Marked by Blood and Flame

I restore things fire has tried to erase.Burned pages. Lost words. Forgotten histories.My life is quiet, controlled, and exactly the way I want it, until a centuries-old manuscript arrives at the Calder Archive in Edinburgh and leaves something impossible beneath my skin.A mark.Crimson. Gold. Alive.Then Evander Struan appears.He is secretive, powerful, terrifyingly controlled, and tied to the symbol in ways he refuses to explain at first. I soon discover the truth is worse than anything I imagined.Evander is the last surviving Bloodwyrm.Part vampire.Part dragon shifter.And according to an ancient supernatural law, the mark on my body means I belong to him.I do not.At least, that is what I keep telling myself.Because the bond between us is unfinished, and the farther apart we stay, the more dangerous it becomes. His vampire hunger recognizes my blood. His dragon reacts to my presence. My body responds to him with a heat I cannot control, and every answer I uncover inside the burned manuscript only raises more questions.Why was I marked?Why does Evander seem more afraid of claiming me than I am of being claimed?And why were parts of the Bloodwyrm history deliberately destroyed?Forced into dangerous proximity, I begin to see the man beneath the monster.A man who stops when I tell him to stop.Who asks when he could command.Who carries centuries of power but seems terrified of what wanting me might turn him into.The closer we get, the harder it becomes to separate supernatural instinct from real desire.Then the manuscript reveals something that could destroy everything we thought we knew about the bond between us.The mark may never have meant ownership.Someone changed the truth.And with the winter solstice approaching, powerful forces hidden beneath Edinburgh are willing to kill to keep that truth buried.Now I have to decide which frightens me more:Being bound to a vampire dragon shifter by fate...or discovering that even if the mark disappeared tomorrow, I might still choose him.