Page 57 of Wanted

The smell, though…

Slowly reaching toward her, so I don’t frighten her more, I touch the blood on the splinter.

And I’m instantly flooded with bile and disgust.

“Tainted,” I say quietly as I realize where the smell that was twisting my stomach was coming from.

My psyche doesn’t want to believe it, but the smell in the air proves I’m not wrong.

“You’re tainted,” I repeat in a horrified whisper.

How can we complete the bond?

Will weeverbe able to complete the bond?

Standing up quickly, I stare at her as my worst fears come true.

I’ll never be able to fully have her…

We’ll always be incomplete with this taint standing between us.

She will never truly be mine.

And one day I will have to watch herdie.

The world shatters around me and crushing pain eats away at my very sanity.

As the void opens its gaping maw and my beast breaks free…

My vision clouds over.

The same color of her blood.

FIVE

ALENA

Tainted.

The word pierces my weak, pitiful heart like a shard of ice.

Ripping open every old wound I had so carefully stitched closed over the years.

Tainted.

Even among the damned, I have been found lacking.

Unworthy and unwanted.

The man…

No.

Thevampirethat held me in his arms and reassured me I was safe, rips himself away with a look of horror on his beautiful face.

Staring into Raphael’s eyes, dark brown eyes filling with disgust and revulsion, pain floods through me.

A pain so great it feels as if my very heart is seizing.

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