Prologue
"I need to, because I love you"
The voice that came from behind caressed the shivers that ran down my spine. My heart flew into pieces as I realized the truth of those words. Words that I had feared, yet to my surprise my body responded with an open invitation of pure love. I turned around to finally face him, to finally face truth and all that I needed. I drank in every aspect of him as he glistened in the darkness. He was the one, the only one for me. How could I have ever thought different? My mind flinched at the thought of choosing any other over him. His eyes penetrated me with that serious heat he was always able to manifest from the bottom of his soul.
Chapter One: The Awakening
He kissed every inch of my body, devouring me like his favorite meal. His fingertips felt through me at the perfect angle with the reaction of the parting of our lips in pure satisfaction, but I could tell it wasn't enough. It was never enough. His eyes smoldered my skin, and penetrated any defenses that were once between us. We were soon to be one, once again. My mouth found every bit of his skin intoxicating, with my nails digging into his shoulders, scalp, and back. I wanted it so badly, I needed it. His lips trailed to the desired section of skin, and I moaned with an excited need. Everything spun out of control, his breathing becoming heavy, his heart pounding through his chest in its dire attempt to meet mine. His fingertips followed his mouth to that sensitive skin, and while I whimpered at the thought of them leaving me, I shuddered with pleasure in what I knew was to take their place.
I could not describe the pleasure that I felt when Dimitri's fangs sliced their way through the hollow of my throat. The endorphins rushed into my body like Emergency Technicians at the scene of a car accident. They healed my soul, taking away all the trouble and the pain. The blood flowing down my chest felt better than Dimitri himself. The sound of his throat swallowing every bit of me was like a symphony, joined by my moans.
Apparently said symphony called in a solo for my alarm clock.
I awoke to a list of unsatisfied needs. The first, being the desire to make love to him again. His name was Dimitri Belikov and he was my true love. He was a well respected Guardian with the strength of a God, and my private instructor. He was also seven years older than me, which was one of the many bumps in the road that we claimed to be our love. The other bump in our destined path was that the feelings we had shared conflicted with the duty that we cherished as being Guardians.
Guardians were those who swore to protect a species called the Moroi, from a pack of a similar species called the Strigoi. The Moroi were named after the mythological blood drinkers of Russia, also known as vampires. However, Moroi do not kill humans, they have blood donors who are willing to let Moroi feed only to survive. The ones they are protected from—Strigoi--are the ones who enjoy killing human beings, and from time to time Moroi. Strigoi are impossibly fast, and impossibly strong creatures with senses that are unimaginable and unparallel, therefore the Guardians that protect Moroi from the strigoi must be able to become the equivalent of a strigoi in strength. Thus, the Guardian body is made up of a hybrid species between Moroi and human beings. This species is known as the Damphir, and they contain the strength of the Moroi, with the invulnerability to simple things (such as sunlight) from their human blood. Dimitri was a Damphir, just like me. The two of us were to be the Guardians of the same Moroi, causing our feelings to put that Moroi in danger. If a strigoi had attacked us, and I was being overpowered by one to the point that it would be impossible for me to survive, Dimitri would have saved me and not the Moroi we were to protect. It also turned out that the Moroi that we were to protect was my best friend, Vesalissa Dragomir. Lissa was the last to rule in the royal family of the Dragomir's after surviving a car accident that killed the rest of her family. I was there the day they died, and survived only because Lissa was able to revive me using a power labeled as Spirit. Every Moroi specializes in controlling a certain element, whether it is Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, or Air. However, Lissa specialized in a newly found fifth element called Spirit, where she could heal those that were wounded, and quite possibly bring a person back from death. When that happens, as it did with me, that person becomes what the mythological society calls "shadow-kissed", meaning one who has traveled to the land of the dead, but made it back to the living. Being shadow kissed created a specific bond between Lissa and me, one where I could read her mind, feel her feelings, and at times of extreme emotions, see through her eyes.
Yet, at this time, I wished that I could not feel my own emotions, for they were filled with grief. Dimitri had been awakened as a strigoi three months ago in an operation of rescue for moroi students that were kidnapped by a bunch of strigoi. Respecting his wishes I decided to drop out of the Academy and search for him, in hopes of destroying the hollow creature that showed the illusion of life claimed by the strigoi. To the disappointment of the Dimitri that I had once called my lover and my teacher, I had hesitated in killing him when we reunited in an alley way and ended up becoming his blood whore while he waited for me to decided to join him forever. The good news: I escaped with my life, the bad news: so did Dimitri, and now he was planning to find me somehow so he could either kill me or turn me.
While escaping from Dimitri's death trap, I had also run into a small legend that the affects of the element spirit, and their masters could turn strigoi away from the darkness that had claimed them. Luckily for me, I knew four spirit users, including Lissa, who might be able to help prove that theory true—with Dimitri as my test rat.
My second unsatisfied need was an addiction to the endorphins I was fed by Dimitri's bite when detained by him as a Strigoi. In order to escape from him, I had to resist the temptation of allowing him to bite me, by making an excuse of weakness through blood loss. I had been bite free for three weeks, and it was a living hell.
Yet as in all adventures concerning the life of a teenager, school came first. Since I came back the United States, after escaping from Dimitri, I re-enrolled in school with hopes of graduating, and becoming Lissa's official Guardian (as planned).
And trust me, this Endorphin addiction was so not helping.
