About the book:
Lydia Susi is passionate about protecting wolves in their natural habitat. When a hotel chain develops a tract of land next to the preserve, Lydia is one of the most vocal opponents of the project—and becomes a target.
One night, a shadowy figure threatens Lydia’s life in the forest, and a new hire at the Wolf Study Project comes from out of nowhere to save her. Daniel Joseph is both mysterious, and someone she intrinsically wants to trust. But is he hiding something?
As the stakes get higher, and one of Lydia’s colleagues is murdered, she must decide how far she will go to protect the wolves. Then a shocking revelation about Daniel challenges Lydia’s reality in ways she could never have predicted. Some fates demand courage, while others require even more, with no guarantees. Is she destined to have true love...or will a soul-shattering loss ruin her forever?
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Sneak Peek Excerpt:
CLAIMED
Chapter 1
Town of Walters,
est. 1834
Upstate New York
Lydia Susi’s Destiny came for
her in the veil, on a random Thursday in the early spring.
As
she ran along the wooded trail, two miles into a loop that would take her
through the preserve’s northeastern acreage, she was measuring the glowing line
that topped the contours of the mountains. Soon, the stripe would expand to an
aura, and after that, the sun would accept the handoff from the moon, and day
would arrive.
Her
grandfather had always told her there were two twilights, two gloamings, and if
you wanted to find your past, you went into the pines in the evening as the sun
went down. If you wanted your future to come to you, you went alone into the
forest in the veil, during that sacred transition of night into morning. There,
he’d told her, when the distinction between that which ruled the light and that
which held domain over the dark was at its narrowest, when the moon and the sun
reached for each other before the rotations of their orbits tore them asunder,
there was when the mortal could brush up against the infinite and seek answers,
direction, guidance.
Of course, that did not mean you
got good news. Or what you wanted.
But life was not an à la carte buffet where you could choose
everything that went on your plate—another words-of-wisdom from a man who had
lived to be 101 years old still smoking a pipe and drinking a glass of sima
after his dinner year round.
Why limit spring to just Vappu? he’d said.
Lydia had never believed in his
superstitions. She was a researcher, a scientist, and the kinds of things that
her isoisa had gone on about did not
fit in with that Ph.D. in biology she’d bought on layaway from the federal
government and was still paying off.
So no, she was not out looking
for any prognosti-cation from the universe this morning. She was get-ting her
workout done before she headed into her office at the Wolf Study Project. With
the way things had been going lately, she was going to blink and it would be
seven at night. Short-staffed and under-funded, everything was a fight for
resources at WSP, and by the time she locked things up every evening, she was
exhausted. So Carpe Cardio was her
motto and why she was out in this misty darkness—
Lydia let her stride peter to a
halt.
Her breath pumped in clouds that
captured and held the moonlight, and as a breeze came across the trail, her
body did the same with the chill, grabbing it out of the air and bringing it in
under her wind-breaker.
As she shivered, she looked
behind herself. The trail she was on was the widest one in the preserve, a
highway rather than a street, but she couldn’t see much into the trees. Pines
crowded up close to the shoulders of the packed path, and the fog wafting
through the craggy trunks and fluffy boughs obscured the forest even more.
In a
quick calculation, she figured she was a good three miles from any other human,
two miles from her car at the trailhead’s parking area, and a hundred yards
from what had caught her attention.
There,
up ahead, something was close to the ground, moving.
Fight or flight, Lydia, she thought. What’s it going to be.
She
reached around to the small of her back. There were two cylinders mounted on
the strap of her fanny pack, and she left the Mace where it was. Clicking on
her flashlight and bringing it forward, she swung the beam in a wide arc—
The
eyes flashed over on the left, a set of retinas flaring the light back at her
as pinpoints. The stare was about three feet from the ground and the pupils
were set close together, as predators’ were.
Lydia
looked around again.
“I’m not going to bother you,”
she said. But like the gray wolf spoke English?
The
growl was soft. And then came the rustling. The animal was prowling toward her.
“Oh,
shit.”
Except . . .
Lydia kept the beam down on the
fallen pine needles as she, too, walked forward. Something was wrong with the
wolf, its gait wobbly and uneven. Yet the spirit of the hunter remained
undeterred—and she was identified as its target.
She
was about twenty feet away when she got a sense of the fully mature male. He
was filled out, at a healthy weight of about a hundred and thirty pounds, and
his mottled white, gray, and brown fur was thick and lush, especially at the
tail. But his head was hanging at a bad angle, and he was dragging his back
paws as he continued to close the distance between them.
It
was obvious when the wolf was going to collapse. Though his head remained
forward, his body listed to the side, his will staying strong even as his rear
legs, and then his forelegs, gave out.
He
landed on the soft bed of pine needles on his side, and the struggle was
immediate, useless paws batting at thin air and ground cover. As Lydia drew a
little closer to him, he snarled, flashing long white fangs, his golden eyes
narrowing.
“Shh . . .”
she said as she kneeled down.
Her
hand shook as she got out her cell phone. As she called a number from her
favorites, she tried to keep her breathing steady.
In
the flashlight’s beam, she could see the grayness of those gums. The wolf was
dying—and she knew why.
“God
damn it, pick up, pick up—” Her words ma-chine gun’d from her mouth. “Rick?
Wake up, I’ve got another one. On the main trail—what? Yes, it’s the
same—enough with the talking, get your ass out of bed. I’m on the loop, about
two miles into the—huh? Yes, bring everything, and hurry.”
She
cut the connection as her voice gave out.
Letting
herself fall back to a sit, she stared into those beautiful eyes and tried to
project love, acceptance, gentleness . . . compassion. And
something got through, the majestic male’s muzzle relaxing, its paws falling
still, his flank rising and falling in a shuddering breath.
Or
maybe it was dying right now.
“Help is coming,” she said
hoarsely to the animal.
Also part of the Black Dagger Brotherhood World:
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Sinner brings another hot adventure of true love and ultimate sacrifice in the Black Dagger Brotherhood world.
The location of the glymera’s notorious prison camp was lost after the raids. When a freak accident provides Nyx clues to where her sister may still be doing time, she becomes determined to find the secret subterranean labyrinth. Embarking on a journey under the earth, she learns a terrible truth—and meets a male who changes everything, forever.
The Jackal has been in the camp for so long he cannot recall anything of the freedom he once knew. Trapped by circumstances out of his control, he helps Nyx because he cannot help himself. After she discovers what happened to her sister, getting her back out becomes a deadly mission for them both.
United by a passion they can’t deny, they work together on an escape plan for Nyx—even though their destiny is to be forever apart. And as the Black Dagger Brotherhood is called upon for help, and Rhage discovers he has a half-brother who’s falsely imprisoned, a devious warden plots the deaths of them all…even the Brothers.
About the Author:
J. R. Ward lives in the South with her incredibly supportive husband and her beloved golden retriever. After graduating from law school, she began working in health care in Boston and spent many years as chief of staff for one of the premier academic medical centres in the nation. She is the author of the Black Dagger Brotherhood and Fallen Angels series.
Find all about the author and their work at
http://www.jrward.com
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