Marissa frowned at her brother’s comment—and then realized the female’s eyes were flickering, the thickened lids batting up and down.

Leaning over, Marissa said, “You’re okay. You’re at my br—you’re at the race’s clinic. You’re safe.”

A ragged moan made her wince. And then there was a series of mumbles.

“What?” Marissa asked. “What are you trying to tell me?”

The syllables were repeated with pauses in the same places, and Marissa tried to find the pattern, unlock the series of words, grasp the meaning.

“Say it again—”

All at once that beeping in the background accelerated into an alarm. And then Havers ripped open the drapes and the door and shouted out into the hall.

“What?” Marissa said, getting down closer. “What are you saying?”

Nurses came running, and a cart was rushed in. When someone tried to get between her and the patient, Marissa wanted to tell them to stop—but then the shift in the room sank in.

“I don’t have a heartbeat,” Havers said as he pressed his stethoscope to the female’s now-bare chest.

The connection between Marissa and the patient was broken, their palms unlocking—and yet the female’s eyes stayed on Marissa’s even as people and more machinery got in the way.

“Start chest compressions,” Havers said as a nurse hopped up on the bed. “Charge the cart.”

Marissa stepped back a little farther, and yet kept the eye contact. “I’m going to find him,” she found herself saying over the din. “I promise you…”

“Everyone clear,” Havers commanded. When the staff backed away, he hit a button and the female’s rib cage jerked up.

Marissa’s heart thundered, as if it were trying to make up for the deficit on that bed.

“I’m going to find who did this to you!” she shouted. “Stay with us! Help us!”

“No pulse,” Havers announced. “Let’s do it again. Clear!”

“No!” Marissa yelled as the female’s eyes rolled back. “No…!”

Chapter Five

It was … a cocktail party?

As Paradise stepped into a gymnasium that seemed as big as a professional football arena, she was surprised to find uniformed doggen holding silver trays of hors d’oeuvres in their white-gloved hands, a bar set up on a table draped with damask, and classical music playing in the background.

Mozart’s violin sonatas.

The ones her father listened to in front of the fire after Last Meal.

Over on the left, there was a sign-in station, and after some coalescing, all sixty of them formed a line in front of a female doggen with a happy smile and a laptop computer. Not wanting to look like she expected to be treated any differently, Paradise fell in somewhere in the middle and patiently waited to give her name, confirm her address, get her picture taken, and file off to the side to check her satchel and coat.

“Would you care for a canapé?” a doggen asked her.

“Oh¸ thank you, no, but I appreciate the kindness.”

The doggen bowed at the waist and approached the male who had been behind her in line. Glancing over her shoulder, she nodded to her fellow candidate—and recognized him from the festivals that the glymera had put on before the raids. Like all members of the aristocracy, they were distant cousins, although she was not close to him or his people.

His name was Anslam, if she remembered correctly.

After he nodded back, he popped a canapé into his mouth.

Pivoting around, Paradise checked out all the athletic equipment that had been set up throughout the open space. Parallel bars, chin-up bars, mats for tumbling, a pummel horse, leg press … oh, good, they had an erg machine.

At least there was one thing she wasn’t going to fail at.

Glancing over her shoulder, she found that many of the recruits were awkwardly fending off the doggen with the trays, looking as if they had never seen servants before. Peyton was hitting the munchies hard—not a surprise. And Axe, the latent serial killer, was standing at the edge of things, arms crossed over his chest, eyes surveying the landscape like maybe he was picking out victims.

Why half of him with the tats? she wondered. And the piercings?

Whatever.

And yeah, wow, looked like there was only one other female at the moment. And given the hard-as-nails expression on that lean face, and her broad shoulders, she was probably more suited to the program than a lot of the males in here.

Rubbing her damp palms on her thighs, Paradise shook off a feeling of disappointment: That male, Craeg, who’d come to the audience house for the application wasn’t in the group.

But come on, that was probably a good thing. He’d been a total distraction the second he’d walked up to her desk—and she was going to need all her focus to get through this.

Assuming tonight was anything other than a canapé hour.

Where were the Brothers? she wondered.

A flash of movement at the corner of her eye turned her head. One of the males had hopped up on the pummel horse and was slowly spinning his lower body in circles as his massive arms held his weight aloft. The smacking of his palms hitting the padded leather formed a beat that gradually got faster and faster as his speed increased.

“Not bad…” she murmured as his incredibly strong torso threw his legs out and around in a blur.

He never missed a beat. Not once. And the more he whirlwinded, the more she became convinced she should have spent eight years in the gym instead of weeks. If the rest of the applicants were like this guy? She was screwed.