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Not just in a literal sense, but for something more substantial than temporary pleasure. I longed for something real in this miserable life, but it didn’t matter what I did to distract myself from the inevitable. The last thing an immortal was ever ready for was the looming presence of impending death.

I took the discarded syringe from my bedside table and flung it into the fire. I’d treated the materials in the alchemy workshop to ensure they disintegrate easily in flames, unlike other glass and metals.

Movement in the corner of my room caught my attention, and I approached the large glass tank that housed Nidhogg. The ball python uncoiled his pristine white body as he turned toward me, his tongue flicking out, striking blue eyes fixed on me. He wasn’t due for a feed yet, but soon. I lifted the wooden cover from the top of the tank and had barely reached in before Nidhogg was stretching for me, his body wrapping around my arm.

“Hello there,” I purred to the snake. “Sorry I abandoned you today. The full moon is approaching, and I feel like this one is going to be rough. Forgive me in advance?”

The python slithered up my arm and draped himself around my shoulders the same way my larger snake at the university often liked to do. For a moment I stood there, allowing him to slither down the other arm before lowering him back into his tank. “I should get some rest,” I said. “We know how well I deal with these shit lunar phases.”

With one more goblet of euphoria down my throat, I climbed into my bed, curled into a ball, and silently begged sleep to take me and keep me through the night.

2

TAINTED BLOOD

AURA

Class that day took place in the lecture hall rather than the alchemy workshop, much to my students’ dismay. The curricula of the University of the Arcane prided themselves on not pushing students into practical concepts before they fully understood theory. It prevented mishaps and irresponsible usage, especially in something as potentially dangerous as alchemy.

My strength lay in my innate ability to imbue potions, gems, and metals. There was a time when alchemy was known simply as the pursuit of immortality and converting basic metals into gold. It had since changed to incorporate the combination of symbology and herbology and was the standard of the University of the Arcane. Still, even without the pursuit of immortality, alchemy could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Which is why only the upperclassmen had access to the workshop, and only with a professor present.

The workshop was kept under lock and key, with full access granted to only me and a spellcaster named Guo Shan.

My students’ eyes were focused on the formulas written on the chalkboard as I pointed to one particular symbol. My bones ached as if they were about to snap and contort as they had often done in my younger years, which is why I formulated the sapphire gem fused to my left bicep to stop my body from fully shifting during the moon cycle and make my lycan blood undetectable to other lycans. I’d been a late bloomer, as my first shift had not taken place until eleven years ago when I was twenty-one, confirming my hybrid nature.

As far as most knew, hybrids no longer existed. They were typically killed in the cradle—hells, they were killed before they were even born most of the time—because their existence threatened the balance of the Occult world. They were historically a danger to society.

After my first shift into wolf form, I saw the hatred my mother held in her eyes as she told me about my father. He was a lycan who evidently forced himself upon her, and I was the result of the horrific incident.

Aside from Bellatrix, only my closest friend, Magdalena, and her spellcaster neighbor who’d helped tend to my wounds after I was attacked knew me as anything but a pureblood Primal Born vampire. Nygaards rarely fraternized outside aristocratic vampire society, and they especially didn’t fraternize with lycans, spellcasters, or humans.

My favorite student was a spellcaster. She sat at the very front of the classroom with her green eyes wide as saucers, her blonde hair neatly pulled back, and hands clasped eagerly atop her desk. She was the age I had been when I realized my existence was a lie. When Tabitha wasn’t absorbing every detail of the alchemical formulas, she was furiously scribbling them into her notebook. She passed every examination and was eager to be an apprentice through the university’s apprenticeship program.

In so many ways, she reminded me of myself. She’d even specifically requested me as her master, but I’d declined for her own safety as I worked out the elixir that’s kept the Lobofebris symptoms at bay.

The corridors were emptier than usual when I left my last class of the afternoon, despite being the peak hours of the day. My footsteps echoed on the black and white linoleum as I stepped through an intricate pointed archway, entering a narrow staircase lit with oil-lamp sconces along the marbleized walls of emerald green and beige. I moved in the opposite direction of my office, heading down a shorter corridor toward a foreboding door of wrought iron.

My fingers moved to the thick alchemy belt around my waist enforced with multiple straps and rings, pockets, and ties. It carried various vials of potions and powders—a combination of poisons and cures—and of course the key to the workshop. Magdalena had asked me on several occasions how I kept track of everything in the belt.

Twisting my key in the lock, the door creaked open, the sound echoing obnoxiously in the silence. As I stepped inside, the room came alive in a blaze of candles mounted to the walls, burning with a flameless energy charmed by Guo Shan. The spellcaster and I were seldom here together, as he occupied the space in the later hours of the morning while I did so in the early morning hours and at night. Neither of us tampered with the others’ potions and experiments, and we shared stock for the more common creations.

It had been this way for the past few years with no problems. I didn’t expect there ever would be. Shan was just shy of forty and a total recluse, which worked in my favor.

A long lab table stretched across the middle of the workshop, housing a rainbow of liquids in beakers of different shapes and sizes. There were a few tabletop burners, an arm balance scale, and a single hanging scale. The cabinets below held cauldrons, pots, ceramic containers, and other beakers and vials. Around the room were various shelves, and on the left, a nook contained miscellaneous animal skulls, herbs, scrolls, and bottles filled with different ingredients.

Toward the back of the room, another counter was bolted below a window, where beams of moonlight shone into the metal box that held several in-progress potions. I’d angled a couple of mirrors to ensure that my potions, especially the draft I relied on, were bathed in the lunar rays. The full moon was used in the distillation process for a few ingredients, such as lycan repel. In low doses, the powder was extremely damaging to a lycan and could be deadly if used in abundance.

I unlocked the metal container, swung the door open, and checked on the vials of clear liquid. The ones used in the lycan repel were starting to turn a pale blue. Perfect. After ensuring there were no leaks or cracks in the beakers and vials, I locked the box again and stood back, staring through the window.

The back of my neck prickled, that untamed thing inside me trying to push its way to the front and shout for attention. My hands shook, and I clenched my fists, reeling in my self-control. “Get it together, Aura,” I told myself.

With a sigh, I sank down onto one of the stools at the main lab bench and took a moment to breathe.

I was fine. I had my drafts and the gem fused to my arm, though they unfortunately did not stop me from feeling out of sorts for at least a week every month. The draft only slightly lessened the surge of mouth-watering nausea, shakiness, achy joints, and hot flashes, and the gem didn’t stop the feeling of wanting to crawl out of my skin, nor the overwhelming desire to go running in the woods. Each month, it overtook me with such ferocity I physically ached to be outdoors. Occasionally, a strange, burning desire led me to host more revels than usual, indulging until my body calmed.

I hated to lose control. I wanted my mind to be my own and not the wolf’s. Though even in my usual vampiric form, Bellatrix looked at me with such revulsion I sometimes considered allowing myself to shift and disappear into the woods forever. But shifting for me has never been controlled.

Bellatrix claimed she was leaving tonight for another trip, which she never explained to me. Part of me wanted to know the reason behind these mysterious travels. She would return home for a short period of time, enough to drive Irving and I up a wall, then leave again on business. It was common for Primal Born vampires with networks and connections in high places to travel frequently, so I was mostly just happy to get her out of my hair, even temporarily.