A few days later, Nero had reached the private and entirely unpoetic conclusion that anyone who spoke reverently about first rut had either never experienced one or deserved to.
The fever had finally broken, the sharpest edge of his pheromones no longer turned the recovery wing into a controlled disaster zone, and the physicians had stopped moving around him with the strained caution of people working beside unstable explosives. That, apparently, qualified as improvement.
Nero personally thought it qualified only as proof that hell had a recovery room.
He lay half-reclined against the raised bed, one knee bent beneath the sheet, staring at the muted city beyond the reinforced glass while the remains of the heat lingered under his skin in a way he found unpleasant.
