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“No.” Just as the brother stepped out in the hall, V said, “Will you check on Butch?”

“Of course.”

After Phury left, V stared at the human woman. Her looks, he decided, were not so much beautiful as compelling. Her face was square, her features almost masculine: No pouty lips. No thick lashes. No arching, feminine-wile brows. And there were no big breasts pushing against the white physician’s coat she had on, no wildly curvy ins and outs as far as he could see.

He wanted her like she was a naked beauty queen begging to be served.

Mine. V’s hips rotated, a flush spreading under his skin even though there was no way he should have the energy to get sexed up.

God, the truth was, he had no remorse about kidnapping her. Matter of fact, it was preordained. Just as Butch and Rhage had shown up in that hospital room he’d had his first vision in weeks. He’d seen his surgeon standing in a doorway, framed in glorious white light. She’d been beckoning to him with love on her face, drawing him forward down a hall. The kindness she’d offered had been as warm and soft as skin, as soothing as calm water, as sustaining as the sunlight he no longer knew.

Still, though he might feel no remorse, he did blame himself for the fear and anger in her face when she’d come to. Thanks to his mother, he’d gotten a nasty look at what it was like to be forced into something, and he’d just done the same thing to the one who’d saved his life.

Shit. He wondered what he would have done if he hadn’t gotten that vision, if he hadn’t had his curse of seeing the future speak up. Would he have left her there? Yeah. Of course he would have. Even with the word mine running through his head, he would have let her stay in her world.

But the fucking vision had sealed her fate.

He thought back to the past. To the first of his visions…

Literacy was not of value in the warrior camp, as you couldn’t kill with it.

Vishous learned to read the Old Language only because one of the soldiers had had some education and was in charge of keeping some rudimentary records of the camp. He was sloppy about it and bored by the job, so V had volunteered to do his duties if the male taught him how to read and write. It was the perfect exchange. V had always been entranced by the idea that you could reduce an event to the page and make it not transitory, but fixed. Eternal.

He’d learned fast and then scoured the camp for books, finding a few in obscure, forgotten places like under old, broken weapons or in abandoned tents. He collected the battered, leather-bound treasures and hid them at the far edge of the camp where the animal hides were kept. No soldiers ever went there, as it was female territory, and if the females did, it was just to grab a pelt or two for making clothes or bedding. Further, not only was it safe for the books, it was the perfect spot for reading, as the cave ceiling dropped to a low height and the floor was stone: Anyone’s approach was instantly heard, as they’d have to shuffle about to get near him.

There was one book, however, that even his hidden place wasn’t secure enough for.

The most precious of his meager collection was a diary written by a male who’d come to the camp about thirty years prior. He’d been an aristocrat by birth but had ended up in the camp being trained due to family tragedy. The diary was written in beautiful script, with big words that V could only guess the meanings of, and spanned three years of the male’s life. The contrast between the two parts, the one detailing events prior to his coming here and the one covering afterward, was stark. In the beginning, the male’s life had been marked with the glorious passing of the glymera’s social calendar, full of balls and lovely females and courtly manners. Then it all ended. Despair, the exact thing Vishous lived with, was what tinted the pages after the male’s life changed forever just after his transition.

Vishous read and reread the diary, feeling a kinship with the writer’s sadness. And after each reading, he would close the cover and run his fingertips over the