The Cage and The Cure

"DO YOU FEEL DIRTY, DRINKING MY BLOOD?"

Imprisoned in a secret laboratory, Isaiah's captors use him as a guinea pig to test the cure for vampirism. His only companion is the lab's second prisoner: the fiery young vampire the lab was built for. They are as powerless as Isaiah, doomed to curse and shout as Isaiah suffers beneath the touch of a shameless scientist who casts him lustful glances when he thinks Isaiah isn't looking.

Despite the pain and despair of his situation, Isaiah is determined to endure if it brings about his friend's salvation.

When his experimenter changes their torturous routine for the better, Isaiah discovers the man's amor of logic and reason has a soft crack of desire he can pry into. For everything he gains though, Isaiah finds himself giving just as much. Trapped between his desire for the touch of a man who's more monster than anyone with fangs and the shame that mounts with each secretive escapade, Isaiah battles to make the little life he has left count, both for himself and his fellow prisoner.

The more he gives in to his physical needs, though, the more he uncovers a complicated and contradictory man within the scientist: one who may yet be his only salvation. Because he knows, when the cure is found and his friend in the other cell is whisked back to their old, human life, he won't be going with them. Isaiah will be buried, along with all the other evidence of this terrible endeavor... unless he can convince one troubled scientist to find the key to his cage.

The Cage and The Cure is a novella in the Guides For Dating Vampires world, with medium spice, a lightly toxic scientist/lab rat paring between a sweet vampire and the incarnation of a trash can with a man bun, and a separate vampire x vampire queer platonic relationship. While it is a great entry point into the universe and follows similar beats to the other romances, the relationships do not receive their happy ever after until the following book in the series.