He disarmed her as he landed next to her on the ground and pulled her against him.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” he said as he held her to his heart.

“I c-c-can’t stop shaking,” she said into his throat.

“It’s over. It’s okay . . . it’s over.”

Closing his eyes, he allowed himself one brief moment of reunion. Then he got on his communicator and started barking out orders. When the responses came in, from Manny, from V—and especially from Doc Jane as she materialized out of thin air right next to Butch, he relaxed a little and pulled back.

Staring into Jo’s wide, shell-shocked eyes, he brushed her hair out of her face. “Are you okay?”

She was trembling so badly, her molars were castanets, and speaking was hard. “You weren’t going to kill me, were you.”

“What?”

“You weren’t. You were protecting me. You killed Gigante to keep me safe.”

Syn shook his head. “None of it matters anymore. As long as you’re all right—”

“You were trying to save my life.” Jo grabbed the front of his leather jacket. “I’m so sorry. I was wrong about you. I was so wrong—”

“Shh. You have nothing to apologize for.”

“I do. Syn, I—”

“Everything is forgiven,” he said because he had the sense it was the only thing that would calm her, and he was worried about whether she’d been shot.

Plus, that was a true statement. He would always forgive her, even though, in this case, there was nothing to excuse. At all.

“I love you,” she said. “You and only you. No matter what the future is, I need you to know that. I need to say the words to you.”

As her miraculous statements registered, Syn lost his voice—or he would have spoken back to her what she had said to him. Lacking words, he touched her hair with awe, and as if she understood what he meant, she turned her face into his bloody palm and kissed it. Then she kissed it again. Then she—

The moan she let out was part relief, part starvation. And then her lips locked onto his bullet wound, the suction hesitant. At least for the first draw. For the second, however, she swallowed hard and moaned again, turning her whole body to the source of the blood flow, seeking sustenance.

Fuck. Her transition was here—

Rearing away from his palm, Jo let out a plaintive howl, her eyes confused and focused at the same time. “What’s happening? What’s . . . happening to me?”

“It’s okay,” he soothed her, “I’m going to give you a better draw.

” Biting into his wrist, he made sure the punctures were nice and deep, and then he brought the wellspring to her lips.

“Latch on,” he told her. “Drink of me so that I may give you strength.”

When he realized he had spoken in the Old Language, he nearly translated, but she didn’t require the vocabulary. She formed a perfect seal over his vein and started to take from him in earnest, her eyes frightened as they held his own, her trembling getting worse instead of better.

“I will not leave you,” he said. “Until it is done—”

“Syn, we need to get you looked at—”

At the sound of the male voice, he jerked Jo even closer to him, his body forming a cage around her own. As he let out a vicious warning growl, the circle of Brothers, who had formed around them without him realizing it, jumped back like they had seen a rattlesnake in the grass.

All at once, the alley was bathed in red.

Upper lip curled back, fangs fully extended, Syn was ready to attack—

He shook himself back to reality. Clearing his throat, he said, “Shit. Sorry.”

Butch pushed his way through the crowd. In a fond tone, he murmured, “I gotta approve of how you follow directions, Syn. I asked you to take care of my sister and you are. It’s a real example for others.”

Feeling suddenly shy, Syn stared down at his female and tenderly brushed her cheek. “If she’ll have me, I’d like to care of her for the rest of her life.”

It was all such a blur.

As Jo’s hormones went wild and her body was taken over by an unstoppable force, she had trouble putting the events that led up to her transition in proper order. Then again, did any of that really matter? She was with Syn and she was . . . doing something that would have been repugnant and shocking at any other time in her life.

Instead, it was natural. It was . . . right.

With her lips to his wrist and the taste of dark wine down the back of her throat, she gave in to what her body seemed destined to do: take from him to survive.

And as she drank, the chill that had trembled through her very bones gradually abated, replaced by a warmth that flowed freely, filling her up from the inside out.

Closing her eyes, she kept taking what Syn provided her, aware that she was being moved, that there was some kind of relocation happening, not that she could track much of what was going on. And then there was movement, subtle and uneven. A soft, engine-like purr. Was she in some kind of vehicle?

Summoning her eyesight, she lifted her lids . . . and saw a whole lot of medical equipment in a cramped space. And was she on the floor?

“It’s okay.”

All it took was the sound of Syn’s voice to make everything all right. Not that she had been worried, anyway. With him, she was safe.

“We’re in the surgical unit,” he said softly. “Manny’s driving us back to the training center. We just left downtown.”

She wanted to release his vein to speak, but her mouth refused to follow that order.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured, “the partition is shut. We’re alone.”

As if she were worried about privacy? The only thing she cared about was that he was with her.

Nursing from his life spring, she memorized his features. The deeply set eyes. The Mohawk. The hollow cheeks and strong jaw. His wide shoulders. His heavy pectorals and thick, powerful arms . . .

Another need began to rise inside of her.

And as if he read her mind, his lids lowered. “Yes,” he purred. “I can give you that, too.”

Somehow, he managed to reposition her flat on her back on the cold, hard metal floor—not that she cared—and she helped him with her jeans as best she could, kicking off her boots, dragging the lengths down with socked toes. All the while, she was aware of making mewling noises, begging him, pleading with him.

Her core needed him as much as her changed demanded his blood.

She felt his fingers slip and slide against her sex first, and then there was a pause.

“I love you, Jo,” he said roughly.

Releasing his vein, she stared up into his harsh face. “I love you, too.”

Jo cried out as he entered her, his thick erection filling her up. And then he started pumping, slowly at first, just a rocking—and she intended to follow his rhythm. She could not. She had to relatch with his wrist so all she could do was absorb his thrusts. Faster. Harder.

Jo closed her eyes again. In the back of her mind, she knew this was unfair to ask of him. Given that he could not find release, it would only hurt him in the end.

But the sex was something he seemed determined to give her.

No matter the cost to himself.

That was the man—male, rather—she loved, however. He would do anything, absolutely anything . . .

. . . for his female.

Syn must have checked that that partition, separating the treatment space from the mobile surgical unit’s cockpit, was locked in place a hundred times.

Okay, that was an exaggeration. But only a slight one.

He did not want anyone to see Jo undone as she was, being intimately serviced by her male—had she really told him she loved him?— and that especially included one of her brothers. Not that he was worried about defending his female, even against a member of her own bloodline.

He may have turned over a new leaf with his talhman, but he was still a killer. His reaction as he’d been approached while feeding his female proved it.

Looking down into the face of his shellan, he watched the way her head moved back and forth as he penetrated her and retreated, penetrated and retreated. The feel of her hot, wet core was going straight to his head, and then there was the sight of her at his vein. His hips jerked and began to pump on reflex, something taking over him.

As the rhythm of his pelvis increased, Syn began to pant, the pleasure ramping up inside of him even though it had nowhere to go. But what the fuck did he care. Beneath his surging body, Jo was in ecstasy, her arousal scent thick in the air, her body absorbing his thrusts, both her hands locked on his forearm to make sure his vein didn’t go anywhere away from her mouth.

Giving himself up to the sex, his body rode the wave, closing in on the terminal moment that would not come, the lip of pleasure from which he would never fly, the culmination that was an ever-moving target he would never close—

Syn’s eyes squeezed closed and his molars locked.

Sweat broke out across his face, down his neck . . . and over his chest under his clothes.

Slapping into the seat of Jo’s pelvis, he groaned deep in his throat as the pleasure pinpointed into pain, the worst it had ever been because his female was the very best he had ever—

The orgasm crackled through Syn’s body as his hips locked into place, all of the tension releasing in an explosion of sensations that brought a sacred easing, an indescribable floating peace, a soaring exhalation as he ejaculated over and over again, filling his female up.

Syn dropped his head down, his forehead against the corrugated floor of the surgical van. For a moment, he thought he was losing consciousness, everything spinning. But then he returned to his body.

And continued to pleasure his female.

It was a new landscape of experience, and he explored it with her, the pleasure rising up again, finding that potential, renewing the ascension. The second time it happened for him, as he approached the release, he wondered if it wasn’t going to fail on him. After centuries of impotence, he expected more of the same even after his first data point to the contrary.