Thea Harrison's Blog, page 5

Cover Reveal: American Witch

As promised, here’s the cover for American Witch. I’m utterly thrilled with it! Projected release is still toward the end of March. I’ll solidify that date as soon as the story goes into editing in early February.

Now Available: The Chosen Spanish Translation

¡Buenas noticias para los lectores que hablan español! ¡Mi traducción MUY PRIMERA autopublicada, La Elegida, ya está disponible para su compra! Estoy muy emocionado de comenzar esta aventura y espero que disfrute la historia. También espero tener más disponibles para usted en el futuro. Usé el traductor de Google para este mensaje, así que disculpe cualquier error en mi traducción

Now Available: Lionheart German Translation

 

Liebe deutsche Leser, bitte verzeihen Sie diese schlechte Übersetzung. Ich habe Google Translate benutzt. Ich bin sehr aufgeregt! Die deutsche Übersetzung von lionheart ist jetzt online im Buchhandel erhältlich. Die Links finden Sie unten. Ich liebe ~ Thea

Kindle  |  KDP Paperback  |  Apple  |  Thalia  |  Kobo  |  Google Play  |  Barnes & Noble

Sneak Peek at the next Elder Races story

In my holiday newsletter that just went out, I offered to newsletter subscribers a sneak peek at the next Elder Races story. Here it is for everybody else. I just engaged to work with a new cover artist so I don’t have a cover to share yet. That should be coming in January, and I will share as soon as we finalize it. I’m likely going to do a trilogy on the elements I’ve created in this story but I haven’t made that final decision. This story is based in the States.

Title: American Witch

Series: An Elder Races novel

Projected release date is March, 2019. This may move around a little so I’m not offering up an actual date. Because of the editing timeline, I suspect it will be later in the month, not earlier. About a month before the release date, I’ll start doing Friday snippets again and share excerpts weekly.

This story is unlike the other Elder Races stories (including the Moonshadow trilogy) that I’ve written, and for that reason I hope readers find it a refreshing change. In many ways, it’s going to be the most “human” story to date. I’m also incorporating more elements of romance suspense.

As always when I share unedited draft material, please keep in mind that what you’re reading might have typos and other issues, and it’s subject to change and/or deletion. For that reason, I ask that you don’t share.

Hope you enjoy. Happy holidays!

~ Thea

***

Chapter One

Molly stared at what she had found while she flushed hot, then cold, and the roaring in her ears was the sound of all the balls she’d been juggling for years as they crashed at her feet.

Her fingers shook as she pulled out the strange pair of underwear from the narrow space between her husband’s nightstand and their king-sized mattress. She dropped the panties onto the bed. They were outrageously feminine, a dark purple with a lace trim.

They were a size smaller than what she wore.

Her gaze listed around the shadowed, quiet room, a foundering ship in search of a safe harbor. Years ago, she had decorated the master bedroom to reflect serenity, but at the moment it felt anything but serene. A storm had rolled in, and despite it being early afternoon, the sky was so dark outside it looked like twilight.

Rain lashed against the windows like a wild creature trying to break in. Water ran in rivulets down the glass pane, and thunder growled. Inside, the house felt too still as if it held its breath, and the heavy, dense air was thick with an electrical charge.

Her attention snapped back to the purple panties. They were a shocking intrusion, the purple violent against the pale cream duvet.

What kind of woman trysted with a married man in his own bed, then forgot to put on her panties when she left? What kind of husband did that to his wife?

Hot tears spilled down her cheeks. Something tightly leashed inside tore, and her emotions raged uncontrollably.

On the landing at the head of the stairs, the antique grandfather clock stopped ticking. The bedroom plunged into semidarkness with a sizzling electric pop that made her nearly leap out of her skin.

From his office downstairs, Austin shouted irritably, “Goddammit, Molly – a fuse blew again. The party’s in two hours, and I’m in the middle of crunching the numbers I need to go over with the other partners tonight. Would you go down and fix it?”

Go ahead, Molly. Fix it.

Go into the basement and reset the circuit breaker.

Then bake the puff pastry hors d’oeuvres by 5:45 p.m. The chicken should marinate until 6:10 p.m., and then you need to put it immediately into a preheated oven. Check the wine cooler to make sure the white wine is chilled to 52 degrees, slice lemons and limes for cocktails, and don’t forget, you need to ice the sponge cake with buttercream frosting and top it with the fresh fruit that you’ve washed and left to dry on paper towels.

And you need to shower, put on your makeup, and dress well so you can do your part and charm your guests tonight.

Would the owner of the purple panties be at the party?

She couldn’t feel her fingers. Carefully, she folded the panties and stuffed them into the pocket of her old cardigan. Then she went downstairs, picked up her purse, located her car keys, and walked out of the charming six-bedroom, four-and-a-half bath, Cape Cod house.

The gray sky spat needles of chilly rain as she climbed into her Escalade in the driveway. After starting the engine and cranking the heat high, she took the panties and laid them out on the passenger seat. Then she fastened her seatbelt and pulled out.

Her shoulders felt crushed, and her face was streaming. She couldn’t get a deep enough breath into her cramped lungs.

She drove to the end of the street, and then turned and drove back on the neighboring street, passing large, well-tended lawns and equally large, familiar houses. Zig-zagging back and forth, going nowhere, her mind a blank.

Her cellphone rang. She ignored it. It rang several more times, until she put it on vibrate. Then it buzzed like an angry hornet. She didn’t want to ever talk to him again. She felt like she could drive for weeks and weeks. Just watch the road as it came scrolling toward her. Why couldn’t she do that? When she thought of how trapped she felt, a wave of anguish rolled through her.

Every light in the dashboard of the Escalade lit up and the engine sputtered. Suddenly calming, she listened as it gave one last cough before it died. Using the SUV’s momentum, she steered to a stop at the curb and put it in park opposite a large, landscaped retention pond at the edge of the neighborhood.

She told the absent woman who owned the panties, “Today is Thursday. The cleaning service came yesterday morning. I got home from visiting my mother last night, and I only just got around to straightening the bedroom today. So you were in my bed yesterday afternoon.”

“True,” admitted the woman in her imagination. “There wasn’t any other time it could have been.”

Molly could picture her. The woman would be leggy. Perhaps lightly tanned, with golden blonde hair and freshly returned from a trip to the Caribbean. The purple panties would look good on her. She would be intelligent as well as pretty, educated with a knowing expression in her worldly eyes. She might hold her mouth in a slight ironic slant.

She probably looked a great deal like Molly. Austin had a type.

She said between her teeth, “You left those panties on purpose. Nobody forgets something like that. You left them for either Austin or me to find. If Austin found them, it would remind him of what you and he did. If I found them, I would learn about your affair. Either way would work for you.”

In her mind, the woman smiled and crossed her long legs. “Indeed. What else have you got?”

She clenched the steering wheel with both hands. “Austin wouldn’t bring an unknown hooker into the house. If he were going to have a hooker, he would go to a hotel. This is a relationship. You and he have been together before.”

The woman gave her a conspiratorial smile. “You’re not quite as stupid as Austin thinks you are.”

This time when Molly glanced at the panties, the passanger seat didn’t seem quite empty. An indistinct, transparent form of a woman appeared to be sitting there, although she wasn’t the tall, leggy blonde Molly had been envisioning. She got the impression of a small, curvy figure, dark hair and a bright gaze.

Her heart kicked hard. Blinking rapidly, she dug the heels of her hands into dry, burning eyes. When she looked again, the strange hallucination had vanished. The seat was as empty as it had always been.

What the hell is happening to me?

Shaken, she wiped her face. When she had composed hereself she found her phone. Ignoring the multiple text and phone messages, she called roadside service.

It took them almost an hour to arrive.  As she waited, she slipped out of the car and, ignoring the light rain, she walked the path alongside the pond while keeping her vehicle in sight.

The wind was chilly, but she barely noticed. She felt like a walking bruise.

Everything in her life had been about Austin’s career. Every decision they had made had been carefully plotted out.

They had met in college, and after graduation they had moved to Atlanta where Austin’s father had a small law firm. Then his father’s firm had been bought out by a larger one. Austin had become a partner in the new, larger firm, while his father had retired.

So they had settled here, making more money as the years rolled by, increasing in influence and reputation, developing important connections, and buying a showcase house with an open floorplan that was perfect for throwing frequent dinner parties for powerful people.

Out of the corner of her eye, a glowing red flared. Turning, she watched as the lights of a tow truck appeared at the end of the street. While the mechanic parked, she walked back quickly and stuffed the panties into her cardigan pocket.

She waited in the Escalade as he changed the battery. Afterward, she paid with her credit card, and he handed her the paperwork. “That car is less than two years old,” he told her. “The battery should have been fine. If I were you, I would contact the dealership. This is probably still under warranty.”

“Understood. Thank you.” She watched him climb back into his truck.

While he had worked on her SUV, the last of the afternoon light had faded. She was horribly, unforgivably late.

When she arrived home, the house was ablaze with lights. Austin had fixed the blown fuse. High-end cars parked along the side of the long driveway and on the street.

His important dinner party had started. The white wine hadn’t been taken from the cooler, so it would be too cold. The hors d’oeuvres hadn’t been baked, the cake hadn’t been iced, and there had been no one to cook the chicken.

She certainly hadn’t showered, nor had she put on makeup. She caught a glimpse of her appearance in her side mirror. She looked like a half-drowned rat.

Okay, she thought. What am I going to do now?

I could go in the back way, slip upstairs and clean up, go back down and make my excuses. Austin would be furious, but he would hide it with warm smiles and a kiss on the cheek.

Afterward, he would lecture me. He might yell a bit. I could make up some lie about going to help a friend in trouble, tell the truth about my car breaking down, and the whole thing would blow over.

But no. I don’t think so.

She strode for the front door, picking up speed as she went, while the frozen lump in her chest melted into something hot and volcanic. Anger felt like a creature living in her chest. It made her strides long and powerful.

In the door.

Past well-dressed, startled people. Molly let the rage take over while she hovered high in one corner of her mind, watching.

The colors of the guest’s clothes seemed garish, too bright. Many of the women were beautiful, their painted mouths forming words as they stared at her, some catty and judging, others disturbed. Was the owner of the panties here? Possibly.

She stalked past partners in Austin’s firm and their significant others. Select clients. Judge Mallory. Somewhere, the new DA Josiah Mason would be mingling. A real up-and-comer, people called him. A man to be careful around. A man to watch.

Everyone had drinks. Several people called out questions and greetings, but she didn’t answer. She had a single objective.

She found Austin talking to Russell Sherman, the managing partner of the firm, and a tall, imposing man she didn’t recognize. When she drew close, the three turned to her. Her sense of disconnection vanished, and suddenly she slammed back into her body again.

Austin’s handsome face creased in a smile, while his sharp gaze looked murderous. “There you are, honey. What happened? I was getting worried about y—”

As he talked, she reached out and dropped the wadded-up panties in his martini glass. His words cut off, like flying birds shot out of the sky.

“You broke my heart the first time you cheated on me,” she told him. “Broke it into a million pieces. I was only twenty-one and a junior in college. You were twenty-two and had just graduated, and we’d only been together for a year. But you were so sorry, and oh lord, my mother was so damn insistent. So I stayed and gave you another chance.” She turned to Russell and the powerful-looking stranger who stood beside him. “He can be persuasive, can’t he?”

Russell stared at her like she had turned into a rattlesnake, while the new, unknown man watched her with an impassive gaze. He had a hard, strong-boned face that was distinctive rather than classically handsome. In her mind’s eye, he seemed to shimmer with a dark essence, as if he was a polished onyx that caught at the light, while all the people around him faded into the background, like flat paper dolls in a book that told someone else’s story.

“Molly,” said Russell with an embarrassed laugh and a sideways glance around the quieting room. “This is neither the time nor the place.”

Her voice sliced across his. “This is exactly the right time and place.”

Russell turned away, moving his square, bulky body like a weapon. In a low voice, he said to Austin, “Get her under control.”

Austin had whitened. His jaw clenched, and his eyes burned with a promise of retribution. Grabbing her arm with hard fingers that bit into the muscles of her biceps, he muttered, “We’re going into the kitchen. Now.”

Fury erupted, filling her body with a flash fire. She actually saw sparks of light like lightning at the edges of her vision.

Jerking her arm free, she hissed, “I believe the legal definition of assault is laying hands on another person without their permission. Or is that battery? I can never keep those two straight. Touch me again, and I’ll call the police.”

Red spots of hectic color burned in his taut face. He bit out, “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

Over his shoulder, she caught sight of the antique Japanese Satsuma vase he had given her as a wedding present twenty years ago. They had gone to Japan on their honeymoon and discovered the vase while shopping. It had cost so much money she had walked away from it, but Austin had returned to the shop to purchase it for her.

She had felt so happy then. So full of faith in their future, with the shadow of his first infidelity buried well and truly in the past.

She focused all her rage and hurt on that vase. The specks of lightning at the edges of her eyesight flared, and something—some indefinable, invisible thing—shot out of her body like a thunderbolt.

Across the room, the vase slammed into the wall and shattered, and the stand toppled over.

Hey, she thought. Hey wait.

I… did I do that? How the hell did I do that?

She stared numbly at the destruction, while the rest of the world faded into swirls of people exclaiming and muttering in the background. Some of the dinner party guests were slipping out the front door, while others lingered to stare.

The imposing stranger regarded the fallen vase then turned to look at her, a corner of his mouth tilting up. Against a deep suntan, his knowledgeable eyes looked yellow like a cat’s. Reaching to his forehead with long fingers, he tilted an invisible hat at her.

Austin broke the throbbing tension with a loud laugh. “I guess we should have gotten someone to fix the wobble in that vase stand,” he said in a voice pitched to carry across the silent room. “Tell you what, everybody, it’s abundantly clear Molly and I are having a rough moment. Why don’t you all head to the bar in the other room? Russell will serve you up whatever you desire, while my wife and I resolve this.”

That snapped her focus back into place.

“Because resolving this should only take five minutes or so?” Her acidic retort caused his head to rear back.

“Where is your Xanax?” he muttered.

“You think drugging me is the way to deal with this right now?” Raising her voice, she said clearly, “The second time you cheated on me, I cried for weeks. You didn’t know I found out. I was too… something. I don’t even know what the word is. There you were, going through your life with your dick hanging out of your pants, and I was too scared or intimidated, or heartsick to confront you. I felt like a failure. I thought it had to be at least partly my fault. I had fallen out of love with you by then, but I still tried to make our life together work. I’m not a quitter, I said. I would stick it out. For better or worse, right?”

As she watched, the embarrassed anger in Austin’s face switched to uncalculated fury. “You frigid bitch,” he spat. “You don’t know the meaning of the word love. Everything always has to be portioned out with you, balanced on some kind of invisible scale. I had to earn every fuck I got from you.”

His words sank invisible claws deep and tore at her, underneath her unmarked skin. Her face burned with greater fury and humiliation.

She made her shaking lips form words. “The second time you cheated. That was when I knew I didn’t want to have children. Years passed, and now here we are. I’m almost forty, you’re over forty. And I’m looking back over the last twenty years of my life, and all I can think of is what a goddamn waste, and none of it was my fault.”

He barked out a harsh laugh. “You’re delusional.”

“Did I ever cheat on you?” she snapped. “Did I?”

“Of course you didn’t,” he growled. “You barely knew how to part your legs.”

The calculated cruelty in his words shredded every tender memory they had shared—every tender moment she had thought they had shared—and the depth of his anger confounded her. She felt wounded and bloodied. Was she really that cold and inflexible? That unlovable?

No. She would not let him do this to her.

Pulling herself together, she thrust away the pain, took a step forward and stabbed at his chest. “Quit trying to justify what you did by tearing me down. I was the perfect wife. I was great in bed, I took all the right classes, and I worked out and kept my figure. I was patient, and I learned how to cook all the right things. I always put your career first, and for what? You are a goddamn waste of space, and I am done living a cliché.”

“Jesus, you two,” Russell growled, shouldering his blunt figure between them. “Will you quit burning down your lives in front of everybody and shut the fuck up?”

Awareness pierced the anger in Austin’s gaze, and he looked mortified. That did her hurting heart a little bit of good.

“I don’t think so,” she told Russell. Underneath everything else, she saw the surprise in both Austin and Russell’s eyes that she would dare to talk back like that to the managing partner. Turning her attention back to Austin, she shouted, “You had that woman in my house. In my bed. No, I will not shut the fuck up!”

“Forget about the bar,” Russell said to the strange man. “This evening is over. We should be going.”

“No, you gentlemen go ahead and stay,” Molly said. She glared at Austin until his gaze slid away. “There’s a lot of booze in the house, and I’m sure Austin could use some commiseration over his frigid bitch of a wife who won’t spread her legs or shut up when she’s told to. I’ll be the one who leaves.”

Turning away, she charged through the people who still remained and jogged up the stairs to the master suite. Moving swiftly, she pulled out her suitcases and threw things in. Underwear, casual clothes, shoes, toiletries…

She needed all her jewelry. There was quite a bit of money tied up in it, and she wouldn’t leave a single piece behind.

What else, what else? What are you supposed to take with you when you burn down your life?

Financial documents.

Right now, Austin was busy dealing with the important people and contacts in his professional life, trying to smooth over a mortifying situation. But when he had time to think, he would think like a lawyer.

She took her suitcases down the back stairs. She could hear a few voices still talking at the front of the house.

Leaving the cases by the back door, she strode into Austin’s office, opened the floor safe and stuffed everything into a large leather satchel without examining it—investment portfolios, car titles, CDs, cash, wills, advanced directives, both of their passports.

He wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. He needed to stay and face whatever happened next.

After she had cleaned out the safe, she shut it and dug the household checkbook out of the upper desk drawer of Austin’s desk. First thing in the morning, she would go to the bank and transfer their liquid assets into her own bank account. He had enough to clean up from the fallout of this evening. Relationships to bolster. No doubt a mistress to complain to. With any luck, he wouldn’t expect her to move so fast.

While she worked, wetness streamed down her face and her emotions raged all over the place, rampant and chaotic. Pain and self-recrimination were a large part of it.

She was almost forty years old and childless, with a patchwork history of working part-time at various socially acceptable jobs and volunteering at socially acceptable charities. She had spent all her adult life trying to fit into the right-sized box.

Somehow, she needed to unchain her mind. She needed to discover her authentic self and try to live that Molly’s life, before it was too late.

Slinging the leather satchel onto one shoulder, she slipped into the kitchen. Just before she pulled her suitcases out the door, she looked around one last time.

The kitchen counters were littered with open bottles, glasses, trays of uncooked pastry puffs, the bare vanilla-berry cake. Austin had a mess on his hands. That, along with work, would be more to distract him while she took care of business in the morning.

All those empty bedrooms in a showcase house, and he had to take that other woman into hers. All those empty, childless bedrooms. One last wave of rage and pain burst through her.

The kitchen lights flickered. As the entire house fell into darkness, she wheeled her suitcases into the rainy night. Nobody approached as she threw her luggage into the back of the Escalade and climbed in. Relief washed over her raw nerves as she drove away.

The SUV’s headlights lit the edges of the wet, burgeoning foliage that hemmed the neighborhood streets. Black pressed on the other side of overhanging branches, turning sights that had been long familiar strange, until it was as if she traveled down a secret tunnel.

Immense shapes seemed to lurk in the trees. She thought she saw a wolf watching her, and a raven. Each one melted back into leaves and shadows as she drove past it.

Then she broke out of the foliage into an open area by the entrance to the interstate. Massive relief lifted her up, as if she had traveled an unimaginable distance and crossed an invisible border to a new country.

After a single glance back at the forest from which she had emerged, she turned onto the highway and drove into the city.

She thought, I’m almost forty years old, and I’m just being born.

*          *          *

Sherman wasn’t the type to let go easily once he had his mind fixed on something. He had his mind fixed on forging a connection with Josiah, and he held on like an octopus gripping with all tentacles.

In the end, however, he didn’t hold a candle to Josiah’s implacable will. After finally extricating himself, Josiah drove swiftly, taking a circuituous route as his mind filled with images from the wrecked dinner party like lurid snapshots of a crime scene.

The District Attorney had a two-bedroom loft apartment in an upscale building near downtown Atlanta, and it was filled with carefully curated items. Josiah also owned an old four-bedroom, two-story house outside the city limits that he had bought under a different identity, and that was where he drove now.

The house was located down a quiet country lane that dead-ended at the property. It had three-quarter acre yard that bordered a large farm field and a patch of old growth woods. The isolation and privacy suited him.

This place, too, had carefully curated furniture—just enough arranged at the front window so that the house looked occupied when the blinds were up. Aside from a few lamps that were scattered throughout the rooms and set to operate on timers, most of the house was empty.

Except for the basement.

Pulling into the driveway, he mentally checked the subtle magical spells that he had woven around the perimeter of the property. Nothing had been disturbed. Still, he didn’t relax until he had let himself inside and walked through the house to inspect it visually. Only then did he descend the old, bare-wood stairs into the basement.

He had put months of planning into this space, and he had done all the work himself. When he had bought the house, there had been a utilitarian bathroom and a large game room in the basement. Now there were two finished rooms, with more protection and obscuring spells layered over the floors, walls, and ceiling and anchored into place with runes made with magic sensitive silver.

The earth itself was another layer of protection and concealment. You could do a lot of magic in a basement before it began to leak out and become potentially noticeable to outside observers.

This was his real base of operations. One room held a bed, large enough to be comfortable for his tall frame, a closet filled with clothes, and a TV tray he used as a nightstand.

The other room was larger. At one end it held three computers, several phones, and a monitor for the extensive security system he had installed. The other end held magical paraphenalia—all his current tools—along with a large floor safe that held the more dangerous items. He always locked it before he left.

There were two ways to enter or exit the basement. One was the obvious way, by using the old stairs that led up to the large empty kitchen. Josiah had created the other way, which was part of the reason why it had taken him so long to adapt the space to suit his needs.

After chiseling out a hole in the concrete wall of the basement, he had patiently dug a tunnel that came out under the cover of the thick tangle of old-growth forest behind the house. There was no way he was going to get trapped in an underground space, if he could avoid it.

He owned still other properties in other areas, that he had bought wearing other faces under yet other names. Many of those properties had undergone similar adaptations, but none of those properties were relevant to his current persona as Josiah Mason.

Sitting in front of one of the computers, he conducted an internet search on Molly Sullivan and scrolled through local news articles and photos. Most of the hits were from society pages or charities.

She was right—she was the perfect wife, especially for a law partner at a busy firm. At least on the surface. In the photos, she was cool, elegant, and composed, completely unlike the haggard, angry woman who had confronted Austin with such steely determination.

He picked up one of the phones and punched a number set on speed dial. When the person on the other end picked up, he said, “Change of plans.”

“Okay,” the man said. “What’s up?”

“Build a file on a woman named Molly Sullivan. Blonde, blue-eyes, five ten or so, between thirty and forty-five, wife to Austin Sullivan from Sherman & Associates.” At least for now. “Dig into her past and her known associates, but most especially, find out where she lands tonight. She left her husband tonight after a messy, public confrontation at the party. I want to know where she goes and what she does next.”

“I’m on it.” The man disconnected.

Josiah tossed the phone onto the desk and sat back, the fingers of one hand hooked over his mouth as he studied the image of the beautiful woman on his computer screen.

He had meticulously planned for so many contingencies, but he had not planned for this.

“You’re quite a complication, Molly Sullivan,” he murmured. “Now I have to figure out what to do about you.”

Change of Plans

I’ve been public about some things I had intended to do next. One of them was to launch my new Patreon page, which will be an opportunity for readers to have a more immersive fan experience in my world-building and writing as I create my next projects.

The other thing I went public about is that I’m intending to write a few stories in my very large Elder Races universe, in the Other land of Ys. My novella The Chosen was set in this Other land, and I’d like to explore the tensions and opportunities more there.

(For readers who enjoy background information, I took the inspiration for Ys from a mythical city in French that was swallowed by the ocean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys But after reading about Ys, I then decided to create my own thing.)

These two projects are on hold for the moment. When I launch Patreon, there’s so much goodness I’m planning for readers that I’d like to make sure my wonderful assistant Gretchen is operating at her tasks at full capacity, so she can help.

Unfortunately, Gretchen has recently been experiencing some complications in a pregnancy. If you believe in this sort of thing, I’m sure Gretchen would appreciate any good thoughts and prayers any of you may like to send her way.

LIONHEART: Friday Snippets (11)

Happy Friday!

Here’s today’s snippet of LIONHEART. **Warning: adult situation**

This section concludes Chapter Six, and as today is the last Friday in September, it also concludes the Friday Snippets. As always, this is draft material and things are subject to editing (and possibly deletion), so please don’t share.

Hope everybody has a good weekend, and you enjoy!

~ Thea

Pre-order LIONHEART now!

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__________

Chapter Six, concluded

Dragging her fingers through her hair, she said without looking at the unconscious man beside her, “I am so, so sorry. I did not mean to cling to you like some sort of limpet. That all happened in my sleep. I wasn’t aware of doing it.”

Her voice was no more than a croak as her abused throat strained to get the words out. Just bloody marvelous. Glancing over her shoulder, she finally assessed Oberon’s still features. He looked so peaceful, yet at the same time his Power had raged out of control and had sent his people running away from this beautiful city.

Sighing heavily, she lay back down and turned on her side to face him, this time not touching him. The frigid air bit at her cheeks, and she couldn’t lie, it was hard to think about leaving the warmth their bodies had created in this nest.

“I’m going to put my hand on you,” she whispered. “And I want to scan the interior of your chest. We’ve done this a dozen times already. There’s nothing to it except a little tingle of magic. I don’t need to keep talking to you ad nauseam to get this done, Oberon. Let’s give it a rest, okay?”

She laid her hand on the hard, broad plate of his chest. So far so good. Then she fell silent as she started to scan him—and his Power surged to knock her magic out of his body.

Damn it.

Four damn days. Now almost five damn days of trying every trick she knew and expending every ounce of magical energy she possessed, and she had only managed to move Morgan’s magic needle a few millimeters away from Oberon’s heart.

That was a long, long way from healing him entirely.

“I can’t help you if you keep fighting me at every turn,” she ground out.

And she couldn’t keep healing him if she contracted laryngitis. They were going to lose both those precious millimeters she had gained, because the magic in that needle would never stop, not as long as it remained in his body. It would simply lay dormant until it had generated enough energy to resume its task.

His strong, blunt profile remained oblivious. Even his short, dark beard was well trimmed. Not bad for a guy who hadn’t shaved for a decade and a half. And that strong, molded mouth… It was as shockingly sexy as the rest of him.

Later, she could never adequately explain why she did what she did. There was no excuse. It was inexcusable. If she had done it in New York and had been caught, she could have lost her license to practice medicine.

But she wasn’t in New York. She was alone in this frigid, gorgeous, terrible place, and her heart swelled and ached for a man who was actively destroying his best hope at returning to life. For the goddamn hero who had fallen so long ago and for whom his people had fought so hard, because Kathryn was beginning to believe she would probably never get to meet him when he was conscious and aware.

Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to his. His mouth was so still, so warm and perfect. Her closed eyes filled with dampness as she lingered over the sensation of touching his lips with hers.

It felt like saying goodbye to a man she had never met and could barely acknowledge to herself that she had truly wanted to.

Then he moved.

He moved.

His still mouth became mobile, his lips hardening on hers. As she froze in shock, one large hand came up to cup the back of her neck while his long body shifted to align with hers.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her entire consciousness seized on the warmth of his mouth and the dexterous, hungry way he kissed her.

He growled quietly. The sound went down her spine, unzipping her. She had remained steady and strong through almost every difficult period in her life, but not this time. This time she trembled everywhere.

He couldn’t have shocked her more if he had grabbed two defibrillator paddles and zapped her. Meanwhile his mouth conquered the shape of hers—conquered and demanded more. He pressed between her lips, and they parted without her conscious volition, allowing him entrance. When he probed deep inside her mouth, her body pulsed with desire that culminated in a sharp, almost unendurable ache between her legs.

Consumed with the riot going on inside, she was only half aware of his heavy weight settling over her. He ravaged her mouth, laying waste to her senses, and it was only when she felt the growing length of hardness pressing against her hip that a sliver of sanity managed to wedge itself into her brain.

He had an erection. And from what she could sense through the layers of their clothing, it was a good-sized one too.

Not bad for a guy who’d been out of action for fifteen years.

What is wrong with you, Shaw!

She had to stop this. Mmm. Holy gods, he really knew what to do with his mouth… They could stop in just a moment, couldn’t they?

Penetrating her over and over again with his tongue, he cupped her breast in a large, powerful hand as he pushed his hips against hers in a slow, deliberate, sexy grind.

The sliver of sanity screamed at her. She couldn’t wait until later—she had to stop this crazy behavior right now!

***

Honestly, this woman. She was driving him mad. Blah blah blah blah blah. How could anybody talk so much?

There was only one good thing about it. The sound of her voice drove Isabeau from his mind, so he focused on her with equal parts irritation and relief.

Then a third thing insinuated itself into his awareness: something was wrong. The woman sounded ragged, her voice hoarse with exhaustion. You would have thought that would be enough to shut her up, but no, it did not.

Almost, he frowned.

Then her lips touched his.

And everything in his head lit up. Yes! This solved all of it… The woman stopped talking, and the sensation of her warm, soft mouth covering his drove any thoughts of Isabeau scuttling far into the darkness where they belonged.

Pleasure cascaded through him, but her touch was light and gentle to the point of being chaste, and he wanted more. So much more.

He came fully awake to the sensation of raw hunger. Fixing his mouth on hers, he feasted on her like a man who had been starving for centuries. Warm, wet, and sensual, she kissed him back, and when he demanded more, she gave it.

A wealth of details shouted for attention. She smelled so goddamn good, like everything he had never known to dream about but suddenly discovered he needed more than life itself. Her hair was fine and silken—that meant she would be silken between her legs as well. The thought made him growl, and she trembled all over in response.

He had to taste her, touch her all over, fuck her. Nothing else existed… Admittedly, her clothes were very strange, he found as he palmed one breast… but nothing else, and no one else, existed in this moment…

“Stop!” she gasped.

Well, dammit. Now she was back to talking again. It couldn’t detract from the delectably soft skin along her jaw and neck. He ran his lips along the delicate path where her carotid artery beat underneath the warm silken skin perfumed with the intoxicating scent of aroused female.

He couldn’t wait to eat her up.

Something struck his shoulder. Her fist. She had hit him.

She struck him again, not lightly, then she clouted him over the head. “Oberon, stop!”

She dared to strike him? He bared his teeth at her in a snarl, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her draw back her fist. Unbelievably, she was going to do it again.

He hissed, “You do not strike the King!”

“You’re not my king!” she shouted back.

He caught a glimpse of her fine-boned features surrounded by a cloud of the silken brown hair spread out on the pillow. Fire flashed in narrowed amber eyes. This time her fist came flying directly at his face, but his reflexes were faster than they had ever been, and he ducked sideways to avoid the blow that landed on his shoulder.

Outraged, he pulled back his own fist to strike back. That was when he discovered she was as fast as he was and quite strong. For one moment all his weight was poised on one elbow, and with a neat, whole-body heave, she shoved him over, hard.

As it transpired, they had been tussling close to the edge of the bed. Flipping over, he landed on his back. As the back of his head connected with the hard, frigid floor, full awareness slammed into him.

“Look,” the woman croaked. “I am so, so sorry for this. There’s been—I don’t even know what to call it—a massive misunderstanding. I’m sure you’ll understand everything once I explain everything…”

He barely heard her as memories cascaded through his mind. The attack at the masque. The poisonous spell that he could tell was even now still working through his body. Saying goodbye to his court and casting the stasis spell. The slow, raging collapse into darkness.

He surged upward with an outraged roar that shook the walls, and his anger propelled him into a shapeshift. Changing into a lion, he sprang at the woman. That stasis spell had been the only thing standing between him and certain death. He would disembowel the interloper for daring to disrupt it… for sex?

He got one glimpse of her mortified expression as he leaped, claws out and ready to strike. His front paws closed on thin air as her slender body melted away.

There was a rush of wings. He caught colors out of the corner of his eye—dark brown, black markings, and soft, mottled gray and white, as well as the slender, wicked length of a hooked beak and strong, hooked talons. The interloper was a full Wyr, a falcon.

Cupping his front paws, he twisted his massive body in midair to try to catch her as she flew past him, but she dipped her body so sharply the tips of her wings brushed against his whiskers.

Roaring again, he leaped and rebounded off the nearest wall, cracking plaster as he lunged for her again. He had speed and power in spades, but she was much smaller than he and could move like greased lightning.

She flapped around the room so chaotically it was maddening. Growling, he tried to follow, uncaring for how he knocked items over or how the strong, well-built furniture fractured under his weight. For one fraction of a moment he thought he had cornered her—but then she dodged successfully again.

This time he got the chance to look into the falcon’s eyes as she passed by. She looked as furious as he felt, and as she streaked between his outstretched paws, she reached down to rake the claws of one foot along the tip of his lion’s nose.

Sharp pain flared along the needlelike scratches. Bloody hell.

The cuts on his nose were insult upon injury. He couldn’t be in more of a frenzy. Whirling, he watched as the falcon arrowed through the open doors and angled right to disappear down the corridor.

Silence fell in the aftermath of her departure. Then, with a yawning crack, his large, damaged four-poster bed collapsed in on itself.

Oberon stared at the shambles of what had once been a masculine, elegant room. In the tussle, they had managed to break every single one of the witchlights stationed along the walls.

Taking in a deep breath, he inhaled the woman’s scent. It was everywhere in the ruined room. She had been in here more than once. The puck’s scent also saturated the room. Had Robin allowed this, or had she vanquished him in some kind of battle?

Other details sank in. Various implements lay scattered on the floor. He recognized a scalpel, vials, and other strange items he couldn’t identify, and also a metal box that looked like it would fit into the palm of his hand. There were also broken pencils, and a number of papers littered the broken furniture.

On one of the trampled pages, a sketch of an oddly shaped oval item was clearly visible. It was labeled in English, Oberon’s heart. An arrow pointed to a spot on the edge of the oval. That part was labeled Morgan’s magic needle.

The interloper had studied him. She knew what was going on inside his body, probably better than he did. What had she hoped to gain when she had kissed him? As he’d awakened, he’d had only one thing in mind—sex.

Had she planned on using him to try to get pregnant? The King’s heir would have an unparalleled advantage in Lyonesse. He growled at the thought even as he realized that food had also been strewn everywhere.

Pieces of dried fruit lay sprinkled over the trampled crimson-and-gold bedspread like confetti, and there was the sharp, aromatic scent of cheese. Curious, he pawed at a small, overturned tub. As he flipped it over, one of his claws sank into soft butter.

He licked it off as he took in other details. Amid the rubble was a fur-lined cloak and a strange piece of clothing that looked like a formfitting blue coat, and another odd, lightweight sheet of something that looked like metal but was pliable and made of a foreign substance he had never seen before.

The interloper had planned a ravishment, and she had brought… snacks?

As he stared around in sharp incredulity, his first surge of bestial rage settled into something calmer, colder, and far more deadly.

Soundlessly, the lion padded into the wide, empty corridor, his focus coalescing into a single purpose. He had prey to hunt and many questions to ask before he decided how he was going to kill her.

________

Copyright: 2018 Teddy Harrison LLC

All rights reserved

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LIONHEART: Friday Snippets (10)

Happy Friday!

Here’s today’s snippet of LIONHEART. **language warning**

This section started Chapter Six. And as always, this is draft material and things are subject to editing (and possibly deletion), so please don’t share.

This time, I’m turning comments off because I’m traveling to Denver for Sweet Pea’s birthday party (my youngest granddaughter), and I won’t be able to monitor them.

Hope everybody has a good weekend, and you enjoy!

~ Thea

Pre-order LIONHEART now!

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__________

Chapter Six

It was day four in this frozen hellhole. Day four. And it was freaking freezing everywhere.

Nothing stayed warm. Since their arrival, she had tried a new bedroom every night and had stocked it beforehand with plenty of firewood. Each night she had built a blazing fire, but they all burned without warmth. She could run her fingers through the flames without getting her skin singed.

The only way she survived was by wrapping herself up in coat, cloak, and blankets and then tucking the Mylar emergency blanket around the entire bundle so that it captured ninety percent of the heat she managed to generate. She felt like a giant foil-wrapped burrito.

Water didn’t boil. Food never warmed. There was plenty of food in the cavernous palace kitchen and pantries, but it was all frozen hard as rocks. For every swallow of water, she needed to suck on a piece of ice until it melted.

In order to eat, she either had to do the same thing, or carry frozen bits of food around in her pocket so her body heat would eventually help it to thaw. She had a hardy constitution, but all the challenges were frankly wearing.

The hand and body warmers were lifesavers. She used one a day and got ten glorious hours of help with combating the cold in the form of a single miraculous little packet. But she had only two left. Soon she was going to have to rely solely on her own body’s resources.

And Robin was no help. First, there was no way in hell she would suggest sharing blankets and body heat when she barely trusted him enough to turn her back while they were together in the same room.

Second, she couldn’t suggest sharing body heat anyway, because after shadowing her obsessively for two days and listening to her constantly explain every little thing to him—which meant she frequently had to offer background medical lectures so he understood what she was saying, including drawing sketches in lieu of PowerPoint slideshows—he disappeared without warning or explanation.

She had no idea if he was off running some errand that he considered vitally important or if something had happened and he had gotten himself into real trouble. He had simply vanished.

Kathryn wrote “4” on a piece of parchment paper and propped it in one corner of Oberon’s room within easy sight.

Day four meant Annwyn and her troops would be arriving in about ten days. Then, according to Robin, Kathryn would need to shelter in place as they entered the city.

Unless Robin had changed his mind and had gone to fetch them? But that didn’t sound likely, so she had to plan for other contingencies. Probably the best place to shelter would be with Oberon in his bedroom, because presumably his Power wouldn’t have any self-destructive tendencies when it rampaged the city.

After she had finished her morning ritual of straightening her possessions that had gotten strewn all over Oberon’s furniture, she braced herself and turned to face the man lying on the bed. Every time she looked at him, she felt the same gut punch as the first time she had laid eyes on him. At least now she knew to prepare for it.

Yes, he was Wyr. According to his scent, he was some kind of feline. He was a big damn cat.

On the night of their arrival, when she discovered what Oberon was, she had exclaimed, “How come nobody told me he was Wyr? I thought the Daoine Sidhe was a community of mixed breeds from the Elder Races!”

She had always liked the idea. It sounded warm and inclusive, with none of the walls that people erect to keep out their perceived “other,” so she felt a little shock of betrayal to discover the truth.

Robin had given her a thoughtful look. “He was mixed Dark Fae and Wyr for a very long time. It was only after Morgan’s attack that he threw everything he had into trying to shapeshift. He thought it might help dislodge the magic. After he finally changed into his Wyr form, it did seem to work—for a while. He appeared to be healed for another two years, until the spell awoke again.”

Robin described the reality of what every half-Wyr faced. They couldn’t completely access many of the health and physical attributes of the full Wyr until they were able to successfully shapeshift into their animal forms. Most who were part-Wyr never managed to achieve that transition.

She couldn’t imagine how Oberon had managed to shapeshift on his own without the assistance of an older Wyr. It spoke of a towering will and determination to survive. When she had met with Morgan, the sorcerer had confessed he was astonished Oberon had survived so long. As scary as Oberon’s Power felt, she had tremendous respect for his will to live.

But this situation was maddening. Even though he appeared to be perfectly warm, the cold was so bitter she had draped blankets over his lax form before leaving that first time.

The next morning, when she had walked into the bedroom, everything she had done to him had been reversed. He lay back in his original position, and the blankets were tucked back in the closet.

The room lay in deep shadow, only flaring with light when she and Robin stepped back inside. Her possessions were the only things left alone… possibly because they were new to Oberon’s unconscious mind and he didn’t know what to do with them?

Who the hell knew? She could say only one thing for certain. In all her many years as a doctor, this was the most unique situation she had ever been in. And she hated to admit that it wasn’t going well.

Because she didn’t just have Morgan’s sophisticated assassination spell to fight. That would have been difficult enough on its own. She had to fight Oberon himself.

And she wasn’t winning.

She had run out of the jerky and trail mix. In an effort to keep her caloric intake high, she had taken to eating butter and other fats from the kitchen pantries because they melted easily after being in contact with her body heat.

Still, she had grown tired all the time, and while the Wyr didn’t suffer from colds like humans did, her lungs felt raw from constantly breathing in the dangerously frigid air.

Also, her throat was sore. She was suffering from voice strain from all the damn talking she’d done over the past several days. She could cast a pain-relieving spell on herself, but she didn’t want to do permanent damage to her vocal cords, and the only thing that would help them was to rest her voice.

She had started out with explaining every little thing to Robin, but then she found that if she didn’t keep talking to Oberon every damn moment while she scanned him or did anything else, his Power would gather in the room like a black, malevolent thundercloud. And black, malevolent thunderclouds never boded well for anybody.

The only way she made headway was when she talked nonstop while she tried the various spells and techniques she had worked out with Morgan. Oberon didn’t fight her when she was talking to him. When he lay acquiescent, she could sense the icy needle pressing against his heart. It was so close to taking him, so close.

But after long, careful work, she had only managed to wiggle that needle back a millimeter, then another… just as long as she kept talking. As soon as she paused to take a breath, or her voice faltered, his Power snapped around him like a clenched fist and she couldn’t get back inside his body without doing damage, either to him or to herself.

What she wouldn’t give for a warm, cooked meal and something hot to drink. Broth, coffee, tea. Anything. A whiskey toddy with lemon and honey sounded like heaven.

In the meantime, the bastard just lay there on his bed and looked like he could sit up at any minute. Even though he was shirtless in the wretched, unnatural cold, he was warm to the touch. Other than the few precious remaining packets of body warmers that remained, he was the only heat source in the entire city.

He was warm to the touch.

When the idea hit, it was filled with such simple brilliance her shoulders sagged—partly from relief at the thought and partly for how far and quickly she had fallen away from any semblance of keeping appropriate boundaries between her and her patient.

But he was warm to the touch, and her stiff muscles and tired mind needed some real rest before she expended more energy on trying to wrestle another round of healing spells into him. So she did the practical thing. She went down the hall to her latest bedroom and retrieved her Mylar blanket.

She was already wearing her fur-lined cloak over her coat. With two people under the Mylar blanket, she thought the cloak would be more than enough covering. And she had already gone to the kitchen for provisions. She’d hacked some ice chips into a tankard, and gathered frozen nuts, dried fruit, a small tub of butter, and a wheel of cheese, both as solid as blocks of ice.

Back in Oberon’s room, she set the tankard on the mattress next to his hip and carefully propped it up with the food. Then she lay down on his other side, shook her cloak over them both, food and all, and then over that she spread the Mylar blanket, talking hoarsely the whole time.

“Look, I don’t like this any more than you do—or any more than you would if you were really cognizant of what a monumental pain in the ass you’ve been. But until I break through to you or…” Or conclude I can’t do anything for you. Something in her chest tightened at the thought. “…or you stop creating such terrible winter conditions, we’ve got to do whatever it takes to make this work. Understood?”

He said nothing, did nothing. Most importantly, his Power did not coalesce menacingly, so she eased down beside his long, hard form and eased her head down on the pillow next to his.

Soon she was more than warm. She quickly grew too hot. Eureka. Unzipping her coat, she shrugged out of it and let it fall by the bed. Deep exhaustion followed the wonderful warmth as her tense muscles finally unknotted for the first time since crossing over.

As she lay back down beside him, she murmured drowsily, “That’s all that’s coming off, buddy, so relax, you’re safe.”

She was even halfway convinced she was safe, at least for the moment, but she wasn’t comfortable with the situation, not by a long shot, and she tried her damnedest to keep from coming into direct contact with his bare skin.

Yet she couldn’t help but notice he smelled pretty good for a guy who hadn’t bathed in fifteen and a half years. All clean and über-male, even if he was some kind of damn cat.

He was actually shockingly sexy, when she thought about it.

Stop thinking about it.

“We’re never going to speak of this again,” she informed him before she fell asleep.

Mmm. Sometime later, she inhaled the scent of sexy male as she rubbed her cheek against her pillow, which was made up of smooth, bare skin wrapped around solid, heavy muscles.

Sexual images played through her mind. Soon they would really wake up and entwine together, she and… and…

…and…

Just exactly who had she taken to bed?

What the hell. She couldn’t even think of his name, and here she was, wrapped around him like a creeping vine—and she never had sex with a total stranger.

Bolting to a sitting position, she stared around wildly.

Oh right. Gotcha. King. Bed. Witchlights burning in their globes, lighting every detail in the palatial room.

She couldn’t really say there was malevolence to the presence in the room, but it was definitely full of dark, heavy Wyr alpha male. It felt like melted dark chocolate against her skin, and she wanted to bathe in it.

The thought disgusted her. For fuck’s sake, Shaw. Pull yourself together.

________

Copyright: 2018 Teddy Harrison LLC

All rights reserved

Pre-order LIONHEART now!

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LIONHEART: Friday Snippets (9)

Happy Friday!

Here’s today’s snippet of LIONHEART.

This section continues Chapter Four, and includes a very short Chapter Five.

And as always, this is draft material and things are subject to editing (and possibly deletion), so please don’t share.

Hope you enjoy!

~ Thea

Pre-order LIONHEART now!

 Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble  |  iBooks  |  Kobo  |  Google Play

__________

Chapter Four, concluded

I don’t get it, she thought. When all the members of the Dark Court spoke about Oberon, it was with a combination of love, pain, and respect, as if he was some kind of missing goddamn hero. How could they love this? It felt like a monster contemplating a slaughter. Oh Shaw, what have you gotten yourself into now?

“Wow, do I feel welcome,” she muttered.

The puck appeared to miss her tone of sarcasm completely. “You should. When Annwyn and the troops arrive, storms will rage through the city until ice shards drive through glass and midday will seem black as night. You will want to shelter in place when that happens.”

Surprise took her over. “What’s the difference between our arrival and theirs?”

“Me,” Robin said simply. “Maybe because I was the last one he saw before he fell to his sleep. Maybe because he gave me orders that I’m supposed to follow. No one knows for sure.”

The puck’s odd wording snagged her attention. Fell to his sleep. It sounded ominous, like falling to his death. “Well, I’m glad I took you up on your offer to bring me. I had no idea just getting to him was going to be so difficult. What would happen if we split up?”

“I suggest you do not leave my side.”

Oh, no worries about that. She had no intention of doing so.

By the time they came up to it, the palace was almost anti-climactic. It was, she decided, very palace-y— A large sprawl of a stone building with crenellations along the top, turrets at each end, and rows of columns and arches along the front.

A long scar along the ground that bordered the front of the building might once have been an operational moat. Now that area was nothing more than a frozen smear. The design seemed almost Moorish and looked both attractive and defensible.

Many years of doing her job had taught her one thing: to grab any chance she could at getting her needs met while she could. As they approached the building, she dug into a pack and pulled out a piece of jerky to chew while she considered what came next.

“Would you take me directly to him?” she asked.

The surprise was back in his voice as he said, “I thought we might rest? It has been a long journey for both of us.”

“I know you’re tired, and I am too,” she told him. “But from everything I was told Oberon was supposed to be unconscious, yet his Power feels aware, and it appears to be reacting to stimuli. I would rather introduce myself to your king right away, in case he might be aware enough to take it in.”

“He is asleep.” The flat, uncertain note in the puck’s voice persisted.

She explained, “Comatose patients can be more aware than people think. Sometimes they report hearing voices and conversations that occurred around them while they were in their comas. I would like to know if it is possible to get some kind of idea that Oberon has accepted my presence, because I don’t want to be attacked by some freak of weather while I’m trying to sleep.”

“You make a good point,” he said after a moment. “We will go to see him straight away.”

“Thank you.”

They had reached the wide, icy palace steps. When Robin drew to a halt, she slid off his back and dragged her packs off with her. Stiffly she bent to unbuckle them while the puck shapeshifted. As she pulled them apart, one of his thin strong hands came into view.

Wordlessly he took the pack that was the lighter one now that she was wearing the cloak. He had born her weight plus both packs through the night, so she wasn’t about to complain. She straightened and shouldered the other one. Then she followed him into the palace.

Inside, it was grand and abandoned. Normally she would have poured over every detail with intense fascination. Now, she had neither the time or the energy. Grand hallways, wide stairwells, and corridors all went by in a blur.

The sense of being watched by the dark Power intensified until the tiny hairs stood up on the back of her neck. Every Wyr sense she owned was screaming: Danger. Run.

But she did no such thing. She followed Robin down a wide, richly appointed corridor to a set of double doors made of a glossy, very dark wood. She almost expected Robin to pull out a key. Instead, he merely turned the knob and pushed the door open to a deeply shadowed room.

Oberon was in there. She knew it. She could feel it in the goosebumps raising on her arms and legs. This was the culmination of her long journey.

Here, the presence of the dark Power was almost unbearably intense. It felt like a thunderclap about to break against her skin. She half expected lightning to shear across the dark interior space.

Robin was looking at her as if he expected her to do something. So she did.

Setting down her pack, she sat down carefully in the floor at the edge of the doorway. Then because she was who she was, she multitasked and pulled out a bag of the high calorie, high fat trail mix.

Shaking some into her hand, she popped it in her mouth. After chewing and swallowing, she said, “Your majesty, my name is Dr. Shaw, and I have traveled a very long way to meet you. I am here to help you if I can, but I won’t attempt to do anything against your will. If you understand what I am saying, please give me some sort of sign that you consent to an examination.”

Then she paused. Nothing happened. Her wary gaze shifted sideways to Robin who had squatted by her side. The puck stared at he intently. She tilted the bag of trail mix toward him.

Slowly, his feral gaze never leaving her face, he reached into the bag and took a handful.

She turned her attention back to the shadowed room. “Sir, I have to ask you again, do I have your consent to examine you? Give me a sign, Oberon, or I’m going to go away. I was led to believe you were unconscious, but you’ve got too much raised Power to be completely unaware. I’ll make things simple for you – do you want to live, or do you want to die? Because you’re headed for death just fine on your own, and you don’t need me here for that.”

She ate some more trail mix while she waited. Mm, chocolate.

Nothing happened.

Disappointment made her shoulders sag. Okay then. Pushing to her feet, she said, “I’m going… going…”

Just as she was about to say gone, the unbearable intensity in the Power shifted. It didn’t go away, but as she assessed it, at least it no longer felt like it was going to ram like a spike down her throat.

Suddenly magic arced like lightning, and light flared in round witchlights positioned around a spacious, richly appointed bedroom. The figure of a large man lay on the bed. His shape was a dark, heavy shadow against the crimson and gold bedcover.

She was going to ignore the fact that she had almost jumpted out of her skin. She and Robin stared at each other, eyes wide.

“All right,” she whispered. “I’m going to take that as a consent to enter.” Even as she spoke, an unusual case of anxiety attacked her. Stepping inside that room felt like walking into the open mouth of a giant.

“I will enter with you,” Robin replied softly.

“Sure, okay,” she muttered, unimpressed. Oberon liked Robin.

Pushing to her feet, she left her pack in the doorway and slowly walked inside.

Then lightning bolts hit her after all, as several realizations struck at once.

He was a big, hard behemoth of a man. It was difficult to tell with him lying down, but she thought he might easily be the size of one of the gryphon sentinels, if not larger. He sprawled in a casual pose on the massive bed, as if he had had just lay down for a nap.

She glanced around her at the rich, but plain masculine furniture and the luxuriously thick rug underneath. Her mind flashed through rapid calculations.

A fortnight in Lyonesse roughly equaled six months on Earth, and on Earth Oberon had been in a comatose state for two hundred years. Four times two hundred—that meant he had been unconscious in Lyonesse for eight hundred weeks.

It was silly to think Lyonesse might have fifty-six weeks to a year just because Earth did, she thought, but for the sake of compiling a completely useless statistic, let’s say there were. Oberon had been in a vegatative state for almost fourteen and a half years.

The entire room, even Oberon, should be coated with a layer of dust, but everything was pristine. His muscles should have wasted, but they hadn’t. He looked fit, vital, and his skin was deeply burnished. He had a mature, sensual face with a short-clipped beard, and thick, packed muscles wrapped around his long, masculine frame.

It was a hard face, a dangerous face, with an outrageously sensual mouth. The severe cold invaded even this room, but he wore nothing except a pair of black pants and black boots. A sprinkle of dark hair dusted the broad muscles of his chest and arrowed down to disappear into the hem of his pants.

Looking at him outside the sterility of a hospital examination room felt invasive and intimate. Every detail struck her like bullets and burrowed underneath her skin. She felt invaded just by looking at him.

But none of that delivered the sucker-punch.

That blow came when she took her first breath after stepping into the room. For the first time, she breathed in his scent and reeled.

Oberon was Wyr.

 

Chapter Five

He dreamed of killing the bitch over and over again, caught on an endless loop.

Isabeau, Queen of the Light Court. Satan personified. She had a beauty like a rotten peach whose perfect, blush skin invited, but when you bit into the flesh poisonous worms spilled into your mouth.

He didn’t want her merely dead. He wanted her utterly crushed, completely destroyed, and then violently executed. He wanted her aware of her own destruction so when she sank into that final darkness she would know she had lost everything she had ever cared about and everything she had ever wanted.

Just as he had.

His hands squeezing around her neck. His thumbs gouging out her eyes. His sword sliding into her body.

Somehow in his dreams, it was never really satisfying, never really enough. Never really finished. Somehow, she always slipped away to come at him in another fashion.

And so he had to kill her again while kingdoms fell and life devolved into a single sick feeling in the gut, because everything was always in a crisis, and all that remained was rage.

Until a woman started speaking to him.

At first it was meaningless background noise to his death-filled dreams. But then it intruded, and life gained a definition beyond that sick sense of crisis in his gut.

Now there was a second thing.

There was the sound of her voice. Her, the woman. He had never met her before, but suddenly she came to be there, and she spoke to him, the words calm, bright, and crisp.

Sometimes there was silence and the killing dreams returned, but then the woman came back. If he had been awake and really aware it would have driven him crazy.

Because she talked, and talked, and talked.

And talked.

Then he no longer dreamed about killing Isabeau. Sometimes, he dreamed about figuring out ways to shut that talkative woman up.

 

________

Copyright: 2018 Teddy Harrison LLC

All rights reserved

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Available Now – The Elder Races: Complete Novella Bundle 2013-2018

More exciting news! THE ELDER RACES: COMPLETE NOVELLA BUNDLE 2013-2018 is available for download at all major vendors!

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From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Thea Harrison… comes all 13 previously published Elder Races novellas (2013-2018), in one convenient bundle.

This bundle contains True Colors, Natural Evil, Devil’s Gate, Hunter’s Season, The Wicked, Dragos Takes a Holiday, Pia Saves the Day, Peanut Goes to School, Dragos Goes to Washington, Pia Does Hollywood, Liam Takes Manhattan, The Chosen, and Planet Dragos. All stories previously published separately.

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While each of these novellas have been published separately, this is the first time you can get all 13 novellas in one volume for one low price. Download your copy now!

Now Available – A Dragon’s Family Album: Final Collection

Exciting news for fans of Dragos and Pia! A DRAGON’S FAMILY ALBUM: FINAL COLLECTION is now available for download!

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From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Thea Harrison… comes seven pre-released stories bundled into one convenient package.

This digital collection contains Dragos Takes a Holiday, Pia Saves the Day, Peanut Goes to School, Dragos Goes to Washington, Pia Does Hollywood, Liam Takes Manhattan, and Planet Dragos, all previously published separately.

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Although each of these 7 novellas are available separately, this is the first time all are bundled together as a single volume. Get your copy of A DRAGON’S FAMILY ALBUM: FINAL COLLECTION today!