She’s fighting for life. He’s fighting for death.

What does it take to live? What does it take to love?

To Ava, love is about as real as fairy tales. But it might be that fairy tales, myths, and magic have some truth to them after all — as well as the monsters that lie in the shadows. Or she could just be completely out of her mind.

After a mental breakdown and a move to a new town, everything changes when Ava clashes with a stranger with eyes as black as midnight and a terrifying sinister air. Her wishes to feel something again become granted. But Ava soon learns that not only is he as cold as he is beautiful, but he brings something out of her, stronger than ever, like fuel to fire — something she’s desperate to bury. He haunts her dreams and waking life, and staying away becomes harder than she could have ever imagined, risking her life, her humanity, and the people that she cares about. Not to mention the fate of the world.

A violent passion. A dangerous bond. A nightmare that will change everything.

EXCERPT:

He had let everything else go, picked her up, and carried her down the hill beside the house and the passageway to the small beach, where he’d sat her in the rocky sand so that she could breathe in the fresh air — where he could attempt to breathe in air. He sat on the log near her. Not too close. He was unsure now.

When she looked up at him, her eyes pulled him into some kind of void within himself. The intensity of them made him feel as though, for a second, he was actually feeling what she was feeling, a violent storm of warm lights — spiraling; was that her or him? For that brief moment, he thought he would follow her to the ends of the earth. It almost seemed genuine; though he knew it was not. Still, he lingered in the illusion of it.

It was clear she didn’t know what she possessed. Everyone else felt it. As well as the animals. It was magnetic and as lunacy-provoking as the moon. She was invaluable, and Layton would find the key to unlock her.

She was magnificent.

He’d watched her break into a million pieces every time she’d gone into her room alone, shining in the dark, and then built herself back up again. And every time, she had come out to her people with a sober face, only to give them something they needed, a little life. There was an intense ever flow of crashing waves in her soul, a force as vital and vivacious as blood, blood that brings nourishment and oxygen, with the power to live and grow, create life. It was the source of life and essence of vitality. If only she knew.

She had the Vitality of blood.

**Please note: This story is a dark romance – dark fantasy. It contains graphic language, explicit sexual situations, and violence. 18+

“She could spend a lifetime searching, and looking for the one that might make her whole, that made the reason for her existence, even though, possibly, she could be forever lost in doing so.”