The instant the connection was made, his confusion started to ebb.

No, that wasn’t exactly right. He had no idea how he’d managed to go from standing in front of the door to the Fade, faced with a choice that he was stunned to be confronted by even though he’d been aware that he’d been dying . . . to somehow slamming back into his own body and hearing his Mary’s most perfect voice clear as day, without the radio static of fear and pain.

None of that mystery had been cleared up—but he just didn’t give a fuck. As long as his Mary was with him? The rest was shit he could—

“Hurt?” he blurted. “Anyone hurt?”

Had the beast—

“Everyone is fine,” she told him.

“I’m sorry about being sick.” God, the post-party visual blackout was awful—but he’d take it over a dirt nap any night and twice on Sundays as the humans would say. “I’m sorry—”

“Rhage, we need to get you into the RV. And no, I’m not going to leave you—Jane’s just going to check your vitals and then we have to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

Oh, right. They were at the campus, in the battlefield, no doubt sitting ducks—

With an explosion of memory, everything came back to him. The argument with V . . . the bum’s rush out into the field . . .

The bullet through his heart.

With his free hand, he slapped against his chest, fumbling around to find a hole, feeling for blood—and finding that though there was a wash of sticky wetness down his torso . . . there was no discernible wound.

Just a strange patch in the center that seemed to glow with the heat of a banked fire.

And that was when the itching started. Beginning with the area over his heart, it shifted around in a solid patch, tracing over his ribs on one side, tickling under his arm, moving to the center of his back.

It was the beast, getting back into position. But why?

Yeah, file that one at the end of a very long line of huh-whats?

“Mary,” he said into his blindness. “Mary . . . ?”

“It’s all right—let’s just get out of here together, and when we’re safe, I’ll explain everything—or at least tell you what I know.”

Over the next hour, his shellan made good on that promise—but when did she ever let anyone down? She stayed beside him every inch of the way, from when he was hefted onto a gurney and given a bumpy ride over to Manny’s RV . . . from the rough evac off the overgrown campus to the smooth glide of the paved roads to the highway . . . from the stop-and-go of the gate system that protected the Brotherhood’s training center . . . to the at-last arrival and processing into his recovery room at the clinic.

The trip exhausted him—then again, he spent most of it throwing up lesser parts and choking on their foul-tasting black blood. And it was funny: Usually, he suffered through this aftermath part pissed off and ready for the suffering to be over. Tonight? He was so fucking grateful to be alive he didn’t care that he had the world’s worst stomach flu/food poisoning/seasickness thing going on.

You’re going to fucking die tonight!

Damn it, Vishous was always right. Except Rhage had somehow beaten the prediction and come back from the Fade: For some reason, by some miracle, he was back—and he didn’t think it was because the Scribe Virgin had done him a solid. She had already made a lottery-win deposit in his existential account when she’d saved his Mary, and besides, for the past couple of years, the Mother of the Race had been as out of touch as that kooky old relative you’d just as soon have backed off anyway, thank you very much.

So had his brother been wrong? The short answer to that was yup, considering Rhage was currently lying in a hospital bed instead of on some cloud up in the sky.

But why?

“Here,” his Mary said. “I’ve got what you need.”

True on so many levels, he thought as he turned his head toward the sound of her voice. When a series of bubbles tickled his nose, he shuddered in relief.

Plop-plop, fizz-fizz, fuck, yeah.

“Thank you,” he mumbled—because he was afraid that if he tried to enunciate things too much he was going to start hurling again.

He drank everything that was in the glass and sagged back against the pillow—and then the sound of Mary putting the empty down and the feel of her weight on the mattress made him tear up for some stupid reason.

“I saw the Fade,” he said quietly.

“Did you?” She seemed to shudder, the bed transmitting a subtle tremor from where she sat. “It’s really scary to hear that. What was it like?”

He frowned. “White. Everything was white, but there was no light source. It was weird.”

“I would have found you, you know.” She took a deep breath. “If you hadn’t come back, I would . . . I don’t know how, but I would have found you.”

The exhale he released lasted a lifetime for him. “God, I needed to hear that.”

“Did you think otherwise?”

“No. Well, except for wondering if it was possible. You must have thought the same or you wouldn’t have worked so hard to save me.”

There was a quiet moment. “Yes,” she whispered. “I did want to save you.”

“And I’m glad it worked.” Really, he was. Honest. “I, ah . . .”

“You know that I love you so much, Rhage.”

“Why does that sound like a confession?” He forced a laugh. “I’m just kidding.”

“I really hate death.”

Okay, something was up. And not just about him. She sounded strangely . . . defeated, which was not the affect of a female who had dragged her hellren’s sorry ass back from death’s door.

Like, literally.

Rhage fumbled around to find her hands, and when he took hold of them, they trembled. “What else happened tonight? And don’t say nothing. I can sense your emotion.”

He couldn’t smell it, though. There was too much lesser in his nose and in his digestive tract. You want to talk about fucking GERD?

“It’s not as important as you.” She shifted up and kissed him on the mouth. “Nothing is as important as you.”

Where are you? he wondered to himself. My Mary . . . where have you gone?

“God, I’m tired,” he said into the silence between them.

“Do you want me to leave you so you can sleep?”

“No.” Rhage squeezed her hands and felt like he was trying to tether her to him. “Not ever.”

In the quiet of the hospital room, Mary found herself studying Rhage’s face as if she were trying to re-memorize the features that she knew darn well were indelibly marked in her brain. Then again, she wasn’t actually dwelling on all that ungodly beauty. She was looking for some courage inside herself. Or something.

You’d think, given her profession, she’d be better in a moment like this.

Tell him, she thought. Tell him about Bitty and her mother, and the fact that you fucked up on your job and you feel like a failure.

The trouble was, all that confession-oriented blabber seemed so selfish considering he’d died only about an hour ago: It was like running up to someone who’d been in a bad car accident and wanting to explain to them how your night had sucked, too, because you’d gotten a speeding ticket and a flat tire.

“I would have absolutely come and found you somehow.” As she repeated the words she’d already spoken, she knew he’d hit the nail on the head—because she did feel like she had something to confess. “Really. I would have.”

Great, now she was sick to her stomach.

Except God, how could she possibly tell him that she’d fought so hard to save him not because of them and their relationship, or even his Brothers and the tragedy his loss would have been to the whole household, but because of someone else entirely? Even if that someone else and all her problems were an arguably noble cause? Even if that third party was a child newly orphaned in the world?

It just seemed like such a betrayal of the two of them and their life together. When you found true love, when you’d been granted that gift, you didn’t make life-and-death decisions based on anybody else’s situations or problems. Unless it was your child, of course—and heaven knew that she and Rhage would never, ever have any children.