Tomorrow (4pm EST/9pm GMT), I'll be hosting a slot at Evernight's Heat Up Your Holidays party, and I'll be talking a lot about Paige and Kata, so please come and join me if you can! I'm also more than likely to be giving away a few ebooks, if you like that sort of thing...
Before that, you can buy THROWN TO THE WOLVES at all the usual places - Amazon US, Amazon UK, Evernight, and All Romance Ebooks, for starters.
And if you want a glimpse of the story, you can read on for an excerpt!
Paige went to Romania looking for inspiration for a book. She found herself caught in a horror story. Attacked and left for dead by a vampire, Paige finds herself at the mercy of Kata, a beautiful, enigmatic werewolf. Their attraction is instant, but Paige's fate hangs in the balance. She may yet be turned into a vampire herself. Soon it's clear to Paige that the only way to save herself may be to return to the woman who attacked her...even if it means placing both herself and Kata in the greatest danger.
Clickety click!
The woods are lovely, dark and deep…
The words bounced round Paige’s skull as she huddled at the foot of
the great, sprawling tree. The roots were thick and twisted, slimy
with damp moss and crawling with insects that itched at her cold
skin. The leafy branches overhead might have felt sheltering,
embracing even, by daylight. But it was midnight, deepest, darkest
midnight, and the full moon cast ominous shadows through the trees
and the canopy felt sinister instead, hiding unknown terrors.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep…
She was breathless, her lungs burning. She’d stumbled wildly
through the woods, desperately hoping to find a road, and instead
just losing herself in the shadowed maze of trees until finally she’d
tripped over a hidden root and sent herself crashing to the earth.
Now she cowered, cradling her injured wrist, feeling the slow, wet
trickle of blood down her throat. Out of energy. Out of hope. Full of
terror.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep…
The poem wouldn’t go away, but those words, circling endlessly, at
least blocked out some of the horror. It was like a charm, a cantrip
to ward off reality. Cold, bloody reality, where spiders skittered
through her tangled hair and the smell of her own blood filled her
nose. Dirt under her fingernails, throbbing pain in her wrist, and
stinging tears in her eyes. Reality that whispered she was going to
die out here, lost in the Hoia Forest, thousands of miles from home
and living a nightmare.
Paige clawed at her hair with her good hand, frantic and powerless.
She needed to move…but in which direction? Everywhere she looked
there was just more darkness, more trees. The lights of the cottage
she’d fled were long since vanished, and she would never go back
there anyway, back into the arms of that monster. Jesus fucking
Christ, she could never go back there. She’d rather die. She’d
rather freeze out here.
She probably would anyway.
The woods are lovely…
An owl shrieked nearby and Paige shrieked in answer, heart firing,
muscles trembling. Everything was a threat now. You couldn’t trust
the world. She’d seen beneath the surface tonight, seen beyond the
veil of the everyday, the mundane, and she knew it was all lies. It
sounded like an owl. And that woman had looked like a woman … but
she hadn’t been. So how could Paige trust the owl?
She needed to move. Needed to run. Maybe a direction didn’t matter.
She couldn’t get any more lost, after all.
She lurched to her feet, grateful she’d only hurt her wrist in the
fall, not her ankles. She inhaled deeply, trying to calm herself and
ease the burning in her chest. She thought of all the awful horror
movies she’d watched with her brother when they were teenagers.
They’d sneak downstairs after their parents had gone to bed and
mock the heroines who got in the wrong car, kissed the wrong guy, and
took the wrong path. She’d never be that stupid, she’d tell Ben.
After all, she had the advantage of having watched all those movies.
She’d know the signs and stay the hell out of trouble.
She laughed hysterically as she started walking. She wanted to run,
desperately wanted to run, but she feared tripping again and hurting
herself more seriously. The owl shrieked again and Paige sobbed,
pressing her good hand to the bite at her throat. She wanted to feel
brave and capable. She was pretty sure she was normally brave and
capable. But the well of dread inside her had pushed out everything
else, everything that she was. Out here, every sound was a threat and
the owl sounded deadly, inhuman and cold. She couldn’t imagine a
more terrifying sound to hear at midnight in a vast forest.
Until she heard the wolves.
Sonorous howls rose up in the night, cascading through the trees. It
was haunting and beautiful and absolutely chilling. It was impossible
to tell where the howls were coming from. Icy fingers trailed down
Paige’s spine and she froze, no longer sure if pressing on was
safe. Maybe … maybe it would be better to just hide until dawn. It
couldn’t be far away now, could it? Monsters melted away in the
sunlight, that was the Hollywood rule. She could climb a tree and
tuck herself away among the heavy leaves.
She was an experienced rock climber. If not for her wrist, she’d
try it. But scaling one of these strange, twisted trees in the dark,
one-handed, seemed as sure a death as waiting for the wolves. So was
that it? Was her choice now simply how she died?
She bit her lip until she tasted blood, a salt-copper explosion on
her tongue that made her want to puke. The next chorus of howls
sounded much closer and she heard herself whimpering, licking blood
from her lips. Would they smell it?
The woods are lovely, dark and deep … and
full of wolves. She didn’t remember
that being a problem for Robert Frost. A haze of defeat washed over
Paige, and she found herself on her knees, blood iced, heart wild.
She realized that in her whole entire life, she’d never known fear
before now. Not true fear, the kind that folded you up and finished
you off like this. The kind that destroyed hope. She was going to
die. Her body would rot out here and her family would never bring her
home.
The first wolf emerged gracefully from the shadows, the moonlight
lost in its black fur. Emerald eyes burned in the darkness, trapping
Paige. She moaned and hugged her knees to her chest, no longer trying
not to cry. The beast dwarfed her, its jaws parted to reveal massive
fangs. Her heart leapt into her throat, while her stomach dropped
like she was on a roller coaster. “Please…” she said
helplessly. “Please…”
Two more wolves appeared to flank the first,
smaller, but no less frightening. The lead wolf paced slowly towards
her, huffing misty clouds of breath into the air, moving in until
Paige could feel the heat of it against her cold skin. This was it
then. This was it. Miles to go… Miles
to go … miles from home, in the deep,
dark woods, and this was it. This was how she died.
Her final thought as the wolf closed in was that it was better than
dying at the hands of the vampire.
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