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I won’t be able to sense—or fix—what’s going on with him until I stretch my own soul into the fire.

Still a few steps away, I cautiously extend a few silks to meet him. My energy blooms outward, turning me into a blue anemone in the middle of the burning street.

Working by feel rather than sight, I coax a wisp of his soul out of the flames.

Instinctively, his silk curls around mine.

Air hisses between my teeth.

The red-hot spark of instant connection double-clicks the box confirming that we’re a close-to-perfect match.

As if I need more reasons to rescue the man in the smoke.

Where I sweat, my skin prickles with strain.

Focusing past the sensation of burning alive, I finally get a visual on the hair-thin fibers of his silks.

They glow hot pink, tangled under his skin and writhing painfully within his hellfire.

They’re fucking wrecked .

Melted, knotted, cut-off, charred—and that’s just what I’m feeling on a superficial scan. If his silks can’t move around, he can’t use his powers freely.

Or without pain.

Even before I deepen our mental connection to guide him, I feel like a candle being blow-torched on one end and shredded on the other.

“You’re not going to burn me, are you, Sentinel?” I ask as I tiptoe closer.

He doesn’t answer, but one curious silk stretches toward me with a hook, like a tilt in its head. It’s long and pink with only a little bit of char.

It’s probably the least-damaged, last sane thread this guy has left.

He needs help.

He needs me .

It’s so simple, so primal, I forget all my bullshit.

I don’t have to think when I’m working. After years of practical battle experience, guiding energies is all instinct and mental-muscle memory.

Guide silks are more delicate than a Sentinel’s. When I’m not straining, mine are so subtle they barely glow. Now, I’m so focused that thousands bloom around me, turning my aura neon blue in their rush to reach the Sentinel who’s suffering.

Our souls meet.

I full-body flinch.

The Sentinel burns like a hot drill, burrowing into my teeth. It’s the kind of pain that gnaws down your spine and throws you back against the dentist chair in a cold and helpless sweat.

My stupid soul doesn’t give a fuck about the pain.

It drives into that searing, clenching, icy-hot sting, desperate to get underneath the Sentinel’s skin and stop the feeling at the source.

His silks curl around mine like ferns.

As our soul-silks begin to twine, a connection forms between our souls.

It’s fragmented.

Fire.

Pain .

The bond doesn’t let us read whole thoughts, but sensations and feral emotions flash to me in bursts of steam.

“I won’t hurt you,” I murmur, trying not to reel. “How about we try putting out these flames?”

I can’t tell if he’s responding to my soul or my voice, but something gets through to him.

Soul-silks spear from the Sentinel’s body. I meet his reaching fibers with as many pieces of myself as I can offer.

My touch is gentle.

His rakes like claws, not so much clinging as claiming .

His desperation scrapes the dry patch in my heart.

Snarling, he grabs my shoulders. His need vibrates along the twisting silks that dig to find the comfort they crave inside my soul.

I’ve never connected so fast, so deep with any Sentinel.

Not even Kevan.

I’d panic if this guy weren’t so damaged.

He’s running on pure instinct.

As our soul-silks test each other out, the bond intensifies. But what should feel like reuniting with half of my missing soul feels more like hugging a hurricane.

I wrap my magic around the screaming roar of his psychic pain, trying to hold this Sentinel together long enough to figure out where to even start doing my job.

He’s pouring out so much lightning-streaked liquid flame that he’s melting the street lamps.

We need to be closer.

As long as our soul-silks are wired together, his flames consider me part of him.

I reach through the hellfire that’s hiding his appearance.

My hands hit the super-heated skin of a bare and heaving chest.

He’s taller than I thought. “Can you lean down?”

He ducks eagerly.

I stroke above his collarbone, catching the thump of his pulse before my fingers find a firm, smooth jaw.

He smells like smoked raspberries.

With my palms pressing his skin, I can barely breathe.

His pain roars, all needles dipped in flames, drilling my brain; I’d be screaming in his place.

“Do you mind if I massage you?” I ask, trying to distract myself as much as him. “I need you to calm down a little. You’ll feel better if we stimulate your vagus nerve.”

As I work my thumbs behind his ears, I make a point to check both sides for piercings.

Guiding doesn’t have to be sexual, but when it is, it happens fast.

That’s why all Sentinels wear a custom-magic stud for health and contraception, tucked away where they can’t rip it loose mid-rampage. Sure enough, I hit a thin disc, mostly covered by the top fold of his hot ear.

Guides wear our earrings in the same hidden helix position, just slightly more dangly; ours are meant to be seen.

Worn on the right, it’s a red flag: already attached and not open to non-platonic guidance.

This Sentinel wears his stud on the left.

Left ear means all clear .

I can touch him as deep as we need to bring back his sanity.

My stomach flutters in anticipation.

Coincidentally?

I switched my earring to the left side on the day I decided to run away.

My fresh magic gem dangles between two fine, silver chains just long enough to show its sparkle.

Guides heal fast.

Now, it doesn’t even sting.

I press his skull, rubbing deep along his jawbone. “Relax. Let me take care of you.”

He responds in an animal growl almost rough enough to rub off my fingerprints.

Animal isn’t far from what he is right now.

The first Sentinels were created from monsters.

Humans needed magic to go up against invading hordes of creatures much stronger than kobolds. But human bodies aren’t made to handle that kind of power. The more Sentinels use the magics they inherit through their monster bloodlines, the more they damage their souls.

The corruption accumulates like poison, clogging their magic veins—the meridians—restricting their silks, and slowly destroying their bodies and minds.

Before Guides existed, Sentinels could only rampage and die.

Now, as long as Sentinels receive regular treatment from a compatible Guide, they can live semi-normal lives.

But this guy…

Has he ever been treated?

Touching his skin should be enough to tell me what’s going on inside his body. I can heal most Sentinels with no more than a handshake. No matter how I massage him or run my silks, the contact isn’t making a difference.

“When was your last guiding?” I ask softly, not expecting an answer.

We’re joined deeper than I thought.

Hot, sticky desire leaves me squeezing my thighs as the Sentinel’s lust invades. Blood roars to fill the cock that’s suddenly all mine.

In full, 4D cinema I occupy two bodies, pre-experiencing the sensation of plunging into myself from both sides.

The sweet drag of my body. The Sentinel’s feral need for it.

My pussy twitches, knowing exactly how deep he’ll hit, how wide he’ll stretch, and how fucking satisfied I’ll feel the moment I lock into his soul and give him absolutely everything he needs.

Shit.

This Sentinel needs Guide-sex.

I want to be the one to give it to him, but only when I’m fully in control.

Not here.

Not now.

Definitely not ass-deep in kobold sludge.

I need to stabilize this guy and drag him to the base.

Also, find the base.

And maybe get his name?

“Let me see your face,” I whisper.

Finally, the Sentinel melts for me.

His flames peel back in layers, revealing sharp, but rapidly softening features. The red tint of his skin fades to pink as I comb through his silks, trying to cool his heat.

The color is golden brown when his face appears out of the smoke.

The devilish Sentinel has pink-tinged lashes and a sexy mole beneath his right eye—on the same side as his single horn.

The horn is tall and slightly twisted, rising from a nest of dark raspberry-colored hair.

It shrinks as his monster features morph back into human ones, leaving behind a few curved inches that end in a blunt tip.

“There you are.” My tongue darts out, wetting my mouth to prepare.

The things I have to do for my job.

I can feel his thoughts flickering, slowly becoming more human. I tense, ready for the push-away when he realizes we don’t know each other.

There’s a ticklish realization of something in that head, but it’s not rejection. The Sentinel weaves our silks tighter .

“Guide.” He twists to sniff my fingers. “ My Guide .”

“I’m not your?—”

His eyes flash to mine, swirling the same tiger pink as his hellfire.

Eye contact jump-starts the soul connection.

My stomach flips as I feel what he feels.

The pain is there, but his hunger hits stronger.

He eats up the threads of my soul like he’s fucking starving. The craving goes beyond the need to devour me. He wants me to want the same thing, and he offers himself to me with zero mental defenses.

It’s intoxicating .

And it’s way too much, too fast.

“Easy, Sentinel.” I breathe through the rush of sensation, overwhelmed in the sudden bond.

His pain.

Possession.

Hunger .

Still in beast mode from the elbows down, he snags my shoulders in his claws.

It’s been years since I touched a Sentinel so… raw .

One who doesn’t rein himself in, knowing I’m attached to a duke.

He’s all wild instinct, and until I soothe him back to understanding human speech, there’s no way to explain that he’s reading our connection wrong.

I’m not his.

I’m not anyone’s —even if I want to be.

“Let me help you.” I rise to him slowly, not wanting to set him off.

His hot breath hits my nose.

I’m desperate to soothe his rioting emotions, but under my falsely calm outside, my heart seethes just as hard as his out-of-control power.

This feels like betraying Kevan.

But that’s impossible.

Kevan betrayed me .

He went for a lecture at the Imperial Guide Academy and just never came home after. Left my messages unread.

I couldn’t track him down. I wasn’t allowed to leave the estate by myself.

For days, all I could do was pace my empty wing, sick with worry.

Then Duchess Calliope Kyorgos—my former mother-in-law and forever personal demon—came to deliver the news with her nose in the air and fresh poison dripping from her haughty mouth.

The young duke found his perfect match.

A fresh-minted Guide. Academy-educated, unlike me.

Eighty-three percent compatible with her precious son.

I try not to wonder if Kevan thought about me before he imprinted and disappeared to binge-fuck my replacement.

There was no warning, no discussion.

Not even a by-the-way, my fiancé .

One day, I was duchess-to-be, running ragged to keep up with the bullshit drudgery that goes with the title.

The next?

Duchess Kyorgos told me our engagement wasn’t needed anymore.

Neither am I.

She and the baroness were already searching for a new Sentinel to sell me off to.

I doubt Kevan would care.

But a bestial growl reminds me there’s at least one Sentinel who needs me.

Right here, right now.

I’m never going back.

“I’ll take care of you,” I promise, meaning every word as I carefully kiss his mouth.

Heat coils in my belly as his tangled silks surge around me, through me, inside me.

I take it all.

His hurt and his madness.

The rampaging magic slices my soul with molten blades. As I accept the Sentinel’s worst, I finally reach him deep enough to read the disaster underneath his skin.

His soul-silks clump together in complicated knots weighed down by years of accumulated poison. The charred sludge clogs his meridians so thickly, I can’t understand how he’s alive.

I untangle a few silks, soothing as best I can, but I’m barely scraping the surface of the Sentinel’s damage.

It’s better than nothing, but holy fucking stars .

He needs help.

Being the one to give it to him and feeling him respond puffs me up with soul-deep satisfaction.

The electric feeling buzzes, waking up pieces of myself that I meant to leave behind with the rest of my baggage.

The hum gets addictive.

So does the feeling of being so needed.

I watch in fascination as the last of his devil form melts under my care.

The man beneath the flames is hauntingly beautiful.

Built like a war machine, all muscle slicked in sweat and ash. His abs have abs, and his arms are as coiled as bridge cables.

As his red claws retract, the blade-pricks at my shoulders disappear. But his grip doesn’t loosen. He grips harder , feeding me an emotion that buckles my knees.

Yearning .

Grabbing the back of my neck with strong, human fingers, he crushes our mouths together.

His tongue spears between my lips.

I gasp.

I can soothe his raging magic, but I can’t stop the wildness of this kiss.

He devours me, licking my teeth, my tongue, the roof of my mouth. His desperation screams.

He wants to be closer.

He wants to be inside me in every way.

Groaning into my throat, he grinds his searing cock against my stomach. “My Guide.”

He’s wrong.

So wrong.

But this isn’t the time to argue.

I give myself to the kiss, taking the Sentinel’s super-heated poison and offering everything I have to cool him down and pull him back from the abyss.

It works.

Skin to skin, mouth to mouth, my guiding ability is at its strongest, but I have so much work ahead.

I’ll love every second if it feels like this .

Like nothing else exists.

No complications.

No engagements.

No fake promises.

Just me and him, trading pure sensations between our souls.

When I tear away, gasping and limp, he lifts me like I’m nothing and casually hooks my thighs around his hips.

The swirls of pink in his red eyes remind me of lava lamps.

Trippy .

I can feel the shift in his thoughts that says his logic is mostly back. He should be human enough to speak in more than growls.

“What’s your name, Sentinel?” I ask, trying to stay professional.

It’s hard to pretend when the crotch of my jeans is already riding his cock.

“I’m Vhex.” He shoots me a sharp, sweet smile—all razor blades in cotton candy. “ You call me husband.”

My heart skips an alarmed beat.

What in the misguided fuck?

Before I can bring Vhex back to reality, he steals another savage kiss.

He bites my tongue and pumps me full of molten magic.

My silks jolt as his soul hooks mine and tugs .

I see red.

The crazy bastard is trying to imprint me.