Free Crave (Tainted Angels Book 1) by D. H. Sidebottom Page B

answered my enquiry. “She’s out of bounds, Rax.”
    “Really?”
    My skin sizzled with heat when he concealed me in his wrath. “Don’t test me with this. This is way out of your hands, son.” He was attempting to keep calm with me. He was used to my reckless behaviour by now but I’d never seen him so furious or resolute about something. “Tabitha is promised to you. I suggest you forget all about the halfbreed and concentrate on someone created specifically for you.”
    My teeth cracked under the clench of my jaw. “I can promise that I have no incentive to pursue a relationship with the seraph, Father. I’m only after her blood …”
    “Well, it is forbidden!”
    I reared back into the chair. “Why?”
    He closed his eyes and sighed, rubbing at his temples as if he had a headache. “Because her blood will kill you, Rax. And that is exactly what she is planning on! Why can’t you see that?”
    Nodding when I realised he had a point, I lifted out of the chair, the pounding in my head becoming unbearable with the heat from the fire. Sweat beaded my brow. I knew Willa had another migraine. Fuck, that woman was having them more and more lately. She needed to get some damn pain relief for them. I squinted to myself at that thought. Seraphs were healers, so why the fuck couldn’t she just heal herself?
    “Rax?”
    “Sorry. Headache. What did you say?”
    “I was just checking we’re all sorted.” He eyed me intently and I bit the tip of my tongue.
    “Of course. I get it, it’s her fighting mechanism.”
    “Exactly! We were created to kill each other, Rax. Empyrean are manipulative. They don’t have the darkness like we do so they learn to fight with what they have, and in the seraph’s case, it’s her beauty and her blood. But beware.” He stepped closer. “Both will kill you.”
    Perhaps he was right. Maybe the hot little siren had a plan up her sleeve, to slay me with her body and her blood. Yet as I walked away I couldn’t help but smile at the visions that concoction played in my head.

“H ave you been to see the doctor?” Lincoln asked as we walked through Battersea Park. It was a balmy night, the sky clear and the glowing moon lighting us a path across the peaceful common. If spring was this warm I wondered how hot a summer we would be given; it was unusual to have this much heat so early in the year. The area was quiet with the late hour, many revellers in their homes hours earlier. It was coming up to the end of mine and Linc’s shift and I shook my head as I yawned. I was exhausted, the migraine I’d suffered from since the previous night telling me it had had enough of waking hours.
    “It’s just a headache, Linc.”
    “I’m not talking about the headaches,” he muttered, causing me to stop and frown at him. “I’m talking about everything else that’s going on with you.”
    “Everything else?”
    He sighed and stopped, grabbing my hand in his. His hand was icy but clammy and I blinked at the peculiar feeling. When he started to cough, a deep rattle in his chest making me wince, everything inside me froze. For a moment, I couldn’t move, the ground beneath me moving as I swayed. Lifting my eyes to his, I shook my head. “No. No, Linc!”
    Why hadn’t I seen it? How had I missed that my brother was dying? I had been so wrapped up in my own fucking problems. I noticed the usual bright blue mist around him had dimmed, now a soft grey quality shifting fluidly around him.
    Lowering his eyes when he realised I had figured it out, he sat on a bench at the edge of the path.
    “I knew something was different about you,” I choked out, his face blurring through my tears. “But I thought it was because I was changing. I … Fuck, Linc.”
    He gripped my hand harder when a sob ripped up my throat. “Shh, Bean. It’s okay.”
    “It’s not okay!” I yelled, disturbing something in the undergrowth when a bush rustled loudly. “It’s not! How can you say that?”
    He shrugged,