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“Aura,” he said, barely audible. His heart raced beneath my fingertips, and my own joined. His blood smelled so fucking good. Desire seeped into the atmosphere, wrapping around me as his arms fell to his sides. “Stop looking at me like you want to eat me,” he warned.

I laughed, but it was the most broken, pitiful sound. I stood and clenched my jaw as everything I felt toward him grew stronger. “I have to go,” I said.

“Probably for the best.”

Again, I walked to the door.

“What were you thinking about earlier? When you were staring out the window so sadly.”

“Just the city,” I said.

“Ah, the city.” He walked to the window and pressed his hand against the stained glass. I watched the shift in his muscles as he stared down the way I had. “A sole figure in a crowd. A single edifice in a town. Alone, but not quite, so soft, and yet so loud. One doesn’t know how it first occurs, but once it does, it sinks deep. The thoughts. Nothing to it but its existence. Pointless. Senseless. Everything and nothing. Aching and alone. One half of a whole. Beseeching. Wanting. A sole figure in a crowd.”

Again, the dulcet tone of his voice slipped over my skin. It wrapped a hand around my chest and tugged. I don’t even know how I ended up across the room. One minute, Sylvan was gazing out the window, and the next his back was against it, my mouth claiming his. He kissed back with equal zeal, hands slipping down to cup my ass. I moaned into his mouth and heard myself ask him for more.

“More what?” he whispered against my lips.

“Everything.” It was an unexpected plea. More poetry. More to make me feel something. But more was dangerous, and I was already playing with fire. “Fuck,” I said, my voice breaking. There was no point in repeating I have to go for the millionth time, so I simply turned, grabbed my bag, and zipped right out of the room and the building.

I didn’t stop running until I reached my home. Until the city and the poetry and the ridiculous lycan who wanted me to embrace the thing I’d spent my life hiding, were far behind me.

Hot tears trickled down my face, and I cursed the audacity of their appearance. Tears were for people who had something worth crying for. I had nothing. Nothing to lose. Nothing to gain. I would’ve given anything for the easy gratification of pleasure just weeks ago. And now?

More. I wanted more. Dammit.

A voice sent a rush of cold down my back. “At long last. Where the hells have you been?”

Bellatrix.

Of bloody course. I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could, she was in front of me, face fixed into a scowl. The strike across my face shouldn’t have been a surprise, ut the force of it shoved me back against the door. Stars burst across my vision, and the back of my head throbbed. My sight had barely cleared when one of the two wavering figures held up a cupped hand.

I flinched, prepared for another blow, but instead a fine powder of some sort blasted right into my face. I barely caught the whiff of it, and I didn’t see the color, but the moment the effects took hold, I knew exactly what it was.

Lycan repel.

26

LYCAN REPEL

AURA

My entire world was pain. My lungs were spasming. Each cough triggered another until I was dry heaving. I couldn’t breathe. Irving was screaming. There was a slap, I think. The keening in my ears was endless, my vision spotting and fragmenting. I couldn’t tell if I was on the floor or what.

My mother lowered herself to my level while I dragged in exaggerated gasps that did nothing to help me breathe. “I have the antidote,” she whispered into my ear. “All you have to do is answer a few questions. Why are you working with a lycan?”

I curled onto my side as a wave of gut-wrenching nausea took hold. Bile spewed on the floor, more spasms rattling my body until I was coughing without end.

“Why are you working with a lycan?” Bellatrix shouted over my sputtering. “What have you told him? About vampires? About us?”

“No”—wheeze—“thing.”

“Don’t lie to me, Aurelia.”

My only response was a desperate gasp for air. My heart was racing, but from fear or the poison, I couldn’t tell. Pain tore through my hands, my knees. My body felt as if it would split apart as it tried and failed horribly to shift.

Something sharp jabbed into my arm, but the burn was nothing like the rest of the pain. I felt the effects of it almost immediately, compliance encasing my mind, when she asked, “What have you told him about our family?”

“Nothing.” The word flew out of me against my own volition through my wheezing breaths. Truth serum. She was going to find out about my Lobofebris. Shit. I fought down more air.