Bitten by Ecstasy: 2 (Dark Judgment) Read Free Page A

slippery slope of surrender and defeat.
    He refused to accept this was it for him. Refused to sit by with his thumb up his ass and condone this slide into madness. He was a healer, damn it! His job was to seek out answers, solve problems…to fucking heal . He might go down, but no way in hell was he going down without a fight.
    And the first step was to locate the female who had condemned him to this hell. The female who tormented him in his dreams with her sun-kissed skin and silver eyes.
    Feral satisfaction swelled inside him and his lips curved.
    He was going hunting.
    A half-hour later, he descended the staircase of Nicolai’s sprawling home on silent feet, a leather satchel slung over his shoulder. Treading softly through the lower level of the house toward the kitchen, he embraced the silence that wrapped around him like a comforting cocoon. He’d found friendship and love here—a sanctuary from the truth he’d been afraid to face. A part of him shook at the thought of leaving, of fleeing the place responsible for easing the sometimes heartbreaking isolation encapsulating his spirit.
    But he had to go. From now on it would be him, his secret, his addiction and his shame. The Fab Four.
    “So you were going to leave without saying goodbye?”
    Bastien’s hand stilled over the knob of the back door, his back going rigid as tension strummed through his body like a live wire. Slowly, he lowered his arm and pivoted to meet the patient purple gaze of his best friend.
    Nicolai Abioud, former Dimios of their race, stood in front of him, muscular arms crossed over a wide chest. The ex-judge and executioner of the hippogryph people—and the male Bastien trusted most above all others—appeared as if he’d just jumped out of bed. But even rocking a serious case of bedhead, stubble and wrinkled jeans, Nico was still intimidating as hell.
    “I would have called when I arrived where I’m heading.”
    A dark-gold brow arched high. “And that is?”
    Bastien closed his eyes, regret a heavy stone in his heart. Damn, he longed to confide in Nicolai. Just utter the words.
    Remember when I told you about Evander’s ambush? Well, I neglected to confess the reason I’d been on my way to find you in the first place. Your sister, the woman I loved, rejected me to marry a stranger of noble blood. Oh that’s right. You didn’t know I was in love with her. And yeah, another thing. I came out of the whole Evander deal changed into a blood-addicted monster and it scares the shit out of me.
    How many times during the past two months had he almost confessed his dark secret? Countless. But fear had gridlocked the words in his throat. Logically, he acknowledged Nicolai wouldn’t condemn him. Not only had the two men been friends for nine hundred years, but Nicolai had fallen in love and bonded with a human woman, watched her transform into a hippogryph and abdicated from his role as Dimios to be with her. If anyone could sympathize with life-altering changes, Nicolai could.
    Yet he couldn’t push the confession from between his lips. How could he just announce to someone he was flawed, a freak? An abomination? Worse, how did he admit fear and shame to a male who had placed his life on the line every day for centuries in service of his people? A man who faced down the monsters of their race with unflagging courage?
    Bastien knew just the right way to reveal the bit of information.
    He didn’t.
    Besides, while Tamar might have once been human, she was now a hippogryph, one of them.
    Bastien didn’t know what the fuck he was.
    “Bastien.”
    He opened his eyes, met the weight of Nicolai’s stare. “I can’t tell you, Nico,” he murmured.
    Nicolai’s mouth firmed into a grim, straight line and his arms lowered to his sides.
    “Can’t?” he asked softly. “Or won’t?”
    “Does it matter?” Bastien returned just as quietly.
    “Damn it, Bastien,” Nicolai snapped. He pivoted on his bare heel, thrust his long fingers through