Free BDB 13 The Shadows by J.R. Ward

center. They’re going to…”
    As his voice faltered, he ordered himself to get the fuck away and let Doc Jane do her job.
    Crossing his arms over his chest, he backed off until he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. It was Rhage. And Trez was pretty sure that the gesture was part compassion, part insurance in case the bonded male in him decided to grab the reins again.
    “Let them do their thing,” Hollywood said as Ehlena, who was Rehv’s
shellan
and the nurse, burst through the door. “Let’s just see where we are.”
    Trez nodded. “Okay. Yeah.”
    The good doctor leaned down and looked into Selena’s opaque eyes. Whatever she said was too soft to hear, but Selena’s pattern of blinking changed—although it was hard to know whether that was a good or a bad thing.
    Blood pressure. Pulse. Pupils. The first three checks went quick, but Jane didn’t waste time announcing what the results were. She and her nurse just kept working fast, taking Selena’s temperature, putting an IV into the back of her hand because the crooks of her elbows were locked up.
    “I want an EKG, but I can’t get to her chest,” Doc Jane said. Then she glanced over her shoulder at her mate. “Do you know any syndrome that causes this? It’s like a full-body seizure except her pupils are reactive.”
    “I don’t. You want me to call Havers for a consult?”
    “Yes. Please.” As V stalked out of the room, Jane shook her head. “I need to know what’s happening in her brain, but we don’t have an MRI here or a CT scan.”
    “So we’re taking her to Havers,” Trez said.
    “He doesn’t have that technology, either.”
    “Fuck.” As Rhage’s hold tightened on him, Trez focused on Selena’s face. “Is she in pain? I don’t want her in pain.”
    “Honestly?” the doctor said. “I don’t know. And until I get a handle on her neurological state, I don’t want to give her any drugs that would depress function. But I’ll move as fast as I can.”
    It seemed to take an eternity, time grinding to a halt as all he could do was watch the complicated medical dance going on around that table. And Rhage stayed right next to him, playing babysitter sentry while Trez straddled the extremes of Shitting in His Pants and Wanting to Blow His Brains Out with no grace whatsoever.
    And then the Chosen Cormia burst through the door.
    The instant the female saw Selena, she gasped and brought both hands up to cover her mouth. “Dearest Virgin Scribe…”
    Doc Jane looked over from taking a blood draw from a vein on the back of Selena’s other hand. “Cormia, do you know what could have—”
    “She has the disease.”
    Everyone went still. Except for Cormia. The Chosen rushed to her sister’s side and smoothed Selena’s dark hair, murmuring to her in the Old Language.
    “What disease?” Doc Jane asked.
    “The Old Language translation is roughly ‘the Arrest.’” The Chosen wiped at her eyes. “She has the Arrest.”
    Trez heard his voice cut into the silence. “What is that?”
    “And is it communicable,” Jane interjected.

EIGHT
    A s sunrise threatened in the East, Xcor, leader of the Band of Bastards, reassumed his form in front of a modest colonial. The house, which he and his soldiers had been using as a lair for nearly a year, was located on the far side of a boring cul-de-sac in a neighborhood full of middle-class humans halfway through their journey to the grave. Throe had secured the rental with an option to buy on the theory of hiding in plain sight, and the property had worked satisfactorily.
    There were lights on in the interior, illumination bleeding out around the seams of the pulled drapes, and he imagined what his warriors were doing inside. Fresh from fighting
lessers
in the alleys of downtown Caldwell, they would be shedding their black blood-stained clothes and partaking of the victuals contained in the icebox and the cupboards of the kitchen. They would be drinking as well, although not blood to make them