Giving up on trying to make sense of it all, she let her head fall back down to the tile. “Help . . . me . . .”

“I’m going to check your vitals, and then we’ll see about taking care of you with some meds, is this okay with you?”

Meds? And what kind of angel talked about vital signs? Besides, if she’d gone unto the Fade, she was now dead for an eternity, so all that was a moot point.

As another blast of heat churned through her, Helania moaned and abruptly didn’t care what the plan was. Anything was better than this terrible grinding need.

“Yes, please. Thank you.”

She had no clue what she was saying.

Things happened at that point. Something was put on her arm . . . after which there was a slow constriction and a release. Then a cold disk that was heaven pressed into the front of her chest. After that, there was a beep next to her ear—no, wait, that was inside her ear.

“Helania? I’m going to give you a shot of morphine, with your permission. It will ease you and make this so much more bearable. Is that okay?”

The angel’s voice was closer now and Helania tried to open her eyes. “Yes. Anything . . .”

At this point, if she had to get in a bath of dry ice, she’d jump in—

Another surge owned her, and as she cried out, she was aware that the spikes of hormones were still getting stronger. As impossible as that seemed, she could feel the intensification—

The easing came on in a wave and flooded through her body, calming down the boil sure as if she were a pot taken off an open flame. But she did not trust the relief, and for a time, she braced herself and waited for the suffering to come back.

“It’s all right,” that female voice said. “Just let yourself relax. I’m going to stay here and monitor you. I won’t let it get away from us.”

The tears came hard and heavy, Helania weeping for no cogent reason and every variation of an exhausted one.

“Mother Nature can be so cruel to females,” said the voice.

Wiping her eyes with her forearm, Helania craned around. As the details of the mystical female came through with greater clarity, she frowned. No wings. No aura. No preternatural presence. Instead . . .

“You’re not an angel.”

The female laughed, her forest green eyes flashing. “Oh, trust me, I’m so not. Just ask my hellren.”

Helania glanced down at herself. What she had assumed was a fluffy white cloud covering her tortured body turned out to be one of her own sheets. She recognized the faded pattern of little pink and yellow flowers.

“How are you feeling now?” the doctor asked.

“Where’s Boone?”

“He’s out cold by the sofa. I’ve given him some help as well.” Helania closed her eyes. “I swear, I didn’t know it was coming. The needing.”

Was she making any sense at all? She felt like she was babbling.

“From what I understand,” the doctor said, “it is not always possible for you all to guess the timing of it. And Butch tells me that you’ve been dealing with a lot of stress. That can throw things off as well.”

“You’re not a vampire?”

“No, I’m not.”

Oh, of course. How else could the female have come here during the day. Wait . . . it was daytime, wasn’t it?

Whatever. It did not matter.

“I should have been smarter.” Helania closed her eyes. “I should have . . .”

“How about we get you to your bed? It’s cold in here and that floor has to be very hard.”

Was it? Given the morphine, the tiles felt as soft as feathers. Still, when the doctor offered a hand, Helania put her own into it and did her best to participate in the effort of getting her body to the vertical.

With that goal accomplished, the doctor hitched a hold around Helania’s waist and supported more than half her weight as they hobbled out into the living area, the tails of the sheet dragging behind.

As they rounded the corner to enter the bedroom, she finally saw Boone. He was on the floor in front of the sofa, his arms and legs flopped in a disjointed series of angles, his torso twisted so he was half on his back, half facedown. He looked like he’d been sucker punched and had gone down hard.

“He’s fine,” the doctor said. “I gave him a lighter dose and he’s slipped into sleep. And before you ask, I checked his vitals. He is just exhausted.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. He fed from a Chosen just three nights ago.” A Chosen, Helania thought.

“It was a medical-need feed,” the doctor said gently. “Not to worry. There is nothing there.”

“It’s not my business.”

“That’s for you and him to decide.” The doctor smiled. “Come on, let’s get you to lie down. If you faint on me, I may not be able to keep you from crashing to the floor.”

Helania allowed herself to be drawn over to her mattress—which, for some reason, had been moved out of place. But what did she care. As she lay 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 of water weight.

“Are you okay?” he said.

His voice was rough, and as he came in the room, she braced herself for an onslaught of painful desire.

“I think so.” When her body didn’t grind in on itself, she exhaled. “I’m a lot better. Where is . . .”

“Doc Jane? She had to go to the clinic. But I told her I’d call her back immediately if you needed anything.”

Helania tried to sit up, and when the world spun, she debated letting that idea go. But as her equilibrium returned, she tucked the sheets around her naked body and shoved her hair out of her face.