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"Then she'll develop one."

The doctor stares at me. "That's not how medical research works."

"Nyet. It's how money works."

"Money cannot guarantee a successful outcome."

"No, but it can buy her every piece of equipment she needs, an entire laboratory, and enough staff to keep her from wasting time washing her own fucking test tubes. What else?"

Roger blinks at me, in wide, open-and-shut winks, while his mouth tightens. "Time," he says finally with a sigh. "She would need time to evaluate him, determine whether the graft is feasible, and develop a surgical plan."

"Then stop wasting it."

I look back down at the photograph and study the woman who holds my brother's life in her hands. Kon and Georgy lean over my shoulders.

"Niiiice," Georgy says, drawing out the word, and I drive my elbow into his shoulder—a gut reaction to a woman I've never met. My eyes are glued to her picture.

She's more than nice. It's hard to picture her as a scientist. Dr. Cienna Layne, her short hair framing her face. I don't usually like short hair—my women, when I take one, typically wear theirs long, nearly to the waist, and almost always blonde or red, their skin fair. There aren't many African Americans in Russia, especially here. But even flattened by cheap publication ink, her dark brown skin looks as warm as the sun. Her short hair makes her eyes look even wider, bangs curling over her forehead, and her lashes—even through the grainy journal photo—long enough to brush her brow. Her lips are a deep pink, the top a perfect Cupid's bow.

I don't read the article below the photograph. I only stare at her face.

Yeah. Definitely more than nice.

My tiger stirs, interested enough to leave the faint scrape of claws beneath my skin. Strange. He's never paid much attention to the women I bring to my bed. As long as they don't linger afterward, he leaves me to my pleasures. But now he's watching a photograph as intently as I am.

Pretty little thing, I tell him.

He doesn't answer. Just keeps staring through my eyes.

As if Alex knows my wandering thoughts, he gives a wailing roar—a tiger desperate for help. The three of us run, in time to see through the windowed wall of his room a man in a lab coat fighting with him, jabbing a six-inch needle into his arm. Alex claws at the man with human hands, his tiger rising inside him, and throws him off his body—but it's too late. My brother's eyes close, and he drops to the floor in an unconscious heap.

My brothers and I wrestle him back onto the bed while Dr. Roger checks his intern. Alex is dead weight in my arms, his skin clammy, his breathing uneven. I lift him beneath his shoulders while Konstantin takes his legs. My brother, despite his strength, can't even lift his head.

I settle him against the pillows and pull the blanket over his chest. His injured arm lies beside him, wrapped in bandages already spotted with blood. I tuck the blanket around his good shoulder, then rest my hand against the back of his neck. He's still warm. Still breathing. His tiger is still in there somewhere, and I refuse to believe this is how he loses him.

Dr. Roger curses. "He's fine," he says. "We have to keep him heavily sedated. If we don't keep him under, every time he comes to, he tries to take out one of my nurses. I don't even let the female nurses in the building anymore—they won't come near him. He's in too much pain. And pain is unfamiliar to him. Alex has probably never experienced it." He straightens. "So. We have two options. Give me permission, and I'll contact the doctor in America—ask her advice, see if she thinks she can help. Or I fit him with the steel rod. Your choice."

I study Aleksej's face. Even unconscious, his jaw is clenched, his brows drawn together. He'll never forgive me if I let them take his tiger without exhausting every possibility. Hell, I won't forgive myself.

"So there's really no choice at all." I give Roger a look.

He nods his head. "Okay. I'll call her."

"Nyet." I shake my head. "She will come here."

"I don't know that she'll want to come. It's very far, and her work is experimental. She may not even agree to take his case." He stands to face me, his intern hovering behind him.

I step up to them both, back them into the wall, and growl, "She will come here."

"And if she refuses?" Roger asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

I glance down at the journal still clutched in my hand. The woman's photograph has bent beneath my fingers, and I smooth the page with my thumb. Dr. Cienna Layne. A woman who doesn't know four Russian tiger shifters are counting on her to save one of their own.

"I'll give her everything she needs to succeed. Equipment, money, access to whatever research she wants. You tell her that. You tell her my brother's life depends on her work."

"And if that isn't enough?"

I look at Roger, then at Aleksej lying motionless on the bed. My brother has never asked me for anything I couldn't give him. Not once in our lives. I'll be damned if the first thing I fail to provide is the chance to remain who he is.