down, she knew the doctor was right to get her back on the horizontal. A wave of dizziness made the room spin, and then her body got so weak, she wondered if she’d had a stroke or something.
Staring at the wall, she thought of Boone, there on the floor, stuck with her indoors for what was no doubt going to be the longest day of their lives. Even with the doctor’s kind ministrations.
At least she wasn’t pregnant. As far as she knew, they hadn’t had sex after the fertile time had come.
Otherwise, she would have felt even worse than she already did.
Still . . . what a mess this all was.
Boone regained consciousness and was surprised to find himself on the sofa. But at least he knew where he was—
Helania’s apartment while she was going through her needing . . . although he did not remember getting up off the floor. Maybe he’d done it when Doc Jane had given him the second shot. Or the third.
What time was it—
“It’s after midnight.”
He jerked his head up. Doc Jane was sitting at Helania’s kitchen table, a tablet propped open in front of her, some kind of movie playing on its little screen.
“Did I say that out loud or do you read minds?” he asked as he struggled to sit up.
Man, his shirt was more wrinkled than a map at the end of a long trip.
The doctor smiled and turned off whatever was playing. “You spoke the words.”
Boone stretched and cracked his shoulder. Then he looked toward the bedroom. The door was open, but the lights were off inside so he couldn’t see Helania.
“Don’t worry, she’s fine. I just checked on her twenty minutes ago.”
With a groan, he leaned forward and plugged his elbows into his knees. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”
“You have been. The hormone load you’ve been under with the opiates chaser? You’re going to feel logy for a while.”
“I didn’t expect this.”
“Neither did she.” Doc Jane shook her head. “Female bodies of any species are a thing, but vampire ones? It’s so unfair.”
“Is it over? For her?”
“Hard to say. From what I understand, she’s been under a lot of stress, and that could shorten or lengthen the course of the needing. Or she could follow the typical timeline. I will say, in the last hour there’s been an improvement compared to how she was. I think the worst of it is behind her, and she’ll feel a lot better in another six hours.”
“Thank God.”
“She will need to feed. And she has to come in for a checkup tomorrow night.”
“For what?”
“To see if she’s pregnant.”
Boone went very, very still. “But we didn’t have sex.”
Doc Jane’s face became professionally composed. “During the needing or at all in the last twenty-four hours?”
“Ah . . .” As he blushed, he cleared his throat. “During the needing.”
“When was the last time you were with her.”
He closed his eyes and reminded himself that to Doc Jane, the sexual act was part of the medical record, a biological event. But damn, he felt a little like he was confessing to a mahmen.
“Boone,” she said quietly, “it matters. For her health and well-being, it’s better that we know—although if you’d prefer that I ask her personally, I’m happy to wait until she’s better able to talk to me—”
“Maybe six hours before the needing hit. At least four.”
Doc Jane nodded. “Okay, then she should be checked out. If she is pregnant, she is going to need prenatal care immediately.”
Boone blinked. Then blurted, “I’m going to mate her if she is.”
Doc Jane’s smile was steady. “Let’s take this situation one step at a time. You can cross that bridge if you get to it.”
* * *
Helania woke up slowly. Her first thought was that the morphine must still be heavily in her system: She couldn’t feel her arms or her legs, and the buoyancy of the bed was overexaggerated, as if she were in a canoe in a still body of water rather than lying on a mattress.
Turning on her side, she looked toward the open doorway of her bedroom and wondered what time it was. Whether the doctor was still in the apartment. If Boone had—
Sure as if she’d called his name, he appeared in between the jambs. He looked as wiped-out as she felt, his hair sticking up at bad angles, his shirt wrinkled to the point of ruin, his slacks hanging low on his hips as if he had lost ten pounds