invincible.
When the call came in to the medical staff, No’One was in the training center’s main exam room, delivering a stack of freshly folded scrubs that were straight from the dryer and still a little warm.
Over at the desk, Doc Jane leaned into her phone. “He’s what? Can you repeat that? Who? And you’re bringing him here?”
At that moment, the door to the outside corridor burst wide and No’One took an involuntary step back. The Brothers Vishous and Rhage filled the room as they barged in—and the fighters were grim, their eyes darkened, their brows down, their bodies tight.
There were daggers in their right hands.
“Wait, yes, they’re here. What’s your ETA? Okay, yup, we’ll be ready for him.” Jane hung up and looked over at the males. “Guess you guys are in charge of security.”
“Damn straight.” Vishous nodded at the operating table. “So I can’t assist you.”
“Because you’re going to have a knife to the throat of my patient.”
“You got it. Where’s Ehlena?”
Conversation bloomed as Doc Jane began gathering equipment and staff, and in the chaos that followed, No’One prayed nobody noticed her. Who was being brought in—
As if Vishous read her mind, he looked in her direction. “All nonessential personnel have to leave the training compound—”
The desk phone went off again with a shrill sound, and the healer Jane put it up to her ear once more. “Hello? Qhuinn? What is—What? He did what?” The female’s eyes shot to her mate, her cheeks going pale. “Tell me how bad? And he needs transport? Do you have—Thank God. Yeah, I’ll take care of it.”
She hung up and spoke in a hollow voice. “Tohr is hit. Multiple times. Manny!” she called out. “We’ve got another incoming!”
Tohrment?
Vishous cursed. “If Throe put even one slug into him—”
“He walked into gunfire,” Jane cut in.
Everyone froze.
As No’One threw a hand out to the wall to steady herself, Rhage said softly, “Excuse me?”
“I don’t know much more than that. Qhuinn just said that he stepped out from under cover, put up two forties, and just… walked forward into a spray of gunfire.”
The other doctor, Manuel, came flying in from next door. “Who we got now?”
There was a lot more conversation at that point, deep voices mixing with the female’s higher tone. Ehlena, the nurse, arrived. Two more Brothers.
No’One sank farther back into the corner by the supply cabinet, staying out of the way as she stared at the floor and prayed. When a pair of huge black boots intruded upon her line of vision, she just shook her head, knowing what would be said to her.
“You need to go.”
Vishous’s voice was steady and sure. Almost kind, which was a new one.
Lifting her chin, she met icy, diamond eyes. “Verily, you will have to kill me and drag my body out of here if you wish me to leave.”
The Brother frowned. “Look, we’re bringing in a dangerous—”
A sudden, subtle growling appeared to surprise the male. Silly, she thought, considering he was making the—
No. He was not.
She was. That warning was rising up out of her own chest, breaching her own lips.
Cutting the sound off, she pronounced, “I shall stay. Which room are you treating him in?”
V blinked, as if he were dumbfounded and unfamiliar with the sensation. After a moment, he looked over his shoulder at his mate. “Ah, Jane—where are you working on Tohr?”
“Right here. Throe’s going into our second OR—fewer doors, so there’s less of an escape risk.”
The Brother turned away and walked off, but it was just to get a stool and bring it over to her. “This is in case you get tired of standing.”
Then he left her be.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, who walked into enemy fire unprotected? she wondered.
The answer, when it came to her, made her gut seize up: someone who wanted to be killed in the line of duty. That was who.
Mayhap it would be better if Layla fed him. Less complicated—no. Not less so. The Chosen was incredibly beautiful, without a deformity of any sort. Yes, he had stated that he wanted no one in a sexual manner, but a male’s resolve could be sorely tested by a female who looked like that. And any such response would kill him.
No’One was better for him.
Yes, that was right. She would handle his needs.
As she continued to justify things to herself, the fact that the idea of him at the fair Chosen’s throat made her curiously violent was nothing she wanted to examine too closely.
TWENTY-SEVEN
T
hroe came awake in a void. He had