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If there had been a vampire UN to intern at, or a way for him to volunteer at Safe Place, he would have done it in a heartbeat.

Blay was the closest thing to an angel Qhuinn had ever come near.

Fuck. He had to get out of here before his father got the whole family kicked out of the glymera.

As he shifted around to try to ease his lower back, he realized it wasn’t all internal injuries that were making him uncomfortable: The envelope his father’s doggen had given him had stayed put in the waistband of his jeans even through the beating.

He didn’t want to see the papers again, but somehow they ended up in his dirty, bloody hands.

Even with his blurry eyesight and his case of the all-over agonies, he focused on the parchment. It was his five-generation family tree, his birth certificate, as it were, and he looked down to the three names on the last line. His was to the left, on the far side of his older brother’s and his sister’s. His entry was covered by a thick X, and underneath his parents’ and siblings’ listings were their signatures in the same heavy ink.

Taking him out of the family required a lot of paperwork. His brother’s and sister’s birth certificates would have to be modified like this, and his parents’ marriage scroll would have to be edited, too. The glymera’s Princeps Council would also need to receive a declaration of disinheritance, the renunciation of parentage, and a petition for expulsion. After Qhuinn’s name was redacted from both the glymera’s roll call and the aristocracy’s massive genealogical file, the Council’s leahdyre would then compose a missive that would be sent out to all the glymera’s families, formally announcing the exile.

Anyone with a mate-able female of appropriate age needed to be forewarned, of course.

It was all so ridiculous. With his mismatched eyes, it wasn’t as if he would have gotten some aristocrat’s name carved in his back anyway.

Qhuinn folded up the birth certificate and returned it to the envelope. As he closed the flap, his chest felt as if it were caving in. To be all alone in the world, even as an adult, was terrifying.

But to contaminate those who had been kind to him was worse.

Blay came through the door with a tray of food. “I don’t know if you’re hungry—”

“I’ve got to go.”

His friend put what he was carrying down on the desk. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Help me up. I’ll be fine—”

“Bullshit,” came a female voice.

The Brotherhood’s private physician appeared out of thin air, right in front of them. Her doctor’s bag was the old-fashioned kind, with two handles at the top and a body like a loaf of bread, and her coat was a white one, just like they wore at the clinic. The fact that she was a ghost was a nonstarter. Everything about her, from her clothes and bag to her hair and perfume, became solid and tangible as she arrived, exactly as if she were normal.

“Thank you for coming,” Blay said, ever the good host.

“Hey, Doc,” Qhuinn muttered.

“And what do we have here.” Jane came over and sat on the corner of the bed. She didn’t touch him, just looked him up and down with an intense physician’s eye.

“Not exactly a candidate for Playgirl, huh,” he said awkwardly.

“How many of them were there?” Her voice wasn’t joking around.

“Eighteen. Hundred.”

“Four,” Blay interjected. “An honor guard of four.”

“Honor guard?” She shook her head, as if she couldn’t understand the race’s ways. “For Lash?”

“No, from Qhuinn’s own family,” Blay said. “And they weren’t supposed to kill him.”

Well, if that wasn’t his new theme song, Qhuinn thought.

Doc Jane opened her bag. “Okay, let’s see what’s doing under your clothes.”

She was characteristically all business as she cut off his shirt, listened to his heart, and took his blood pressure. As she worked, he passed the time looking at the wall, the blank TV screen, her bag.

“Handy . . . bag . . . you got there,” he grunted as her hands palpated his abdomen and hit a soft spot.

“Always wanted one. It’s part of my Marcus Welby, M.D., fetish.”

“Who?”

“This hurt, too?” His gasp as she poked