Amara slammed her back into the stairwell’s wall and tried her best to inhale deep, filling her lungs for the first time since Minach had brought his arousing scent with him into his flat. God, he made her so tense. Insane with a desire that reached deep to her core and far beyond. Every inch of her body tingled with excitement in his presence, a deep longing catching the oxygen in her chest before she could make use of it.

“Keep moving,” she told herself, grabbing hold of the hand rail. “Get away from him before you change your mind and go back for more.”

Sometimes the allure of the Dragon shifter was almost too much to bear. How ridiculous was it to think she’d hated him when she’d first met him under Glastonbury Tor? His haughty expression, those piercing blue eyes of his, even his black hair had seemed too sleek then. But now that amazing mane had become a gorgeous frame for what she’d realized over time was an incredibly handsome face.

She’d once thought him the most arrogant bastard that she’d ever met. Cocky, rude, disrespectful. But hatred and lust had quickly proven that they lie a mere hair’s breadth away from one another. Something in Minach had always called to her for companionship, like a kindred spirit making its way into another’s soul. She knew all too well that he was a broken beast, his churlish manner a means of concealing what truly ate away at him. He had been this way, no doubt, since he was a child, since the incident he refused to speak of. The incident that had cost his brother his hearing.

That alone should have been a red flag, a warning to shy away and avoid him at all costs.

But not for Amara. If it was possible, she was even more broken than he was, which only drew her to him more. At least for Minach, there was a shred of hope, the real potential for a normal life. He could be fixed with the right sort of care, or, perhaps, the right sort of mate.

An Enlightened, on the other hand, was beyond repair. Amara was a half-breed who had been born broken. Those with flaws in their blood had little choice but to live with them in a chronic cycle of misfortune. Half shifter and half blood-seeker, she’d spent her entire life sacrificing one side of herself to fight off the other. Her Wolf, which had once been so strong and graceful, had lost her fight and retreated into a state of near-perpetual hibernation in recent months.

She pulled away from the wall and forced herself to keep moving down the stairs. Always moving, like a prey animal. Always on the lookout for threats. Foolish woman, she thought. You walked right into the lion’s den tonight. You put yourself in the presence of the greatest threat in the world. She’d rendered herself vulnerable to Minach’s charms, desire flooding her like salt water pouring into a boat riddled with holes. But she hadn’t sunk. If anything, he’d lifted her higher. It was a beautiful, cleansing feeling, reminding her that for all her weakness she was still alive. Still whole, more or less.

Even the déor who lay dormant inside her sometimes stirred when he was near, though never enough for her to imagine shifting. Her Wolf approved of Minach’s presence; such a creature was always attracted to strength, and Minach had it in spades, flawed though he was. His was the mentality of an Alpha; cold, emotionally closed off and powerful. He did what needed to be done, sometimes at the peril of others’ feelings.

To be with a man like him would have been challenging, yet so, so rewarding. But it wasn’t to be. It was too late for such thoughts; hell, it had always been too late. She would never be a balanced shifter like most of the Dragon Guild’s members; not while ceaseless cravings ate away at her mind.

It was her blood-seeker side, the vampire inside her, who had really stolen her Wolf from her. She may have been a half-breed, but half of her—the half that she’d always loved most—was all but dead now.

As she strode towards her home through London’s darkened streets, she longed to run as she used to do. She longed for her Wolf, her natural defence against the world around her. The only weapon she had these days was a Dragon bone blade, stuck in a sheath at her waist. She’d come to hate what it symbolized. For too long she’d relied on knives as her defence, but she wanted her déor’s fangs back. Wanted to be able to sprint like the wind, to rip and tear at any enemy that threatened her or her allies. To unleash blood-curdling howls at the moon in a display of feral freedom.

Instead she was trapped in a delicate human body, pale, thin and growing weaker by the day.

Seeing Minach had reminded her what strength and power were meant to look like. Perhaps that was one reason she was so drawn to him; he embodied everything that she wasn’t. His shapely arms were massive, beautiful sculptures of rippling muscle. His shoulders were so broad that when he stood in a doorway he barely had space on either side to move through. And his face—his handsome, perfect, serious face—was the most gorgeous thing on earth. Amara could see further than what lay on his surface. In his eyes she saw deeply hidden emotion, a kindness that he rarely dared to reveal. She saw his potential to love, to care, to caress.

Minach pretended that he considered kindness a weakness, damned frustrating man. He was an aggressor, a snarling, feral beast of a man, concealing a sweet, purring softie somewhere deep down. Amara knew it, but she hardly dared try to extract his kinder side for fear of falling entirely in love with a treasure that she could never claim.

Reaching for her arm, she rubbed the spot where he’d touched her, recalling the sensation of his fingers on her flesh. Though he’d grabbed her aggressively, he hadn’t hurt her, of course; he never would. For all his bluster, Minach would have thrown himself in front of a speeding train to protect her. Somewhere deep inside him was a perfect, loving goodness. But she wouldn’t be the one to uncover it. She couldn’t. The task would be best left to another woman. A half-breed with the genes of a blood-seeker was too great a risk for any relationship. If she and Minach grew too close she would want more than just his body. She would want to taste him, to consume him in a way that would destroy them both.

Stop thinking about the Dragon man, she told herself as she passed under a flickering overhead street light. A new day would dawn soon, and she must move on with her life, such as it was. In a few hours she’d talk to Trix, the one person with whom she felt comfortable speaking openly. Trix was an ally who also happened to be mated to Minach’s twin brother.

As Amara contemplated the morning meeting, her body reminded her that it had been too many hours since she’d last dosed. Every ounce of her energy was currently being spent fighting the chronic thirst that parched her from somewhere deep inside. The curse of the Enlightened, always to want that which she could never have.

With a shaky hand, she extracted a small flask from her pocket and unscrewed its silver lid before taking a quick swig. Pig’s blood. Disgusting stuff, it was. Humans often complained about cough syrup and the like, but they had no real idea how foul medication could be.

As she felt the strength reenter her body, for the first time in her life Amara longed for more than a treatment.

She wanted a cure.

She wanted to be fixed, to be whole. To be strong.

Perhaps then she could find a way to love.