Mary sought Vishous out of the crowd because of his EMT experience. “You need to help him!”

That red stain . . . was right at Rhage’s sternum.

And her hellren had a strong heart—but it was not impenetrable.

What had happened?

SEVEN

Vishous was the first to get to Rhage as the brother reemerged from the flesh of the dragon—and shit had gone from pre-beast bad to post-curse worse. The guy wasn’t moving, wasn’t responding even to his shellan. His coloring was gray as a granite grave marker, and there was a lot of red blood.

Which was merely the tip of the iceberg. The real issue was how much had to be in that chest cavity.

“Help me!” Mary said as she put her hands over the wound and pushed down like she was trying to stem the leaking. “Help him, oh, God, V—”

The good news was that the surgical unit was hitting its brakes and Jane had come with Manny, having transferred over from her own vehicle. As soon as the surgeons popped the front doors of the RV, both docs hit the ground running with black duffel bags full of medical equipment.

“They’re here,” V said. Not that the pair could do much of anything.

“Has he been shot? I think he’s been shot— Oh, God—”

“I know, come here. Let them look at hi—”

Mary shook her head and fought against being pulled back. “He’s dying—”

“Give them some room to work. Come on.”

Goddamn it, this was his fault. If he hadn’t confronted . . . but what the fuck. The vision had been what it had, and it was this right here and now: Rhage flat on his back naked, his blood everywhere, V holding Mary as she strained and wept.

“Single gunshot wound,” V announced. “Probable cardiac bleed with tamponade and pleural effusion.”

God, he wished he could cover Mary’s ears as he spoke, but like she didn’t already know what was up?

The doctors didn’t waste a moment, checking vitals as Ehlena jumped out of the back of the RV and brought the stretcher with her.

Vishous caught his mate’s eye as Jane listened to Rhage’s heart sounds, and when she shook her head, he knew without any further words that everything he was guessing was true.

Shit.

“What are they doing?” Mary babbled against him. “What are they going to do?”

V held the female tighter as she continued to mumble into his shoulder, her head wrenched around toward her mate. “They’re going to help him, right? They’re going to fix him . . . right?”

Jane and Manny began to talk in medical shorthand, and as Vishous caught the gist of the words, he closed his eyes briefly. When he popped his lids again, Manny was on one side of Rhage getting a chest tube in to drain fluids from around the lungs, and Jane was performing pericardiocentesis with a needle that seemed as long as her arm.

Which was a balls-to-the-wall move.

Ordinarily, that procedure was done with ultrasound guidance, but she had no choice except to go in blind through the fifth or sixth intercostal space next to the heart.

If she guessed wrong? Went in too far?

Mary struggled in his arms. “What are they doing—”

“He’s arresting,” Manny barked.

“Rhage!”

Ehlena was right there with the paddles, but what good was that in the case of a massive exsanguination? Hell, even if the chest tube and that needle did the job, neither was going to fix the trauma to the heart. The only chance of true survival was to put the brother on a bypass machine so Jane could work her magic and repair whatever tear or hole there was in a blood-less and motionless environment.

Abruptly, everything went into slow-mo as Rhage opened his eyes, dragged in a breath . . . and turned his face toward Mary.

His white lips began to move.

Mary shoved against V’s hold, and he released her, allowing her to go to him. F.F.S., this could be the female’s last chance to communicate with her mate. Make her peace with him. Sort out her arrangements to meet him on the other side.

Vishous frowned as the image of his forsaken mother lying on that bedding platform came back to him.

You’d better fucking make good on that promise, he thought at the heavens. You’d better man up and take care of the two of them.

Mary fell to her knees by Rhage’s head and put her ear down to his mouth. The fact that the medical staff backed off was no doubt lost on her, but Vishous knew what that meant and it was nothing good. That heart rate that was being monitored so closely wasn’t getting more stable. That blood pressure wasn’t getting stronger. That bleeder wasn’t fixing itself. And the tube and the needle hadn’t gone nearly far enough.

V looked over at Butch, and as the cop stared back across the drama, V thought about how the three of them had formed such a tight bond. The troika, they were called. Tight as ticks, and annoying as shit, in the words of Tohr.

V glanced around. The other Brothers had all circled in close, forming a barrier of protection and worry around Rhage and Mary. None of the fighters had put their weapons away, however, and from time to time, a gunshot rang out as they picked off slayers whose bodies were showing too much animation.

As Mary began to speak with soft desperation, Vishous cursed again as it dawned on him that even though the couple had an endgame that resulted in them being together, the rest of them were going to lose Rhage—and Mary. Goddamn it, it was impossible to imagine the mansion without them.

Shit was not supposed to go down like this.

Strike that, he thought, as he remembered his vision. He didn’t want it to end like this.

V shifted his eyes to his mate, and as Jane just shook her head, his blood ran cold.

Jesus Christ, no.

Abruptly, an image of Rhage at the Pit’s Foosball table came to mind. The Brother hadn’t been playing at the time; he’d been standing off to the side, chowing down on some kind of bedroll-as-burrito from Taco Bell. He’d been double-fisted eating, actually—with a chimichanga in the other hand. Alternating bites, the SOB had gone on to consume about four thousand calories, what with the mint-chocolate-chip ice cream he’d macked from their fridge and the half a chocolate cake he’d had for dessert before coming over from the main house.

Hey, V, the Brother had said at one point. You ever going to shave off that ugly bath mat around your piehole? Or are you gonna keep looking like an Affiliction reject as a public service for what not to do with a razor?

So fucking irritating.

And wouldn’t he give his remaining nut to have any part of that again. Even if only as a good-bye.

Time was way too finite: no matter how much of it you had with someone you loved, when the end came, it wasn’t nearly enough.

“I love you,” Mary croaked. “I love you. . . .”

As she stroked Rhage’s blond hair off his forehead, his skin was so cold and strangely dry. His blood-speckled mouth was moving, but he didn’t have enough air in his lungs to speak—and oh, God, they were gray . . . his lips were turning . . .

Mary looked up at Manny. Doc Jane. Ehlena. Then she met the eyes of the Brothers. John Matthew. Blay and Qhuinn.

The last one she stared at was Vishous . . . and she was horrified by the distant light in his eyes.

They had given up. All of them. Nobody was rushing to push her out of the way so they could intubate her mate, or shock his heart back into a rhythm, or crack his rib cage open and do whatever it took to get whatever was wrong back in working order.

Rhage arched with a groan and coughed some more blood up. And as he began to choke, she knew a new definition of terror.

“I’ll find you,” she told him. “On the other side. Rhage! Do you hear me? I’ll find you on the other side!”