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His eyes were heavy-lidded, dazed. You’d almost have mistaken the look for sleep, but not quite. He cupped his hands on both sides of my face. The wound on his mouth was healed. The rush of power, his beast, had healed it. He lowered his soft lips to mine and just barely brushed my mouth. “What are we going to do?”

I held his hands against my face. “We’re going to do what we came to do.”

“Then what?” he asked.

I shook my head, rubbing my face against his hands. “Survive first, Richard. Worry about the niceties later.”

Something filled his eyes with a sudden rush of panic. “Jamil, I could have killed him.”

“You also healed him.”

He let that take some of the panic from his face, but he still got to his feet and went to his fallen enforcer. An apology at the very least was needed. I couldn’t really argue with that.

I stayed kneeling, not sure I could walk yet, for a variety of reasons.

“Not the way Gideon and I would have done it,” Thomas said, “but in a pinch it will do.”

I felt heat rush up my face. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Gideon growled. “It was a lovely show.” He crawled towards us, one arm cradled against his body. Blood dripped down the arm and shoulder. The red showed brilliantly against the white shirt. I had absolutely no desire to lick the blood off his body. I was grateful for that.

“Richard did that?” I asked.

“He was beginning to change form when you called him. You drank his beast and he calmed.” He sat leaning to one side, bleeding a little puddle on the floor, but he never asked for help, not by word or expression. But Thomas reached out to him. Touched his shoulder in a neutral, almost brotherly gesture. Their power strengthened in a skin-prickling rush that oozed over me like a cold wind, but if I hadn’t been able to sense it, I’d have never known.

“Is this just European reserve,” I asked, “or are Richard and I doing something terribly wrong?”

Thomas smiled, but it was Gideon who answered. “You do nothing wrong. In fact, I feel quite cheated.” He patted Thomas’s hand and smiled flashing fangs. “There are ways to share power that are quieter, and less…showy. But for today you did what needed to be done. It was a desperate thing and called for desperate measures.”

I let it go. No need to explain how often being around Richard ended in such “desperate measures.” Across the ring Jamil sat up with Richard’s help. Zane had untied both the wereleopards. He’d led Vivian over to Gregory. They both knelt by him, Vivian hugging Zane and crying.

I got my feet under me and found that I could walk. Great. Richard got there before I did. He stroked Gregory’s tangled hair out of his face until the wereleopard looked up at him. “We have to set these legs.”

Gregory nodded, lips in a thin tight line that reminded me of Cherry.

“We need a hospital for this,” I said.

Richard looked up at me. “The legs have already begun to reknit like this, Anita. Every minute the bones are out of alignment is another minute that they heal, badly.”

I stared down at Gregory’s legs. He was totally nude, but the wounds were so fearful that it wasn’t embarrassing; it was just piteous. His legs from the knees down bent the wrong way. I had to close my eyes and look away. If it had been a corpse, I could have looked at it, but Gregory was still bleeding, still hurting. Made it worse somehow.

I looked back. “You mean the legs would heal like that?”

“Yes,” Richard said.

I stared down into Gregory’s frightened eyes. They were still the surprised cornflower-blue of Stephen’s. They looked even bluer from the mask of blood that covered his face. I tried to think of something to say, but he spoke first.

His voice was thin, scratchy, as if he’d screamed until he was hoarse. “When you left without me the first time, I thought you were going to let them keep me.”

I knelt beside him. “You’re not something to keep. You’re a person. You deserve to be treated…” To say, “better than this” seemed too obvious. I tried to hold his hand the way you