, but as an asymptomatic carrier, you might transmit it differently. I tested your saliva, and it’s definitely present. We need to run tests to be sure, but since Luc hasn’t come down with the virus, you probably aren’t breathing it out or passing it on by casual touch. But you need to avoid intimate contact with werewolves and other dhampires.”

Oh, bloody hell. How many females had Con fed from and slept with in the last month? His mind raced as he counted and eliminated those who weren’t werewolves. Only one had been a warg… a turnedwarg. And ironically, a female who he’d avoided sleeping with for years because he cared about her, and she deserved better than a one-off with him.

Shit. “Hold on, Doc.” Con dug his cell from his pocket, dialed, and Yasashiku, a member of the Warg Council, answered on the second ring.

“Con. You’re missing the meeting. Valko’s about to have a freaking puppy. Where are you?”

“I’m at work. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Moving toward a corner, he lowered his voice. “Have you heard from Nashiki lately?”

Yasashiku’s silence made Con suddenly, achingly, aware of the pounding sound of his heartbeat in his ears. “You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?” Don’t say it. Don’t. Fucking. Say it.

“She caught the virus,” Yas said, his faint Japanese accent thickening with emotion. “She died last night.”

Con didn’t even reply. Numbly, he closed the phone. He’d done his share of killing in his thousand years of life, some of it justified, some not. But there was something truly obscene about killing someone with pleasure. Especially because, years ago, he’d saved Nashiki’s life after she’d been attacked by a pride of lion-shifters, and though he didn’t normally keep in contact with his patients, she’d been special, bubbly and bright, one of the few people he’d met in his life who never let anything get them down.

So he’d saved her… only to kill her.

Sure, there was no proof that hehad given the virus to the gorgeous, honey-skinned warg, who hadn’t deserved how he’d screwed her while fantasizing about Sin, let alone how he’d given her a disease that had turned her organs to mush. No proof at all, but the timing was right, given the time frame from onset to death.

Crimson washed over his vision as both nausea that he’d killed an innocent female and anger that the person ultimately responsible was right there in the room with him collided. This had to end, and at this point, the risks of repeated feedings from Sin were the least of his concerns.

Especially since all of the risk would be Sin’s.

“Con?” Wraith’s deep voice was a mere buzz among the other noise in Con’s head. “Dude. You okay? You look like you’re about to take a header.”

“Then I’d better feed.” Conall’s voice was cold as he swung around to Sin. “And it looks like you’re lunch.”

Two

This was such bullshit.

Sin got that this might be the answer to the epidemic, but Con didn’t have to look at her like she was a juicy steak. He could at least try to be as repulsed as she was.

“Sit.” Con’s voice had deepened to a compelling, husky rasp that nearly had her complying with his demand like a well-trained dog.

“We’re going to do it here?”

He cocked a sandy eyebrow. “You’d rather do it in a patient room? Or maybe a supply closet would be more to your liking?”