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Shadowmated excerpt

Book two in the Rune Wolf series will be hitting ereaders in just over two weeks. In case you can’t wait, I’ve included an excerpt below.

But don’t dive down there yet! You’ll definitely want to read Matebranded before you give this one a try.

Already read book one? Then I hope you enjoy this sneak peek into Elspeth’s second adventure.

***

​Chapter 1

Infiltrating enemy turf was hard enough without a magical tattoo doling out dating advice. Especially when the matebrand in question seemed singularly uninterested in my survival. If anything, it appeared intent upon getting us caught.

Or so we realized soon after Orion and I crept down the deserted alley toward a darkened high-rise. According to his pack mates’ recon, a single guard patrolled inside, following a predictable loop that should have kept him well away from our entrance point. At least until—

Movement flashed in my peripheral vision. A man stepped out onto the sidewalk a mere fifteen feet from us, his crisp uniform and billed cap identifying him as building security. Unhurried, he lifted a cigarette to his lips with one meaty hand while the other sparked his lighter. A smoke break. Utterly routine…except for the faint sheen of electricity crackling through the air.

Magic. The matebrand must have nudged the guard’s habits to draw him out here, and I had a feeling I knew precisely what it would take for that amorphous sentience to let the deviation drop.

Still, Orion and I tried to get out of our predicament the easy way. We froze, counting on the guard’s human vision missing us in the near total darkness.

No such luck. He tensed and began scouring the shadows with slow, measured sweeps of his gaze. Which was a problem since there was no reason for anyone to be lurking in this deserted side street at this predawn hour. As soon as the guard saw us, he’d forget about his smoke break, remember his job, and investigate.

Especially if the matebrand manipulated him yet again.

Sure enough, the tattoos on my forearm itched, displaying the faintest hint of a power that had been much more vibrant before Orion broke our mate connection weeks ago. Hairs came erect along my nape just as they’d done three other times at three very inopportune moments. The guard took the first small step in our direction…

…And I gave in to the matebrand’s insistence. I giggled, swaying as if I was drunk before grabbing onto Orion’s arm for support. In response, the ink beneath my fingers subtly rearranged itself to accentuate the hardness of his muscles. My own ink tingled in reaction, the former itch transitioning to a yearning.

I should allow the tattoos on my skin to reconnect with those on Orion’s. We could be matebranded again. It would be so easy to give in to the inevitable…

Not happening. Not when reconnection meant the matebrand would once again assume control over our lives.

Gritting my teeth, I ruthlessly severed the tendril of my own craving, listening rather than watching as the guard’s boots scuffed fractionally closer. He was still suspicious, which meant…

“Ready for another round of enforced proximity?” Orion’s rumbled words carried the slightest edge of a purr. As he spoke, he swiveled us both around until the irregular bumps of a parking meter bit into my hip. His broad back shielded us from view while also hiding the fact that we weren’t actually pressed front to front the way the matebrand wanted.

I froze, imagining angling my body just the slightest bit to wipe away the unwanted empty space between us. My cheeks heated as I breathed in the cactus-flower aroma wafting off Orion in waves. Flower petals seemed to brush my tongue as I murmured, “You’ve been doing your homework. Getting caught up on all the romance tropes?”

Then I lost track of words as his hand rose to cup the air around my cheek. From the guard’s perspective, it would look like a caress. It felt like a caress, air currents providing the contact Orion wouldn’t.

I shivered, forgetting our reasons for keeping our distance, wishing Orion wasn’t so meticulous about granting me personal space. He didn’t close that final centimeter between us however. Because he refused to give the matebrand leverage until and unless I overtly told him I was ready to take that step.

I wasn’t ready. Still, it was hard not to focus on the sweet parts of our lost connection with Orion’s skin so close to my skin. Despite every rational reason to keep my distance, I swayed in closer, drawn by the flutter of Orion’s breath against my lips as he replied to a question I’d forgotten asking.

“My sister gave me half a dozen bodice rippers,” he rumbled. “That hotel being almost entirely full last week now makes so much more sense.”

I named the trope absently while letting my head drift sideways. “Just one room. A classic for a reason.”

In lieu of further words, his hand feathered down to trace the curve of my neck, still keeping a buffer of air between us yet managing to stroke my nerve endings regardless. The patterns he wove above my skin might have been tattooed there if we’d let the matebrand continue expanding across our bodies. The tingle of awareness that spun through me, though, had nothing to do with the matebrand and everything to do with the undeniable chemistry between Orion and myself.

Chemistry so sublime I didn’t realize the guard was gone until retreating footsteps were cut off by the thunk of a metal door shutting. Only then did Orion mutter something I couldn’t quite make out before stepping back and taking the cactus-flower aroma with him.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” he asked at a more audible register.

For a split second, I thought he meant denying the matebrand’s formation. For a split second, I considered saying no.

Then I remembered what we’d come here for. “I’m sure that if we don’t break in, Celeste will do it herself.” I answered, my voice huskier than it should have been.

Strong and solid as always, Orion nodded. “Alright then. Back to work.”

***

Ever since my adopted sister tore apart her father’s study and found out about her shifter heritage, she’d searched for confirmation of her guess that other werewolves were being similarly experimented upon. To that end, she’d returned to Julius’s mansion to gather evidence while I’d done the same as best I could from the outside.

Her involvement had driven me crazy. Celeste couldn’t shift the way I could. She was a kindergarten teacher, for crying out loud. She didn’t need to put herself in harm’s way by returning to the place where we’d both been raised as unwitting lab animals.

“I can do more where I’m at,” Celeste had rebutted when I’d tried to suggest she move in with either Orion’s pack or my Aunt Vega’s. “You live your life and I’ll live mine.”

Her response had hurt and I wasn’t so sure she hadn’t meant it to. The memory of my past actions sat like a wall between us, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say my goal here tonight was as much to remove that wall as it was to save shifter kids I wasn’t even sure existed.

As if he felt my inner turmoil down our non-existent mate bond, Orion’s hand reached toward mine then retreated without touching. Most likely, he smelled my roiling emotions. Which was a good reminder that I needed to get my head on straight.

So I pushed away thoughts of sisters and mate bonds and I skimmed my gaze across the facility that we’d determined was the most likely possibility for caging experimental werewolves. The top floors were rented out to various businesses for office space while an extensive basement had been soundproofed then never put to any obvious use. And yet, a paper trail suggested food was delivered here at regular intervals. Council members came and went occasionally. The security levels were considerably higher than for any other building on the block.

There was only one way to find out whether we were right about what was inside.

“Ready?” I asked Orion.

“Ready,” he answered. Then he guarded my back as I padded down rough concrete steps to a door far less modern than the one the guard had come out of. This was our saving grace—the Council had apparently decided on stealth over effectiveness. Thirty seconds with my lock picks and the door swung open into pitch dark.

The space was dark but not devoid of sensation. A dank, musty tang washed over us as Orion and I padded inside. Then the door to the street thudded shut behind our backs.

I reached for my flashlight. But before I could flick it on, an overhead light flared, brilliantly illuminating our surroundings. At which point, I discovered our first mistake.

I’d assumed if that outer door was easy to get through, we were home free. But the Council left nothing to chance.

Instead, we appeared to be stuck inside a vestibule with the only viable options being retreat or passing through a seemingly impenetrable inner door. There was no obvious lock, no keypad even. Just biometric scanners that would currently be powered off—I hoped—and the possibility of caged werewolf children on the other side.

For the first time, I let myself imagine what those caged children might be like. Had they been brought up to believe their lupine halves were distasteful, twisted just like I’d been into reviling the very essence of their beings? Or perhaps they’d been genetically manipulated like Celeste and had never managed a single shift.

I only realized I was shivering when Orion spoke my name. “Elspeth?” His voice was more vibration than sound.

“I’m fine,” I lied, keeping my volume just as quiet as his had been. “Call it in.”

His werewolf senses meant he could taste the bitterness in the air, so it was no wonder Orion growled softly. Still, he didn’t argue. Instead, he pulled out his phone and typed in a request to his hacker contact.

One moment later, the lights went out. Pitch darkness, silence…then the distant hum of a generator springing to life.

“You’re sure this is a good idea?” I asked. “If we start an electrical fire, the kids…”

“It will be a very small flame,” Orion promised just like he’d done the first time we discussed this. “And our contact is certain that there’s a fail-safe to open all locks in the event of a fire.”

Nothing happened though. Well, nothing other than the barely present scent of something burning seeping through invisible cracks around the inner door. That plus the faintest whoop of a smoke detector nearly entirely muffled by soundproofed walls.

Our plan wasn’t going to work. Celeste’s face would pinch with the same disappointment that had colored her voice last month when I’d prioritized strangers above her students. She’d think I hadn’t really tried. That I didn’t value what she valued. That our bond as sisters was irreparably broken, just like the mate connection that Orion and I had lost.

No, I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to come up with another way in. I needed to…

The door clicked open. Which would have been welcome if evidence of a larger-than-expected flame hadn’t immediately flowed through the opening to fill the vestibule. Illuminated by the dim glow of backup lighting, a hallway stretched out before us full of haze reddened by LEDs. Roiling smoke was already so thick it burned my eyes and seared my lungs, but that wasn’t the worst of our problems.

Amid the haze, the silhouette of a figure nearly as large as Orion blocked the doorway. “Welcome,” a male voice intoned, “to the underworld.”

***

​Chapter 2

Smoke messed with my ability to smell, but I would have caught a tinge of fur if this man was lupine. I was sure of it.

Nearly sure of it.

Beside me, Orion shook his head very slightly. No, he didn’t think the stranger was a shifter either. Which left a few possibilities, the most likely of which was—Council employee.

Still, I would have given the stranger benefit of the doubt if the door behind us hadn’t opened at that very moment. “I know you told me to wait,” Celeste said as she breezed through and shut herself into the smoky interior alongside us, “but you’re running behind schedule and…oh. Who are you?”

The stranger’s voice dropped, turning seductive. “Finnegan. And you are?”

For one long moment, my sister just stared at him. She’d be taking in what I’d seen already, but I had a sinking suspicion she was spinning those same physical features into a very different narrative.

Because Finnegan was tall and lean, with a messy mop of dark hair that fell into his eyes and gave him a boyish charm despite the fact he otherwise appeared very close to my age and Celeste’s—mid-twenties. His tailored suit made no sense for a man woken in the middle of the night but did an astonishingly good job of emphasizing corded muscles. And the dark trench coat layered on top was currently open at the front in a way that framed him to full advantage. Only the faint sheen of sweat along his hairline hinted at any discomfort with the heat and smoke that currently had me stifling a cough.

No wonder my sister’s voice turned husky. “I’m Celeste. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Curling through the smoke, I caught the sickly sweet scent of Celeste’s arousal. Caught something less clearcut from the stranger, although the intensity of his gaze upon her person suggested my sister’s interest was very much returned.

I didn’t like this one bit.

Especially when the stranger—Finnegan—took a step forward. Celeste’s hand stretched out as if she intended him to shake or kiss it, even though he might just as easily grab her wrist and yank her off balance, turning her into a hostage…

Orion and I slammed into each other in our haste to form a barrier between the stranger and my sister.

“Keep your distance,” Orion growled.

I expected Finnegan to growl back. If he’d been a wolf, he would have been dominant. Something about his stance made me sure of that.

Instead, he lifted one arm to reveal what had been hidden behind his trench coat—a garbage bag full of clothing “Is this a rescue or isn’t it? I’m packed and ready to go.”

I frowned, rearranging my assumptions, or trying to over the blaring alarms and eye-burning smoke. Was it possible we’d gotten our wires crossed? Was this basement meant to cage adult werewolves rather than children?

No matter how hard I sniffed, though, Finnegan continued to smell entirely human. Which meant, counterintuitively, I needed to treat him like a greater threat.

Because a human was more likely to be working for the Council. It would have been nice to be able to communicate that guesswork down a mate bond. As it was, I had to hope Orion’s thought processes ran along a similar path to mine.

“You got this?” I asked.

Orion didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he struck in a flash of shifter-expedited movement. One blink, then Finnegan’s face was pressed up against the wall, one trench-coat-clad arm twisted up behind his back. Celeste barely had time to gasp before Orion uttered a single syllable:

“Yep.”

“Great.” Problematic stranger taken care of, I grabbed my sister’s wrist then tugged her out of the vestibule and into the hallway. After all, there were still children to hunt for, whether Finnegan was their jailer or an older captive as he claimed.

I’d expected the smoke to be worse here, but it was actually a little better. So that wasn’t the reason my sister strained away from me, trying to stay close to the double set of doors that opened onto the vestibule. She was the one who’d been adamant that we follow this lead as soon as possible. But even as her feet unstuck and she trailed behind me into the increasing darkness, she acted as reluctant as when Julius had refused to let our younger selves leave the table until we’d cleared everything green off our plates.

“Orion’s hurting him,” my sister complained, her voice louder than was really necessary even with the cacophony blaring.

No, that wasn’t right. Among humans, Celeste’s speech would have been entirely appropriate to the surroundings. I’d just gotten used to living among wolves.

Wolves who wouldn’t consider what Orion was doing excessive. No bones had cracked and I doubted Finnegan’s muscles were really straining. “He’ll be fine,” I answered, opening a door in hopes it was the kitchen. No such luck.

“We can’t leave him alone with…” Celeste started.

“Orion?” I finished her thought absently, traveling faster into the haze.

“An alpha werewolf,” my sister answered under her breath, perhaps not expecting me to hear her. “You know how they get.”

There was so much to unpack there…so much I would have said myself two months ago. Now was neither the time nor the place for word-bending however. Not when I had a blazing appliance to find behind one of the closed doors that lined both sides of the stark hallway. A scavenger hunt with a hard deadline—douse the device with fire repellent before the entire building went up in flames.

Yesterday, I’d agreed with our hacker’s suggestion to set up a long-distance fire by overloading a smart toaster. It made good sense after all. The appliance was bound to be outside any sleeping quarters, giving me and Orion time to squelch the problem after smoke triggered the unlocking of doors and before the blaze really took hold.

But we hadn’t counted on dilly-dallying talking to a stranger, then talking about a stranger. We hadn’t counted on Celeste joining the invasion, moving slower than a shifter would have as she trailed her fingers along the wall to make up for the dim lighting. I just hoped the combined delays didn’t mean fire had flared up to cabinet level before we reached the source.

The second door opened onto a room that wasn’t the habitat of a toaster any more than the first had been. The third, though…

Yep, the toaster was in here somewhere. Hidden behind that wall of unquenchable flames.

***

Celeste was the one who slammed the door, cutting off the flow of billowing smoke. My eyes didn’t just tear now. They burned, trying to squeeze shut to protect delicate membranes.

I could see well enough, though, to know that the kitchen had passed the point of fire suppression. Celeste was right to create a barrier between the conflagration and the hallway. She was also right to hurry us further down the hallway, away from the exit rather than toward it.

After all, there could still be children locked in one of the rooms we hadn’t checked yet.

The two spaces we’d looked into on the way to the kitchen had been a bathroom and a living room, both currently devoid of life. Which left three doors further down the hall…

I hesitated, uncertain whether it would be safer to send Celeste back toward Orion and the stranger or to let her follow me deeper into what Finnegan had termed the underworld. My sister was the one who made the decision for us. “We’re not leaving kids behind in this,” she said, taking the lead as she felt her way deeper into the smoke.

Past the kitchen, heat from the fire turned suffocating. If I had to guess, I’d say the flames had burned through an interior wall and spread in this direction. It also seemed as if the air-filtration system was drawing smoke toward this end of the hallway, condensing it beyond the filter’s ability to clean.

The thought fizzled in my head, rational explanations pushed aside by painful skin prickling. By breathing gone raspy. A cough started in my lungs then shook my entire body in a way I couldn’t seem to stop.

Then Celeste was sloshing water out of a plastic bottle onto my sleeve and dragging that sleeve across my nose. The layer of wet fabric helped a little, enough so I could peer at her to ensure she’d done the same.

“Never underestimate a kindergarten teacher,” my sister admonished, her voice coming out as a croak from behind what appeared to be a cloth handkerchief tied across her nose and mouth.

My sister was right—she’d had more foresight that I had. And it wasn’t so much that I was underestimating her. It was that working together on a critical mission was unfamiliar territory for the two of us. I’d been trained to walk through hazards unflinching. She hadn’t. And I needed Celeste to make it out of here alive.

I didn’t waste time trying—and failing—to send her away though. Instead, I took the lead as we entered a portion of the hallway so smoky Celeste had to grab onto the back of my shirt to keep her bearings. Even my shifter-assisted eyesight had turned our surroundings into a blur now. Smoke and heat pressed against us in a suffocating embrace.

I could barely discern the first door on my right, the opposite side of the hallway from the kitchen. My hand had just touched the knob—still cool—when heavy footsteps pounded up behind us.

Orion. I knew the cadence of his stride without having to look, but I glanced backwards anyway as the dark shape behind me rumbled, “Finnegan swears there’s no one else here.” Despite his words, Orion continued to keep his body between Finnegan—who’d followed him down the hallway—and the rest of us.

“Won’t hurt to check,” I answered, yanking open the door. Before haze took over the air inside, I scanned the space and found it just as devoid of life as the others.

This room was an office, complete with desk and computer. Would a prisoner be given supplies like those? But if Finnegan wasn’t a prisoner, wouldn’t he have taken advantage of Orion’s turned back in order to call for reinforcements?

Which is when I realized Celeste’s fingers had left my shirt. My rasping breath was so loud in my own ears, I hadn’t heard her move away from me. But I caught the motion as she opened the next door down, the last one on the non-kitchen side.

“Bedroom,” she called back to us.

“Mine,” Finnegan answered, “and you look remarkably good in it.”

Just like everyone else’s, his voice had turned rough from smoke inhalation. No, that wasn’t quite right. His tone was also tinged with flirtation despite heat from the kitchen pressing into our skin like a physical force.

Celeste was mostly human, so she should have felt ten times worse than I did. Still, she leaned toward Finnegan while his entire body angled back in her direction. Both of them appeared willing to make calf eyes as the building we were inside literally went up in flames.

“Terrible pickup line,” I muttered under my breath. “Even worse timing.”

I’d kept my voice shifter low, but Finnegan as well as Orion responded by glancing in my direction. Celeste didn’t. She was so intent upon gazing at Finnegan that I expected cartoon hearts to pop out of the smoky air and form a halo around her head.

I’d never seen my sister like this. Still, when we watched movies together, she always ogled the bad boys. Was this the moment she fell for exactly the wrong man, not on screen but in real life?

Something fell then, but it wasn’t Celeste. Instead, the crash came from the kitchen. I could only hope a cabinet had come loose from the wall rather than a structural support losing its integrity. Surely a building this large would be framed in metal? Still…

“I swear there’s no one else here,” Finnegan said, his tone turning urgent as if he’d just realized he and Celeste were inside a burning building. “Let’s go.”

“There’s one more room,” Celeste countered, already moving toward the door on the kitchen side of the hallway. The door I suspected would open onto flames.

A louder crash emerged from the kitchen. The wall on that side bulged as if something heavy pressed up against it. If sheet rock collapsed into the hallway, Celeste’s only exit route would be blocked…

“It’s time to evacuate. Ladies first.”

The alpha command spun me around and thrust my feet forward before I fully understood what was happening. My motions weren’t my own as I hurried back down the hall, aiming toward the exit. Only the sound of Celeste’s parallel footsteps prevented me from struggling against the compulsion and forcing myself to stay in place.

As I walked, I puzzled as best I could while breathing through my sleeve and swiping at tearing eyes. My sister wouldn’t have left that doorknob unturned of her own free will, which meant shifter magic worked on her even though she showed no other signs of having a connection to her wolf. Thank you, Orion, I thought, grateful he’d guessed my sister’s susceptibility and used it to protect her.

Then Orion’s growl carried down the hall through the smoke. “You’re a wolf.”

“Not much of one,” Finnegan answered. “Can’t shift. Perhaps we could hold the rest of this conversation somewhere the walls aren’t about to cave in on us?”

Whatever Orion replied, I didn’t hear it. Because the alpha command—Finnegan’s alpha command?—continued carrying me down the hallway faster and faster. I thrust open the unlocked outer door and stumbled out into the fresh air of the dimly lit alley. There, I bent over and hacked out sooty yuck that had settled in my throat, blinking my eyes furiously to clear my sight.

It took me far too long to straighten and look for a sister who might need my help. Shifter constitutions tended to be hardier than humans’, and Celeste was far more human than she was lupine. The smoke had been bad there at the end, far too bad for damp cloth over a nose to protect us. Celeste might not have made it…

She had made it. Wasn’t in any distress, apparently.

Instead, my sister stood with her head cocked, gazing intently at the doorway we’d so recently stumbled out of. She was waiting for something. She was waiting for—

Finnegan emerged, not bent over but rather just as tall and sturdy as he’d looked when he greeted us the first time. His trench coat billowed out behind him like a cinematic wizard’s cloak, and he didn’t seem to chafe at its bulk despite the Texas heat and the fiery interior he’d just strode through.

In response, Celeste sighed, the breeze of air wending out of her lips soft and awestruck. I had a sinking suspicion I’d just witnessed love at first sight.

***

Keep reading on the retailer of your choice!

 

The post Shadowmated excerpt appeared first on Aimee Easterling.

New box set, new anthology, and new audio short!

While Shadowmated is visiting with my beta reader, I finally put my head down and launched a bunch of goodies that have been sitting around waiting to be shared with you. (Yes, launching is my last favorite part of the publishing process. Yes, I have even more goodies that will sit on my hard drive a little longer because I ran out of oomph after doing all this.)

Without further ado, the goodies!

The entire Time Bites Trilogy is now available as an omnibus edition in ebook, paperback, and audio formats! Yes, you can save quite a bit this way, especially if you buy in the next couple of days before launch pricing ends.

***

Meanwhile, the sister book is A Dog’s Dinner & Other Stories, which includes shorts from the Moon Marked, No Fox Given, and Time Bites series. This new release is only available in ebook and paperback since I don’t have audio editions available for all of the shorts.

However, some shorts are available as standalones audio. I’ve included those links below:

OutfoxedThe Alpha Puzzle & Broke Truck, Lost PupA Dog’s Dinner

***

Finally, Hot Shift is now available in audio! The ebook and print versions came out a couple of weeks ago, bundled into the Hot Shift & Other Stories anthology.

Phew! That’s a lot of new books in a short space of time. I hope they hold you over until my next novel releases in June. Thanks for reading!

The post New box set, new anthology, and new audio short! appeared first on Aimee Easterling.

New Release: Hot Shift

When a mysterious outsider crashes Terra’s fiftieth birthday party, her position as female alpha hangs by a thread. Uncontrollable shifts make matters worse as Terra and her mate go undercover to hunt through the circus for missing family members. Can they bring their daughter and pack mates home before it’s too late?

This bonus epilogue is set after and contains spoilers for the Wolf Rampant Trilogy. Included along with scads of other stories in the anthology Hot Shift & Other Stories. Keep reading for a peek inside…

***

​Chapter 1

Hot flashes are werewolf kryptonite.

One moment, I was watching my mate Wolfie insinuate himself into a pack of circus dogs, pretending to obey the trainer who guided my mate, two poodles, and a Great Dane through a series of gymnastic contortions. We were smack dab in the middle of the field behind our home, a space newly redolent with buttery popcorn and sweet cotton candy. Calliope music carried through the night air, combining with excited shouts from pack mates as they played carnival games and gasped at the simulated magic of tumblers and fire eaters.

The next moment, real magic struck. An unrelenting wave of heat surged through me, waking my inner wolf and threatening to expose shifter existence to the human performers brought in to celebrate my fiftieth birthday.

Not that I understood what was happening at first. I assumed, instead, that the uncomfortable warmth came from standing too close to the bonfire. I was watching my pack mates with an eagle eye, having mandated we all either stick to two or four legs, no switching. And it was gradually becoming clear that even the most volatile among us would manage to toe the line.

Everyone except me, that is. Because the blaze in my core flared up into a conflagration before I realized the bonfire wasn’t responsible. There was no way I could flee into one of the distant houses before the shift seized hold of me. Instead, all I could do was rush toward the outskirts of the crowd, past the games and neon-lit rides, hoping I’d find a patch of darkness to hide within while my wolf burst out of my human skin.

Pack laughter morphed into cacophony as I fought down blind animal instinct. I was no longer part of a united whole. Instead, imaginary claws scratched their way down my spine, giving me the distinct impression that at least one pair of watching eyes didn’t wish me well.

But I couldn’t focus my bleary vision well enough to hunt for the source of that danger. My humanity was already fading, the wolf within me trying to gain ascendance…
Meanwhile, the vibrant colors of circus lights dazzled and dizzied. I stumbled, my knees wanting to re-bend into a new configuration, my arms reaching for the ground no matter how hard I tried to keep them loose and natural. Hairs pushing up out of my skin made the heat inside me worsen. My teeth cut sharp against the inside of my lip.

Then I saw it. An empty fortuneteller’s booth. Dark, sheltered. Whoever ran the attraction was elsewhere, and I didn’t hesitate. Just shoved my way through the curtain then recoiled at the stench of a wolf not affiliated with our pack.

Fur. Dominance. Danger.

The reek had mixed with heavy sandalwood incense swirling from a burner, and the unpleasant combination pushed me over the edge. I didn’t have time to take off my clothes. Didn’t have time to call to my mate down the tether that joined us. Just twisted in on myself, the blaze of the hot flash searing through me as human bones melted and reformed lupine. Claws burst forth from curled fingers. Scents rushed into my nostrils with sharp intensity. Shaking my fur, I tossed away the last vestiges of my humanity along with the hot flash.

I was instantly, gratefully cool.

Which is when the velvet curtain parted to let in a wolf-scented woman. She was a stranger, no one I’d ever met before. Yet, she greeted me by name.

“Terra Wilder. First female alpha. I’m a big fan.”

The words sounded complimentary, but there was something dark beneath them. As if this woman two decades my junior was laughing at me, and not because of my hot-flash-induced shift either.

I wanted to reply, but I’d learned over the last couple of years that my thermoregulationary malfunction would return if I didn’t lean into being a wolf for a while. So I cocked my head, hoping the stranger would elaborate on why she was angry, why she was here in the first place.

She didn’t. Instead, someone else pushed through the curtain behind her. Someone who flared his lupine nostrils, considered the woman draped in scarves and bangles, then yawned as only Wolfie could when facing down potential danger.

My mate didn’t consider a vagrant dominant worth his while. Didn’t bother glaring her out of this tent, a matter he could have taken care of so easily she wouldn’t have stopped running until long after she left our territorial boundary behind.

Instead, he dismissed the woman who’d made my fur bristle and trotted over to lick my face in commiseration. “Rough one?” he sent down the mate bond.

A few minutes earlier, he’d been frolicking with a pink party hat atop his lupine head, a hat that had since twisted down to rest alongside one cheek. His neck was encircled by a rhinestone collar that had been presented to him by the same pack mate who glitter-dusted his coat into several shades of way-too-bright.

To cut a long story short, Wolfie should have looked like a joke. Instead, his strength, his warmth, was palpable. He was all rock-solid partner and co-alpha. No wonder I leaned into him without consciously intending to do so, seeking the unique combination of goofball and comfort that was as familiar as my own heartbeat.

The tension inside me uncoiled. If Wolfie didn’t think the strange wolf was a problem, I didn’t either. If he didn’t think I’d made a mess of things by shifting after ordering everyone else in our pack to stick to one form, then I was ready to forgive myself.

“Not so rough,” I answered honestly, “now that you’re here.”

​Chapter 2

My mate and I padded back out to rejoin the circus together, the same lights and music that had made me queasy earlier now bubbling joy through my center. And our pack exacerbated the pleasure. Over the course of the next hour, various friends dropped by to purchase corn dogs for us, to clip glittery bows onto my fur, and—in Ember’s case—to pay for a game of hoop toss.

“Which stuffie do you want?” Wolfie asked me silently via the mate bond after our daughter had left. The joy radiating off his lupine form proved that he was entirely caught up in the moment.

I was right there with him, but I also couldn’t resist pointing my snout at the toy that reminded me of Ember twenty years ago. She’d been a rascally pup, as in her wolf brain as Wolfie while lacking his maturity. At the time, I’d felt like I was treading water, trying to keep our pack together while also preventing Ember from literally lighting herself on fire. Now, she was a confidante and ally…and I missed being able to enclose her entire squirming body in my arms.

Wolfie must have caught a bit of the emotion that went along with my gesture because he stilled, his earlier antics fading. With supreme care, he picked up the first ring in lupine teeth and flung it toward the indicated stuffie with all the intensity of a skilled predator.

It should have been an easy win. Wolfie was able to snap grasshoppers out of the air in wolf form and catch fruit flies in his human fist. His coordination was impeccable.
But the ring turned sideways as it flew. Twisted and ended up stuck between a giraffe and a tiger two feet away from his target.

My mate wasn’t the one who’d messed up. The ring was clearly weighted to fail.

Any other alpha werewolf would have torn the cheating carny’s throat out. Wolfie just huffed out a lupine laugh, and I caught some sort of pun running through his mind involving the ringmaster having not quite mastered this particular ring yet. Then his attention narrowed in on the hunt as he picked up the second hoop.

In contrast, my attention was distracted by something far less sweet. Because a bitter tinge was sliding down the pack bond toward us. It came not as words but as emotions, their source inconclusive but their meaning as clear as the pang they created in my chest.

A member of our clan felt stifled here. Craved adventure. Hoped the fortuneteller would help them find what they were lacking.

I spun, scanning the crowd for faces of pack mates who might be chaffing against Wolfie’s and my leadership. But everyone was laughing. Everyone was enjoying themselves.

Well, almost everyone. A slender form I recognized from behind as easily as if I was holding her twenty-years-younger body in my arms slipped through the curtain to enter the fortuneteller’s tent.

Our adopted daughter Ember had become part of this pack in a way that made the word adopted anathema. Every member of our clan was an honorary aunt, uncle, or cousin to her. She baked us surprise pick-me-ups, lived in her fur as easily as her human skin, and had grown to become one of my very closest friends.

She was also, apparently, the stifled werewolf who wanted to leave our pack.

***

I didn’t see whether Wolfie won the stuffie. Because I was already loping through the crowd away from him, throttling down our connection to a thread slender enough so he’d believe the excuse I pushed back in the direction from which I’d come.

Indigestion. I needed a moment in private.

I wasn’t lying either. When I thought about Ember leaving, my stomach felt like it was tying itself into knots. Plus, I had a pretty good idea that her discontent would hit Wolfie even harder than it was currently hitting me. Better to debrief our daughter solo before pulling my mate into the loop.

Unfortunately, it’s no easy matter for an alpha to pass unnoticed among her pack mates. One of the current generation of troublesome teenagers we called yahoos had found a way to cheat at balloon darts. Another was trying to lead the circus animals in a revolt against their trainer despite the dog-wolf language barrier. And our resident gardener was furious because one of the circus support staff had backed a truck into her blueberries, flattening decades of growth.

To cut a long story short, by the time I reached the fortuneteller’s tent, Ember was gone. The curtained space was salty with my daughter’s tears, though, and I could no longer feel her down the pack bond. So perhaps I could be forgiven for barely making it inside the curtains before I shifted up into my human form, immediately tossing an alpha command at the strange werewolf.

“Tell me where my daughter is,” I demanded.

My dominance should have been sufficient to force words out of the other woman’s mouth. Instead, she laughed in my face. And when she spoke, she didn’t mention Ember at all.

“My name is Fiona, thank you for asking. And, yes, I was an alpha just like you. One of the little girls who believed that if Terra could do it, then I could do it also. Only, I didn’t have a big, bad bloodling backing me up. So when my pack mates received a better offer, they left me. Guess I’m not an alpha anymore.”

Her story should have tugged at my heartstrings. Instead, I did exactly what she’d accused me of—I drew upon my mate’s strength and used his borrowed power to growl,

“So you’re trying to steal my daughter to rebuild your pack.”

Lack of dominance clearly couldn’t have been the reason Fiona’s pack mates left her. Because even with a hint of Wolfie beneath my words, she found it easy to counter my question with a question. “Is it stealing to tell an adult she has options?”

“What options?”

“To look for a mate somewhere every eligible bachelor isn’t considered a cousin. To attend baking school in Paris rather than trying to hone her skills on YouTube videos. Anything other than staying stifled in a pack where she’ll always be overshadowed by parents who aren’t even biologically her own.”

The truth of the stranger’s accusations struck like a blow. No wonder this space reeked of Ember’s tears.

The growl that arose could have been mine, but it wasn’t. Looking down, I found Wolfie at my hip, still rhinestoned and glittered but no longer even slightly playful. His lips had curled back, his ears were pinned, and it was crystal clear he wasn’t a wolf to be crossed.

Yep, realizing our daughter wanted to spread her wings was an even tougher pill for him to swallow than it had been for me.

Thankfully, Wolfie and I had honed our partnership over the years. When I was weak, he held me up. When he was out of control, I reined him in.

Now, I managed to tamp down my own sadness in the face of my mate’s aggression. Fiona was baiting us; I could see that now. She hadn’t outright lied, but she hadn’t answered any of my questions head-on either. She was playing with our emotions the way she’d likely played with Ember’s. If I had to guess, her goal was to lure me and Wolfie into a fight with her, which would inevitably draw in our pack mates and reveal the existence of werewolves to the circus performers outside this tiny curtained enclosure.

She was banking on the fact that even Wolfie had to obey national laws. If we revealed ourselves to humans so flagrantly, the powers that be would have no choice but to dole out punishment. It might take half a dozen alphas to neutralize my mate, but sheer numbers meant they’d win in the end.

And our pack? I couldn’t lead without Wolfie’s assistance. Could Fiona? Was that her long-term goal?

The likelihood that this entire confrontation had been meticulously organized to win Fiona a pack was just slotting into place in my mind when Wolfie attacked.

Chapter 3

“Shut down the circus! Get the humans out of here!” I broadcast via the pack bond, not bothering to target any specific individuals, just ordering everyone alike.
Then I fixated my attention upon Fiona, who’d gone four-legged in the moment I’d been focused elsewhere. She slithered out of robes that might as well have been designed to be easily discarded by a wolf, and she attacked with all the finesse my mate currently lacked.

Because Wolfie was lost in a fury I’d seldom seen him consumed by. At the present moment, he was a worried father instead of a smart alpha. All the control he’d shown when faced with a cheating carny was long gone.

Fiona, in contrast, was full of cold calculation. And she was deeply intent upon the win.

No wonder she managed to dart in under her opponent’s guard, ripping a gash into the skin above his ribs before retreating just as quickly. Down the mate bond, I could tell that Wolfie didn’t even feel the injury. But when his blood splattered crimson onto the woven rugs beneath us, it was all I could to do not to shift and dive into the fray.

Biting down hard on the inside of my cheek, the taste of my own blood helped me focus. Fiona wanted us to shift in front of humans, which meant she intended this fight to spill out of the curtained enclosure before our pack could get the hired circus staff out of the area. Already, she was tempting Wolfie toward a wall he could easily burst through. To make matters worse, the air wafting away from that corner was so redolent with our daughter’s tears that I wasn’t surprised when the already bristling fur between Wolfie’s shoulder blades came even further erect.

The scent was working on me also, but I fought back using memories that I not only held firm in my mind but also thrust toward Wolfie via our mate bond. Ember, yesterday, delivering pre-birthday cupcakes elaborately decorated with paw prints and wolf faces. Ember guiding the yahoos away from high jinks that would end in broken bones and toward ones that resulted in deep belly laughs. Ember repeatedly showing that she had a good head on her shoulders and was happy here, at least most of the time.

Yes, our daughter was young and sometimes cried, but she was resilient also. She’d be alright.

My reminders didn’t appear to make any difference to Wolfie, but they kept me on track. If I wasn’t much mistaken, Fiona would have found a way to draw humans into her tent just in case she wasn’t able to tempt us out of its shelter. Which meant I needed to be ready…

I yanked on the clothes I’d discarded an hour ago during my hot-flash-induced shift, clothes Fiona had left where they fell. I didn’t take time for underwear, just drew on jeans and a t-shirt, running one hand through hair that, yep, still had bows clipping sections into little-girl tufts.

I’d just gotten the first bow loose when two men who weren’t part of our pack burst through the curtains. By nose, I could tell they were humans. By sight, I recognized one as the dog trainer, the other as the ringmaster.

“That’s Fiona’s dog!” the former exclaimed. He had a whip in his hand, the same one he’d used entirely theatrically during a recent performance. He seemed to be considering using the whip far less theatrically against my mate now.

“She attacked my dog,” I retorted, sidling over to place myself between the humans and the wolves.

As I spoke, Wolfie and Fiona came together again and this time stayed together. I couldn’t tell who’d gotten hold of the other’s throat, could just see two shades of fur merging into one as the opponents tumbled end over end in a two-wolf ball of snarling fury.

The dog trainer stepped sideways and cracked his whip far too close to Wolfie for comfort. And I didn’t think. Just thrust my hand into the mass of teeth and claws, latching down on the sole part that didn’t look like the others.

The rhinestone collar. My fingers didn’t clench shut around the restraint but instead pressed deeper into the fur on either side…

Fingertips made contact with my mate’s hot flesh, and at the same time I strove to get through to him via the mate bond. We had to be smart. We had to stop this. He’d promised to let me take charge when my head was clear and his wasn’t. He’d promised…

Wolfie instantly went limp in my grip.

Fiona was the one who tried again to provoke us. Not with an attack, though. Instead, whining, she rolled over to show off the blood staining her flank. The blood that had originated inside my mate.

I only realized I was growling when Wolfie sent words down our mate bond, words that proved the teeter-totter of rationality had landed on his side this time. “I lost more blood than that when our daughter gave me a nosebleed during Ember ball.”

Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to remember the way pack mates had tossed our favorite wolf pup through the air as a game twenty-four years earlier. The laughter as Ember accidentally slammed into my mate’s face. My horror as blood exploded over both father and daughter. The way the event had mellowed into a fond memory in the years between then and now.

“This will be a fond memory too,” Wolfie assured me. “In a couple of decades.”

And that was enough to keep me human as the dog trainer did his job, using the whip to create a choke collar then marching Fiona across the field of dismantling circus.

Every one of our pack mates glared as Fiona passed them, and she’d visibly wilted by the time the kennel door slammed shut behind her furry butt. I got the distinct impression she was grateful to have bars between herself and us.

When the circus drove off, Fiona was carted along with them. By the time another hour had passed, Wolfie and I were gorging on left-behind cotton candy and laughing at the metaphorical circus my birthday party had turned into.

We laughed until I sent a joke down the pack bond to Ember and got no reply.

Closing my eyes, I considered the network of invisible connections that radiated outward from me and Wolfie. Had Ember worn herself out and fallen asleep? Had she gotten sidetracked, so intent upon baking she didn’t notice my message?

No, my daughter’s thread wasn’t just dormant. It was entirely missing from the web that bound our pack together.

So were the threads of three female yahoos. I didn’t have to tear apart pack central to know where they’d gone.

***

Keep reading in the Hot Shift anthology!

The post New Release: Hot Shift appeared first on Aimee Easterling.

Wolfie’s anniversary celebration

This month, my oldest werewolf book turns ten years old! To celebrate, I’ve got a lot of fun planned. First up is a massive price drop:

Shiftless — Book one in the Wolf Rampant series is free as always in ebook form and 90% off as an audiobook.

Pack Princess — Book two is 40% off as an ebook and 50% off as an audiobook.

Alpha Ascendant — Book three is 40% off as an ebook and 50% off as an audiobook.

Wolf Rampant Trilogy — You can save an extra dollar by buying the bundle in ebook or audiobook format.

The Complete Bloodling Serial — The prequel is 40% off in ebook format. (I haven’t dropped the price on this book in six and a half years, but Wolfie told me he wanted his off-beat humor to be read more widely and I caved.) (Not available as an audiobook.)

Wolf’s Pack — This massive box set contains the Wolf Rampant series, the affiliated Alpha Underground and Wolf Legacy series, plus all associated prequels, short stories, and novellas. Even at full price, you would save a bunch by grabbing Wolf’s Pack. But for the anniversary extravaganza, I’ve marked the ebook down to 67% off on the command of you-know-who. (Not available on Amazon or in audiobook format.)

Audio lovers can check out the three novels and trilogy bundle above or dive into these audio-exclusive deals:

Bloodling Wolf is 67% off at:

 

 

 

Beastly is 67% off at:

 

 

 

Scapegoat is 67% off at:

 

 

 

More excitement is yet to come — stay tuned!

The post Wolfie’s anniversary celebration appeared first on Aimee Easterling.

Matebranded Sneak Peek

Do you want a preview of Matebranded, the first book in a brand new series? Then keep reading below. There are no spoilers and no reason not to start here no matter how many of my other books you’ve read. Except…

The prequel short story, Paws & Claus is currently FREE on all retailers in ebook form and 99 cents in audio for a short time. So grab that in your preferred format then come back here and read on.

***

Chapter 1

When is a wolf not a wolf? At home, where I played the adult yet still obedient daughter, keeping my inner beast under wraps for the sake of my adopted human family. At work, where I infiltrated dangerous shifter clans with practiced deception, using my furry scent to get in the door while wielding no obvious weapons other than a killer smile.

Tonight, though, I was neither at home nor at work.

I did need to touch base, though, before my time became entirely my own. Still, I toed off my shoes there at the edge of the wide-open desert, the cool night air making my inner wolf stir with familiar excitement. Then, before I succumbed to the urge, I forced myself to focus and text my boss.

Julius was not only my employer; he was also the closest thing I had to a father. Not that we were the touchy-feely sort. He’d be fine with me merely dropping a pin, ensuring he had my exact location if he needed it—fifty miles from where I was due to ferret out blood magic tomorrow and well within outpack territory where I was unlikely to run into anyone else.

Message relayed, I let my phone fall onto the driver’s seat and I closed my eyes, standing erect and listening to the dark.

The ping of a reply text tore through the silence, louder than it would have sounded before my ears started shifting. My fingers were still human enough to pick up the phone, though, and see that the missive wasn’t from Julius, but rather from his daughter.

Celeste was already thinking ahead to tomorrow, when I’d slide into the persona that made me into the Council’s secret weapon. There’d be lip-biting and lowered eyelashes. Feigned submission and, at just the right moment, a needle stuck into an unwary alpha’s arm.

Well, no, that’s what I was thinking about. Celeste was thinking past that to the moment when I’d bag the culprit then head home to the echoing mansion we shared with her father.

“Elspeth! Choose for me, please: Rom com or action flick? Pizza or popcorn?”

The answer was both, everything, obviously. My mouth watered and for one split second I could taste salt on my tongue, could feel our shared laughter filling the living room to bursting. Celeste was my opposite in so many ways, but whenever we were together we clicked.

We clicked…as long as I stayed human. As long as I kept my feral side under wraps, ignoring the way my inner wolf itched to stretch its legs and run wild.

As long as I never admitted that what I craved at the moment wasn’t popcorn but, rather, blood.

The distant scent of prey animals made my inner wolf itch now. My teeth sharpened as my hands curled into claws, reaching toward the sandy expanse beyond this isolated and silent gas station. I could almost see the terrified eyes of the critter I’d soon pounce upon, could almost feel flesh tearing beneath my fangs.

“You’re more than a wolf,” Julius had told me so many times. And that was true. I was much more than a wolf.

But, for one night, perhaps I didn’t mind being less.

***

Through lupine nostrils, the desert smelled like mesquite and sagebrush. No hint of wolf pee warned away outsiders the way it would have within a claimed territory. Instead, a hum of electricity I’d only felt in the outpack sped my feet to near flying while a distinct musk I’d grown familiar with during my previous visits to this region prompted me to lick my chops.

Peccaries were good eating. And, yes, I was well aware desert pigs had sharp tusks that could inflict significantly more damage than my canines. I knew their herds worked in unison just like wolf packs and that the largest grouping might contain four dozen individuals.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t have to mess up my takedown by looking small and meek the way I did on jobs. Game on.

Lowering my body closer to the earth, I transitioned from tracking to stalking. Swiveling my ears, I picked out the soft grunts and growls of the peccary herd, their vocalizations intermingled with chewing and digging. They didn’t sound alarmed, hadn’t noticed me creeping closer.

There was no moon to brighten the landscape. No glow of light pollution to assist my vision. But I could smell. My paws could feel. I could almost taste raw pork on my tongue.

And now I could see the faintest silhouettes of the animals I was approaching. A small one had wandered a good distance away from its neighbors. The meat would be tender. I angled myself toward the weanling. Tensed my muscles. Took off…

…and slammed directly into another wolf.

He was larger than me but for a moment I thought our collision was a mere accident. It was true that, with the wind blowing in such a way that I couldn’t smell him, he definitely should have caught my scent. But he didn’t growl. Didn’t raise his ruff in threat and pin back his ears the way wolves did during altercations.

Instead, he just got in my way. That time, then again and again as I tried to pad around him. I bared my teeth and he failed to return the threat, but he also resolutely refused to step out of my path.

Despite my best efforts, our standoff wasn’t silent. A peccary snorted. Teeth clacked together. Then they were stampeding away from us, disappearing into the desert. They’d be alert now. Not worth the chase.

I shifted, furious. Stayed on my knees so I could grab onto the wolf’s cheeks and drag him up until our eyes were at the same level. It was a dominance move, but he let me get away with it. Let me spit out my anger. “Cockblocker!”

Only then did he join me in humanity, my grasp on fur turning into fists cupping cheeks. A naked man not much older than my twenty-five years knelt knee-to-knee in front of me, his muscles and breadth making him roughly twice my weight.

Despite his daunting size, however, his scent was sweet as cactus flowers. The bristle-roughened skin of his face was warm beneath my knuckles. Warm and enticing. I found myself swaying inward before reality reasserted itself.

“Lone wolves are vermin,” a memory of Julius’s voice asserted.

Vermin might be extreme, but a lone wolf certainly wasn’t worthy of my attention. I settled back onto my heels just as the stranger’s lips curled upwards in a barely visible half-smile. His dark eyes glinted with starlight as he rumbled out a retort, “You intended to make love to the pigs?”

“I intended to eat one,” I back-talked, letting the spunk I usually hid turn even more audible. After all, wolves who hung out solo in outpack territory were generally those too submissive to survive in a clan. It wasn’t as if I was risking much. “Same thing you intended, presumably,” I couldn’t resist tacking on.

Abruptly, the stranger’s starlit eyes turned intense as he growled, “Smart wolves don’t hunt peccaries solo.”

My skin prickled. Maybe this stranger wasn’t so submissive after all. I’d acted without understanding the big picture and it was too late to pivot into dumb-brunette mode. I…

Then the flash of danger in his eyes faded so quickly I was left wondering whether I’d only imagined it. His hand rose, a single finger not quite touching my bare skin as it traced a line from my shoulder across my neck to the opposite shoulder. The heat of almost-contact made me breathless and my mind began playing crazy tricks.

What my eyes thought they saw: a strand of glowing dots momentarily rising upon my skin beneath where his hand drifted. What my body thought it felt: the same electricity that had seemed to buoy me up as I ran through the desert now coursing through my veins.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, crab-walking backwards then swearing as the sudden pain of a cactus spine embedded itself into the pad of my thumb. The jolt broke me out of the sensual daze the stranger’s attention had infused me with. Brought me back to the real world where even the earth bit back.

Bit and latched on. The spine didn’t want to come out easily. Instead, my efforts only worked it deeper into my flesh, the jerkiness of my motions not helping one bit.

I was furious with somebody. Perhaps with myself. Perhaps with the stranger. The spine was definitely part of it and I chose not to look deeper into my anger than that.

In front of me, the stranger let me poke at the spine until it became clear that I was only making matters worse left-handed. Only then did he gesture at my wound. “May I?”

I shouldn’t have, but I nodded. And when his long fingers encircled my much smaller wrist, luminescent spirals curled up from the point of contact. They slid across my forearm and veered toward my elbow, tickling at skin level while twisting and tugging deep within my gut.

I held my ground this time though. Whatever the light show was about, it wasn’t hurting either of us. It wasn’t a threat, so it was irrelevant.

Only once the stranger was sure I wasn’t going to jerk away again did he bend his head and close his teeth around the spine. As if he was a wolf, which should have been disgusting but…wasn’t. Instead, I watched, enthralled, as his lips brushed across the pad of my thumb, the resulting glow illuminating his face like Christmas lights.

He was beautiful, but not in the way one might expect. This wasn’t the rough attractiveness of a lone wolf or even the manicured perfection of a vain pack shifter. Instead, the lights erupting out of my skin cast tribal tattoos across the chiseled contours of his nose and chin, turning handsomeness into something otherworldly.

He was unlike anyone else I’d ever met.

Or maybe the vision was yet another trick of the night. Because the stranger tugged sharpness out of my flesh with one quick jerk. Lights dulled as pain flared. Cold replaced heat as his hand retreated.

“To answer your question,” he murmured. “I’m not doing anything. We’re mates.”

I didn’t feel tough, but toughness was all I had to fall back on at that moment. “Mates?” I forced myself to snort while reminding myself that wolves without a pack weren’t precisely rational. No matter how physically enticing this stranger might appear, I’d never see him again.

Which meant it was time to distance myself in the easiest way possible—with words. “So that’s how lone wolves get laid,” I finished, adding a twist of sarcasm to my voice.

I expected him to explode into anger. After all, hell hath no fury like a male werewolf scorned.

Instead, that tiny half-smile curled his lips again. “Think about it, then come see me. I live that way.” His gesture was vague. West somewhere. “My name is Orion. The bond will pull you where you need to go.”

I was too shaken to speak and I didn’t need words anyway. Letting my wolf body replace my human body, my receding rump said everything necessary. I trotted away in the opposite direction from the one in which Orion had pointed, back toward my car where granola bars would fill my belly and locks on the doors would prevent anyone from disrupting my slumber.

Three times along the way, however, I peered back over my shoulder to make sure the stranger hadn’t followed. He hadn’t.

I was oddly disappointed that he found it so easy to let me go.

***

Chapter 2

I feigned a mechanical breakdown fifty miles down the road the next morning. As soon as a distant silhouette of a sentry suggested I’d entered the monitored portion of the rotten pack’s territory, I braked aggressively, wobbling the wheel as I pulled over onto the shoulder of the two-lane highway. Getting out, I pretended someone on my phone was walking me through checking the obvious, which I did very badly. Far more adeptly and subtly, I flipped open the plastic cover to the fuse box and loosened the fuel-pump relay.

Because packs like this didn’t like outsiders sniffing around. But if my car wouldn’t start, they couldn’t very well send me away.

By the time I was done, the sound of a vehicle on the road behind me suggested I wouldn’t even have to walk to the closest mechanic to put my plan into motion. Tires slowed then stopped right in the middle of the road, a hint that the driver was a local well aware of traffic patterns, or the lack thereof.

Meanwhile, hairs prickled on the back of my neck. This wasn’t just a local. This was a wolf.

“Problem?”

I turned to find a thirty-something woman in braided pigtails considering me with her beast rampant behind her eyes. But I couldn’t smell her signature aroma, nor could I make out the pack scent that should have formed a foundation underlying that signature.

Instead, I smelled something very different. The subtle yet very present salty aroma of blood.

This was exactly what the Council had sent me to deal with. Blood magic at the alpha level rippling down to impact the entire clan—one of several issues too volatile for individual packs to handle solo. The werewolves involved were never glad to be intruded upon, but well-timed takedowns could prevent awfulness up to and including inter-pack warfare.

I was helping, not that the woman in front of me would see it that way. So I didn’t ask about the blood aroma, which clung due to her leader’s actions. Just got in when she offered me a ride and poured out my well-prepared sob story.

My car wouldn’t start. Could she possibly arrange a tow?

“Not a problem.” Empty desert flowed past outside our windows, but the woman didn’t look at me. Was she concerned I’d notice the wolf lurking behind her eyes, a wolf that should have been asleep during a situation that was far from perilous? “I’m Maya by the way,” she introduced herself.

“Elspeth,” I answered. Then, figuring I might as well go for broke, I added, “Could you possibly take me to your alpha? This is embarrassing, but I just don’t… I…”

“You’re a woman alone.” Her hand reached across the center console to cover mine, the contact deeply soothing in a way it shouldn’t have been with the scent of blood still redolent between us. “You’re asking for safe harbor, but you don’t have to ask. You’ll find what you’re looking for in town. There’s a cafe. Do you need any cash?”

Women were harder to hoodwink than men. Women understood that just because I was small and curvy, that didn’t mean I was defenseless.

But women also understood well-founded fears. I bit my lip and peered out the window, watching as the side road my research had suggested led to pack central passed by on our right. Then I continued to tell the truth—if not the full truth—while drawing upon the experience still at the forefront of my mind.

“I stopped last night in outpack land,” I told Maya. “I… There was a lone wolf… He expressed an interest and…” I swallowed.

The scent of blood grew stronger. “You’re concerned he’ll follow you. He won’t. We watch our boundaries.”

That assertion was hard to counter when Maya had found me mere minutes after I pretended to break down. So I didn’t argue. Just begged. “Please.”

“We’ll send someone out to handle the lone wolf,” Maya promised. “Just because no one owns the desert on the other side of our borders doesn’t mean we allow inappropriate behavior from vagrants. Describe him.”

Despite everything, my cheeks heated. I’d messed up. I couldn’t sic shifters dabbling in blood magic on a lone wolf who had, in reality, acted like a perfect gentleman, albeit a delusional one. “No, don’t bother. I’m overreacting. Orion didn’t do anything inappropriate.”

The lone wolf’s name tasted oddly sweet on my tongue, which might explain why I’d offered information that didn’t need to be offered. Maya’s response, though, was odder than my slip.

The car screeched to a halt so fast I would have slammed into the dashboard if my seatbelt hadn’t caught me. Then Maya stared at me with that wolf even more wide awake behind her pupils. “You met Orion in outpack territory? Orion scared you so badly you want to ask for help from our alpha?”

I nodded confirmation and she huffed out something that sounded an awful lot like mother of a whelp-mauler before yanking the steering wheel all the way to the left to make a U-turn.

“Where are we going?” I asked when an explanation didn’t appear to be forthcoming.

The scent of blood intensified further and Maya didn’t look at me as she answered. “Looks like I’m taking you to my alpha after all.”

***

The pack central I’d been sent to infiltrate resembled any other patch of desert until we were almost at its doorstep. Then, as our vehicle eased its way between close canyon walls, camouflaged gardens began to pop up amid the sandstone.

In satellite photos, the area must have looked like a few pockets of soil had provided a foothold for cliffrose and desert broom. Up close, however, I could see strawberries dangling from hanging planters. Crisp lettuce ready to turn into salads. A peach tree arching above everything else.

I’d been inside dozens of under-the-radar pack centrals and none had been as cleverly arranged as this.

Leaning into my pleasure, I did what everyone loved—I praised Maya’s home. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” I gushed. “It’s beautiful. Your alpha must be one of the good ones.”

Instead of relaxing into my enthusiasm the way I’d expected her to, Maya simply shrugged as she pulled up underneath an overhang where the car’s glass and chrome wouldn’t glint and catch the sunlight. “He’s unique,” she said as we both got out and edged around the only other vehicle present—a van. Maya’s long braids swung behind her as she strode purposefully into a crack in the sandstone that appeared entirely natural…until we passed through and I saw that the bedrock we’d parked on had transitioned into poured concrete.

Ahead were the kind of thick metal doors humans installed to slow the spread of fires and shifters used for more defensive purposes. If I followed Maya through, would I be able to get back out again?

“Will your alpha be angry with you for bringing me here?” It wasn’t hard to add a quaver to my voice and I paired that with rounding my shoulders so I’d look even smaller than my actual five feet two inches. “I can wait outside. I don’t want to cause any trouble…”

“He’ll definitely want to see you,” Maya promised, but she didn’t bother glancing in my direction. Instead, she tilted her chin upward in a way that suggested there was a facial-recognition camera embedded in the wall somewhere above eye level. I quickly turned my own head away, watching from the corner of one eye as Maya waited for the click of a disengaging lock then pushed the door open to lead me inside.

It wasn’t optimal to enter an enclosed space with a locking exit door, especially when I had very little information to go on. But I’d found my way out of worse pinches and I could almost smell success. My heart rate elevated, but not out of fear.

Instead, I stifled a smile as I ran through the game plan: Track down the alpha. Get him alone. Then subdue him with the sedative hidden in one of my pockets.

Finding the alpha turned out to be easy. The space Maya had brought me to was a gym full of fifteen shifters ranging in age from their teens up to their sixties. They were sparring hand-to-hand, none of them particularly adept at it, while a man with the aura of pack leader called out corrections.

Well, he did that for a moment. Then he tilted his wheelchair up on its back wheels so he could pivot to face us even though Maya hadn’t called out a greeting or caught his attention in any overt way.

I’d already guessed as much, but his ferocious eyes suggested I’d found my target. No wonder he took the time to look me over, which was perfectly fine since that gave me the opportunity to do the same.

Other than those alpha eyes, heavy muscles were his most distinguishing feature. The impressive physique wasn’t limited to his upper body, either, the way I’d expect from someone used to wheeling himself from point A to point B. Whatever kept this man from walking, it had occurred recently.

Was the injury temporary? Or was a permanent disability the reason the pack’s alpha had descended into the quick fix of blood magic?

It would have been easy to pity him, but the desert southwest seemed to spawn alphas who thought it was a good idea to kill their pack mates and use that dying burst to boost their own power. It was a rot and it wouldn’t happen again here, not after today.

My adrenaline spiked further as I went on the attack…obliquely of course.

“Sir.” I dropped my eyes to the floor submissively even though I could feel the alpha’s gaze continuing to scan me. “I appreciate you letting me come. I know you’re very busy and very important. I know I have no right to your time.”

I didn’t need much time, actually. Just a few minutes alone with him to complete the takedown without prompting a full-scale battle. Afterwards, his pack would bounce back in short order. The ingenuity of their residence spoke to a bedrock stability that a few months of off-the-rails alpha couldn’t fully erode.

“Elspeth,” the alpha acknowledged. The fact he knew my name without Maya having texted ahead proved that the pack bond was still strong enough to allow information to be passed along it. “We have a few minutes left in this session. Care to join in?”

I winced even though my chin was still tucked so low no one could see the gesture. They’d hear the uncertainty in my words, though, when I murmured, “Oh, I don’t know how…”

“You should.” This was Maya, sounding annoyed at the world that had created me. “A woman who can’t defend herself is like a fish on a bicycle. Sue will show you the ropes.”

This was a sidetrack, but sometimes it was necessary to go with the flow to minimize casualties. I let my chin come up as I followed Maya’s gesture to the dowdy middle-aged woman who could have been my mother if she’d had me very young. From what I’d seen when coming in, Sue hadn’t been the worst of the fighters but she was far from the best. She was, however, safest-looking for a scared female outsider to grapple with.

My cover was holding. Maya was being kind.

I glanced up through my hair at the alpha rather than taking Maya up on her offer. “Sir?”

“Leave your shoes by the door,” he suggested, a glint of humor softening his warrior-like face. “Wouldn’t want another accidental nose break.”

At that, all eyes flew to a teenaged boy on the other side of the room. The youngster flushed beet red and muttered at his feet, “I didn’t mean to.”

This was good-hearted teasing. I saved the teenager from another round by toeing off my sneakers then padding over to join Sue. My hands rose in front of my face as if I was a toddler playing peekaboo. Someone behind me snickered.

Then cold swept through the gym so hard and fast it couldn’t have resulted from anything other than an alpha command sent down the pack bond, one I couldn’t hear but could easily see the results of. Trainees plus Maya all fled without bothering to grab the shoes lined up along the wall near the entrance. Their faces twisted, their eyes averting from me as if part of the command had involved not just leaving the room but specifically removing themselves from my presence.

This was exactly the sort of over-the-top pack-leader behavior I would have expected from an alpha dabbling in blood magic. But the man in the wheelchair wasn’t the source of the flurry of activity. He was fleeing along with everyone else. Had already pushed himself through the door and left me alone in the gym by the time a man I hadn’t expected to see again strode in from outside.

Orion looked exactly the same as he had last night and also entirely different. How I’d taken him for a lone wolf was now a mystery as his gaze spun across me in a way it hadn’t in the desert. Intrusive. Challenging. Ten times as dominant as the man in the wheelchair.

I stared right back, daylight unveiling details that the dim night had concealed. Undeniable strength, both outer and inner, contrasted with last night’s vibe of gentleness. Sunlight streaming down through skylights kissed his chiseled jaw, accentuating a magnetism that was all alpha.

He waited until the last footstep faded into silence then he raised his eyebrows. “What are you doing in my territory, Elspeth Darkhart?”

***

Chapter 3

My surname wasn’t Darkhart, but that was the name I’d used the one time my face had been caught on camera. Correction: the first time my face had been caught on camera. Because Orion must have snagged a shot of me this morning then run it through a hefty database to come up with that identification so quickly.

“Are you recording this?” I asked, eying the walls and ceiling while trying to figure out the location of the camera I’d missed.

“No.” He was in my space before I saw him move. In daylight, his bulk was overwhelming, both a threat and an enticement. But his cactus scent had turned prickly—less flowers and more spines—as he repeated his demand. “Why are you here?”

“You invited me.” Truth yet nowhere near the whole truth. And…it was hard to focus on mincing words when Orion had settled into a fighting stance so close I could feel his heat against my skin. “Do you intend to beat me up?” I asked in disbelief.

Orion’s eyes darkened as he moved in closer, his broad shoulders blocking my view of the exit. “Does it seem like I could?” he countered, using one of his feet in an attempt to sweep away both of mine.

I say attempt because I was already on the move, dodging with a grace I’d honed over a lifetime of practice. Yes, my hormones were reacting to Orion’s proximity. My breath was coming a little too quickly, my heart beating faster than it had when I thought the man in the wheelchair was this pack’s alpha. But I ignored that attraction and dropped the feint of incompetence I’d donned moments earlier.

After all, I’d already let Orion see who I was back in the desert. Might as well be myself and win now.

Winning, when dealing with a large and powerful man, didn’t just involve the quick dodge I’d started with. It also meant messing with my opponent’s head. In this case, I chose to focus on the question he’d asked me twice already. The one that lingered behind those obsidian eyes, unresolved by my assertion that I’d come here in response to his invitation last night.

“You didn’t tell me you were an alpha,” I murmured, landing a swift kick to his side. With Celeste, the blow would have had her flat on her ass. Orion merely staggered back a single step.

As he did, he growled out a question. “Does me being an alpha make a difference?”

The chop he paired with his words forced me to backpedal physically, if not verbally. My focus tunneled as I tried and failed to land another strike.

Looked like Orion had already learned my favorite offensives. Which meant I needed to dig deeper and become less predictable. Hit him where it really hurt.

“Yeah, you being an alpha does make a difference,” I said, watching for the moment his mouth would pinch. The moment he’d read the subtext: that I hadn’t been interested in Orion solely for his own sake but was willing to check him out now that I knew he was a pack leader. He seemed like the sort of guy who would be disappointed in someone who craved secondhand power, and that descent into disappointment would provide the perfect opening for my next attack.

Only, Orion didn’t react. Instead, he offered me information he shouldn’t have had access to. “You entered a pack in New Mexico six months ago under false pretenses. Their alpha disappeared that evening and wasn’t seen again.”

The next blow I attempted to land was less important than the question I paired it with. “What would you say if I told you that the alpha you’re referring to was using blood magic to solidify his leadership?”

“I’d call bullshit.” Orion’s words were more adamant than anything I’d heard from him previously. He didn’t attack, though. Just circled, his gaze so intent it felt like he was trying to pry open my skull and peer inside my brain. “I knew Prince,” he continued. “His pack was solid and he was honorable. Where is he?”

Orion could have lashed out physically in conjunction with his final words and I might have been too busy thinking to block properly. Instead, he continued padding around me, waiting for my response.

And words emerged before I could stop them. “I don’t know.”

I hadn’t meant to say that. But the scent I remembered from the desert—sweet as cactus flowers—was even more thorny now than it had been earlier. Orion honestly cared about his missing friend.

Not only that, my reference to blood magic didn’t appear to have rung any personal bells with him. Which was decidedly odd since my intel clearly said the alpha of this pack was the guilty party.

I only realized my attention had wandered when Orion’s hand landed on my arm. The contact was searingly intense despite the thin cotton shirt that separated us. It was also a warning that I’d made a fatal mistake.

I’d let myself be grabbed by someone larger and stronger. I hadn’t made such a beginner flub since I was twelve.

My opponent didn’t toss me to the ground, however. Didn’t pull me in close to threaten me further. Instead, his voice gentled. “Why are you here, Elspeth?”

I couldn’t win this match overtly, so I bit my lip and peered up into those dark eyes that had glinted with starlight only twelve hours earlier but were now shuttered and lightless. Then I played my final card.

***

Ten years ago, when I was a naive teenager, our trainer had taken me aside after a lesson. Just me, not Celeste also, which I understood when Gabi started delving into werewolf-specific abilities.

“And then there’s the mate bond,” she continued after running through a verbal summary of the pros and cons of going lupine during battle.

I rolled my eyes. “I thought we were talking fighting. Did Julius ask you to tell me about the birds and the bees? Because I get it. Safe sex. Consent. Consider me educated.”

Gabi’s lip quirked. At the time, she’d been in her mid twenties and Celeste and I had both wanted to be her. We’d practiced her signature lip quirk for hours in front of the mirror, but we never managed the insouciance Gabi pulled off with ease. “Glad to hear it,” she told me. “But, no, that’s not what this is about. When you’re dealing with male werewolves, you’re always going to be smaller and weaker. Banter and agility will only take you so far. Someday, you may need another edge, and that edge is the mate bond.”

She’d gone on to describe a connection so powerful that its formation tended to knock even the most powerful alpha off his game for a handful of minutes. “If you’re ready for it, though,” she told me, “then you can work through it. Compartmentalize. Pleasure, wonder, amazement—it’s a simple bodily reaction.”

“Like an orgasm,” I suggested, trying to sound edgy.

“Sure,” Gabi agreed, lip quirk promising she knew far more about orgasms than I did. “Today, we’ll mimic the formation of a mate bond a few different ways. See how you fight while being tickled. While eating something delicious. Later, we’ll use a stimulant.”

My eyebrows winged upward. “Julius approved this?” Julius never even let me and Celeste drink coffee. He said it would stunt our growth.

Gabi nodded, which gave me leeway to keep asking questions. “I can’t mate more than once though. Can I?”

“You can mate as many times as you like,” she assured me. “Just break the bond when you’re through with it. One and done.”

Over the intervening decade, I’d trained myself until I was confident I could continue fighting through anything. A fractured bone. A drugged haze. Yes, even when overwhelmed by the formation of a mate bond.

But I’d never actually used the latter technique. Had told myself I was holding back because I liked having one bonus tool in my arsenal that no one other than Gabi would ever consider a possibility.

Now, despite Orion’s hand on my arm, I wasn’t precisely desperate. So why did I open my mouth and tell the alpha in front of me: “I’m here to accept your proposal to mate”?

Keep reading in Matebranded!

 

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Paws & Claus

Would you like a FREE prequel to my upcoming Rune Wolf series? Then grab your copy of Paws & Claus now, or keep reading the beginning below:

***

“What you’re doing,” Maya complained as she nudged at my lupine nose with a jingle-bell-tipped boot, “is ten times worse than the single guy who sleeps in a twin bed and doesn’t understand how that broadcasts his disinterest in a serious relationship.”

A sisterly lecture. Precisely how every Solstice-eve day should start. I came up onto four paws then stretched into full downward dog with a wide yawn.

“You’re not even going to shift in order to hold this conversation?”

Our one-year age difference shouldn’t have mattered now that we were both pushing thirty. Still, this was the day our pack would come together for our first winter celebration under a new alpha—me, unfortunately. Having my only quiet moment intruded upon provoked an entirely juvenile urge to frustrate my sister back.

Until, that is, I recalled what Maya was going through and immediately corrected my mistake. Turning my back and shifting into humanity, chilly air instantly pebbled my skin into goosebumps. Then, as I did up the buttons on the flannel shirt I’d pulled on over jeans, I apologized. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You need to talk? Let’s talk?”

Behind me, Maya’s voice turned as brittle as the ice we seldom saw here in southern Arizona. “I don’t want to talk about…that.”

Enough with the buttons. I turned around and drew my sister into a hug even though her shoulders immediately went rigid and the holly pinned to her sweater jabbed through my shirt and into my skin. “What do you want to talk about then?” I murmured into her hair.

“You. This.” Maya’s voice was muffled by my shoulder. Dampness soaked through the shirt I’d so recently donned, but that was the only evidence of her crying as she continued to nag. “Carting a dog bed around to a different house every night is stupid. It has to stop.”

She clearly preferred argument over consolation. So I obliged her. “We did it as pups.”

“Because our alpha was trying to force us out by refusing to grant us a human bedroom!”

“And I’m trying to hold the pack together. Being near the alpha is a comfort.” Plus, I could only spend so much two-legged time around pack mates before my brain started buzzing with introvert overload. Letting my wolf take over for a little while helped.

“Being near the alpha would be more of a comfort if the alpha actually took care of his own needs first,” Maya rebutted. If we’d been ten and eleven, she probably would have blown her nose on my shirt to spite me. I almost wished she had.

Instead, she pulled out of my arms, eyes redder than they’d been a minute ago. And she laid down the law as only a big sister could. “Put on the holiday sweater I bought for you. Consider doing something nice for yourself. And no more sleeping around.”

***

Of course, the five-year-old daughter of the home I’d opted to spend the night in overheard Maya’s last words. “What’s sleeping around, Mommy?” Isabella asked as we lingered over the breakfast table, the bees in my head just barely starting to wake up and churn my thoughts into what, by midday, would become a frenzy. Meanwhile, the sweater Maya had left scratched my skin as much as it had my eyeballs when I made the mistake of glancing in a mirror.

I’d needed those lost ten minutes of solitude in order to pretend to love the holidays. Still I couldn’t resist cracking a grin as the little girl’s mother spat out her coffee all over the kitchen table now.

“Who said anything about sleeping around?”

“Maya,” Isabella tattled. “She told Orion to stop it.”

And…that was my cue to deflect before making my escape. “Where are you going to hang your stocking?” I asked Isabella. The overexcited child turned sparkling eyes on her parents, I picked up my dog bed, stepped out into the morning light…

…And deflated. This wasn’t a pack central fit for holidays.

At my command, we’d retreated into cliff-side dwellings after losing our old alpha months ago. The goal was to ensure that our weakest pack members—like Isabella—weren’t easy to track down if another clan decided our transitional status turned us into easy pickings.

To that end, our strongest fighters and I spent time every day making our old residences appear lived in. We severely limited traffic to our canyon location so the narrow track leading here would look untrafficked. There were no spur-of-the-moment hunts and definitely no howling, and I chewed out pack mates who so much as used flashlights outside after dark.

We were safe here. Our kids were safe here. Safety was worth rules and rock-wall-view claustrophobia.

So why were three unfamiliar vehicles racing up the canyon floor toward the heart of our clan’s den? Why was wind swirling around them the way it did when desert magic wanted to send me a warning I couldn’t miss?

Because the worst had happened. All of our stealth measures had failed and it was time to face the expected invasion.

I dropped the dog bed, donned my fur, and leapt toward the not-really-staircase descending the cliff face far faster than I would have approved for any other pack mates. No wonder Maya met me at the bottom, already grousing.

“What happened to your sweater?”

I whapped her with my tail. There was a time to be my big sister and a time to be my second. Now was the latter.

The intensity of my concern whipped her around to face the oncoming danger and her voice turned sharp. “Got it. Assembling the troops now.”

Then she scrambled back up the same stairs I’d recently come down while I sprinted toward the closest vehicle. It looked like a tank from my lupine perspective, but the view from the cliff-side terrace promised it was actually a civilian Hummer. Still quite capable of swerving toward me and squashing me pancake flat. Also quite capable of carrying at least a dozen wolves, which didn’t even take into account the capacity of the vehicles behind.

But the Hummer didn’t speed up and it didn’t aim for me. Instead, it screeched to a halt, brake noises suggesting the others were stopping also. Then a woman unfolded herself from the driver’s seat, a woman who was entirely human even though she reeked of werewolf. I’d seen her picture once but it took me a moment to place her.

“We’re here to beg sanctuary,” said the second of the only nearby alpha I considered a friend.

***

Keep reading in Paws & Claus!

The post Paws & Claus appeared first on Aimee Easterling.

My favorite fantasy reads of 2023

Shepherd asked me if I’d be willing to look back through my reading lists and see which books most hit the spot over the last year. Those of you on my email list have already been regaled with the fantasy book recommendations I came up with.

To which, I now must add another instant favorite:

Neither the cover nor the title of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries appealed to me, but if you’re a fan of female scientist-explorers you won’t want to miss this book.

There’s a slow-burn romance, geeky awkwardness, fairy-tale cleverness, and best of all a warm cozy feeling that I wanted to stay in all winter. I lost myself so deeply in its pages that I could barely step back out of the Norwegian fae-filled snow.

It’s almost certainly at your library too, so check it out!

 

 

What’s up with romantasy?

As a side note, I noticed that two of my top picks for this year are being listed under the subgenre “Romantasy.” Interestingly, I saw this term for the first time in 2022 when my translator suggested it as a keyword for my German translations. Which made me wonder — is it possible “romantasy” hopped over from German to English?

Geekily, I headed straight to Google’s Ngram Viewer to check my hypothesis out:

A more traditional google search suggests the term “romantasy” started skyrocketing in English this year due to the popularity of The Fourth Wing (and likely also BookTok). But whether “romantasy” hopped over to English from German is as yet unconfirmed.

 

The post My favorite fantasy reads of 2023 appeared first on Aimee Easterling.

A slew of audio shorts

Do you love audio? Then you won’t want to miss this summer’s new shorts — all cheap, quick listens brought to life by excellent narrators.

Outfoxed is a Moon Marked bonus epilogue narrated by Jack Nolan.

Five years after Fox Blood, the pack’s future hangs in the balance when unseen danger stalks Gunner’s pregnant mate.

This bonus epilogue involves sisterly scheming, cliffside close calls, and one very befuddled dad-to-be.

 

The Alpha Puzzle & Broke Truck, Lost Pup includes two No Fox Given shorts narrated by Luke Welland.

Thom has his hands full with a gathering of pack leaders, a hunt for his mate’s smile, and a visit from a very unconventional alpha.

Find out how he comes into his own in these two short stories, intended to be enjoyed after Moon Duel.

 

Scapegoat is a Wolf Rampant short narrated by Christine Mascott.

When livestock deaths point to the paranormal, stripper-turned-scientist Sienna must reconsider what is real to protect both wolves and humans from attack.

This romantic urban fantasy short includes characters from the Wolf Rampant Trilogy but can be enjoyed as a standalone.

 

Beastly is a Samhain Shifters short narrated by Christine Mascott.

Answering a cryptic job listing leads a widow to uncover ancient fae mischief in this shifter-filled retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

 

And, on a final audio note, Wolf’s Choice will be available as an audiobook in early to mid November. Stay tuned!

The post A slew of audio shorts appeared first on Aimee Easterling.

Wolf’s Choice Sneak Peak

The final book in my Time Bites series has dropped into Patreon supporters’ libraries already and I’m including a sneak preview below. But there are definitely SPOILERS here. If you’re behind, please start with Wolf Trap before you read any further…

***

​Chapter 1

If I’d owned a business card, it would have read: “Spirit. Temporary inhabitant of a human body. Recovering supervillain.” Trouble was, dumpster divers don’t tend to print business cards.

Yes, switching from world domination to survival mode took me down a notch. Then, right about the time I got the hang of caring for the needy meat suit I inhabited, the past decided to rear its ugly head.

Like most evenings, I was pushing my shopping cart full of belongings toward the bridge I considered home sweet home when the gaze first burned the back of my neck. That wasn’t out of the ordinary. I’d noted watching eyes before.

But in the past they’d always been creepy, not caressing. This non-physical touch, in contrast, wrapped me up in all the warmth my threadbare coat lacked.

Unfortunately, when I turned and stared across the busy city street to find the source of today’s gaze, the eyes barely hidden behind a car’s windshield turned out to belong to someone I recognized. Not just recognized—had been doing my level best to avoid for weeks.

Drake was a werewolf who had zero reason to wish me well and a dozen reasons to punish me for various episodes of murder and memory theft. His mate was even less likely to join my fan club, and she was currently making moves to exit the vehicle. Beside her, Drake clenched his chiseled jaw, dark brows lowering. His gaze became yet more intense.

And even though running was the obvious reaction, my wobbly muscles tried to tell me I should stay where I was and take in Drake more fully. He was intriguing, tantalizing…

Squashing the urge, I turned down an alley like a rat darting into the first shred of shadow, a stream of questions flowing through my head.

Where can I hide? How can I get there without being followed? Why did Drake’s eyes sear through my skin so pleasurably that I didn’t want to run away?

I failed to realize I’d left my shopping cart behind until I was already on the first step of a five-story fire escape. Bad news since, at the very bottom of the shopping cart, I’d also abandoned my sword. The mainstay of my existence. Without it, I might cease to exist.

Still, I couldn’t double back now. Not with Tru in the alley behind me, her silence more ominous than if she’d shouted imprecations.

Regret at what I’d done to her made me peer back over my shoulder even though doing so risked a stumble and fall down to pavement that this human body wouldn’t be able to handle. To my surprise, my pursuer was no longer pursuing. Instead, she was heading back the way she’d come.

She’d turned away, but a flicker of movement from the other end of the alley materialized into her mate, who must have gone the long way around to cut me off. Drake was tall, lithe, and darkly handsome…and his job involved execution and torture. No wonder his gray eyes bored into mine like coals that don’t look hot but, on contact, burned.

Strangely, though, the shot of emotion that burst through me at the moment wasn’t fear. My mouth filled with saliva; my heart pounded so hard it sounded like a snare drum. And this time I couldn’t force myself to turn away as my gaze roamed over my pursuer from head to foot.

Straight hair fell across his forehead, swaying slightly in the breeze. Muscles flexed beneath a suit perfectly tailored to show off his physique. And even though he wasn’t sprinting, his long legs ate up the distance far faster than I’d covered it.

Right. I’m being chased. No time to paint a mental picture.

Ignoring whatever weirdness was going on in my body, I finally managed to rip my gaze away so I could speed the rest of the way up the rickety fire escape. And at the rooftop, I didn’t pause to soak in the view or push wind-whipped hair out of my face. Instead, I forced a brain that wanted to skip around between ten thousand erratic thoughts to focus on the here and now.

Tru was tenacious, so I doubted she’d given up on catching me. Likely she’d thought of another way up to roof level and was planning to cut me off if I traveled in the obvious direction back toward my shopping cart. That way, buildings sat close together, the air space between them easy to hop over if you didn’t look down and did keep your nerve.

So I turned left instead of right. Took a running leap and surged across a gap I wasn’t so sure my human body could handle.

It almost couldn’t. I landed hard, knees banging into the sharp edge, feet dangling into space, hands scrabbling for purchase against smooth roof metal.

Meanwhile, the wind picked up, buffeting me and trying to knock loose my already precarious balance. Sweat slicked my fingers and my breath scraped raw in my throat. I was afraid to move for fear I’d fall.

And the world slammed into sharp focus. This body wanted to survive. My soul, such as it was, wanted to stay grounded in flesh even if that flesh was currently screaming pain from knees and elbows. I ached where muscles tensed into cramping, yet every gasping inhale felt like a gift.

One I might not hold onto for much longer. Because I was slipping, the weight of my lower body carrying me down across the slanted rooftop. Dislodged debris scattered beneath my desperate fingers, tiny pebbles plunking one by one onto hard ground far below.

I’d be down there joining that debris soon.

Then a voice carried across the gap. It had to be Tru’s mate, but his rumble was musical rather than raspy the way I remembered. The shivers quaking through me inexplicably lessened even though Drake was no less dangerous than the threat of gravity.

Meanwhile, his words made no sense when he had every reason to wish me ill. “Kami. Focus. There’s a vent three inches from your left hand. You don’t even need to turn your head. Just feel for it then grab hold.”

A trick. If I’d been fully kami, I would have believed that easier. But his gaze on my back was as warm as the dirty sleeping bag I’d left behind in my shopping cart. As soothing as the wandering cat who’d curled up against my belly two nights prior.

For one long moment, I wavered. Then I moved my hand.

The vent was cold and almost sharp enough to cut through my skin. But I didn’t care. It was solid, unlike the debris that had turned the rest of the roof slippery. The handhold provided enough leverage and stability so I could scramble away from the drop. Could find my feet and stand.

Not that there was any safe way off this building. My throbbing legs warned against trying to repeat the same leap I’d recently endured, even if a werewolf wasn’t currently blocking that exit. Meanwhile, the building opposite the one where Tru’s mate stood was higher up and even further away than the one where I’d started.

To make matters worse, the roof I’d made it onto wasn’t meant to be walked across. So there was no door down into the interior. No fire escape running up the outside.

Which left two other sides of the building as potential exit routes. One dropped straight down to the alley, the other to a main thoroughfare. There were no handy awnings to soften the fall.

My legs transitioned from throbbing to full-on shaking. Tru’s mate might have saved me. But he now had me quite thoroughly trapped.

“I know the outlook appears bleak,” my pursuer said, words just loud enough to hear over the wind. “Reminds me of the time I took the bet that I could stay on the back of a water buffalo for thirty seconds. Not a good idea, just in case you’re considering giving it a try.”

Despite the fact that escape should have been my top and only priority, my gaze was drawn to Drake without permission. His face was square, strong, and perfectly symmetrical except for a single dimple on his left cheek that wasn’t mirrored on his right. Somehow, that one small indentation managed to counteract the whole alpha-werewolf scariness factor, turning him irresistible instead of terrifying.

Warm squiggliness rebounded inside my belly and I finally realized what it equated to. Attraction. What a strange thing to succumb to at a time like this.

I frowned, trying to understand how I’d missed that dimple while throwing roadblock after roadblock between Drake and his mate a month ago. How had it failed to rope me in then the way it was doing now?

Because even though Drake’s words were clearly a ploy to keep me talking instead of fleeing, I was the one who kept the conversation going. “How long did you last?”

His gaze grew even warmer. The dimple deepened. “Believe me, I can last a good long while.” Then his smile softened. “Let me guess. I’m the only one with my mind in the gutter and you just want to hear about the water buffalo? I’ll tell you this much—I definitely didn’t win that bet.”

While barely scraping by in human skin this past month, I’d found it impossible to turn on the charm that had won me so many free passes as a disembodied kami. But now I could feel my own dimples—two of them, perfectly symmetrical—emerging despite cold, hunger, and the blood oozing from scraped skin on my knees. “So what you’re saying is, you’re no good at being on top?”

“Top, bottom, if you like it, I like it.” His shrug brought my attention to broad shoulders, made me imagine how good it might feel to press myself up against his solidity. To have him kiss away the pain in my knees and elbows. To pull me in close and…

Movement caught my attention behind Drake’s left shoulder. Tru was emerging on a rooftop several buildings down just like I’d expected she would. Back when I was thinking rationally, before flirting turned my head.

Adrenaline flooded me. Drake had made me forget he wasn’t my sole pursuer, or maybe my human body had done most of the work for him. Whatever the reason for my lapse, sharp reality now whipped away every ounce of pleasure. Slowly, hoping the motion wouldn’t be noticed, I began sidling along the edge of the building, no destination in mind other than away.

“Don’t.” Tru’s mate took a step in the same direction I was traveling and that clinched it. He’d been toying with me just like I used to toy with humans. Trying to distract me while he came up with a plan that would end with me in handcuffs.

Or worse.

So I let myself consider the other way off the building. The way I’d tried so hard to avoid even thinking about.

I was nearly at the edge overlooking the main street now. The edge that would at least add drama to upcoming sacrifice.

“Stop!” Drake’s eyes were no longer warm. Instead, they were ice, demanding obedience.

I didn’t. I stepped over the edge, falling backward and staring up into that handsome werewolf’s face as I plummeted.

Humanity shed off me like a snake’s skin. And in reaction, Drake’s face contorted in a way that somehow managed to look like fear for me rather than fury at me. His arms reached out even though he was nowhere near me, his long fingers clutched at thin air.

The same thin air I was disintegrating into. I didn’t strike the ground so much as disembody inches from it. My last glimpse of Drake faded into the gray emptiness of the spirit realm.

Which meant I’d have to steal memories to regain flesh and solidity. The worst part? Pure kami again, I didn’t really care.

 

​Chapter 2

Around me, the spirit realm stretched out as a still, featureless landscape. Faintly glowing wisps of fog drifted through an otherwise empty plane, each one a material manifestation of unclaimed energy. Long ago, when I was a starving kami with no sword to ground me, I’d followed wisps like these for hours before giving up on catching what could provide sustenance but wasn’t worth the chase.

Now, hunger was the least of my worries. Because travel here wasn’t bogged down by the laws of physics—well it was for me, but not for others. Spirits could materialize right beside me while my only escape was a slow, human plod.

The audible pop of someone arriving sent me skittering sideways. Human instinct prompted me to fling my arms up in front of my face even though that wouldn’t shield me from being maliciously punctured.

Punctured and turned into wisps like the ones I’d formerly hunted. If the rents were few and shallow, a spirit might simply lose some of her energy to such an attack. But those who lost too much too quickly disappeared into the void.

That danger didn’t appear to be facing me today, however. “You’re lucky,” the newcomer observed, poking at me with words instead of claws.

“Not right now, Tall Nose,” I answered, dropping my arms to my sides and starting back toward where I’d left my shopping cart. Because Tall Nose wasn’t precisely a friend but he wasn’t an enemy either. Instead, he was what I would have been if I’d made a different choice years ago.

As we traveled side by side, the repercussions of that choice were striking. I appeared entirely human all the way down to my plodding footsteps. Tall Nose, in contrast, floated along beside me with gentle flaps of his wings, featherless arms crossed while his beak turned up in disgust.

He’d pulled ahead while I was assessing our differences, and now he adjusted his pace to match mine even as he mocked me with a yawn followed by pointed words. “You don’t think you’re lucky? How many of us can cross to the human realm so easily?”

I might have been able to cross to the human realm, but I couldn’t zip toward my sword and get there before the garbage man sent my possessions through a trash compactor. Fear about that possibility made me engage with Tall Nose when I probably shouldn’t have. “Being human isn’t all shits and giggles,” I told him. “There are repercussions. I have to steal to solidify my body on the other side.”

Tall Nose didn’t need to breathe in the spirit realm any more than I did, but he still managed a snort that erupted loud as a bullhorn. Flinching, I spun in a complete circle to see if any other spirits had been attracted by the sound. In particular, there was a hag I’d been dodging for months now, one who wasn’t entirely pleased to have Japanese spirits on her turf.

Luckily, the foggy landscape around us was just as empty as it had been a moment earlier. And now Tall Nose found his words again. “Repercussions for humans maybe. None for you when you cross over, or for me if you take me with you.” He batted his eyelashes, a gesture that looked nowhere near as appealing as he thought since long hairs brushed his shiny upper mandible like spider legs dancing. “But you’re stressed about your sword. I can see that. How about I travel ahead and check on it for you? No charge.”

There was always a charge with a tengu like Tall Nose, so I gritted my teeth, shook my head, and kept wafting my immaterial feet no faster than a human could have jogged. It was maddening to be slowed down in kami form. Maddening enough to make me consider what Tall Nose had suggested.

Could I give him a solid body in the human realm the next time I transitioned? I’d have to steal more memories to make it possible, likely stronger memories that would impact the donor more badly. But Tall Nose would owe me if I gave him a leg up. An ally could mean a lot.

Right now, though, I had a more pressing issue to deal with. Because I rounded the corner, took a quick step sideways into the human realm, and found my shopping cart untouched. Tru and Drake were absent. A major relief.

Unfortunately, both cart and sword were bound to remain untouched until I found another memory to seize hold of and turned myself tangible again. In my current kami form, I could feign a physical appearance in the human realm, something even Tall Nose could manage on occasion. But I couldn’t lift the sword and take it with me. Nor could I push the shopping cart into an out-of-the-way corner to protect it from those with more physical abilities than I currently possessed.

Which meant anyone could come along and grab my sword. Being separated from the blade wasn’t a problem, but if it was damaged? I wasn’t precisely sure what would happen. Best guess—the result would be akin to being punctured and forced to watch all my energy seep out.

“If you’d given me a body,” Tall Nose observed, popping into the human realm beside me, “I could be moving that for you right now.”

His form was hazier than mine while benefiting from wings that let him rise up so high a mortal’s neck would have had to strain to look at him. Mine didn’t protest as I peered directly up above my head. “See anybody?”

“Nope.”

Neither did I, no one on foot at least. Cars continued to rush past as day descended into twilight, but I didn’t trust Tall Nose enough to leave him guarding my sword while I leapt into a speeding vehicle and stole a memory. Not when I might wreck the car while re-embodying, that murder dogging my nightmares along with the others when I ended up back in flesh.

Luckily, time wasn’t so imperative in kami form. Cold and hunger didn’t touch me either. And now that I was physically beside my sword, I could likely talk my way out of danger if anyone tried to mess with the weapon.

Which gave me leeway to come up with a solid plan. “I’ll do things differently tonight,” I mused, speaking more to myself than to Tall Nose, who was starting to fade back into the spirit realm. “I’ll stash my sword somewhere safe—no, I don’t intend to let you watch and find out where. Then I’ll go back to full-on kami. See if stealing memories will give me other powers beyond humanity. Are you shivering?”

“You didn’t feel the chill before we crossed over?”

Sometimes I thought Tall Nose was more drama than he was worth. It was true that the moon was just past new, the time when spirits had the least power. Still—“You do realize there’s no temperature in the spirit realm?”

“Not for you maybe.” He was perching on the back of the shopping cart now, legs dangling like those of a grotesque and over-sized human child. His voice was anything but childlike though as he warned. “There’s a new darkness in the air too.”

“Yeah, night will do that.”

Tall Nose spoke over me, ignoring my attempt at levity. “It’s hungry, seeking. You haven’t felt it?”

I shook my ahead, although perhaps I had noticed a very subtle something while rushing back to my shopping cart through the spirit realm. A drag at my feet that slowed me even more than I’d expected. A weight on my shoulders pressing me down almost like gravity.

Then I forgot about vague maybe-dangers as a teenaged boy rounded the corner on the other side of the street. His clothes were high quality, his coat more than sufficient to ward off chilly weather. But his shoulders were hunched, his gaze glued to the pavement.

“Don’t distract me,” I told Tall Nose. “Looks like we’ve landed an easy mark.”

 

​Chapter 3

Feigning humanity wasn’t the same as inhabiting a tangible body. There were fewer rewards in my current state but also fewer limitations, at least for me. So while the teenager’s attention was still on the ground, I manipulated the illusionary form I’d wrapped around myself, clothing my not-quite-skin in a classy yet threadbare outfit.

People who wore expensive clothes, I’d noticed, were prone to judge others by their apparel. I wanted the young man to trust me and pity me as well.

“Excuse me!” I called, voice wavering just a little. That was the key to drawing him in. That, plus the way I angled my body to outline perfectly perky breasts.

“Nice move.” Tall Nose’s flute-like voice whispered into my ear even though I couldn’t see him any longer. He was almost entirely back in the spirit realm and I swatted at the air where his words had come from, hoping he’d take the hint and retreat the rest of the way. Meanwhile, I donned my most charming smile.

But Tall Nose must have knocked me off my game because the teenager seemed ready to run in the opposite direction. Rather than coming closer, he just peered across the partially illuminated street at me. “Hello?”

In response, I turned up the sugar quotient. “Is there any way you could do me a teeny, tiny favor?” Men, I’d found, responded well to a little-girl voice emerging from a grown woman’s body. Perhaps it made them think I’d be the one who was easily manipulated.

Didn’t work on this teenager, unfortunately. Maybe he was too young or too innocent. Whatever the reason, he didn’t shoot my curves the extended second glance they usually attracted. Didn’t smirk that tiniest bit as if he knew something I didn’t.

Still, he crossed the street. Ambled up with hands in his pockets. “Can I help you?”

I wafted my body two small steps away from the shopping cart while inviting him to take my place. “The wheel’s stuck. Could you possibly push it just a little…?”

I let my voice trail off, and that seemed more effective than outright provocativeness had been. Because the teenager nodded once as if accepting a challenge. Then he stepped up to the cart and gave it a heave.

The cart didn’t actually have wheel issues. No wonder his hard push made it jet forward so fast it nearly yanked him off his feet. His attempts to regain his balance and control the cart distracted him enough so he didn’t notice when I reached out to touch the bare skin of his wrist.

Memories flooded me like a shot of pure oxygen. For one split second, all I could focus on was the blood beginning to pump through my veins. The breath starting to heave my lungs in and out again. The solidity of a human body just barely beginning to reform around my kami interior.

Then I focused on the memory I was sucking out of the teenager and discovered why my little-girl voice hadn’t been as effective as I’d expected.

Shouting. Crying. A father tossing around slurs he never should have used on anyone, let alone on a son.

The mother, placating but also implacable. “Honey, you know we still love you. Hate the sin, love the sinner. There are camps that will help you overcome this phase you’re going through. We’ll call the pastor in the morning. All you have to do is promise…”

“Not to be who I am?”

“Not in my house.” This was the father, hand raised as if he thought he could beat the gay out of someone he’d taken fishing and taught to ride a bike and given his own name to.

“Then I’ll leave.”

The son’s hand shook as he grabbed his coat. He feigned anger as he slammed the door behind him, but inside something was breaking as he walked blindly into the night with no destination in mind.

The teenager’s pain was so profound I could feel it, even as almost-pure kami. It clenched what little bit of throat had begun solidifying out of the ether. It twisted my gut even more than lack of food had done.

If I took this memory, I could re-materialize a solid body. The teenager’s recollection was powerful. It would likely keep me strong for days even if I didn’t find traditional sources of sustenance to fill my belly.

But over the last month, I’d laid down personal rules for memory theft. Rules that never made sense when I was fully disembodied but, in this betwixt and between state, seemed almost important enough to pay attention to.

Rule number one was: Don’t take anything too recent or too formative, which doubly applied to this teenager’s awful showdown with his parents. I’d learned that lesson the hard way, watching a successful lawyer disintegrate over the course of one long week after I stole the memory of his child’s first breath. The rumpled and confused man who’d ended up living on the street not far from me had eventually been ushered into a car by two family members, their soft words suggesting he’d be taken care of. But I never saw him walk up the steps of the courthouse again with his briefcase in hand.

Regret tried to gnaw at me. But regret required a body and I didn’t have one at the present moment. Instead, I repeated the litany of memories that were missable, memories I’d told myself were kosher to take.

Long boring days of repetition. A painful yet long-ago event in a string of similar indignities, the specifics better off forgotten. Or, if I had to, I was allowed to seize something very small yet sweet.

My hand was still on the teenager’s wrist, only a millisecond having passed while he tried to control the shopping cart and I searched for something that might fit the bill better. There were many sweetnesses in his past. I could almost taste them, could feel how they’d fuel a human body through cold, hungry nights if I decided to stay in human form after stashing my sword somewhere secure.

But the teenager would need those memories more than I would. He’d need them if he wanted to survive young adulthood without letting bitterness twist his character. He’d need them to grow into the man he seemed poised to become, the man who’d cross the street to help a distressed stranger.

“You have needs too,” Tall Nose breathed into my ear. He was invisible beside me, but I could hear him as he whispered seduction. “We both have needs. Imagine how loyal I’d be if you gave me part of that tasty memory.”

The tiny hints of sensation that had entered my body while I surfed the teenager’s showdown with his parents were already fading. And with the loss of sensation came a loss of moral compass.

It would be so easy to take from this teenager. Perhaps Tall Nose was right…

I whipped my hand away before I could finish that thought. I couldn’t trust myself not to steal something large, something important. So I’d take nothing. Not from this innocent who was facing the first major trauma of his formerly sheltered life.

Instead, I’d help him. Because, while scanning his memories, I’d noted one adult in his life who seemed like a safe harbor, an adult I now lied to remind him of. “I think I’ve met you before. Isn’t Mrs. Sellings your theater teacher?”

The teenager’s brow furrowed as he struggled to figure out how I could have known that. I stayed silent, waiting for him to fill in the blanks. “Were you at the play she took us to last month?” he ventured finally.

Smiles were so easy in full-on kami form. So were lies. “I was. But, hey, I won’t keep you. I know you need to get going. Thanks for the help.”

He nodded, already pulling out his phone as he strode purposefully away from me. He’d likely remembered the same scene I’d snooped on—Mrs. Sellings drawing aside a student as everyone else filed out of her classroom. The teen I’d almost stolen from tonight had been the last one out so he’d overheard a fragment of a conversation meant to be private.

“Are you safe at home?” A head shake. The teacher’s hand settled on the other student’s shoulder. “Then we’ll figure something out.”

Mrs. Sellings’ phone number had been on her syllabus. She was young, earnest. “Text me if you have any questions,” she’d told everyone on their first day of class.

In another week, this teenager would be so beaten down by life that he wouldn’t even consider texting, let alone breaking the unspoken social rule of calling a teacher in the middle of the night. But, right now, he still had those warm memories suggesting his safety was worth a little rule-breaking.

“Mrs. Sellings?” he said into his phone just before he disappeared out of sight around the corner.

I didn’t remember until the sidewalk was once again empty that my sword was still sitting at the bottom of the shopping cart, right out in the open. I continued to lack a human form or any other way of moving my weapon under cover.

Even Tall Nose had disappeared, disgusted by my un-kami-like behavior. The hungry darkness was now all I noticed as I waited alone for the end of the night.

 

​Chapter 4

Tru’s mate showed up before the trash trucks started running. It was hours after the teenager left, hours since the last person had passed down the opposite sidewalk resolutely ignoring my attempts to hail her.

Running low on energy had prompted me to lose visibility in the human realm, coming as close as a kami ever gets to sleeping. Which explains how a werewolf so large he was impossible to miss managed to swipe my sword out of the shopping cart before I even realized he was present.

I felt the firmness of his grip as soon as he touched the hilt however. Felt the absence of those strong fingers as he stuffed the sword and its umbrella sheathe inside a cardboard poster tube then used a plastic cap to seal the odd choice of container up.

“I know you’re there,” Drake observed, poking one-fingered at what would have been my nose level had I been in my most recent human body. “Boink,” he added, his dimple indenting in a way that almost made my recent dilly-dallying up on the rooftop understandable.

Almost, but not quite. Yes, this shifter turned physical attractiveness into an art form. But I certainly wasn’t going to fall for the same trick now that I was disembodied and lacked human arousal hormones. So instead of materializing and responding verbally, I fought back in a more efficient way.

Because he’d taken my sword. He’d stuffed it inside a tube that I suspected was meant to keep me from accessing it. Even though he was wrong about my abilities on that count, he was now in possession of an object very important to me. I had every right to seize one of his memories in a counterattack.

I touched his neck with fingers he couldn’t see then rifled through his brain like it was one of those old-fashioned card catalogs. And what I found there surprised me so much I left the memory behind, released my hold, and used up energy so I could converse.

Visible and audible now, I observed. “You’re not Tru’s mate.”

Rather than leaping away from my sudden appearance, he pretended to sweep a hat off his head by way of greeting. “Nope. Jack De Luca at your service.”

“Drake’s twin?”

“The more handsome twin, of course.”

Despite his words, there was no rivalry evident within his memories. Instead, I noted a deep loyalty to his brother. That plus some distressing news.

Turned out Jack, his brother, and Tru had decided I was the culprit in a recent murder. Which meant they’d been chasing me yesterday for a reason other than my actions a month ago. And Jack wasn’t here now for conversation either. He’d come to stop further depredations in a kind, gentle manner that was based on yet another very misplaced impression.

I winged my eyebrows upward. “You think I’m your mate.”

“I was hoping to save that bombshell for our third date. But, sure, poke around in my brain. Ruin all my surprises.”

Keep reading in Wolf’s Choice!

 

The post Wolf’s Choice Sneak Peak appeared first on Aimee Easterling.

No Fox Given: Collector’s Edition Extravaganza!

Are you ready for a collector’s edition omnibus hardback of the more-than-complete No Fox Given trilogy? In addition to the three main novels, this extravaganza includes:

…an interior with lots of beautiful awesomeness…

 

…two short stories from Thom’s point of view plus one text exchange between Kira, Grub, and Mai…

 

…extra author commentary (with photos from location-scouting expeditions)…

 

Other details:

649 pages6 x 9 inchesall three novels included in one omnibus editioneach hardback is signed and numbered by the author if you order by June 30 using the paypal button below. (Unsigned books will later be available on retailer sites.)free shipping in the U.S.estimated delivery August 11

$79 (U.S. only)

Please expect an email soon after your order to collect shipping information. If you don’t hear from me within 24 hours, please email your mailing address to aimee@wetknee.com.

Are you outside the U.S.? Instead of doubling the price to ship internationally, I’m offering non-U.S. readers unsigned hardbacks drop-shipped from the printer plus a signed bookplate sent directly from me. Estimated delivery August 25.

$96

Please expect an email soon after your order to collect shipping information. If you don’t hear from me within 24 hours, please email your mailing address to aimee@wetknee.com.

Do you want even more prettiness? The book box includes:

one signed collector’s edition hardbackstickers, postcards, a magnet, and more to bring the adventure more fully to lifeonly 8 available — please order now!free shipping in the U.S.estimated delivery August 11

8 available!

$99 (U.S. only)

Please expect an email soon after your order to collect shipping information. If you don’t hear from me within 24 hours, please email your mailing address to aimee@wetknee.com.

http://aimeeeasterling.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/AlphaPuzzle_Sample.mp3

Prefer audio? Two of the bonus shorts are now available on all retailer sites. The No Fox Given trilogy (all three novels) is also now available on all retailer sites. (Or ask for a copy at your local library.)

Already have the trilogy in paperback? You can add two of the bonus shorts in paperback form to your collection.

Prefer ebooks and don’t need all the prettiness? The three novels are available on all retailer sites and at your local library. Meanwhile, the bonus shorts are available in ebook form to patreon suscribers for as little as $1 per month (and you can also try before you buy, which will let you catch up online without any outlay of cash).

Did you miss the collector’s edition of the Moon Marked trilogy? Although the special Kickstarter version is no longer available, an omnibus hardback including some of the extras is now up on retailer sites.

http://aimeeeasterling.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/thomvideo.mp4

Phew! I know that’s a lot of options to throw at you. But I hope you enjoy the extra ways to enjoy this adventure.

The post No Fox Given: Collector’s Edition Extravaganza! appeared first on Aimee Easterling.