She frowned. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. And no, I’m not reading your mind. You just seem tired.” Abruptly, he knew how she felt. “I’d like to make it up to you.”

“Not necessary-”

“By treating you to dinner.”

Okay, he hadn’t meant to say that. And given that he’d just gotten all self-congratulatory on keeping his distance, he’d also made a hypocrite out of himself.

Clearly his next tat needed to be more along the lines of a donkey.

’Cuz he was acting like an ass.

In the wake of the invitation, it was entirely unsurprising that Ehlena stared at him like he was insane. Generally speaking, when a male behaved like he did, the last thing any female wanted to do was spend more time with him.

“I’m sorry, no.” She didn’t even tack on an obligatory, I never date patients.

“Okay. I understand.”

While she got the blood-drawing supplies ready and snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, Rehv reached over to his suit jacket and took out his card, hiding it in his big palm.

She was quick with the procedure, working on his good arm, filling up the aluminum vials fast. Good thing they weren’t glass and Havers did all the testing himself. Vampire blood was red. Symphath ran blue. The color of his was somewhere in between, but he and Havers had an arrangement. Granted, the doctor was unaware of how things worked between them, but it was the only way to be treated without compromising the race’s physician.

When Ehlena was finished, she capped the vials with white plastic stoppers, snapped off the gloves, and went for the door like he was a bad smell.

“Wait,” he said.

“Do you want some pain meds for the arm?”

“No, I want you to take this.” He held out his card. “And call me if you’re ever in the mood to do me a favor.”

“At the risk of sounding unprofessional, I’m never going to be in the mood for you. Under any circumstances.”

Ouch. Not that he blamed her. “The favor is forgiving me. Got nothing to do with a date.”

She glanced down at the card, then shook her head. “You’d better keep that. For someone who might ever use it.”

As the door shut, he crushed the card in his hand.

Shit. What the hell had he been thinking, anyway? She probably had a nice little life in a tidy house with two doting parents. Maybe she had a boyfriend, too, who would someday become her hellren.

Yeah, his being your friendly neighborhood drug lord, pimp, and enforcer really fit in with the Norman Rockwell routine. Totally.

He tossed his card into the wastepaper basket by the desk, and watched as the rim shot circled, then dropped in amid the Kleenex and the wadded-up papers and an empty Coke can.

As he waited for the doctor, he stared at the discarded trash, thinking that to him most of the people on the planet were just like that stuff: things to use up and throw away with no compunction whatsoever. Thanks to both his bad side and the business he was in, he’d broken a lot of bones and cracked a lot of heads and been the cause of a lot of drug overdoses.

Ehlena, on the other hand, spent her nights saving people.

Yeah, they had shit in common, all right.

His efforts kept her in business.

How. Perfect.

Outside the clinic in the frosty air, Wrath was chest-to-chest with Vishous.

“Get out of my way, V.”

Vishous, of course, was having none of the back-off. Not a surprise. Even before the little news flash about the Scribe Virgin having birthed him, the fucker had been a total free agent.

A Brother’d have better luck giving orders to a rock.

“Wrath-”

“No, V. Not here. Not now-”

“I saw you. In my dreams this afternoon.” The ache in that dark voice was the kind normally associated with funerals. “I had a vision.”

Wrath spoke without wanting to. “What did you see?”

“You standing in a dark field alone. We were all around your periphery, but no one could reach you. You were gone from us and us from you.” The Brother reached out and grabbed hard. “Because of Butch, I know you’re going out into the field alone and I’ve kept my mouth shut. But I can’t let you do this anymore. You die and the race is fucked, to say nothing of what it’ll do to the Brotherhood.”

Wrath’s eyes strained to focus on V’s face, but the security light over the door was a fluorescent and the glow from the thing stung like a bitch. “You don’t know what the dream means.”

“And neither do you.”

Wrath thought of the weight of that civilian in his arms. “It could be nothing-”

“Ask me when I first had the vision.”

“-but a fear you have.”

“Ask me. When I had the vision first.”

“When.”

“Nineteen oh nine. It’s been a hundred years since I saw it first. Now ask me how many times I’ve had it this past month.”

“No.”

“Seven times, Wrath. This afternoon was the final straw.”

Wrath broke out of the Brother’s hold. “I’m leaving now. If you follow me, you’re going to find a fight.”

“You can’t go out alone. It’s not safe.”

“You’re kidding me, right.” Wrath glared through his wraparounds. “Our race is failing and you want to bust my balls for going after our enemy? Fuck that for a laugh. I’m not getting stuck behind some bitch-ass desk pushing papers while my brothers are out there actually doing something-”

“But you’re the king. You’re more important than us-”

“The hell I am! I’m one of you! I was inducted, I drank of the Brothers and they of me, I want to fight!”

“Look, Wrath…” V assumed a tone that was so reasonable it made a guy want to knock all his teeth out. With an ax. “I know exactly what it’s like not to want to be who you’re born as. You think I get off on having these fucked-up dreams? You think this lightsaber of mine is a party?” He held up his gloved hand as if the visual aid was a value-add to their “discussion.” “You can’t change who you are. You can’t undo the coupling of whatever parents you had. You’re the king, and the rules apply differently to you, and that’s the way it is.”

Wrath did his best to cop to V’s calm, cool, and collected. “And I say I’ve been fighting for over three hundred years, so I’m not exactly a greenhorn out there in the field. I’d also like to point out that being king doesn’t mean I lose the right to choose-”

“You have no heir. And from what I hear from my shellan, you shut Beth down when she told you she wanted to try for one when she has her first needing. Shut her down hard. How did she say you put it? Oh…right. ‘I don’t want any young in the foreseeable future…if at all.’”

Wrath’s breath exhaled in a rush. “I can’t believe you just went there.”

“Bottom line? You end up dead? The fabric of the race’s society is going to unravel, and if you think that’s going to help in the war, you’ve got your head so far up your ass you’re using your colon as a mouthpiece. Face it, Wrath. You are the beating heart of all of us…so, no, you can’t just go out there and fight alone because you want to. Shit don’t work like that for you-”

Wrath grabbed onto the Brother’s lapels and slammed him against the clinic. “Watch it, V. You’re walking a damn fine line of disrespect here.”

“If you think roughing me up is going to change things, have at me. But I’ll guarantee you that after the punches are over and we’re both bleeding on the ground, the situation will be exactly the same. You can’t change who you’re born.”

In the background, Butch stepped out of the Escalade and jacked up his belt like he was getting ready to break up a fistfight.

“The race needs you above ground, asshole,” V said. “Don’t make me pull the trigger on you, because I will.”

Wrath shifted his weak eyes back to V. “I thought you wanted me alive and kicking. Besides, shooting me would be treason and punishable by death. No matter whose son you are.”

“Look, I’m not saying you shouldn’t-”