Aine ran back to the hotly burning pyre. Shielding herself against the blaze with the edge of her cloak, she thrust the sword into the fire and then stepped back.

“Hurry…hurry…” she whispered, as if the flames could hear her.

Aine wrapped a piece of her cloak around the hilt of the glowing sword and pulled it free from the flaming pyre. Then she sprinted into the woods. Thankfully, Tegan wasn’t far away. It was almost fully dark and Aine would have hated to have to search for him in the thickness of the forest.

Goddess, there was so much blood! Tegan was lying perfectly still in a growing pool of scarlet. She called his name, but he made no response. She dropped to her knees beside him and felt quickly with her fingers. He didn’t respond to her touch. Taking a deep breath, she pressed the hot blade of the sword flat against the severed blood vessel. Tegan’s body jerked in automatic response, although he didn’t regain consciousness. The smell of burnt flesh was nauseating, but when she pulled the sword away the fountain of blood had dried and blackened.

Aine looked up at Tegan’s face. He was so still. She might have been too late. It took so little time to lose a life-threatening amount of blood when a major vessel was severed. Then shock set it. Often that killed as easily as blood loss.

Shivering, Aine took off her cloak and covered him with it. Tegan was wearing a worn linen shirt and patched leather breeches-no coat or cloak. Did Fomorians feel the cold as humans do? She knew so little about them. Aine bent to rest her fingers against the side of his throat, feeling for the pulse that should throb there. She had to press hard before she found a slight flutter. He might be dying, and there was little more she could do to help him.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have helped him at all. Epona had led her to him and given her a choice, and then the goddess had left. Had this all been a test, and had Aine’s choice made her fail it?

Aine was pulling her hand from Tegan’s neck when his eyes opened.

They glowed a terrible golden color. With a movement so fast that it blurred, he grabbed Aine’s wrist. She tried to twist away from him, but his other hand shot out and a vise-like grip closed behind her neck.

“Stop! Let me go!” Aine choked and struggled against him, but he was amazingly strong.

“Impossssible…”

His deep, musical voice made the word a seductive hiss as he pulled her down to him. His lips touched the place where her neck sloped into shoulder before his teeth claimed her, and she shivered, only this time not from cold. His touch was a delicious poison, seeping cloyingly into her body. Then his teeth broke open her skin and she moaned. There was no pain. Only dark pleasure coursed into her body as Tegan sucked the blood from her. His lips and tongue teased her skin as his hands gentled on her, caressing where they had been bruising.

“No…oh Goddess no…” Aine whispered, even as her own arms wrapped tightly around his broad shoulder and she pressed herself more firmly against his hard body.

As Aine’s vision began to gray, Tegan shifted, so that he was on top of her. Her last sight was of his massive wings rippling and then spreading erect over them as if he were a mighty bird of prey.

Tegan came back to himself locked to Aine’s body, drinking her lifeblood.

“No!” he cried, releasing her instantly and scrambling back. The pain in his leg jolted through him, but he gave it little notice. How much had he taken from her?

In control again, he dragged himself to her, touching her face and neck, calling her name. “Aine! Aine you must awaken.”

But he knew she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. He’d almost drained her. Already the healthy flush had faded from her cheeks. He could feel her heartbeat getting weaker by the moment.

“You can’t die. I can’t bear it if I killed you.”

Later he told himself he’d had no choice. That wasn’t the entire truth. Yes, what he did next he’d had to do to save her. But he’d only had to save her because he hadn’t sent her away or warned her about him. He’d foolishly thought he could control the urge to taste her. Instead, he had been wounded too deeply and the instinct to take that which would heal him had been too great. Tegan had known it, even if he hadn’t admitted it to himself. Or to her.

Tegan searched around in the leaves until he found his short sword. Then he ripped his shirt and with one quick slash, opened the skin over his left breast. Gently, he lifted Aine’s unresisting body and pressed her slack lips to the bleeding cut.

“Drink, Aine. Save yourself.”

At first blood trickled from her mouth, but as some of it washed down her throat, Aine swallowed. The change within her was instantaneous. Her eyes remained closed, but her arms lifted, encircling his torso so that she could press her lips more firmly against him.

Tegan groaned in pleasure as her arms brushed the sensitive underside of his pulsing wings, and her tongue flicked across his skin. He’d known that the exchange of blood was an intensely erotic experience, something shared only by a mated couple because of the side effects of such intimacy, but he had no mate, nor had he ever expected to. As Aine drank from him, Tegan thought how inaccurate the dispassionate descriptions the elders had given for bloodlust had been.

Then Aine’s eyes opened. With a terrible cry she lurched away from him. She was scrubbing the sleeve of her dress back and forth across her mouth, her eyes wide with disgust and horror.

“Aine, wait. Let me explain.” He spoke softly, as if she was a frightened fawn.

“There’s nothing to explain.” She got shakily to her feet. He made no move to stop her as she grabbed the sword from where he’d dropped it, holding it defensively in front of her, and backing away from him. “I tried to help you. You tried to kill me. That’s obvious.”

“I’m sorry. I thought I could control myself, but I was dying.”

“So you tried to kill me to save yourself?”

“It’s true that I needed your blood to save myself, but I would never have killed you.” He passed a hand over his face. “That’s why you had to drink from me. You saved me, little Healer, and in return I restored you.”

“Restored me? You used me!” Aine whirled around and started to run up the side of the gully.

“Don’t go, Aine-” Tegan tried to stand, but his leg gave way and he crumpled to the ground.

At the same instant Aine cried out and fell to the ground, too.

Deathly pale, she stared wide-eyed at him. “I feel your pain. What have you done to me?”

“We’ve shared blood,” Tegan said.

“I know that, and while it’s disgusting it doesn’t make this understandable.” Aine pointed to her ankle where the pain that had spiked through it was fading, but still entirely too real to have been a hysterical hallucination.

Tegan looked away from her, sighed, and then reluctantly met her gaze. “The sharing of blood is part of how my people mate. It binds us together.”

“That is not possible.”

“Listen with your heart and you will know the truth.”

“Listen with my heart? That’s ridiculous.” But even as she spoke Tegan’s eyes seemed to trap her. Aine felt pulled within their amber depths. Before she realized what she was doing, she’d taken a couple steps towards him. She came to herself suddenly and stopped so abruptly it was as if she’d slammed into a glass wall. “This can’t happen.”

Tegan cocked his head to the side, and gave her a sad, slight smile. “Do you find me so repulsive?” He hurried on. “I thought you a goddess when I first saw you.”