For those who get my newsletter, you already had the chance to see this. For those who don’t…

This is what I’m working on.

buy links, cover, blurb to be post later

Zee actually flirted.

And giggled.

And smiled so hard her face hurt.

Through it all, the hungry things within her demanded freedom.

She smashed them down time and again with the ease that came from years and years of containing those aspects of her nature. It hurt. Lately it had hurt more than normal. But tonight that pain was edged with something sweeter.

Finally, she might be able to have sex and do something about the physical needs she’d had to stifle for so long.

A wolf wasn’t meant to be alone.

And the other aspect of her nature…it withered and died without touch. If she didn’t have Therian blood within, she would have wasted ago long ago. She didn’t know much about that part of her heritage, because there had never been anybody to teach her, her mother dying not long after she was born. But she’d read about the wasting.

More than an hour after he’d first arrived, Duke moved in so close, she felt the warmth of his breath brush over her lips and she had to choke back the whimper that almost escaped, thrash the other part into submission—and it didn’t want to listen.

“I’ve got this crazy need to kiss you, Zee. Am I risking life and limb if I try?” Duke’s eyes, so dark a brown they appeared black, held hers.

“No.” She licked her lips and hoped he’d kiss her, hoped he’d touch her…even as she hoped he’d never notice how new all of this was to her.
He reached up and cradled her cheek in his hand and then his mouth was on hers. Soft at first, his tongue tracing the curve of her lower lip before seeking entrance to her mouth.

This…kissing…this, she remembered. A hungry noise escaped and she eased closer—or tried to. Duke stood next to the stool where she perched and her position made it awkward. But then he moved and in what felt completely natural, she parted her jean-clad thighs and he stepped between them, deepening the kiss.

She broke away to gasp for breath—and maybe ask if he’d come upstairs to the apartment where she lived.

But he was already kissing her again, with more focus and determination this time.

She moaned and reached up, cupping the back of his head, the short, raspy feel of his hair abrading her palm.

“Son of a—fuck, Donner!”

A scent hit her—holly, cedar, birch…and fur and wildness and sweet mountain air.

Pack…except, no. It wasn’t pack. Not anymore—pain spliced through her heart, tearing and clawing. It all happened in microseconds while she clung to Duke and then she wasn’t even touching him.

The big, strong military man was stumbling back into a wooden table, but he moved fluidly with the movement, eyes going sharp as he instinctively recognized a threat. He drew a knife from his boot—as an officer with one of the military branches, he’d be authorized to carry any number of weapons, and he moved fast…

But not fast enough. Panic clawed at her and she swiped out, emptying the drink and smashing the glass. She wasn’t military trained, or part of a lethal pack, but she was no push-over, either. No meek thing to be thrown around and abused—not again. Not anymore.

Then it didn’t matter, because Donner was there, slamming a fist into the Therian wolf who’d entered the bar and seen her being kissed by a man who wasn’t the Prime who had laid claim on her years before.

It didn’t matter that he’d never actually followed through.

Therians understood and respected their own customs and laws before anything else. And to them, Zennia Day belonged to Nikolai Lochlann, the Prime of Appalachia, a man who lived hundreds of miles and several states away, the man who’d once promised he’d love and care for her always…then told her to get the fuck out of Appalachia.

And stay out, Zennia. You’re not welcome here.