Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You don’t have to be published to participate–just an writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site! or click on the banner above.
The Wolf’s Mate: a Tale of Holtlands releases tomorrow, which is of course making me very excited indeed. I love these two charaters. I love their story, their romance and the way they interact. I am currently writing part 3 The Wolf’s Destiny, and things are really getting dramatic!
Tomorrow, I’m going to have some more information about the story, the things that inspired it, the elements that changed along the way and a little competition or two. I like them.
Today, however is Excerpt Monday, so here is an excerpt from The Wolf’s Mate. Hope you enjoy.
~~~***~~~
Their love is a forbidden gift. Keeping it means a fight to the death…
A noise in the night woke her. Only cold air met her when she rolled over. There was no sign of Shan, just a faint outline in the furs and blankets where he had lain. Beyond the shelter of the tent, the fire had dwindled away to a dull red glow and the chill in the night made her shiver.
“Shan?”
There was no answer. Her side ached as she sat up, reminding her to move slowly and with care lest the wound rip open again. Twice now she had done that and Shan had drilled into her the need to protect it.
“Shan?” she tried again.
A hand touched her shoulder, a cold hand like that of a corpse. Jeren turned with a cry and found herself looking into the face of Mirrow, the handsome young guard who had once been her friend and companion, who had died before she met Shan.
Terror killed the words in her tight throat. Mirrow raised a finger to his lips. “Shh…” His icy breath struck her face and her body stiffened in alarm. She stared at him.
It was him, in every detail. His thick brown hair, the little scar on his chin and the lopsided grin. She had found it endearing, a little rakish. Once, before she met Shan and truly knew the emotion, she had thought she might love Mirrow. A childish infatuation. She knew that now.
“You’re dead,” she told him in a tiny voice, though whether to remind herself or impart the truth to him, she couldn’t say.
His eyes glittered darkly. Not the coppery warmth she remembered but endless black, two windows on the void.
Jeren’s mouth opened but no sound came out. She heard thunder, fierce and loud, and only after a moment did she realise it was her own heart.
“Kiss me,” said Mirrow, leaning closer. “You always wanted to kiss me. It wasn’t fitting though. That’s over now. Kiss me.”
She jerked back, but his arms closed about her like iron, his touch so cold it drained what little warmth she had left. She needed help. She needed Shan.
“Ah,” came the sigh of realisation, of understanding. It flowed around her, chilled her. “Not this face. Not anymore. How fickle you mortals are. Something else then, something more like this.”
Transfixed, she watched Mirrow’s features flow and change, colour draining away, his close-cropped hair growing and twisting itself into braids. Tiny braids of silver-white.
Now Shan was holding her.
Jeren gazed into his eyes. The sorrow was gone. For the first time since she had known him there was no trace of pain. No shadow of the past. No scars left by her brother’s blight on his life. Dazed and confused, she struggled to focus. Her mind dragged its way sluggishly to accommodate this change. Had she been dreaming?
“Whatever were you thinking?” he asked.
“Shan?”
“Shh…” He brushed his long fingers down the line of her jaw and her skin shivered beneath his touch. Her lips parted in a gasp of surprise as the tip of his forefinger played across her bottom lip.
In the back of her mind, some instinct struggled wildly. This was wrong. Shan’s smile never looked so hungry, quite so ravenous as this. If anything, this smile reminded her of her brother Gilliad, and her subconscious mind rebelled to see it on Shan’s handsome face.
Then he kissed her.
Shan’s hand closed on the back of her neck, tangling her hair in his fingers so she was trapped. In his strong grip she couldn’t help but let him have his way. And this kiss was far more than his chaste and respectful kisses. Even they stirred every sense she possessed. This time he sent her desire out of all control.
She clawed at his shoulders, hungry for him, desperate despite her discomfort or fear. It wasn’t right. She knew that. Her heart hammered against her ribs as all the time he held her in check, pushing her relentlessly back down onto the soft furs. This was wrong. Shan wouldn’t act this way. His honour was everything to him. And his honour would not allow him to do this to her, not without vows exchanged, a handfasting at the least. But this new, dark-eyed Shan was different. His mouth consumed hers, his kisses tearing away some vital part of her pitiful resistance.
Jeren opened her terrified eyes wide as the first jerk of energy within her snatched away her remaining breath. Now his lips devoured not just her own, but her very life force, tearing her soul and her very essence out with his kiss. Her body sagged, helpless under the enchantment, and her consciousness flickered like a candle in a gale. This wasn’t Shan. Couldn’t be Shan. But then, where was he?
The light in her gutted once more and went out.
~*~
The sight of the grey wolf drew Shan through the night. Fluid and beautiful, she crossed the snow without leaving a trail. As she looked back, her glance beckoned him on. It was almost too late when he realised his mistake. Anala would never deliberately draw him away from Jeren. The wolf’s ghost had brought them back together, had helped them to escape.
Dismissing it as another animal, albeit one almost as beautiful as his former companion, he turned his back. As he did so an alien movement caught the corner of his eye and the wolf was gone. Dull dread beat hollowly inside him as he looked instead to find a woman standing in the snow. Her eyes glistened, completely black without iris or white, and her long hair trailed behind her, as black as the smoke of a funeral pyre. Beneath the wolf skin draped around her shoulders she was naked, her pale skin both a lure and a warning.
“What are you?” he asked on a hitched breath.
She smiled, her lips parting to reveal sharp canines. “Am I not your desire? Both woman and wolf?”
Shan frowned and curved his left hand on the hilt of his sect knife, the right one against his sword. Both weapons felt cold, but wholly real. The only real thing about the scene before him. He acknowledged it to himself, swallowing hard on the lump in his throat. “You are not Anala’s ghost.”
“No.” She stepped closer and her features shifted subtly, her hair paling and rearranging itself in a thousand slender braids. Now his sister stood before him and yet he knew it was not, if only by the deviant gleam in her unnaturally black eyes. It could not be her, for Fa’linar would never look at her own brother in that way.
Shan slid the sect knife free. It formed a comfortable weight in his hands, his anchor in reality.
The woman’s gaze darted down to it for the briefest moment and when they returned to his face, her features had changed again. Her hair was brown, the deep glossy chestnut of Jeren’s hair. She flinched back from him.
“Shan? What’s wrong?” Her voice rang out in the night air—definitely her voice, every nuance correct. “Don’t you know me?” She reached out with trembling hands. But her eyes were still wrong. So desperately wrong.
Shan shook his head, trying to clear the image, but it remained before him, the human girl he loved, scared of his sudden aggression. Her face paled and she bit on her lower lip, as she always did when unsure.
He almost dropped both knife and sword. His eyes lingered on her face, then dropped down her nubile length. The perfect curve of her side. Without even the trace of a wound. Not even a scar. Flawless.
She stood no more than two feet away from him when he slashed out with the blade of his sect knife.
With speed and dexterity far beyond any mortal, she twisted aside and all her pretence fell away.
“You’re not my Jeren!” He kept the knife between them, and fear clawed at the back of his throat, though he used everything in his power to push it down.
The creature laughed, her illusions tumbling to the snow like the spring thaw.
“No. And soon your Jeren will be our Jeren and you, Shan’ith Al-Fallion, will be mine.”
“Never.” The word was a low growl. “You’re Fell’na. You’re everything my people despise.”
She turned away, her body twisting to smoke and shadows, but her voice lingered on the breeze like a taint. “So is she.”
Jeren!
Shan sprinted back to the camp, the knife heavy in his hands, the sword dragging at his arm with every step. He tore over rocks and through deep snow, reckless in his haste.
The dark form of a Fell’na cradled her, leaned over her mouth like a lover. But instead of kisses, it stole her life itself. Jeren’s arms hung limp at her side, her eyes stared vacantly at the skies overhead, and a thin covering of frost glistened on her perfect skin and twisted through the strands of her chestnut hair.
“No! Jeren!” Shan tore the creature off her and held it so it could not dissolve into mists and shadows. His knife flashed moonlight for the second before it bit into the darkness. The Fell’na cried out in a tongue close enough to his own that he recognised a curse. Then it sagged in his grip, nothing more than deadweight. He dropped it and pulled Jeren from the ground, gathering her in arms that suddenly felt weak, helpless.
Her body hung from his grip, so cold, dangerously cold, and her heart fluttered like that of a wounded bird.
“Curse it, Jeren,” he whispered, trying to rub some warmth back into her body. “Can I not leave you alone for a moment?” The feeble attempt at humour to rouse her fell sickeningly flat. He kissed her unresponsive lips and his heart plummeted when she remained still and cold as stone.
“She’s ours now,” a teasing voice carried on the breeze and he jerked his head up to meet the threat.
“No. I’ll keep her from you, Enchassa, Sorceress, Witch!” He rubbed Jeren’s arms furiously, trying to will her stolen life force back into her while the Fell’na Enchassa laughed.
“If you had the fire of the desire you claim to hold for her, that might do you some good. But it isn’t proper is it, Shan? You can’t save a lover with your love alone unless she’s your wife. That would shame you. And so would mating with a creature like that.”
“You won’t touch her.” He slashed towards the figure as it coalesced from the darkness. But her smile didn’t fade, no more than she did.
Beautiful as night, her skin like water under a moonless sky, iridescent waves of hair tumbling down her back, she moved towards him, each step more bewitching.
“She’ll be our thrall. Her magic ours to use. And so will you.” She laughed, the noise ripping through the air to caress his skin, setting the sensitive hairs vibrating with alarm and unwilling desire. “Ah yes, you can feel it too, Shan. Part of you even wants it. Come with me now and spare your people.”
“My…my people…” A fog drifted over his mind, the Enchassa’s power falling over him. He knew it even as he failed to shake it off.
“She’ll bring ruin to you all.” A fingertip slid down the length of his arm, leaving ice and terror in its wake. “This I prophecy. And though you think you love each other now, that will never endure. She lives for but a moment next to us. She is a brief light and at best you’ll spend countless years in mourning once she is gone. Her home will draw her back and I see only blood there, blood spilling all around, blood covering her, drowning her. And the blood of the Fey’na will stain the ground. Your blood, your people’s blood billowing through the pools beneath the Vision Rock. And all drawn because of a sword, a sword like a grasping hand reaching out from River Holt.”
The Enchassa’s grip closed around his throat. “Let’s end this, you and I,” she whispered, her breath like the first warning of a snowstorm.
“Don’t forget me,” Jeren hissed, her voice brittle from beneath them. She seized Shan’s hand and thrust the knife he was still holding right at the Enchassa’s heart. With a howl of rage the Fell’na threw herself back, turning to avoid it, and the blade sliced along her forearm, trailing a smear of tarry blood behind it.
~~~***~~~
Links to other Excerpt Monday writers
Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site. As Excerpt Monday is an international affair, some of the links might not be live as yet, so remember to check back.
Links:
Our hosts:-
Bria Quinlan, Rom Com (PG13)
and
Alexia Reed, Urban Fantasy (R)
Joining us this week:
Stephanie Draven, Fantasy with Romantic Elements (PG 13)
Danie Ford, Contemporary YA (PG 13)
Babette James, Contemporary Romance (PG 13)
Cynthia Justlin, Thriller with Romantic Elements (PG 13)
Kaige, Historical Romance (PG 13)
Jeannie Lin, Contemporary Romantic Elements (PG 13)
Shawntelle Madsion, Paranormal Romance (PG13)
Debbie Mumford, Science Fiction/ Fantasy (PG13)
Remember to come back tomorrow, for release day music, chat adn a chance or two to win The Wolf’s Mate. Spread the word.
Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday. As a bit of a Christmas present, and perhaps for some post breakfast/lunch/dinner reading, here’s the opening of The Wolf’s Destiny, book three of A Tale of the Holtlands. In The Wolf’s Sister, Jeren and Shan met when she fled her brother Gilliad’s realm, fearing his growing insanity. In The Wolf’s Mate they fought to stay together among his people, the Fey’na, and battled against their ancestral enemies the Fell’na, cementing their relationship and facing two divergent prophecies – one which predicted their separation, the other spending their lives together. And now, in The Wolf’s Destiny, prophecy and their past come back to haunt them, threatening to tear apart everything they have built together.
