Cruel Malady: A Necrosis of the Mind

He is the diagnosis she never wanted—and the only cure she can't refuse.

Dr. Vera Calloway has spent years building walls clinical enough to keep the chaos out. Then Dominic Hale walks into her life like a wound that refuses to close—brilliant, dangerous, and carrying secrets that mirror her own darkest corners. He isn't someone she should want. He's someone she should *report*.

But hatred, she's learning, has a pulse.

Their battles are sharp-tongued and razor-edged, each confrontation peeling back another layer of armor until neither of them can pretend the fury between them is anything but hunger wearing a disguise. Dominic sees through every defense she's constructed. Vera sees through every mask he wears. And the problem with two people who truly *see* each other is that there's nowhere left to hide.

What begins as contempt curdles into something neither of them can name—something that spreads through the mind like a slow infection, rewriting every certainty they've ever held.

Falling for your enemy was never supposed to feel like finally breathing.

*Cruel Malady* is a dark, psychologically rich enemies-to-lovers romance that refuses easy answers and even easier happy endings. It asks the question no one wants to face: what happens when the person who destroys you is the only one who makes you feel whole?

Some sicknesses, you never want to survive.