The gasping and rattling, the pain on his face, the agony of the group around them . . . everything became so crystal-clear that it hurt her eyes and ears, staining her brain forever. And strangely, she thought of Bitty and her mother and what had happened at the clinic.

Oh, shit, if she left the planet . . . what was going to happen to the girl? Who was going to care as much as she did for the now-orphan?

“Rhage . . .” Mary pulled at his shoulders. “Rhage! No! Wait, stay here—”

Later, she would try to tease out why the synaptic connection got made when it did. She would wonder how she had possibly thought of it all . . . would get into cold sweats about what would have happened next—and what would not have happened next—if that bolt of lightning hadn’t come out of the blue when it did.

Sometimes the near miss was almost as traumatic as the impact.

But all that came afterward.

In the moment of her beloved’s demise, at the very instant that she sensed he had left his body to make the trip to the Fade . . . suddenly, and for no reason that she could think of, she barked, “Roll him onto his side. Do it!”

She started pulling on him herself, but got nowhere—he was too heavy and she couldn’t get a good grip on his massive torso.

Looking up, she motioned at the Brothers. “Help me! Fucking help me!”

V and Butch dropped down with her and eased Rhage onto his right side. Arching around her mate, Mary recoiled for a split second. The bright colors of the dragon’s tattoo were fading, as if the brilliance of the depiction were a barometer of Rhage’s health. Snapping back into focus, she put her hands on the beast’s form—and, God, she hated how sluggish the response was.

“Come with me,” she said urgently. “I need you to come with me.”

This was crazy, she thought as she slowly drew her palms around Rhage’s torso—but something drove her on, some kind of will that certainly didn’t feel like her own. She wasn’t going to argue, though, as the representation of the beast followed her touch—and it was strange: It wasn’t until she made her way onto his ribs that she realized what she was doing.

Crazy, she thought again. Completely nuts.

Come on, it wasn’t like the dragon had been trained in emergency medicine—much less cardiac surgery.

But she didn’t stop.

“Help me,” she choked to the beast. “Oh, please . . . figure it out, help him, save him . . . save yourself by saving him. . . .”

She just couldn’t let Rhage go. It didn’t matter in these last few moments that there was a cosmic out for the two of them, that because of what the Scribe Virgin had given her, they didn’t have to worry about some kind of separation. She was going to try to save him.

Working with her, the Brothers eased Rhage flat on his back again, and Mary’s tears dropped onto her mate’s bare chest as she transferred her hands over to the deceptively small hole about an inch to the right of his sternum.

God, she felt like the wound should be the size of a grave.

“Just fix it . . . somehow, please . . . please . . .”

The tattoo settled where she stopped.

“Fix it. . . .”

Time slowed to a crawl, and through watery eyes she stared down at Rhage’s chest, waiting for a miracle. As minutes passed and she transitioned to a wretched emotional plane that was more keyed up than full-on panic, much lower than totally depressed, and so vast it was twice the size of the galaxy, she thought back to what Rhage had said about the hours he’d spent at her bedside in that human hospital: knowing she was going to die, unable to affect anything, lost even though he knew the address of where his physical body was.

It was as if gravity had no hold on me, he’d said, and yet it was crushing me at the same time. And then you would close your eyes, and my heart would stop. All I could think of was that, at some moment in the future, you were going to look like that forever. And the only thing I knew for sure was that I was never going to be the same, and not in a good way . . . because I was going to miss you more than I would ever care about anything else in my life.

But then the Scribe Virgin had changed all that.

Yet here Mary was . . . fighting to keep him alive.

And the why—when she really focused on the question—felt wrong, all wrong, and yet she wasn’t going to stop.

At first, the flare of warmth didn’t register in the midst of all her emotions. There was too much in the forefront of her mind, and the temperature change was so very subtle. The heat soon became impossible to ignore, however.

Blinking her eyes, she frowned down at her hands.

She didn’t dare take her palms away to see what was happening underneath. “Rhage? Rhage . . . are you staying with us?”

The heat quickly became so intense, it radiated up her arms and warmed the air she breathed as she leaned over her mate. And then she felt a thrashing, as if the beast were rolling around—

Without any warning, Rhage threw open his mouth, dragged in a giant inhale, and jerked his torso off the ground, throwing her back on her ass. As her hands went flying, the tattoo was revealed and it was . . .

The depiction of the dragon had lost its contours, its colors having swirled together and yet remaining distinct, like one of those old-fashioned spin-art things she’d done at fairs when she was little.

She could no longer see the bullet wound.

There was a collective gasp, followed by some serious WTF-ing, and then a number of hallelujahs that were uttered with a Boston accent.

“Mary?” Rhage choked out in confusion.

“Rhage!”

Except before she could reach for him, he began to cough in great spasms, his head locking forward, his distended belly clenching, his jaw extending.

“What’s wrong with him?” Mary said as she reached forward, even though it wasn’t like she could do anything to help. Hell, the medical professionals looked equally confused, and they were the ones with the M.D.s after their names—

Rhage coughed the damn bullet out.

Right into her hand.

With one last, great heave, something came flying from his mouth and she caught the pointed piece of lead on reflex—as Rhage abruptly started breathing in deep, easy draws like nothing had ever been wrong with him.

Turning the thing over on her palm, she started laughing.

She couldn’t help it.

Standing the slug between her thumb and forefinger, she held it up for the Brothers and the docs and the fighters—because Rhage was still blind. And then she straddled her mate’s outstretched legs and took his face in her hands.

“Mary . . . ?” he said.

“I’m right here.” She smoothed his hair back. “And so are you.”

Instantly, he calmed even further, a smile pulling at his mouth. “My Mary?”

“Yes . . . I’m right here.”

And then, dear Lord, she was crying so hard that she became as blind as he was. But it didn’t matter. Somehow the beast had done the job and—

“Mary, I . . .”

“I know, I know.” She kissed him. “I love you.”

“Me too, but I’m going to throw up.”

And with that, he moved her gently out of the line of fire, turned to the side, and vomited all over Vishous’s shitkickers.

It was a helluva way to come back from the dead.

As Rhage tossed his cookies all over the place, his brain was nothing but scrambled eggs—

Okay, not a good idea to think of eggs in any form.

Round number two of the abdominal evacs took over his body, contorting him from head to foot, and as he let his guts do the talking, he heard V’s dry voice overhead.

“Not my night,” the Brother muttered. “So not my night with the barfing.”

Huh? Rhage thought, before letting it go. All he really cared about, aside from the fact that he could now breathe and speak again, was his Mary. Sticking his arm out, he went in search of contact with her again—and she grabbed his palm right away, clasping him, holding on, both soothing him and giving him energy.