Allegiance(59)

A stirring in the hallway was followed by a soft knock at the suite door. Cage and Melissa exchanged a smile before he got up to answer.

Aidan stood in the corridor, dressed in black combat pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt—Cage didn’t think he’d ever seen him quite so casual. He looked at Cage, looked past him at Melissa, then back at Cage. “Anything I need to know?”

Cage glanced back at Melissa, who shrugged and nodded. “Right. We were just setting to rest the mad rumor that we were destined to be Penton’s next vampire super-couple. Sad to say you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

Aidan grinned, which lifted about two centuries of stress off his face. “Mirren’s rounding up everyone in the old mill to start training at nine, so you have a couple of hours. I want everyone fed before training. One of you feeds from Nik and one from Mark. You pick.”

He set off down the hall, where Cage saw Krys waiting. Aidan turned back. “We’re about the same size, Cage—come by the house and get some clothes. You show up looking like that and Mirren will make your life a misery.”

Right.





CHAPTER 17

As soon as Nik had dropped him off, seen that he’d made it into the house, and then driven away to find his little shifter friend, Mark made sure no one else was in his house and, only then, allowed himself the luxury of a loud groan. If you kept your self-pity to yourself, it didn’t qualify as wallowing.

“You have a minor concussion,” Krys had told him. “And you’re just going to have to work through the back pain.”

Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one walking around with the equivalent of a raw, exposed nerve that burned and throbbed with every move as if someone had scraped sandpaper across it. His back pain had company: his head pounded with its own miserable rhythm.

He reached in his pocket and studied the amber plastic bottle of prescription-strength ibuprofen Krys had given him. Wouldn’t hurt him to take his moose-sized dose fifteen minutes early. If it burned through the lining of his stomach, well, what the hell. One more malady wouldn’t make that much difference.

He shuffled to the kitchen and ferreted a bottle of water from its hiding spot behind containers of leftovers from the Chow House. As the only human in a houseful of vampires with no interest in solid food, and not much of a cook even in the best of health, Mark had qualified for Glory’s version of Meals on Wheels. She’d drop anything left over from the Chow House each day when she went home to meet Mirren when he rose from daysleep.

Speaking of which, Mark had about an hour before Aidan arrived for feeding—he usually took some private time with Krys before coming back from the lieutenants’ daysleep spaces. Mark probably could have weaseled out of feeding for one more day, but Penton was too short on humans for him to play martyr—especially with Max gone indefinitely, the new shifter girl not a viable feeder because of some weird reaction Mirren had at her bonding, and Robbie just plain gone.

Long story short, Penton needed its few humans to pull their weight, and he wouldn’t let Penton down. He would, however, rest until Aidan arrived, and hope his back would recuperate from his too-busy day.

Mark shook out two white pills, tossed them toward the back of his throat, and swallowed them with about half of the water. He screwed the white plastic top back on the bottle and took it to his bedroom.

Speaking of wallowing, his sheets looked like a pig had rolled around in them, just as he’d left them this morning. If Melissa were here, she’d have his bed looking neat and straight in the time it would take him to figure out which way to turn the untucked sheet.

But she wasn’t here, so he might as well suck it up and try to make it habitable, or sleepable.

Then he saw it. On the dresser, next to the wallet he rarely carried anymore unless he was going to be driving outside Penton, sat another amber plastic bottle, about half the height of the ibuprofen. Maybe Krys and Aidan had stopped by just after daysleep, and she’d had pity on him and left him something a little stronger.

She wouldn’t have that much pity. Mark stared at the label on the bottle, shivering as chills ran along his arms and into his fingers. He set it back on the dresser as if it might grow teeth and bite him. Krys wouldn’t leave a full bottle of oxy for him to find. She’d dole it out a half pill at a time and deliver it with a stern warning.

Hell, what was he thinking? She wouldn’t put an oxycodone tablet anywhere near him unless he were shrieking in pain. Even then, she’d have to think about it.

When he reached for it again, his fingers shook so violently that they knocked the bottle on its side. The sound of plastic hitting wood and of pills dancing merrily inside their amber cage sounded so loud he half expected to hear an echo.