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improbable, or impossible situations and pray hard that they don’t find a loophole. Because they will if they can. There are tens of thousands of minds in the collective for them to draw on. And I knew at least a few of them were attorneys who were skilled at contract negotiation. One of them is P. Douglas Richards, Esq., the queen of the Denver hive. I heard him take in a slow, hissing breath. He wasn’t happy with the request. But doctors take oaths to “do no harm.” I would have expected a simple agreement, or at least a grudging affirmative. Instead, there was a long silence as he and the hive considered every nuance of what I had said. That made me believe Rob had been right. Something was definitely fishy. I automatically opened my psychic senses to their full extent, trying to catch a hint of what was going on within the hive. Unfortunately, the queens had anticipated that, and my mind was met with dead silence. Terrific. Just terrific.
    I could hear Dusty panting and whimpering in the background. Judging from the sounds she was making, the baby would be arriving soon. Since I’d gotten involved with Tom and his pack members had moved into my apartment complex I’d learned a lot about surrogates and werewolf pregnancies. Werewolf deliveries are almost always complicated and difficult. Dusty needed medical attention now. If not Drewrey, then at least one of the ER docs. I decided to try a telepathic link to Rob, but didn’t have any luck. He’s been working with Tom to retain more of his human mind when he changes form, but he still has a long way to go. Stressed as he was, I wasn’t really surprised that human Rob wasn’t “home.” Disappointed, but not surprised.
    Finally, the doctor spoke. The words came out haltingly, as if each individual syllable was being pulled out by force.
    “I personally, and the queens, on behalf of the collective give you our word that the girl and her … spawn will receive the best medical attention available at this hospital and that no one connected with our people will do anything to harm her or the infant while they are at this hospital.”
    The growling stopped and Ruby grabbed the telephone. “Oh, thank-you, Kate! Whatever you did worked. Rob’s backed off and is letting the ER doctors work on her. Thank-you, thank-you.”
    Hallelujah! It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough for the moment. Dusty and the baby were safe. But I couldn’t help but notice the promise had only been while they are at this hospital. Which made me wonder just exactly what we’d be facing when they left. I’d warn Mary. We’d work out some sort of protection when the time came. In the meantime, Dusty and the baby were as safe as I could manage.
    But oh yeah, right, I almost forgot. The vampires are supposed to be the “good guys” now.
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    There are reasons I don’t generally drink much. First, I don’t want to lose my edge. My life is too dangerous, too violent to take that kind of risk. I was dealing with the second reason this morning. A hangover made my eyeballs feel like they’d been packed in sand, my head ache enough that my thought processes didn’t quite seem up to speed. I hadn’t thought I’d had that much champagne. But the thing about alcohol is that it affects your judgment—including about how much alcohol you can handle.
    If I hadn’t made plans I’d have stayed in bed and slept it off. But I was due to meet Tom’s grandparents at 9:00 at the nearby family-style restaurant for breakfast.
    Maybe it wasn’t the hangover that was giving me dry mouth and making my stomach queasy. Calm, Reilly. Calm. Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen. I climbed out of the tub and grabbed one of the oversized, fluffy towels. It was actually soft. One of the biggest differences I’ve encountered between mid-range hotels and the really high-end ones is the linens. I’ve owned couches smaller than the bath sheet I was using, and the high thread count bed sheets had