“Well, that was fun,” the brother said grimly. “Can we do it again tomorrow night?”

“Is she all right?”

“Fine.” V exhaled as he put his lighter away. “Dehydrated. Feet are torn up. Chafed in places. She’s being rolled into the bunk room by Ehlena right now.”

“She’s still out cold?” Fuck, this was bad. This was very bad.

“More like in and out. We don’t want a slip-and-fall situation, true?”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause. “What’s wrong with you? Look, I told you, she’s gonna be fine.”

Butch just shook his head. No doubt, given V’s S-and-M background, he was used to females—and males—looking wrung-out, and yet walking away from seshes just fine. As a former homicide detective, however, Butch took things in a different direction: He saw victims.

He relived crime scenes where females’ bodies were mangled like cars that had been crashed—and no, they did not walk away, they were not “fine.”

For fuck’s sake, he remembered what his own sister had looked like as she’d stared out the back window of her murderers’ car, never to be seen alive again.

So, yeah, the associations were not the same.

“You want a drink?” V asked him.

Read: You look like roadkill, true?

Butch took out his phone. He’d texted Marissa as soon as they’d carried Paradise back inside, but no, no response. Busy night for his mate, apparently.

“You mind if I duck out?” he asked his roommate.

“You going to church again?”

Man, the son of a bitch knew him too well.

“I still have two hours before dawn.” He clapped his best friend on the shoulder. “See you at Last Meal.”

He was halfway to the office, where the entrance to the tunnel was, when V called out, “You didn’t do anything wrong tonight.”

Butch nodded. Then looked over his shoulder. “Doesn’t mean I’m happy about introducing a bunch of children into the war.”

“We either make the intros, or the war will find them on its own terms.”

“Yeah, this shit might be necessary—might even be for their own good. Doesn’t sit well with me, though.”

As he kept going, he could feel those diamond eyes watching him, and he was glad he was walking away from the guy instead of toward him. Vishous was too good at reading him, and he wanted to keep all the unstable he had going on to himself.

And yes, that was why he was going to church. It was what good, God-fearing Catholic boys did when they were suffering from mind fucks like this.

Paradise came awake on a jerk, not so much surfacing back to consciousness as catapulting into awareness, her hands slapping out at whatever she was lying on, her torso jacking up, her eyes popping wide.

She was ready for anything …

Except for the clean, well-lit room that was full of bunk beds and completely empty of anyone but her.

“What … the…?”

As she went to look around, her neck cracked, and that opened the floodgates to all kinds of unpleasantness: Her feet were throbbing, her hips were killing her, her thighs were on fire, one calf was seized up, and her stomach was aching like she’d been punched in the gut.

Shifting her legs to the floor, she discovered she was in a hospital johnny and a soft robe.

“Don’t worry, both the doctor and the nurse are females.”

She snapped around to the doorway. “Peyton?”

Her friend was half in and half out of the jamb, his wrecked clothes gone, a loose, belted robe in their place. He’d clearly had a shower and some food and drink—he was close to normal, his good looks, his sardonic smile, his lidded eyes revived.

“Or call me Santa Claus.” Her friend came forward and held out a mug. “I brought you a present, after all.”

“Wait, wait … where are we? What are—”

“Here, drink this.” Peyton sat down on the bunk next to her. “And before you ask, nothing’s in it except for two sugars and two creams. I remember how you like it.”

“What time is it?” She took the coffee, just to be pleasant. “Oh, my God—my father—”

“I called him myself. We’re all here at the Brotherhood’s training center. The seven of us made it into the program—especially you. Congratulations, Parry. You did it.”

She frowned and took a sip—then moaned. “Oh, my f— this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.”

He got back up and went over to a side table. “Last Meal, m’lady.”

As he brought her over a tray of covered dishes, she had to force herself not to pound the coffee. “Where are the others?”

“In a cafeteria, break room thingy right outside this place. Most of them are sleeping. I had the nurse put you in here for obvious reasons.”

“Obvious…” Oh, right. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, no chaperones. But I’ve been checking on you every fifteen minutes.”

After everything she had been through during the nighttime hours, her virtue seemed like the last thing she needed to worry about. But you didn’t shake your entire upbringing justlikethat.

“Eat,” he said. “Everything gets better after you eat.”

He put the tray next to her on the bunk and began popping the lids off. One look at the slices of roast beef and the baked potato and she was ravenous.

But before she tucked in, she had to ask, “All seven of us? From the … you know, we walked together? All of us?”

“Axe, Boone, Novo, Anslam, and Craeg.”

She ducked her eyes at the last name. “So that’s our class?”

“Yeah.”

Picking up the fork and knife, she groaned as she twisted toward her plate and her ribs let out a WHAT ARE YOU DOING. “Crap, I can’t move without—”

“Advil. I’ll have them bring you some more.” Peyton headed to the door and stopped. “I owe you an apology.”

“For what?”

“Thinking that you couldn’t do this.” He glanced back at her. “You were right to call my shit out on the bus. You proved me wrong. I’m sorry.”

Paradise exhaled. “Thank you. That means a lot.”

He nodded. “Come out when you’re ready. We’re just shooting the shit.”

“Hey, Peyton?” she said before he reached for the handle.

“Hmm?”

“Do me a favor?”

“Name it.”

“Don’t tell them about … you know, about who I am. I don’t want to be treated any differently. I just want to be like everyone else.”

“Anslam knows. But I can talk to him and give him a gag order.”

“Thank you.”

Peyton looked at the floor for a moment. “Anything for you.”

After he left, Paradise ate as much as she could—which turned out to be everything on the tray, including the fresh roll and the peas. She finished the coffee and drank both of the bottled waters that came with everything. Then she limped over to the bathroom in the corner.

The shower she took was so hot, she was surprised she didn’t melt the paint off the walls, but oh, how her body loosened under the penetrating spray. The blisters on her feet stung, and so did various random places, like her right elbow and her left knee that were scraped and the tops of both her shoulders for some reason. She didn’t care. It was heaven.

Hanging her head, she let the rush of water run down the back of her neck.

She was glad that Peyton had called her father. It was almost dawn, and she didn’t want the male worrying, but she wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened. She needed time—to think, to reassess, to process.

There was shampoo. She used it without checking the label. Same with the conditioner. And the soap.

By the time she got out, she felt closer to herself—but that changed when she looked at her reflection in the mirror over the sink.

Leaning in close, she regarded her features as if they were someone else’s—and they did look unfamiliar. Her face seemed so much leaner, and even with no makeup on, her big eyes seemed to take over everything as a child’s would.

“Who am I?” she whispered to the reflection.

Chapter Thirteen

St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Caldwell was a grand old lady, rising up from the pavement as a testament to both God’s mercy and man’s ability to glue blocks of stones together. As Butch pulled up in his new Lexus and parallel-parked, he thought it was pretty damn funny that of all the human traits to have survived his transition into a vampire, the one that had stuck the most was his faith.