Rescued by Her Bear by Felicity Heaton-Review

Rescued by Her Bear (Black Ridge Bear Shifters 2) by Felicity Heaton-Review Tour

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date August 10, 2021

Leaving his cosy cabin at Black Ridge in the middle of a winter storm isn’t Lowe’s idea of a good time, but he’ll do whatever his alpha wants. With his twin for company, he battles the blizzard and his grouchy bear side, trying to keep his spirits up. When his brother brings up his bad habit of getting his heart broken, Lowe is sure things can’t get any worse… and then a gunshot echoes around the valley and the smell of blood sends his instincts wild.

And when he finds the owner of the delicate, tempting scent and sets eyes on the most beautiful female he’s ever seen, fear and hope collide as he realises she’s human but everything inside him roars ‘fated mate’.

Going on the run hadn’t been in Cameo’s life plan, but when her nice-guy-turned-drug-lord ex kills her brother and sets his sights on her, the binder goes out of the window. Staying one step ahead of Karl and his men is vital to staying alive, but a wrong turn leads her into a remote valley and what looks like the end of the line… until a gorgeous six-six mountain of a man rescues her and growls a vow to protect her.

As the heat that crackles between them blazes into an inferno, Cameo is torn between accepting Lowe’s help and leaving to keep him safe. With the clock ticking and the men hunting her drawing ever closer, will Cameo follow her head or her heart?

••••••

REVIEW: RESCUED BY HER BEAR is the second instalment in Felicity Heaton’s contemporary, adult BLACK RIDGE BEARS paranormal, romance series – a spin off from the author’s COUGAR CREEK MATES’ SERIES which in turn is a spin-off from the author’s Eternal Mates series. It is not necessary to have read the previous series but there is an on-going premise throughout with the inclusion of the group known as Archangel. This is bear shifter Lowe, and park ranger Cameo’s story line.

NOTE: Some of the events of RESCUED BY HER BEAR run parallel to, and cross over with some of the events of book one STOLEN BY HER BEAR.

Told from dual third person perspectives, covering approximately twenty four hours, RESCUED BY HER BEAR, follows the quick building romance and relationship between bear shifter Lowe, and park ranger Cameo. Cameo is on the run in the wake of the murder of her brother, and threats against her life but wherever she goes, the drug cartel with whom her brother was working, wanted their money, believing our heroine was good for the coin. Hoping to lose the men in the Black Ridge mountains, Cameo finds herself injured, in both body and soul. Enter bear shifter Lowe, and the man with whom Cameo will fall in love. What ensues is the quick building relationship between Cameo and Lowe, and the potential fall-out as Lowe’s secrets are about to be revealed, and the men hunting for Cameo take aim at Lowe.

The relationship between Lowe and Cameo is quick to develop. Lowe suspects Cameo is his fated mate, and struggles with the possibility that our heroine may leave when she discovers the truth. Desperate to protect the woman that calls to his heart, Lowe is willing to risk the wrath of his Alpha, looking forward to his own happily ever after. The $ex scenes are limited but passionate.

The secondary and supporting characters include Alpha Saint and his mate (cougar shifter) Holly; Lowe’s twin brother Knox; bear shifter Rune and Maverick, and cougar shifter doctor Yasmin. The requisite evil has many faces.

RESCUED BY HER BEAR is a quick read; a fast paced story of insta-love between a shifter bear and a human female, a human who is willing to kill to protect her mate. The premise is dramatic; the characters are edgy; the romance is intimate. RESCUED BY HER BEAR ends on a happily ever after-for now, as the trouble following Cameo has yet to be rectified.

Click HERE for Sandy’s review of book one STOLEN BY HER BEAR

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you’re a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling London Vampires series. Seven sexy and sinful Greek god brothers can be your new addiction in the Guardians of Hades series. Or how about four hot alpha shifter brothers in her Cougar Creek Mates series? Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the Eternal Mates series.

If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:

WEBSITE | BLOG | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | GOODREADS | INSTAGRAM

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Stolen by Her Bear by Felicity Heaton-Review & Excerpt Tour

Stolen by Her Bear (Black Ridge Bear Shifters 1) by Felicity Heaton-Review & Excerpt Tour

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date July 20, 2021

Saint is a bear shifter on the war path. He just wants to sleep the winter away, but his rowdy neighbours in the remote Rocky Mountains valley have other plans. When the cougar shifter brothers refuse to keep the noise down, he reacts on instinct, kidnapping a beautiful female who smells like sweet berries and tempts him like no other—a female who happens to be mated to one of the brothers.

Holly’s first taste of freedom isn’t going as planned. Escaping her family to join in the winter wedding celebrations at Cougar Creek with her friend Ember sounded fantastic, until a grouchy bear shifter grabs her—a gorgeous male who rouses instincts in her that are startling and powerful, igniting a fierce need to growl and stake a claim on him. A gorgeous bear who might be her fated mate.

Can Holly resist the hungers Saint awakens in her? And when Saint realises his mistake about her identity, can he convince the stunning Holly to give him a second chance?

•••••••

REVIEW:STOLEN BY HER BEAR is the first instalment in Felicity Heaton’s contemporary, adult BLACK RIDGE BEARS paranormal, romance series- a spin off from the author’s COUGAR CREEK MATE’S SERIES which in turn is a spin-off from the author’s Eternal Mates series. It is not necessary to have read the previous series but there is an on-going premise throughout with the inclusion of the group known as Archangel. This is bear shifter / alpha Saint, and cougar shifter Holly’s story line. Saint and his pack/brothers were first introduced in the Cougar Creek Mate’s series.

Told from dual third person perspectives (Holly and Saint) STOLEN BY HER BEAR follows Saint as he is awoken from his winter sleep, a sleep he is desperate to continue. Discovering the cougar shifters were preparing for a party, Saint kidnaps a woman he believes to be someone’s fated mate but in doing so kidnaps the woman that will call to his heart. Enter cougar shifter Holly. What ensues is the quick building romance and relationship between Holly and Saint, and the potential fall-out as the cougars attack in the hopes of rescuing our story line heroine.

The relationship between Holly and Saint is one of fated mates; a kidnapping scenario in which Holly is targeted in a case of mistaken identity, but her return home comes on the heals of an attack against Saint that leaves our hero fighting for his life. Believing Holly to be his fated mate, Saint struggles in the aftermath of an attack that sees Holly walking away, taking his heart with her. The lone $ex scene (at the end of the story) is passionate and intense, without the use of over the top, sexually graphic language and text.

We are introduced to Saint’s pack mates and brothers Knox and Lowe, as well as the return of the Cougar Creek Mates as the cougar shifters prepare for a double wedding.

STOLEN BY HER BEAR is a quick ready that covers approximately twenty-four hours in the life of our storyline couple. The fast paced premise is engaging and entertaining; the romance is insta-lust to love, and seductive; the characters are energetic and determined.

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

Saint turned his frown on the snow that reached almost as high as the deck, had to be at least three feet deep where it had accumulated against the underside of his raised cabin. His gaze tracked across the undulating snow that stretched between him and the thick forest of lodgepole pines and spruces.
This was going to be one shitty walk.
Putting it off wasn’t going to make it any nicer though, or make his mood any better.
He wasn’t the only grouchy bear on the property either. He glanced to his right at Knox and Lowe, could see by their faces they were as pissed as he was by the disturbance. Having the three of them tired and grumpy would only make all of them worse in the long run, would bring out the bear in them and cause them to bicker and fight, destroying the peace they normally enjoyed. So as much as he despised the thought of dropping down into three feet of snow, he was going to have to do it.
Gods, he was glad Rune and Maverick had gone to Vancouver for winter as they always did, the two of them travelling to a bolthole they shared there. Neither of them was the sort of bear to sleep the months away, preferred to be awake through winter, but like him, they didn’t like snow. Saint had once made the mistake of convincing them to stay at Black Ridge for winter, had denied the urge to sleep so he could stay awake with them.
It hadn’t gone well.
They had made it to December before Rune and Maverick had gotten into a brawl so bad he had feared they would kill each other, and then all three of them had holed up in their individual cabins until the snowmelt. It had been the longest damned winter of Saint’s life. He hadn’t been able to sleep, had stayed awake to make sure Rune and Maverick made it to spring.
He scrubbed a hand over his beard, hoping like hell things didn’t end up that bad this time. If they couldn’t get back to sleep, ended up having to stay awake, then he wasn’t sure he would be able to keep his cool and smooth the edge of his own mood to maintain order within their makeshift pride.
As it was, he was itching for a fight.
If Knox or Lowe tried to start anything, just looked at him the wrong way, he was liable to blow his top.
Knox kicked the snow off his deck, grumbling, “I’m tempted to go deal with whoever is making all that noise.”
“Rein it in, or I’ll be tempted to deal with you,” Lowe muttered as he finished pushing the last of the snow off his own deck, piling it up around the thick wooden pylons that raised the cabin off the ground.
It wasn’t like the usually laid-back Lowe to be grumpy. Normally, the ash-blond bear took things as they came, rolling with whatever life threw at him without worrying too much. Saint blamed Knox’s mood. It was his brother’s agitation that had Lowe on edge too.
Lowe always got like this whenever Knox was fired up, felt a need to weigh in and have his twin’s back.
“I’ll go see what the deal is.” Saint turned away from them and murmured under his breath, “Just got to get through this crap first.”
He huffed and took the first step down from his deck, forced himself to keep going when the next one was hidden by snow. His pride needed him to do something, and he would do it. He would make the cougars shut up so he and his kin could get back to sleep, and when he woke, all the snow would be gone.
He held on to that fantasy, filling his mind with images of green grass and warm sunshine as he trudged down the steps. It shattered as he fumbled for the final step and slipped, had to grab the railing behind him and brace himself to avoid falling on his backside.
Saint growled as he pushed away from the steps and waded through the deep snow, heading for the forest that would lead him to Cougar Creek. He glared at the field of white as it sparkled, the weak sunlight reflecting off it enough to almost blind him. As it was, it made his eyes water again, and that moisture felt as if it was turning to ice in his eyes.
There was nothing magical about winter.
He huffed and snarled as he pushed forwards, ploughing a path through the snow. At least he wouldn’t get as cold and damp on the way back, after he was done murdering whoever had woken him and his kin.
If he somehow managed to rein in the urge to spill blood, maybe the fresh air and struggling through the snow would tire him out enough that he could sleep when he got back to his cabin.
He finally reached the dense forest, where most of the snow clung to the branches of the pines and firs, keeping the amount on the ground down to less than a foot. He picked his way through the fresh snow, careful not to snag his boot on a root or rock because falling flat on his face in the snow would probably be the match that lit the fuse of his temper.
Saint breathed a little easier as he reached an animal track, a path through the forest that had been kept clear of snow by the constant back and forth of the local ungulates. His muscles began to relax, the tension that had stiffened them during the walk through the icy snow fading as he picked up pace.
When he neared the invisible boundary between Cougar Creek and Black Ridge, he slowed and fell silent, his breathing levelling out as he moved with stealth into the trees, veering off the track. His ears twitched as he listened, the only sound that of distant birdsong and animals moving through the trees. No laughter. No voices.
His breath fogged in the air as he slipped from tree to tree, peering ahead of him through the trunks and low branches and the scrub, seeking a sign of life as he drew closer to Cougar Creek. His palms began to sweat as his heart drummed a faster, harder rhythm against his ribs, as he honed his senses and searched for danger, in case it was hunters who had come to the cougar territory and they were the ones laughing.
Overjoyed by capturing or killing a shifter.
He spat on the ground, cursing the hunters. They had taken too many from his kin.
Had taken too much from him.
He had barely matured, had only just passed a century old when the mortal hunter organisation Archangel had executed a raid on a nearby underground fae town. His parents had been there, had tried to escape and hadn’t made it out alive.
Last year, a helicopter had circled over Black Ridge, heading back to Cougar Creek, and Saint had heard the distant gunfire. Part of him had wanted to go and check it out, to see if Rath needed help.
The rest, the alpha in him, had made him stay at Black Ridge in case there were more hunters in the forests and his pride needed him.
He tipped his head up and dragged in a slow, deep breath as he pushed those memories aside, focusing on the present in case it was hunters. He couldn’t let himself get swept up in the past, had to stay alert and aware of his surroundings and any danger that might be lying in wait for him.
Saint scented the air, trying to catch something that would tell him what to expect ahead of him.
He froze, locked up tight as he caught a scent, as warmth spread through him in response, roused a hunger in him that was powerful and commanding.
He dragged in another breath, aching for another delectable hit of that scent. And it was delectable, like sweet berries, and utterly feminine.
Which was enough to set him on edge.
Females didn’t stay at Cougar Creek in winter.
Saint veered off course again, unable to stop himself from tracking the scent through the forest, curiosity gripping him and filling him with a need to find the owner of it. His mouth watered, the hunger clenching his gut growing fiercer as the scent grew stronger. Ahead of him, the bushes and trees gave way to man-made clearings, openings in the forest where small cabins had been constructed.
He huffed.
Cougar Creek.
He stealthily inspected the two cabins he could see, keeping his distance from them. Snow had fallen through the canopy of the forest and was thick on their roofs, and it was pristine on the decks, untouched. No one was staying in them.
Saint banked left, heading down towards the river, to a cabin he knew was there. The raised L-shaped wooden lodge sat at the head of a fifty-foot clearing in the forest, one that stretched down to the creek.
He remained in the shadows of the trees as he moved towards that river, giving the place a wide berth. He eyed the deck and the steps and the ground just beyond them. Someone had cleared the snow away. The place belonged to one of the three brothers of Rath, the alpha of the pride, and it was usually empty over winter.
Looked as if the male was staying this time.
Was he responsible for the ruckus that had woken Saint and his kin?
He sharpened his instincts again and frowned as he sensed more than just Rath and one brother at the Creek. He pinpointed at least five other people, most of them close to the main clearing. One of them was bound to be the female Rath had mated with last year, one Saint had seen for himself a few times.
He thought her name was Ivy, was sure he had heard the alpha cougar call her that a few times when she had been photographing bears near the river. The female was human, and not the only one at the Creek either.
The bastard Storm had a human female of his own. Saint had caught her in the woods last year when she had been running from the male and had scared her witless. He regretted what had happened now, but he had been in a foul mood, his bear at the fore. Their run-in had happened only a week after the Archangel helicopter had come and the need to protect his kin had been strong, fierce enough that he had viewed her as a threat.
Saint had figured Gabi for a huntress, still thought she was a member of Archangel and one day Storm was going to wake up to find a blade in his heart.
He backtracked up to the two empty cabins and headed past them into another area of dense scrub that provided cover as he moved towards the heart of Cougar Creek.
His ears twitched.
Voices.
He eased lower and peered through the bushes and trees towards the clearing. Stilled as he spotted two males and a female in an area that had been cleared of snow near the top of the long sloping strip of green that formed the centre of the cougar’s territory. The felines had been busy. It looked as if they had cleared snow in a patch roughly sixty feet in all directions from the front of Rath’s cabin. That cabin sat nestled among the pines and spruces, its back to the forest that covered the base of the mountain, facing the clearing and the creek at the bottom of it.
What were they up to?
Rath straightened and planted the tip of his snow shovel against the ground, leaned on the handle of it as he pushed his thick black hat up and wiped his brow. He pulled his dark green scarf down and undid the top fastening of his black winter jacket.
“We taking a break now?” the male with him growled, a hint of warmth and teasing in his tone as he set down his own shovel and tugged at the blue scarf wrapped around his throat. Like Rath, he wore a black protective coat and matching hat, and irritatingly kept his back to Saint so he couldn’t make out which brother he was. “Only been at it an hour. Still a lot more snow to clear.”
Rath huffed and scrubbed a hand down his face, over a thick dark beard. “Remind me again why we’re doing this.”
The big male chuckled, the warmth in his voice lingering. “Love, apparently. Not sure why I got pulled into shovelling duties though. Storm should be here, clearing the way for this ceremony. Where is he anyway?”
This time, Rath was the one who chuckled, his grey eyes brightening with it. “Where do you think?”
The male shook his head. “I have half a mind to go bang down his door, but I don’t want to get an eyeful. Flint could at least have offered to help, but he’s about as useful as Storm.”
Flint and Storm weren’t present then, which meant the big male with Rath was Cobalt. Cobalt was a mad bastard. Saint had never seen a cougar fight like he did, as if he had nothing left to live for.
Rath and Cobalt were as big as each other, packed with muscle and good fighters, but if it came to a one-on-one fight, Saint could take them. Provided they didn’t resort to low blows like their brother Flint.
He shuddered at the memory, his balls aching. It had taken him weeks to heal them after the male had run his claws over them during a brawl. He still hadn’t forgiven the cougar, wanted a piece of him, and Storm, for the scars they had given him. A low growl curled up his throat, his blood running hot despite the cold, and he wanted to unleash it but bit it back instead. As much as he wanted a fight, he wanted to sleep more.
Besides, he couldn’t let his foul mood get him into a brawl right now when his body was still recovering from a month-long sleep. He would probably lose and that would only make his mood worse.
Saint drew down a steadying breath and stilled as the delicious scent of berries hit him again. It was weaker now, but still warmed him, roused a hunger to hunt the owner of that scent and see her for himself.
The door of the cabin behind Rath opened and a female came out, wrapped so heavily in winter clothing that he couldn’t make out much of her face between her colourful striped scarf and woollen hat, or her figure through the thick cream coat and brown ski pants.
He knew her scent though.
Ivy.
In fact, he knew most of the scents of the females belonging to the brothers. He had put Gabi’s scent to memory when he had captured her, and he had done the same with Yasmin’s when Flint had come to Black Ridge looking for a fight in order to impress her.
Maybe he had imagined the sweet scent in the woods.
Berries were his vice after all.
He loved them and found them impossible to resist.
“Come warm up for a few minutes.” She looked at her mate and then at Cobalt.
Both males nodded and let their shovels fall into the thin layer of snow, and Rath waited for Cobalt to reach him before they both started towards the cabin.
“Does Ember want to drop in for a warming drink too?” Ivy said with a look at Cobalt.
Ember. Saint wasn’t familiar with that female.
“She went for a walk.” Cobalt tugged his black hat off, revealing mussed blond hair. “But she’ll be back in time for the practice run.”
Rath glanced at his brother. “Did your certificate come through?”
“Yup. I’m officially ordained.” Cobalt flashed a grin at him and chuckled. “That’s not something I ever thought I would be. Not many cougars out there needing this sort of thing.”
Saint watched them go inside, debated going to the cabin and speaking to Rath, but fatigue was rolling up on him, his eyelids feeling heavy again as the fresh air lost its effect on him and his bear instincts growled at him to go back to sleep. He knew what the noise was now. It wasn’t humans or danger, just a bunch of irritating cougars celebrating something. That should be enough to calm the instinct to protect himself and his pride, and allow all of them to get back to sleep.
He rose to his feet and turned away from the cabin, picked his way to the animal track and followed it back towards the Ridge. Maybe he would fix himself some food before he hit the sack again, something to take the edge off his hunger and tide him over while he slept. He was clearly hungry.
Because he was fantasising about sweet juicy summer berries again.
Could smell them stronger now.
He frowned and slowed his pace, lifted his head and drew down a breath. The scent was stronger. His mouth watered, heat suffusing him, and he pivoted on his heel, was tracking the smell of berries before he realised what he was doing.
Saint dropped to his haunches when he spotted a lone figure ahead of him, near the frozen river.
A female.
He dragged down a breath, every inch of him locking up tight as he caught her scent.
Sweet berries and a hint of vanilla.
He scented something else on her too. She was cougar. Was she Ember? Did she belong to Cobalt?
Saint told himself to go, but found himself easing lower instead to observe her. Silent. A predator.
She tilted her head up as she turned, raised her gloved hand to cover her eyes as she peered at the canopy. Birds sang there but he paid them no heed, was too arrested by the sight of her.
Raven hair spilled from beneath her dark purple woollen hat, cascading over a form-fitting weatherproof coat in the same colour, and grey eyes with a strong hint of emerald sparkled as rosy lips curled into the semblance of a smile.
His heart started at a hard pace, drumming against his ribs as his blood heated.
She was beautiful.
A need to stand and go to her pounded inside him and he struggled to deny it, to remain where he was and merely observe her, studying everything about her. Like the fact she had to stand at least a foot shorter than his six-seven, and looked as if she weighed nothing more than a feather. There was a delicate sense of beauty about her, with her porcelain skin and the hint of pink on her cheeks, and he lost himself in watching her, the world around him fading away.
Until there was only her.
Her slender shoulders suddenly stiffened, her smile disappearing as she tensed and went still.
She had sensed him.
Saint lingered, wondering what she would do. Run away or stay?
Seconds seemed to stretch into an eternity as he waited, as her grey-green eyes slowly took in the forest.
Strange disappointment flooded him when she suddenly turned on her heel and walked in the direction of Cougar Creek, her pace brisk, boots chewing up the frozen ground beneath the pines.
Saint stared after her.
Driven to follow.


 

 

Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you’re a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling London Vampires series. Seven sexy and sinful Greek god brothers can be your new addiction in the Guardians of Hades series. Or how about four hot alpha shifter brothers in her Cougar Creek Mates series? Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the Eternal Mates series.

If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:

WEBSITE | BLOG | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | GOODREADS | INSTAGRAM

 

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Thanatos (Guardians of Hades 8) by Felicity Heaton-Review Tour

Thanatos (Guardians of Hades 8) by Felicity Heaton-Review & Giveaway Tour

THANATOS
Guardians of Hades 8
by Felicity Heaton
Genre: adult, contemporary, paranormal, romance

Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.ca | Amazon.com.au
iBooks USA | iBooks UK | iBooks Canada | iBooks Australia | iBooks New Zealand
Barnes and Noble | Kobo Books | Google Play

ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date June 8, 2021

Thanatos, god of death, has a mission: scour the unknown realms of the Underworld and retrieve the only daughter of his god-king, Hades. Murdered six centuries ago and her soul captured before it could pass on, she now falls under Thanatos’s domain. Armed with only a description of the location of her prison seen in a vision by her oldest brother, Thanatos has spent four years hunting for her, determined to complete his task and save her.

But when he locates Calindria, she’s not the delicate little girl he remembers—she’s a fierce, bewitching and beautiful warrioress who stirs unwanted feelings in his black heart and she’s on a mission of her own.

Calindria, daughter of Hades, has a mission: escape her prison, hunt down the ones who murdered her twin brother, and then make her family pay for abandoning her. But the Fates have other plans, placing a distractingly gorgeous god of death in her path—a warrior who is determined to convince her that what she believed is the truth is in fact a lie.

In a realm that turns memories against them and where anything can be an illusion, can Calindria and Thanatos learn to trust each other enough to work together to escape the hellish domain, or will the darkest moments of their past prove too powerful to overcome?

••••••

REVIEW:THANATOS is the eighth instalment in Felicity Heaton’s adult GUARDIANS OF HADES erotic, paranormal/fantasy series focusing on the children of Hades. This is Thanatos, god of death, and Calindria, daughter of Hades’ story line.THANATOS can be read as a stand alone but for back story and cohesion, I recommend reading the series in order as there is a continuing premise throughout.

NOTE: The Guardians of Hades series is Felicity Heaton’s interpretation of, and does not follow, the actual Greek mythological family tree or events.

Told from dual third person perspective (Thanatos and Calindria) THANATOS follows the search and rescue of our story line heroine. Calindria, daughter of Hades, is missing and presumed dead for close to six hundred years but Thanatos has made it his mission to locate the missing goddess, one way or another, as she is presumed to be held captive in the realm of the death. Calindria’s brother ‘saw’ our heroine in an apparition, and the brothers are desperate to rescue the sister they hadn’t seen in hundreds of years. Before Thanatos is able to ‘free’ our story line heroine, Calindria discovers that she is not without some power of her own. What ensues is the quick building relationship between Thanatos and Calindria, and the potential fall-out as Thanatos offers himself up in return for Calindria’s freedom.

The relationship between Thanatos and Calindria is one of immediate attraction but Thanatos believes he is unworthy of love; the darkness from his past refuses to let go. Meanwhile, Calindria’s newfound powers threaten any chance of a possible relationship, powers that she has yet to learn to control. As our couple journey towards freedom, Calindria discovers that Thanatos may be the male, especially for her. The $ex scenes are intimate and passionate without the use of over the top, sexually graphic language and text.

All of the previous story line couples make cameo appearances, as well as Hades and Persephone, and the demi-goddess Harleena.

THANATOS is a story of introspection and reflection as our couple meander the underworld searching for a portal home. Thanatos believes he is tainted by his past, shamed by the actions he was forced to perform. Calindria bears her own scars for the centuries trapped by an unknown force. The premise is entertaining and inviting; the romance is provocative; the characters are broken but struggling to heal.

Reading Order and Previous Reviews
Ares
Valen
Esher
Marek
Calistos
Daimon
Keras

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

 

Thanatos ducked beneath a dip in the roof of the tunnel, bracing his hand against the onyx rock as he worked his way downwards, watching his footing. He grimaced, lips pulling taut as the tops of his black wings knocked against the rough ceiling and caught on the protrusion of rock. He ducked lower, almost on his backside, and hunched forwards, easing his wings past the obstruction.
Maybe continuing along this path had been a mistake.
He probably should have turned back the moment the tunnel had started to narrow, picking another route to explore and chart in his mind.
Behind him, something chittered, as if mocking him.
He huffed and gripped the wall, fingers tight in the holds he found as he carefully navigated the steep slope. He hoped to the gods it opened out again soon and didn’t get any narrower. Fitting his seven-foot-two frame into small spaces was difficult enough at the best of times, but this was beginning to move past difficult into impossible territory.
A little like his mission.
Four years of searching and he had nothing to show for it, and his god-king, Hades, was growing impatient. Thanatos had charted realm after realm at the very edges of the Underworld, places beyond the sight of his god-king, seeking the one where Hades’s only daughter was being held.
With only a description of what Hades’s oldest son had seen in the memories of another to go on.
Thanatos raked his free hand through his damp onyx hair and exhaled hard.
He was beginning to doubt those memories, but every meeting he had with Hades and his sons had him coming away with a renewed sense of determination to complete the mission Hades had entrusted him with and find Calindria.
It wasn’t only the thought of pleasing his god-king that had him scouring uncharted lands day after day without a break though, refusing to admit defeat.
It was the toll he could see those days were taking on his god-queen, Persephone. Now that they knew Calindria’s soul had form, the gentle goddess needed her daughter back, a child she had mourned for almost six centuries.
A girl who had been ruthlessly murdered in front of her twin, Calistos.
His king and queen had believed her soul lost forever when it hadn’t passed through the veil to reach Hades for judgement. Now, they had entrusted him with her rescue, and he would do all in his power to bring her back to them.
Because she fell under his domain.
As god of death, it was his duty to reap the souls of the dying when their allotted time in this world ended, only he had never been summoned to separate Calindria’s soul from her body, as he should have been, and her soul had never passed on to Hades. Thanatos pondered that, for what he was sure was the millionth time, as the path levelled out and the tunnel thankfully widened. If she was dead, lingering in the place between worlds where he ruled, he should be able to feel her as he could others who moved through the veil.
Only he couldn’t.
He had tried. He had tried so many times and in all the ways he could think of to get a fix on her location, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t feel her.
The tunnel opened out into a cavern with a jagged ceiling only thirty feet above him that dipped lower in places, great pillars of rock joining it to the uneven ground. He kept a wary eye on the shadows as things moved in them, chittering to each other, wanting to avoid another encounter with some of the local wildlife. The largest bats in the mortal world had nothing on the leather-winged black beasts that called the stretches of tunnels and the caverns home. These fell creatures resembled gargoyles the mortals had once adorned their buildings with, with snub upturned noses and pointed ears, and claws as long as their fangs, and a dragon-like tail.
The first time Thanatos had encountered them, he had accidentally disturbed a large nest of them, and they had descended on him as one, ripping at his feathers and clawing his bare arms and chest. They had forced him to retreat and return to his castle to heal.
Something he had to do on foot or wing since there was a strange power over this wild land, one that stopped him from teleporting.
That power had strengthened his feeling that he was on the right track at last. It blanketed the entire realm, hindering him by not only stopping him from teleporting in and out but by dampening his senses too. He could feel things if he focused, but it was as if there was some kind of interference.
It made him feel that Calindria was here and the reason he couldn’t feel her was because of that interference. This realm shielded her somehow, making it impossible for him to sense her.
A power that didn’t seem natural to him.
Someone had taken great pains to ensure no one found Calindria. The one who had taken her or one among the enemy he had fought alongside the sons of Hades four years ago? That enemy had contained not only those of the daemon breeds, but demigods, gods and goddesses too.
A rebellion Hades’s sons had crushed, restoring peace in the Underworld.
Thanatos meandered around sharp spikes of black rock that jutted from the floor, his gaze scanning the route ahead of him, looking for an exit. Water dripped somewhere, the sound echoing around the cavern, punctuating his thoughts. Whoever had killed Calindria and had taken her soul had hidden it well, the method they had used to conceal it carrying on after their death.
If they were dead.
When Thanatos had raised that thought with Hades, his god-king had grown dark and had immediately left the palace, teleporting to Tartarus where he was holding Eris, Thanatos’s younger sister.
And the ringleader of the enemy that had risen up against Hades and attempted to bring about not only his downfall but that of the Underworld and mortal realm too.
Disgust rolled through Thanatos, as strongly as it had the night he had realised she had turned against their god-king, together with another two of his sisters and his youngest brother. His mother, Nyx, was still furious about what had happened, wanted blood and regularly visited Eris in Tartarus to sneer at her and threaten her.
So far, neither Nyx nor Hades had managed to convince Eris to tell them something other than the same denial she spewed whenever they tortured her. She just kept swearing she knew nothing about Calindria and what had happened to her.
Thanatos wasn’t buying it.
He spied three exits in total and picked the largest of the tunnels, the one set into the cragged wall of the cavern dangerously close to a pool of water. He lowered his hand to the hilt of his sword where it hung from his waist, attached to his thick leather trousers, and warily stalked towards the tunnel, keeping an eye on the water.
Wishing he had worn more of his obsidian armour than just the heavy vambraces that protected his forearms.
He had forgone the armour that he normally wore on his lower half. The thick plates offered protection but slowed him down and made it more difficult to move through the narrow tunnels or clamber into holes. He had decided to leave them in his castle for this trip when he had discovered the warren of tunnels in the heart of this vast mountain range were narrower than those in the last set of peaks that rose high into the smoky air of this realm.
Something moved in the water and his fingers tensed around the grip of his sword, ready to draw and swing it in the space of a heartbeat if necessary. Great serpents lived in the pools in many of the caverns, waiting for a creature to approach and drink the life-giving water. One had nearly taken his head off. Since then, he had avoided all the pools.
Thanatos eased around this one, facing it at all times, and was quick to duck into the tunnel. It was narrower than it had looked from a distance, but still large enough to accommodate him and his wings. He shook them out and furled them again, tried to ignore the itch to stretch them and fly. The next time he found a cavern that was large enough, and was lacking occupants, he would do a few laps around it to stretch his wings.
Ahead of him, in the gloom, creatures skittered and scurried away from him. He eased his head left and lowered his wings, edging around a dip in the ceiling. He was beginning to miss the world outside this mountain, even though it was as grim out there as it was in here. Perhaps more so.
The valleys of these mountains were great black lands, some riddled with crevasses cut by waterfalls that thundered into them, and others filled with dead-looking trees, and then there was his personal favourite.
A valley that had been infested with spires of jagged black rock with holes in it. The things that lived within the three-, four-, even five-hundred-foot-tall towers had not liked him being in their territory. Like the gargoyles, they had chased him from the valley, the veins of crimson that formed patterns on their black carapaces glowing like lava as they had scuttled after him on four bony legs, snapping at him with their pincers.
Thanatos was beginning to get the impression everything in this realm hated him.
Perhaps if he didn’t find Calindria, he would kill everything in it. Eradicate all life to make it easier for Hades’s legions to tame these wild lands steeped in ancient powers and bring them under his god-king’s control. He drifted in that pleasing imagery for a while, mentally getting revenge on the foul creatures who had tried to maim and murder him on far too many occasions.
Thanatos stilled as awareness rolled down his spine, making his wings quiver. Something was watching him. He’d had the same feeling several times now during his travels and was beginning to get the impression that someone and not something was following him.
The Messenger.
Thanatos had encountered the black-haired male in another realm, one close to this one, and had thought Hades had sent his servant to relay something to him. Only he had startled the male when he had questioned him, asking what he was doing in an uninhabited realm if he wasn’t there to deliver a message from Hades.
The Messenger’s mismatched eyes—one green and one blue—had widened and then narrowed, had shone with fire when he had delivered a message of his own.
He didn’t serve Hades.
When Thanatos had brought up the male in his report to Hades, two of his god-king’s sons, Marek and Esher, had exchanged a look. Hades had noticed it and demanded answers.
Apparently, they believed they had met the same Messenger in the mortal realm.
There, the male had told them he was looking for Calindria.
“If I cross paths with him again, perhaps I will ask him to assist me,” Thanatos grumbled as he eased around another jagged spike of rock that blocked his path. “He can run the tunnels like the hound he is.”
Thanatos had never liked Messengers. The clones were creepy with the way they would silently appear close to him, and they had no boundaries, were always teleporting into his castle without invitation, bypassing all his wards. Hades had given them too many powers when he had created them.
Something which had proven dangerous during the rebellion, when several Messengers had sided with the enemy and revealed something that had unsettled even Hades.
Some of them had developed the ability to feel emotion.
Thanatos had witnessed it for himself in the Messenger he had encountered, the one who was looking for Calindria. The male hid it well, but Thanatos had seen the glimmer of emotions in his eyes when he had questioned him, had noticed it in the slight twist of his lips or twitch of his eyebrows.
Hadn’t been able to miss it when the male had snarled at him that he didn’t serve Hades.
Hades was going to have to deal with his creations. Servants with emotions and so much power were dangerous. At the very least, his god-king needed to cull those who exhibited feelings and ensure future Messengers were subjected to stringent tests and given less power.
Perhaps his god-king could fashion them to be more like Thanatos’s servants—loyal, emotionless, powerless. His staff existed to serve him and carried out their duties without question.
Ahead of him, the tunnel opened up again, rapidly doubling in width. He straightened and pressed his hand into his back, arched it and sighed as something popped. He drew down a deep breath and frowned as he swore he caught the scent of a fire. Not the wretched, almost sulphuric smell of the volcanoes that dotted this realm, but the smell of wood burning.
He quickened his pace, his hand falling to his sword again, his black eyebrows pinching together as he strode into the gloom. It grew brighter as he neared the end of the tunnel and his step faltered.
He recognised this place.
His eyes darted around, taking in the stalactite laden ceiling of the enormous cavern, and his steps slowed further as he approached the edge of the broad ledge that jutted out high above the ground on one side of it.
Thanatos drew to a halt near the edge of it, staring at the rusty oval cages suspended from the jagged cavern roof by thick chains.
This was it.
This was what Keras had seen.
His heart beat harder at the thought he was close now, would be able to fulfil his mission for his god-king and would be well rewarded for it.
Thanatos spread his black feathered wings and kicked off, sweeping down into the cavern. He circled the huge dome-shaped space, weaving around spires of rock. His eyes narrowed on each cage he passed. Some were empty. Others contained remains.
None held Calindria.
Or did they?
He hovered before one cage that contained bones and held his hand out, drew down a deep breath and closed his eyes. Images flickered before him, revealing a female but this one a brunette. Not the one he was looking for.
Calindria had golden hair and blue eyes, had been a bright and bubbly little thing when he had last seen her, hanging on the tails of Calistos. She had always hidden behind her twin or her father whenever Thanatos had visited, shyly peeking out at him, ducking back into cover whenever he had looked her way.
He flew to another cage and repeated the process, hoping the rotting corpse wasn’t her. It wasn’t.
Thanatos looked around the cavern, unable to imagine the delicate female in this place, unable to believe she had somehow survived being held here as her brother had said she had. Unsettled by how Keras swore she had felt pain when someone had attacked her with a spear.
Something about that felt wrong.
The dead felt no pain.
Thanatos checked the remaining cages, and even the bones that littered the floor, but none of them were the bright-eyed daughter of Hades. He landed and furled his wings against his bare back, strode towards the scent of wood fire and investigated the camp. It was well lived in, with ancient animal bones piled in one corner together with old blankets and discarded rotting bedding. Around the fire, the bedding was fresh and almost new.
He found evidence of two or possibly three people. Guards for those in the cages? Their tormenters?
Thanatos walked around the wall of rock that shielded the guards’ quarters from the cages and frowned up at them. Where had the guards gone? The fire was still going, but he sensed no life here.
His gaze fell and he frowned as it landed on a cage on its side. He canted his head as he strode to it, as he stooped and touched a dark patch on the ground. Damp. Someone had been in this cage recently.
He stood swiftly. Had it been Calindria? Perhaps they had moved her. He did another sweep of the cavern, searching for more clues, and backtracked when his gaze caught on something. Frowned. He kicked off, beating his wings, swiftly crossing the span of gritty dirt.
Thanatos landed soundlessly, his frown deepening as the turbulence caused by his wings destroyed what he had come to look at before he could investigate it. The two bodies crumbled to ash, swirled and scattered on the breeze. Whoever they had been, they had both been large males. He eyed the spear that lay on the ground near one of them. Guards.
He crouched and held his hand over the ashes, but saw nothing.
Strange.
He looked back at the cage that rested on its side and then at the black ashes again. Had someone killed the guards and made off with Calindria? If they had, they couldn’t have gotten far.
Thanatos spread his wings and beat them, did a lap of the cavern and found only three exits. He checked the opening of each of them, using his senses to see if anyone had entered them recently. The realm dulled them too much for him to make anything out.
He huffed and looked at the ground, a thousand thoughts crowding his mind as he tried to figure out what to do. Which tunnel to pick?
Thanatos tilted his head to one side, his eyes narrowing on the ground as he spotted something. He walked to it, eased into a crouch and ghosted his fingers over the scuff mark in the dirt, looked around and stilled. Further inside the tunnel was another, only this one had a distinct shape.
A footprint.
It was small, dainty.
Bare.
Feminine.
And the only ones he could see. No one had made off with Calindria, if she had been the one in the cage. She had made off with herself. Had something killed the guards when they had been doing something with her, allowing her to escape?
He rose to his feet and strode into the tunnel, moving as quickly as he could, his senses reaching out around him as he desperately sought a sign of life—a sign this was the right way.
The tunnel opened out again ahead of him and his heart drummed harder against his ribs as he spotted more footprints. This had to be the right way. He drew down a deep breath to focus his senses, honing them in the hope he would be able to sense the owner of those footprints.
Froze as he realised he wasn’t alone.
A female dressed in very little stood in the middle of the cavern with her side to him, gulping water from a dark pouch.
She froze too, her dirty shoulders locking up tightly, her fingers clutching the waterskin. She lowered it from her lips and turned slightly, her matted, filthy blonde hair that reached the small of her back swaying as she came to face him.
As her wide, luminous blue eyes landed on him.
“Calindria,” he breathed, sure it was her, only she was not a little girl as some foolish part of him had expected.
She pressed the pouch to the swell of her chest and stared at him like a prey animal facing a predator, her eyes taking on a wild and almost feral edge.
Thanatos slowly lifted his hands, hoping to calm her.
She broke into a dead run.


 

Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you’re a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.

If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:

WEBSITE|BLOGFACEBOOKTWITTERGOODREADSINSTAGRAM

NOTE: The Reading Cafe is NOT responsible for the giveaway. If you have any questions, please contact the author.

Enter the grand tour-wide giveaway to win a signed paperback of your choice from my backlist of available titles plus awesome book swag! This giveaway is international and open to everyone, and ends at midnight on June 27th. Enter now: https://kingsumo.com/g/vvgksb/thanatos-book-tour-grand-giveaway

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SCORCHED BY DARKNESS by Felicity Heaton-Review Excerpt & Giveaway

SCORCHED BY DARKNESS (Eternal Mates #18) by Felicity Heaton-Review, Excerpt & 2 Giveaways

SCORCHED BY DARKNESS
Eternal Mates #18
by Felicity Heaton
Release Date: April 13,2021
Genre: adult, contemporary, erotic, paranormal/fantasy romance

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date April 13, 2021

Even for one of the top assassins in Hell like him, Hartt’s latest contract would have been difficult enough, but there’s a complication—a beautiful, flame-haired, and dangerously tempting complication. Not only is the bewitching female a distraction he doesn’t need—she’s the competition.

Mackenzie’s life hasn’t been easy. Held captive by blood mages who murdered her family, forced to spend every day guarding her secret, and now she lands the biggest contract ever—one that would set her assassin’s guild up as one of the best in Hell—and it turns out her client hasn’t only hired her. He’s hired the top guild in Hell too. Worse, the male she’s up against is wickedly alluring, a dark elf warrior who sets her blood on fire, and the heat that sparks between them is in danger of burning her resolve to take him down to ashes.

It’s a race against time and each other to fulfil the contract by taking out one of the most dangerous men in Hell, a vampire with a name befitting of his bloody history, but who will be the one to claim victory—one of them or the King of Death?

Find out in Scorched by Darkness, an enemies-to-lovers fated mates paranormal romance that will set your heart on fire!

••••••••

REVIEW: SCORCHED BY DARKNESS is the eighteenth instalment in Felicity Heaton’s contemporary, adult ETERNAL MATES paranormal/fantasy romance series. This is assassin/ dark elf Hartt, and assassin MacKenzie’s story line. SCORCHED BY DARKNESS can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous story lines is revealed where necessary.

Told from dual third person perspectives (MacKenzie and Hartt) SCORCHED BY DARKNESS follows the building but acrimonious relationship between assassin/ dark elf Hartt, and assassin MacKenzie. Hartt is a dark elf who has been hired to take down the King of Death but Hartt isn’t the only assassin on the current payroll, and our hero finds himself fighting for his life against a woman of unknown origins but something about MacKenzie stirs something deep, something he hasn’t felt for a very long time. MacKenzie needs the money to keep her assassin guild up and running but never expected to have to fight another assassin before taking down her intended target, a target who may or may not have been their true mark. As the truth begins to reveal itself, MacKenzie and Hartt are drawn to one another, a draw that places them both in the direct line of fire. What ensues is the building romance and relationship between MacKenzie and Hartt, and the potential fall-out as the true target is about to be revealed.

The relationship between MacKenzie and Hartt begins as enemies to lover but quickly turns into fated mated. Neither MacKenzie nor Hartt believed in fate but like a moth to a flame, the draw was irresistible but someone was about to get burned. The $ex scenes are intimate and passionate without the use of over the top, sexually graphic language and text.

There is a large colorful and energetic ensemble cast of secondary and supporting characters including a few we have me in previous story lines-Kyter and Iolanthe, Prince Vail and Rosalind, Fuery and Shaia, Lord Van Der Garde aka Grave aka the King of Death Grave and his mate Isla, and Grave’s brother Night; MacKenzie’s best friend and assassin Jasynder aka Syn.

SCORCHED BY DARKNESS is a story of family, friendships, bonds, fate and love. The premise is suspenseful, exciting and intriguing; the romance is seductive and steamy; the characters are energetic, powerful and captivating. Felicity Heaton pulls the reader into another wonderful and breathtaking addition to the Eternal Mates series.

Reading Order and previous reviews

Book 1: Kissed by a Dark Prince  ( FREE right now!)
Book 2: Claimed by a Demon King
Book 3: Tempted by a Rogue Prince
Book 4: Hunted by a Jaguar
Book 5: Craved by an Alpha
Book 6: Bitten by a Hellcat
Book 7: Taken by a Dragon
Book 8: Marked by an Assassin
Book 9: Possessed by a Dark Warrior
Book 10: Awakened by a Demoness
Book 11: Haunted by the King of Death
Book 12: Turned by a Tiger
Book 13: Tamed by a Tiger
Book 14: Treasured by a Tiger
Book 15: Unchained by a Forbidden Love
Book 16: Avenged by an Angel
Seduced by a Demon King

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

 

The clock in the grey stone tower to his right continued to chime the hour.
Midnight.
The hundreds of fae, witches, demons and other species crammed into the large square of the underground town swayed, hugged and sung together in a discordant melody that grated in Hartt’s ears as he stood unmoving, the only still thing in a churning sea.
But inside him, it was a different matter.
His stomach twisted and his mind spun, thoughts colliding and breaking apart, emotions threatening to unravel the tentative hold he had on the darkness. It lurked, waiting in the deepest recesses of his soul, a creeping and malevolent thing that hunted for a weakness in him, the tiniest fissure in his will that it could slip its claws into and rip wide open.
He lifted his left hand and absently rubbed the spot over his sternum as acid filled the scraped out and raw abyss where his heart should have been.
He had been a fool again.
Hartt tried not to think about it as he stood there in the square, his back to one of the towering three-storey grey stone buildings that enclosed it on all sides. He tried not to think about her.
Or the death wish he had.
He must have one since he had just come close to stepping into Underworld, a nightclub in London, to speak with his ex. If he could call her an ex. Iolanthe had stood him up on their wedding day, had left him waiting at the grand celebration his family had put together.
Looking like a fool.
The rubbing grew harder as the empty pit ached, his heart attempting to resurrect itself. The temptation to call on his armour was strong. It would only take a simple mental command to the black and silver bands that encircled his wrists and the onyx scales would ripple over his body, transforming his fingers into talons that could easily slice through bone and remove the damned broken thing that passed for his heart, freeing him of its constant torment.
He had been free.
For centuries, he hadn’t thought about her. He had moved on with his life, had stepped off the route that had been laid before him by their parents and trod his own path in the world.
And he had been happy.
He had a friend who was like a brother to him, had founded an assassin guild that had a fearsome reputation and was undeniably the best one in Hell, and he had more coin than he could ever need. He wasn’t short on females either. If the mood struck him, he only had to take a walk through the town that had sprung up around his guild and take his pick of the females who lived in it.
He had been happy.
And then Harbin, a snow leopard shifter who was more like a friend than an employee, had done something reckless in the mortal realm.
And his world had collided with Iolanthe’s again.
And all the godsdamned feelings Hartt had thought long dead had come flooding back.
So, like the fool he was, he had gone to see her tonight, well aware that if her jaguar shifter mate so much as smelled him nearby, he was a dead man.
Worse, he had brought his family’s ring with him.
One she should have worn on her finger.
Hartt raised his hand and scrubbed it down his face, somehow held back a groan as he closed his eyes and shook his head. What the hell was wrong with him?
He blamed Fuery. His brother-not-by-blood was settling into his new life with his fated female, Shaia, a happy ending that the elf deserved after everything he had been through. Not only that, but Harbin was happily mated too. Seeing the two of them with their females was screwing with his head, rousing desires he should have forgotten.
He blamed Iolanthe too. The shock of seeing her again after all these centuries must have jolted something loose.
“She means nothing to me,” Hartt muttered as the people around him swayed and came close to jostling him too.
The square was far too packed. It felt as if every person living in the fae town that occupied a cavern beneath a mountain in the highlands of Scotland was out tonight, crammed into the small heart of it to celebrate the dawning of a new year.
Someone tried to grab him, leaning close to him, and he flashed fangs and snarled as he rolled his right shoulder and shirked them. The big shifter of undetermined species, although he smelled like a wet dog, grunted and shrugged, and grabbed one of the witches instead. She squealed in delight as he lifted her and spun, her petite booted feet coming up and almost clocking Hartt in the face.
He huffed and leaned back to avoid being struck, and the darkness writhed in response to the switch in his emotions. If it had been a living being, it would have smirked. Sometimes, it felt as if it was alive and had a will of its own.
Sometimes, he couldn’t control it, failed to contain it.
Bad things happened then.
Hartt sidestepped and peered at the crowd, forcing his mind back on track. The mission. The reason he had come to this fae town near Fort William.
The intel he had gathered pointed towards his mark being here tonight, somewhere in this dense throng of revellers. While he couldn’t imagine his target celebrating the new year, let alone being anywhere near a crowd of this size, following up the lead seemed like a good way of distracting himself.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth again.
Gods, he needed a distraction.
Taking on this contract was keeping him busy, but at a cost. Fuery wasn’t happy about it. His friend had been on his case about rolling solo on a mission since day one, didn’t care that the client had stipulated that he had to work alone on it.
And that it had to be him who took it on.
Fuery preferred him away from the frontlines, as far from danger as he could get, and while Hartt usually indulged him because he didn’t want Fuery to suffer, he couldn’t do it this time. He needed some action. He needed some space, some time away from the guild. He just needed a moment to breathe.
A distraction.
His gaze hopped over the heads of the gathered males and females, cataloguing them all, discerning their species whenever he could from a distance. The demons were easy to pick out from the crowd with their horns that flared from behind the tops of their pointed ears and the fact they stood a head taller than most of the crowd, as he did. The witches were equally as easy to identify for the most part thanks to their gender—mainly female—and the colourful and interesting fashion they wore.
Neither species were of interest to him.
He kept searching, picking out the vampires he could easily spot, studying them to see if they reacted to anyone else nearby, someone unseen by him. They were all too interested in eyeing up potential prey among the gathered, their crimson eyes following females or males that were clearly inebriated. Easy pickings.
His mark was here somewhere.
Hartt moved again, wove through the people and headed towards a set of broad grey stone steps that led up to a raised walkway that ran around three sides of the square. A better vantage point.
He stopped near the top step and his gaze caught on something on the other side of the square.
A distraction.
Her flame-red hair tumbled around slight shoulders in soft waves as she peered at the crowd. The dark makeup that surrounded her eyes and streaked across her temples made her honey-coloured eyes look stunningly bright as they sought something. Burgundy leather hugged long lean legs and a curvy waist, cupped breasts that had many males staring. She paid them no heed as she frowned at the gathered, a mulish or possibly dissatisfied twist to her red lips.
Hartt studied her in silence, still amidst the crowd as they pushed their way down the stairs behind him, as if his boots were rooted to the stone.
She was unmoving too, her amber gaze serenely taking in her surroundings, charting everything.
His black eyebrows pinched hard as she was forced to take a step back and then turned, drifting down into the crowd in the middle of a group of demons. He canted his head, curious now as he tracked her through the crowd, as she emerged from the trio of demons and left them behind. She slipped through a gaggle of witches and twittering succubi and stopped at the far end of the square, closer to the clock tower.
The crowd was thicker there, stealing her from view.
He growled as he lost sight of her as a large group of males pushed their way deeper into the busy square from the avenue that led to the northern section of the town. Shifters of some sort if he had to guess. They jostled and jabbed at each other, grinned and whistled at several females, gaining scowls from some and sultry smiles and interested looks from others.
Hartt focused and teleported, landing on one of the roofs of the tall dark grey stone buildings. The tight feeling in his breast loosened as he spotted the redhead again, and he didn’t try to decipher the reason why he had felt compelled to keep track of her, why he had felt a strange, almost desperate need to see her again.
He didn’t need to.
Every instinct he possessed told him there was something off about her.
Something wrong.
At first, he had thought she was simply looking for someone she knew, or perhaps she had lost her friends in the busy crowd.
Now, as he eased into a crouch at the edge of the pitched slate roof, he knew better.
His lips quirked into a half-smile.
She had been looking at everyone but him.
Diligently keeping those bright honey-coloured eyes away from him as she had scanned the crowd.
Eyes that now leaped to and locked onto the spot where he had been on the walkway.
A little frown creased her brow as she stared at it, and then her gaze was moving, roving over the crowd as that scowl intensified. Seeking him. He moved a foot to his right, pressed his side to the smoking chimney and peered around it, using it as cover as he observed her.
If he had to guess, he would say she was a fellow assassin.
He realised something else as she looked off to her right and her eyes remained fixed there, tracking something off to his left, at the opposite end of the square to the clock tower.
Hartt looked there too and cursed as he spotted what she had.
She was after the same mark as him.
His violet gaze leaped back to her, and something in the region of his stomach sank slowly towards his boots even as fire ignited in his veins. He had the terrible feeling that taking on this contract had been both a good and a terrible idea.
She was a beautiful distraction.
But he was going to have to kill her.

 


 

Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you’re a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.

If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:

WEBSITE|BLOGFACEBOOKTWITTERGOODREADSINSTAGRAM

There are TWO (2) ways to WIN !

In addition to the  Grand giveaway below, Felicity is graciously offering an ecopy of any ONE book in her ETERNAL MATES series *excluding Scorched by Darkness* (international) to ONE (1) lucky commenter at The Reading Cafe.

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7. Giveaway from April 18-22, 2021

 

Enter the grand tour-wide giveaway to win one of a $75, $50 or $25 Amazon Gift Card at the Scorched by Darkness book page. This giveaway is international and open to everyone, and ends at midnight on May 2nd. Enter now: http://www.felicityheaton.com/scorched-by-darkness-paranormal-romance-novel.php

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Daimon (Guardians of Hades 6) by Felicity Heaton-Review & Excerpt

Daimon (Guardians of Hades #6) by Felicity Heaton-Reviews & Excerpt

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date September 29, 2020

Daimon is ice. His heart is frozen by it. His body caged by it. And he likes it that way. But the sexy sorceress that storms into his life and declares herself a part of his team in his battle against the daemon uprising is determined to melt the ice that has shielded him for centuries, and he’s powerless to stop the burning need she ignites in him.

Even when he’s sure it’s only a game to her.

Cassandra has a sword hanging over her, a duty she has no choice but to perform and one she’s been putting off for years. Her latest excuse? Helping a band of immortal brothers with a war that might mean the end of this world if they fail. Her delaying the inevitable has nothing to do with the gorgeous Greek god who keeps rebuffing her and everything to do with saving the world. He’s a nice distraction and nothing more. She keeps telling herself that.

Even when she’s sure he’s a danger to her heart.

As things heat up in the battle to save the mortal world and the Underworld, will Daimon’s icy heart be able to withstand the fiery witch who can scorch him with just a look?

•••••

Sandy’s REVIEW:DAIMON is the sixth instalment in Felicity Heaton’s contemporary, adult THE GUARDIANS OF HADES paranormal/fantasy romance series loosely based in Greek mythology, focusing on seven brothers- the sons of Hades and Persephone -sent to Earth to guard the gates to the Underworld. This is Prince of the Underworld and Lord of Ice Daimon, and witch/sorceress Cassandra’s story line. DAIMON can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty but I recommend reading the series in order as the brothers struggle against an unknown enemy to keep the human world and the Underworld from colliding.

NOTE: The Guardians of Hades series is Felicity Heaton’s interpretation of, and does not follow, the actual Greek mythological family tree or events.

Told from several third person perspectives including Daimon and Cass DAIMON follows several paths including the building romance and relationship between Prince of the Underworld and Lord of Ice Daimon, and witch/sorceress Cassandra. Cassandra is/was the guardian of Calistos’ mate Marinda (Calistos #5), and as such has found herself in the unenviable position to be mistrusted as it pertains to her powers, the brothers, and everything they represent but as the portals to the Underworld continue to open allowing daemons and monsters to escape onto Earth, Cassandra’s special abilities aid the brothers in their battle to stay alive but it is Daimon’s attraction to Cass that gives pause as our hero believes he is unworthy of love having loved and lost in the past.

Meanwhile, Esher continues to defy his father Hades, remaining in the Underworld in search of the wraith who may have information about their sister and Calistos’ twin Calindria, a young goddess they believe is dead and gone. As the brothers continue to question the who, how and why of their inability to keep the portals closed, other Underworld inhabitants make life a little more miserable for the sons of Hades. What ensues is the building relationship and reluctant romance between Daimon and Cass, and the potential fall-out as Cassandra becomes the ultimate target in a war between the worlds.

DAIMON is a dramatic, character driven, detailed, action-packed, and introspective story of love and loss, betrayal and heart break; magic, power and control. The reader profits from the character’s thoughts and ideas, soul-searching and self-examination but saying that, the conversations and communication between characters is limited and narrow. The premise is complex and inviting but often protracted in several areas; the romance is fated and intense; the characters are edgy, colorful and energetic.

___________

Julie’s REVIEW: Daimon is guardian of the Hong Kong gate, he’s also been blessed (or cursed in his case) with the ability to control Ice. The only downside of that is he can’t touch or be touched without severe frostbite. He’s constantly cold, and wants to go home, back to the Underworld (there his powers are manageable) but that’s not going to happen anytime soon!
He’s watched as his brothers have all found mates (well except Keras, and if he gets his head out of his butt, he could have a certain goddess!)

He’s envious, he wants what they all have. Well, in fact he’d just settle for someone to touch him without getting frostbite!

His brother Ares, use to know how he felt, (he controlled fire, and couldn’t touch anyone without them getting third degree burns!) until Megan came along, and now…. well let’s just say, it’s pretty unfair! He’s the odd guy out, the third wheel, in fact a big fat gooseberry!! All this love and companionship is making Daimon tired, but he’s promised his brother’s Keras and Esher, he will stay in the Tokyo mansion until the threat is over!!

Quick recap without trying to give too much away….. The brothers protect gates that connect the Underworld to this world. Only certain types of demons are allowed to pass through, it’s the Guardians jobs to stop the others demons.
But others are plotting to take over the Underworld (overthrow their father Hades) then merge the two worlds together (basically creating a hell on Earth)

Each book gives us more details to the plot, with the explosive culmination happening in Keras’s book!

Cassandra “Cassie” is guardian to Marinda (mate to Cal) and she’s also a pretty powerful witch.

She wasn’t sure that Marinda was going to be safe with the Guardians, but they’ve proved themselves capable in battle. That should have been the end of her duty, but a certain icy god has gotten her attention, she just needs to scratch that itch and then she will be on her way.

Cassie and Daimon meet in the previous book (calistos) and it’s almost hate at first sight. She thinks he’s a pompous a$$ and he thinks she’s a nightmare! Both bait each other at every opportunity that arises. She uses her magic to get one up on him, he tries to use his ice, but she seems to be one step ahead of him (unless he tries to drown her!) But there is a spark Daimon wants to ignore, but unlike most things that get close to him, Cassie only makes him burn hotter! His ice cold exterior is close to melting!!

But what we don’t know until we get to know Daimon better, is he did have someone before being banished to this realm…..
And so not only is he feeling guilty that he is beginning to like Cass, and he should be staying faithful to this other person.

He’s also also angry that he can’t touch Cassandra (and at first it’s to shut her up or drown her) and he wants to, badly!
But when things happen and Cass does touch him (remember powerful witch) then all bets are off, in fact the word MINE is growled and the blood that runs through his fathers veins, does indeed run through his, and he becomes possessive of Cass.

Cassandra is such a character, she’s a powerhouse in her own right, she’s sick of being sidelined when the action kicks off (oh boy does it kick off, and keeps kicking till your black and blue) she hates being told NO! And hates that her ward Marinda is still with Calistos, but she’s happy, and being well protected, so technically her job is done, she really should be getting back to her Coven.

But duty is waiting for her there, a duty Cass doesn’t think she can do any longer. She truly loves her sisters in the Coven, but here with the brothers and their mates, Cassandra sees a different type of family, and it’s now the one Cass wants. But life is never that easy….

We get closer to finding the traitor (and it’s one I thought it might be, but was still surprised when it was!) We get more information on missing family members, and we get a sneaky peek into Keras’s head (and that is one sad and scary place!)

The action is at full pelt for the whole book (I was exhausted just reading it!) sexy scenes are towards the end (but the banter and foreplay still made me chuckle)

You can be guaranteed tears, laughter, and a few OMG moments!

I didn’t think you could improve on the last book….

But with everything that goes on in this book, not only does it blow your mind, it also makes you wish for the book to be longer, or you need the last in the series like NOW.

I don’t know how the last book will play out, but it’s going to be EPIC!!

Julie ?

Reading Order and Previous Reviews
Ares
Valen
Esher
Marek
Calistos

Copy supplied for review

This wasn’t going well.
Daimon slipped a throwing knife from the holster that sat against his ribs over his navy roll-neck long-sleeve, and funnelled his power into it before sending it flying at the daemon running right at him across the dewy moonlit grass of Hyde Park. The small blade hit its target, nailing the human-looking male in the chest. Ice immediately spread outwards from the point of impact and the male grunted and went down clutching his chest as glittering frost flowers rapidly covered it. His skin darkened, turning mottled in the low light, appearing almost black.
Beside Daimon, his older brother Ares unleashed a wave of fire at another two daemons, driving them back, and tossed a fireball at a third.
They had expected this.
What they hadn’t expected was that it would take so long to close one of the main gates.
Behind him, Valen grunted and muttered a black curse in the mortal tongue. The scent of his brother’s blood hung heavily in the damp autumnal night air. Worry ran through Daimon, and not only him. Ares flicked a concerned glance over his broad shoulder, the fires of the Underworld raging in his eyes, making them glow in the darkness.
Eva bit out something in Italian. She had stopped speaking English around five minutes ago, when Valen had announced the gate was resisting his attempt to seal it and had decided to spill more of his blood in the hope it would speed the process along since twenty daemons had descended on them.
“I’m going to need more,” Valen gritted, his voice tight and speaking of the frustration Daimon could feel in him.
As well as the pain.
“Too risky,” Ares answered as a whip made of fire appeared in his right hand and he narrowed his gaze on the trees that enclosed one side of the area around the gate. Daemons spilled from them, cutting across the paths and the grass, heading right for him. He grunted as he lashed out at the daemons with the flaming whip, driving them back and stopping them from reaching Valen. “You sure you’re using the right wards? Or doing them right? I mean, we all know how shitty your wards are.”
Valen chuckled, the sound out of place given the graveness of the situation. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. My wards are beautiful.”
They weren’t. Valen had never bothered to apply himself when it came to studying wards. Their father, Hades, the god-king of the Underworld, had gone as far as calling them bad. It took a lot for their father to admit to a fault in any of his sons, let alone point it out to the entire family.
“You’re definitely using the right ones?” Daimon didn’t take his eyes off the daemons as they made another attempt to get past him and Ares, breaking into four teams of four and coming at them in one wave.
The longer this war to protect the gates between the mortal realm and the Underworld went on, the more organised the daemons were becoming. He swore the enemy were training them, teaching them how to fight as a unit—turning them into soldiers.
He had to admit he’d preferred it when the daemons had been lone wolves, only a few of them reckless enough to succumb to the lure of breaching a gate and entering the Underworld—a realm they were forbidden to enter.
Just like Daimon and his brothers.
Only unlike the daemons, he could go home once this war was done.
He drew down a breath and threw his right hand forwards as he summoned his power. The dew on the grass became a thousand tiny ice needles that flew through the air and hammered into one of the daemons, taking him down. The female daemon who had been running beside that wretched male shrieked as she was caught by a few of the small spears of ice, her ear-splitting cry piercing enough that Daimon flinched and his next wave missed their target.
“Exactly as Cal told me.” Valen huffed and water sloshed as he moved, a reminder to Daimon to keep his distance from his brother since standing in the Round Pond was the only way for Valen to get close enough to the gate to spill his blood on it. The last thing Daimon wanted was to accidentally freeze the small lake. Valen grumbled, “And Keras hammered home around thirty times.”
His violet-haired brother wasn’t embellishing that.
Keras, their oldest brother and self-appointed leader, had sat Valen down on one of the cream couches in the Tokyo mansion and gone over the wards at least three dozen times. In the end, Valen had stepped, a term they used for teleporting since it only took a single step for them to travel great distances, to escape another round of which wards went where.
It wasn’t that Keras didn’t trust Valen to get it right, it was that this was important.
Since the enemy had revealed they were in possession of two of the Erinyes, goddesses who had the ability to siphon powers and who strengthened that power by passing it between them in a cycle, and those Erinyes had gotten their hands on the ability to command the gates Daimon and his brothers protected, they had been on red alert.
The gates were the focus of their mission, the reason Hades had banished Daimon and his brothers to the mortal world two centuries ago, after the Moirai had foreseen a great calamity, one where an unknown enemy would breach the gates between the mortal realm and the Underworld, fusing the two into a new hellish realm.
It had come to light that he and his brothers were more than just protectors of the gates though.
They were bound to them in blood, a bond forged at the time of their birth, one gate created for each of them.
Cal had managed to close their twin sister’s gate in Seville, and had gone over everything he had done, using wards, a sort of spell, to seal it and conceal it, stopping it from opening and rendering it safe from the enemy.
With the enemy able to open the gates thanks to the power the Erinyes had stolen from Marinda, Cal’s girlfriend and the third Erinyes, and the fact the enemy seemed bent on breaching at least one gate before that power faded, Keras had decided they needed to act.
Closing the gates was dangerous, because it meant there were fewer gates to share the power that flowed between them all, and that would make them more unpredictable and harder to command, but it was a necessary risk.
And the only path open to them.
It would not only give the enemy fewer gates they could hit, but it would mean that the enemy couldn’t split him and his brothers up as easily.
Valen had volunteered to seal the London gate, which was bound to him, and Cal had volunteered to close the main Seville gate. Cal was there now with Keras, Marek, and Caterina, Marek’s girl-fiend as Valen called her because she was a hybrid, a human who had been given daemon blood by the enemy in an attempt to take down Marek.
Everyone had thought sealing a main gate would be as simple as closing the twin gate had been for Cal.
Apparently, everyone had thought wrong.
Ares took out another two daemons, bringing their numbers down but still not enough to satisfy Daimon. He imbued another two knives with his ice and let them fly. One of them buried to the ring-shaped hilt in the forehead of a female daemon, and the other slammed into the throat of the male behind her.
Valen bit out a ripe curse.
Daimon didn’t take his focus away from the daemons charging towards him.
Ares looked back at their brother and swore too.
That didn’t sound good.
Daimon risked a glance over his shoulder as he sent a thicker spear of ice flying at the closest daemon, cleaving the male in two at the waist.
“Shit,” he muttered as he spotted what his brothers had.
More daemons, sprinting towards them from the other side of the Round Pond, a shadowy mass of them silhouetted before the elegant red-brick and sandstone Kensington Palace.
The new horde of daemons split into two groups as they reached the far end of the pond, coming at them from both sides.
Above the water, the flat disc of the gate shimmered in a rainbow of colours, chasing back the darkness. The thick rings rotated slowly in opposing directions, all of them chasing around the central violet circle. Glyphs encircled each band, smaller ones that filled the gaps between them, and larger ones inside the ring. The power of the gate hummed in the air, inside him, drew him to it with a promise that on the other side was home.
Home.
A place he wanted to go more than anything.
There, his power was under his control, would no longer shimmer over his skin in a way that felt like a curse. Here, he couldn’t touch anyone, not even his brothers, without risking killing them with his ice, or severely maiming them at the very least. Here, he was alone, even within the circle of his brothers.
The blood Valen had spilled on the gate absorbed into it, the colours that danced across its surface and curled into the air like faint smoke brightening again.
It was beautiful.
Beautiful and vulnerable.
Daimon’s stomach swirled as the daemons closed in, the foul coppery odour of them filling the air, drawing out his darker side. He wouldn’t let them near the gate.
He closed his eyes, drew down a slow breath that filled his lungs, and focused his power, calling on it. His blood chilled and he shuddered, huddling down into the tall neck of his long-sleeved sweater and his ankle-length black coat, trying to keep that cold at bay.
It never worked.
It was always there, always part of him in this world, a constant presence that drained him emotionally.
He flicked his eyes open and swiftly raised both of his gloved hands.
Around him, his brothers and the gate, hundreds of clear shards of ice shot from the earth and the water to form a circular wall forty feet tall.
Daimon sagged forwards and Ares came to check on him as Valen muttered an oath.
His older brother ghosted a hand over Daimon’s spine, the warmth that emanated from him giving Daimon a brief reprieve from the cold. Ares shared his problem. His brother’s power over fire had manifested in this world, meaning he couldn’t touch anyone without the risk of burning them.
Or at least he hadn’t been able to until Megan, a Carrier with the ability to heal, had come into his life. Megan was immune to Ares’s fire, and could withstand Daimon’s ice, and he and his brothers had surmised she was closer to her demigod ancestors than most Carriers.
“Can you get it done?” Daimon pressed his hands to his thighs and ignored the way the frost on his leather gloves spread onto his black jeans.
“Give me a minute.” Valen went back to work, holding his arm out over the gate and closing his eyes as his blood spilled onto it. Beside him, Eva, his brother’s mortal assassin girlfriend, shifted foot to foot, concern shining in her rich blue eyes.
“I’ll handle these guys.” Ares straightened and broke away from Daimon, heading for the few daemons that had ended up within the ice wall.
Daimon wanted to help him, but he needed to focus on the wall. Where it touched the water, it was in danger of melting, was weaker and vulnerable. The daemons had already figured that out and were beating it with fist and claw, attempting to break through. He focused there, summoning more shards of ice to reinforce it.
Wishing Esher was here.
His brother would have used that water to his advantage, would have drowned all the daemons in a heartbeat.
Daimon looked at the gate and fought the urge that suddenly sparked to life inside him.
Esher was on the other side of that gate, in the Underworld, hunting for one of the enemy who had slipped through the gate in Paris. He was alone. Lost to his other side. Daimon rose to his full height and drifted towards the gate, pulled to it as his heart filled with a need to find Esher.
Pain bloomed inside him, searing his bones in multiple places where an injury didn’t exist on his own body.
It existed on Esher’s.
Daimon could feel them, the depth of the bond they had forged over the centuries relaying not only the pain his brother felt, but the anger and frustration.
The rage.
The other side of Esher, the savage and cold one that had been born in the darkest of times, was firmly in control. Daimon could feel that too. He needed his brother back with him, not only because he needed to know he was safe and because he was worried about him—missed him.
He needed him back so he could bring him back.
Esher had confessed to him once that he feared that other side of himself, that he loathed it. Daimon could only imagine how his brother was suffering now, a slave to his darker side, driven to hunt and not rest until he had secured his prey.
The wraith.
Eli.
If they could get their hands on him, they might be able to find out who was behind this attempt to breach the gates. Once, they had believed it was purely the work of daemons, but then they had discovered a Hellspawn, what he and his brothers called the species of daemons who had been allowed to remain in the Underworld after the last rebellion against Hades, was involved, and now there were goddesses on the enemy side.
Where did it end?
Someone was behind all of this, and all they had to go on was that it was a female.
Their father had sent them a long list of possible enemies currently residing in the Underworld, far too many for Daimon’s liking. Discovering which of them, if any, were behind everything would take too long. It was quicker to get their hands on the wraith and make him talk.
An ominous creaking noise drew Daimon’s gaze to his left. His eyes tracked the jagged fault line spreading up the ice from a point where several daemons were clawing at it. Was he imagining it, or were there even more daemons now?
“You guys got this?” Valen said.
“Sure.” Daimon readied himself, shoring up the wall of ice but aware it wouldn’t hold, not against that many sets of claws.
The daemons’ black blood streaked the clear ice, the foul stench of it filling the air. Disgust rolled through him and he curled his lip.
Ares grunted in response from the right side of the pond as he slammed a daemon into the pavement that encircled the water.
“Good, because I’m not sure I can do this.” Valen sounded tired now, and when Daimon fixed his senses on his violet-haired brother, he felt it too. “Not without a little more juice.”
Daimon looked back at him.
Valen’s golden eyes glittered, glowing in the light shining from the gate as he raised one of his blades.
“No,” Ares snarled, pivoted towards him, and kicked off.
He wouldn’t make it. Neither would Daimon, not even if he stepped.
All he could do was watch as Valen ran the blade across his wrist and blood gushed from the wound.
“Stronzo!” Eva barked and lunged for him, her short black hair flying out of her face as she reached for the blade.
Valen sagged as blood poured from his wrist, splattering across the surface of the gate and spreading outwards, and Eva grabbed him instead of the knife. She caught him as his knees gave out.
He breathed hard from between gritted teeth, his eyes rapidly darkening as they narrowed.
Eva muttered soft words in Italian, sweet chastising ones coupled with a few strong swear words that Daimon decided his brother deserved.
Valen leaned heavily on her slender shoulders, his arm shaking as he tried to keep holding it out over the gate. Eva took hold of his arm for him, helping him, and he looked at her, a hell of a lot of love in his eyes that was still strange to see. Valen’s default setting for his entire life had been caustic, and it had only gotten worse in the centuries after their sister had died and Zeus had punished Valen for his insubordination by removing his favour from him, leaving a ragged scar down the left side of Valen’s face and neck, a permanent reminder of what he had done.
So it was weird seeing his brother looking at someone with genuine warmth in his eyes.
With love.
The blood Valen was spilling onto the gate seeped across the surface, muting the colours.
“I think it’s working,” Valen slurred.
Eva struggled to keep him on his feet.
Daimon wasn’t sure how their youngest brother, Calistos, was going to be able to handle closing the main gate in Seville if closing London was draining Valen this much. Cal had been out of sorts since they had lost the chance to discover the location of his twin sister, Calindria’s, soul and Esher had disappeared. Cal was blaming himself for both of those things. Daimon doubted he was strong enough to handle closing Seville on top of all that.
“Think I’m—” Valen cut off as he suddenly dropped, his knees hitting the bottom of the shallow pond, and Eva yelped as she was dragged down with him.
Daimon looked at the gate as he called on his power, summoning one last wave of ice. It rose up around the inside of the wall, the shards only seven feet tall but enough to keep the daemons at bay while Ares checked on Valen and the gate.
A gate which Daimon could no longer feel, not as he could before. The power that flowed from it now was muted, barely there. Had Valen done it?
The rings slowly began to shrink, the innermost one winking out of existence as it touched the central violet disc.
It was closing.
“Is he good?” Daimon hollered, keeping his focus on the wall of ice, aware the daemons were still there and still trying to get to them.
Ares looked up from his position crouched next to Valen and nodded. “Think so. He’s out cold though.”
Daimon didn’t like the sound of that.
Closing the twin gate had been taxing on Cal, but he hadn’t passed out.
Ares pulled a phone from his pocket, the screen casting white highlights in his overlong tawny hair and across his face as his thumb danced over the device. “Calling in a retrieval.”
Because neither he nor Daimon could teleport with Valen without harming him.
Eva tore the hem of her T-shirt and bound Valen’s wrist, muttering obscenities in Italian under her breath the whole time.
Beyond Ares, Valen and Eva, the last ring of the gate shrank into the central disc. It shrank too and then disappeared with a violent flash.
Gone.
For now.
Once the enemy was dead and the threat over, Hades would want the gates opened again. Their father had sent a Messenger to Keras to say he had stopped all traffic through the gates, but had made it clear he couldn’t keep the Underworld closed for long.
Gods, goddesses and Hellspawn didn’t appreciate being caged in that realm, having their freedom taken from them. Hades’s staff were already dealing with hundreds of complaints.
Considering the alternative was them all losing their home and being ruled by whoever was behind this uprising, Daimon figured they could put up with their freedom being impacted a little.
Daimon kept an eye on Valen as Eva tended to him, worry a constant weight in his heart as his senses remained locked on the daemons. They retreated into the night, but he kept his boots firmly planted where they were, resisting the urge to follow them and eradicate them all.
Valen needed him here.
The ice walls surrounding them were beginning to crack as Marek appeared, black ribbons of smoke curling from the shoulders of his torn charcoal linen shirt and onyx daemon blood streaked across his face and darkening his wavy brown hair.
His earthy eyes shimmered with green and gold flakes as he looked down at Valen where he lay in Eva’s arms. “Cal suffered the same fate.”
Daimon cast a glance at Ares. Concern etched hard lines on his older brother’s face, unease that ran through Daimon too as he thought about not one but two of their brothers out cold with no sign of coming around.
If he had known closing a gate would cause this to happen, he would have spoken out against it rather than going along with it. The look on Ares’s face said he wasn’t sure what he would have said, and Daimon didn’t envy him.
Marek looked just as conflicted as he stooped and lifted Valen into a fireman’s carry over his shoulder.
Daimon was glad he wasn’t one of the oldest of their group. He felt the weight of responsibility enough as it was. He couldn’t imagine how heavily it weighed upon Keras, Ares and Marek’s shoulders.
Keras was under enough pressure as it was, without having to order them to close the gates knowing full well they would end up like Valen and Cal.
Closing the gates was something they needed to do, but Daimon feared the cost of shutting them down was dangerously high.
He only hoped he was wrong about that.
Marek held his hand out to Eva. Her blue eyes reluctantly shifted away from Valen and landed on it. She placed hers into it and they both disappeared.
Ares was quick to follow them.
Daimon lingered, waiting for the ice walls to break because he wanted to be sure all evidence of their existence would be gone by morning, when mortals would enter Hyde Park. He didn’t want them seeing anything out of place.
That was the only reason he hadn’t teleported.
It had nothing to do with the sorceress who was probably waiting in Tokyo to give him hell.
He scrubbed a hand over the spikes of his white hair, watching the ice begin to crumble.
The ancient Edo period mansion felt far too small with her staying in it, but when he had suggested she bunk elsewhere, Cass had been quick to launch into an argument with him. Her ward, Marinda, was staying in the mansion with Cal since the London townhouse that was his home had been breached by Eli and the enemy, which meant Cass had decided she was also staying in Tokyo, right under Daimon’s feet.
Daimon rubbed the back of his neck and huffed.
The sorceress had a bad habit of just deciding things, and no one got a say in them.
Daimon had been staying in Tokyo to take care of the mansion, which was primarily Esher’s home now although their father had built it for all of them, and so he could be there for Aiko. Aiko was devastated by Esher’s disappearance, and Daimon needed to look after her for his brother.
He was doing his best, but some days were harder than others.
Some days, Daimon’s dark thoughts and fears about his brother weighed too heavily on him and he couldn’t face her, or anyone.
His phone vibrated and he didn’t bother to check the message that had come in. It would be from Keras, asking him where he was.
He focused on the wall, raised his hand and curled it into a fist. When he squeezed it, the ice shattered, and Daimon stepped. Darkness whirled around him, cool and comforting, a connection to the Underworld that he savoured, and then his boots hit gravel.
He opened his eyes and looked at the mansion, aching inside.
It felt empty without Esher in it, even when all his brothers and their women were there, crowding the long main room of the single-storey horseshoe-shaped building. Morning sunlight reflected off the glazed grey ribbed tiles of the roof and brightened the white panels that filled the spaces between thick dark wooden beams. It warmed his back, casting his shadow out before him, across the gravel and the steppingstones, to the base of one of the large stone lanterns that were dotted around the front garden.
From inside, voices rang out, a cacophony that had him wanting to teleport to his own home in Hong Kong to get some peace and quiet.
And avoid the owner of the angry female voice that for some damned reason he picked out from the blur.
“You should have taken me with you. Now look what happened. I could have helped,” Cass snapped, her words harsh and clipped, bringing out her Russian accent as they rang with the fury he could sense coming from her.
Keras didn’t respond to that. He carried Cal towards the right side of the mansion, disappearing from view with Marinda hurrying behind him. Cass turned, her pale blue eyes tracking her ward, a worried edge to them that almost made him feel there was a warm heart somewhere beneath that irritating, haughty exterior of hers.
Daimon forced himself to walk to the front porch, stepped up onto the raised wooden deck as he toed his boots off, and steeled himself only a little before entering the house.
As expected, Cass’s eyes immediately leaped to him.
He cursed when he realised they were alone.
She strode towards him, the thigh slit in her long black dress flashing a lot of creamy flesh at him. He swore she never took the damned thing off. Would it kill her to wear something less revealing, less figure-hugging? The soft black material embraced ample breasts and a small waist, and flared over curvy hips. It flashed every inch of her and made it impossible not to notice things about her.
Things he didn’t want to notice.
Before she could open her mouth to launch her first salvo, he held his hand up and strode past her.
“Not interested.”
Daimon made a beeline for the garden nestled between the three sides of the house, needing air and some space because he felt as if he was drowning.
Had been feeling that way since Cass had come crashing into their lives.
He couldn’t get a moment alone, and gods he needed a moment to breathe.
Cass stepped into his path, the flare of anger in her ice-blue eyes rapidly fading into something far worse—concern.
She gave him a once-over. “Those wounds need looking at.”
She pointed to his chest and then his legs, and he had never been more aware of his own body as he was whenever she was gazing at it.
“I’m not in the mood for you, Cass. Just leave me alone.” He stepped past her, heading for the garden and the air he badly needed.
Space to rein his riotous feelings back under his control.
Needs he had no right to feel.
“Daimon, wait…” She started after him again.
Wanting to be sure she got the message and left him alone, he turned on her with a growl as his feet hit the wooden planks of the covered walkway that ran around all three wings of the house.
“I don’t have time for this right now. Esher is still missing, I’m tired and injured, and we don’t know when or where the enemy will attack next and I need to take care of Valen.”
Cass inched back a step with each harsh word he threw at her. It wasn’t like the sorceress to shrink away from someone, especially him.
“I just want to help,” she bit out, a little too sulkily for him to not feel anything other than like a royal dick. “Let me help with Valen.”
“Fine,” he muttered, and took some of the bite out of his tone as he added, “I’d appreciate that.”
He turned to his right, towards the southern wing of the house where Valen’s quarters were.
Cass murmured, “It wouldn’t kill you to let me help you too.”
He knew that, but he couldn’t. He needed to keep his distance from her.
He’d made a promise.
He drew his long black coat back and slipped his right hand into his pocket, and clutched the pendant hanging from his phone.
A promise he intended to keep.


 

 

Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you’re a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.

If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:

WEBSITE|BLOG| FACEBOOK| TWITTER| GOODREADS| INSTAGRAM

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Calistos by Felicity Heaton-Dual Review & Giveaway Tour

Calistos (Guardians of Hades #5) by Felicity Heaton-Dual Review, Excerpt & Giveaway tour

CALISTOS
Guardians of Hades #5
by Felicity Heaton
Release Date: July 28, 2020
Genre: adult, contemporary, paranormal/fantasy romance

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Prince of the Underworld and Lord of Air, Calistos was banished from his home by his father, Hades, two centuries ago and given a new duty and purpose-to keep our world and his from colliding in a calamity foreseen by the Moirai. Together with his six brothers, he fights to defend the gates to the Underworld from daemons bent on breaching them and gaining entrance to that forbidden land, striving to protect his home from their dark influence.

Tormented by the death of his twin sister, Calistos wants nothing more than to find a way to save her soul, but the pain of continuing without her, the constant feeling that he got her killed, is slowly pulling him down into the darkness and he knows it’s only a matter of time before he succumbs to the call of the abyss.

Until a battle sets him on a collision course with a kind-hearted and beautiful mortal, one who rouses softer emotions he had sworn he would never risk feeling again, threatening to peel away his mask of playfulness and shatter the barriers around his heart.

Marinda is a woman on a mission-to become a great cellist and repay her father for his faith in her. But her regimented and studious life is thrown into chaos when a handsome man is carted into the ER where she works and takes her hostage, pulling her into a dark and dangerous world… one where she discovers there’s more to her than meets the eye and her entire life has been a lie.

When the enemy makes a play for Marinda and the gates, will Calistos find the strength to let someone into his heart again and look to the future, or will the pain of his past lead him to unleash hell on this world?

•••••••

SANDY’S REVIEW: CALISTOS is the fifth instalment in Felicity Heaton’s contemporary, adult GUARDIANS OF HADES paranormal/fantasy romance series very loosely based in Greek mythology, focusing on seven brothers- the sons of Hades and Persephone -sent to Earth to guard the gates to the Underworld. This is Prince of the Underworld and Lord of Air Calistos, and cellist/ hospital receptionist Marinda’s story line. CALISTOS can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty but I recommend reading the series in order as the brothers struggle against an unknown enemy to keep the human world and the Underworld from colliding.

NOTE: The Guardians of Hades series is Felicity Heaton’s interpretation of, and does not follow, the actual Greek mythological family tree or events.

Told from several third person perspectives including Calistos and Marinda CALISTOS follows Marinda in the aftermath of a strange series of events beginning with a supernatural encounter, in the hospital where she worked, with a man whose mortal wounds were anything but. Finding herself in the Underworld as a prisoner of the injured man, Marinda struggles to make sense of her world but a world that is about to come crashing down. From the murder of her father to an attack by daemons, Marinda becomes the target of an unknown enemy, an enemy that is also hunting our story line hero. What ensues is the building romance and relationship between Marinda and Calistos; the revelation about Marinda’s true self and her heritage; and a fight to the death wherein one of the brothers will go missing in an effort to find the soul of someone they love.

Marinda has always believed herself to be human but knew there was the possibility of the existence of the supernatural. When her father revealed that he could ‘see the future’ Marinda had no idea that her future would involve a god of the Underworld, and attacks by daemons, Hellspawn, monsters and a necromancer. Calistos has changed since the death of his twin, a death for which he blames himself. Hoping to locate his sister’s soul, Calistos plays fast and loose with his mortality, placing himself in the direct line of fire, time and again.

The relationship between Marinda and Calistos is one of immediate attraction but Calistos believes he does not deserve love or his own happily ever after since the death of his beloved twin. Trying to keep his distance Calistos continuously finds himself drawn to our heroine, and feeling over protective of the woman with whom he will fall in love. The release and revelations of Marinda’s powers finds our heroine working together with the brothers in an effort to protect the world. The $ex scenes are limited but passionate.

All of the previous story line couples and characters play secondary and supporting role including Ares and his mate Megan (ARES #1), Valen and his mate Eva (VALEN #2), Esher and Aiko (ESHER #3), Marek and Cat (MAREK #4) Daimon, and their eldest brother Keras; their mother Persephone, and their father Hades, as well as a number of daemons, shape-shifters, a necromancer and wraiths. We are introduced to Marinda’s guardian Cassandra (Cass) whose story line is next in DAIMON.

Like MAREK, CALISTOS is an action packed story where the reader is privileged to the internal dialogue, thoughts and introspective of the leading characters, as well as an early look at Daimon’s struggles with his powers and his attraction to Marinda’s guardian Cass. The character driven premise is intriguing, enthralling and imaginative; the romance is impassioned; the characters are edgy and charismatic. CALISTOS is my favorite GUARDIANS OF HADES thus far….the story ends on a slight cliff hanger-you have been warned.

Copy supplied for review

__________

JULIE’S REVIEW: How do I tell you about Calistos without giving away any of the previous books. You really do need to read this series in order. There is a lot going down! A few twists and an honest to oh my god moment!! Calistos is the youngest of the brothers, he was also a twin (sadly she died)

The wind is his element, and he wields it with accuracy and with deadly intent. Always the reckless one, the one to dice with death, a quick jab and sarcastic comeback. But beneath that, is a young man, brother and son that aches with loss. His twin was taken from him, and his family, and he’s battled with that heartache for centuries. His burden to bear till the end of time, it was his fault his twin sister died that day. No matter how his family tell him otherwise.

He also suffers terrible headaches and blackouts, this is the product of his sister’s death. If he tries to remember how she died, then he’s punished with a migraine and if pushed then a blackout. His family treat him with kid gloves, the baby of the family, the broken one. But Cal thinks they still hold him responsible for the death of his sister (angry that he didn’t protect her) no matter how many times they tell him that, he won’t believe it.

A thrill seeker and adrenaline junkie, fast cars and even faster women.

Marinda is attending at musical college in Paris, her love of music is all she needs at the moment, well that and her father. After her mother died, it was just the two of them, working all the hours he could and saved all the spare cash to buy Marinda a Cello. Being away from her father is hard, but her flat mates are fun, life at the moment is pretty good. When they first meet its in the ER, she’s drawn to the bloody mess which is Cal, the team try to save him as he looks close to death. But within seconds his wounds begin to close and all hell breaks loose, she’s taken hostage as the drunk junkie tries to leave the hospital.

Next think Marinda sees is strange people trying to force something down her throat!!! Darkness and Marinda wonders how she got here, she doesn’t remember anything of the last few hours!! Then fates bring them together, her father is murdered, her friend/guardian tells her to get to London. Being ambushed by daemons, then meeting up again with Cal in the middle of blood and carnage.

There is the usual distrust, the brothers think it’s a convenience that Marinda and Cal meet twice in less than a week. They are even more concerned when Miranda tells them her father saw her future, and it’s with the brothers! As a friend? Or enemy? The more time Cal spends with Miranda the more he notices he’s calmer around her, and when he tries to remember his sister, it’s not as hard as it usually is, what does that mean?

This book promised a wild ride, and the author delivered it in spades.

It will have you putting it down, walking away, and hurrying back to read more. There are a few twists, and a few times I had to take a deep breath and tell myself things would work out. They’d better work out!!!!

The author catches you from the first page, and doesn’t let go till the last word. Descriptions are so vivid, characters jump out from the pages. You want to cheer the good guys, slap the bad guys, and want the next book immediately.

So can he convince Marinda to give them a chance? Can he show his brothers he’s not the idiot they all think he is.

And will they get the upper hand in this war for both the underworld and this one?

Julie ?

“What did you just say?” The soft female voice invaded Calistos’s foggy mind, stirring the shadows until a glimmer of light peeked through like a warming ray of sunshine.
He focused on it, attempting to bring his senses back online as his entire body throbbed, a deep ache that warned him he had been badly injured and was still recovering.
“I don’t think so!” Her French accent lent a hard edge to that refusal.
Who was she talking to? What didn’t she want to do?
“I helped him.” She sounded fearful now, but angry too. “You asked me to help him… and I didn’t ask to be brought here.”
Another voice rumbled in his ears, this one a black snarl, and he struggled to make out what they were saying.
A second female joined the conversation, her tone gentle, whisper-soft. “The waters of the Lethe will not hurt you, child.”
The Lethe?
Cal growled as he was hurled back through time, memories flittering past him at high speed until he landed on the banks of that turbulent river, faced with a choice.
Drink the waters and forget her, or live with the constant pain in his heart.
“I don’t want to forget.” The French woman’s voice dropped low, the pain that laced each trembling word cutting through him.
He hadn’t wanted to forget either. He never wanted to forget.
He wanted to remember everything. He wanted to remember his sister. He wanted to remember what had happened to her. To him. He wanted to remember the face of the one who had tormented, tortured and murdered her.
But he never could.
In the vision building around him in the darkness of his mind, the river bubbling before him shifted colour and changed course, the waters receding to form a single sphere that then rose up before him. It dropped into a silver goblet, cupped in a delicate pale hand.
Mnemosyne offered it to him.
The water of memory.
Great pain rolled through him and he eased away a step, stumbled and fell on his back before her cell in the towering prison of Tartarus. Because the water offered only misery, only more pain when it failed to work. Not again. He would never drink it again.
“Drink the water.” Hades’s voice boomed like thunder rolling across the land, shattering the memory to leave only darkness behind.
Fear washed through Calistos. Fear that didn’t feel as if it was his own.
“You can’t make me.” That sweet voice lacked conviction as it shook.
He growled as he realised what was happening, as it all came flooding back in a torrent of images. Waking in a bright room. Finding himself surrounded by mortals. The agony. The fiery pain. The sudden explosion of energy inside him.
And then her.
A beauty who had looked as if she had stepped right out of Ancient Greece with her spun gold hair twisted into a braid across the top of her head and her warm blue-green eyes as inviting as the Aegean waters.
A snarl tore from his lips as he recalled seizing her, threatening her to defend himself against the other mortals, as he remembered trying to speak to her and how fiercely he had needed to keep her with him.
So fiercely he had apparently brought her with him to the Underworld.
“No,” he bit out, voice a hoarse scrape in his ears as he tried to move. He needed to stop his father. She was right and she had done nothing wrong. Gentle hands grasped his shoulders to hold him down, her touch light and offering comfort that he stole, strength that he absorbed as he gathered all that he could, preparing for a fight he would never win in his current condition. “No.”
When those tender hands attempted to keep him pinned, he brushed them away, as gently as he could manage as rage slowly built in his veins, roused by the thought of his father forcing the waters of the Lethe upon the mortal female who had helped him.
“Leave her.” Cal manoeuvred onto his elbows and managed to find the strength to crack his eyes open. They were sore, gritty and dry, his vision blurred. The room was a mash of fuzzy colours dominated by black. He blinked rapidly to clear his eyes and bring everything into focus. “I’ll take her back.”
“You will.” Hades stared him down from the end of the bed, his red eyes bright in the low light, stark against the long black lashes that framed them and his pale complexion. Obsidian spikes rose from his raven hair, a crown that suited the god-king of the Underworld, one meant to intimidate his enemies. “Once she has tasted the waters.”
Hades revealed the slender violet glass vial with a flourish, cupping it in the black claws of his left gauntlet. His father had come dressed for war.
Cal glanced at the golden-haired beauty where she stood off to his left, close to his mother, her soiled white shirt and grey pencil skirt so out of place in this dark ancient realm.
She wasn’t a threat to his father, or this world. Hades was overreacting. She was mortal.
He could feel it in her, was deeply aware of it and what he had done, how he had placed the fragile female in danger.
“Just let me take her back.” He tried to sit up, but his strength failed him and he gritted his teeth as pain blazed through him. He sank back against his elbows.
For a heartbeat, concern surfaced in his father’s eyes.
And then they hardened again.
“She must drink the waters.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” the woman snapped, fire in her eyes that swiftly abated when Hades shifted his gaze to her. She shrank back and wrapped her arms around herself, her slender dirty fingers tugging at her soiled white shirt near her elbows.
She looked small like that. Vulnerable.
It roused a dark need inside him.
Cal wanted to fight in her corner and convince his father that she wouldn’t tell anyone what she had seen, that no one would believe her if she did, but deep inside he knew his father was only doing what was necessary to protect his realm and his people.
Persephone looked to Hades and then to him, concern softening her green eyes as they met his.
He pulled down a deep breath and then nodded, hating himself for consenting to this when every fibre of his being wanted him to fight his father on it. He didn’t want her to suffer as he did, forgetting things that happened to her, left to wonder what she couldn’t remember when she inevitably felt as if she had forgotten something.
He only felt worse when his father held the vial out to him. He shook his head. He couldn’t be the one to do it and his father had to see that. He had to see the guilt and shame that was building inside him, a swirling tempest that felt as if it was ripping him apart as he waited. Hades curled a lip at the woman and turned towards her, his crimson cloak swirling around his ankles as he came to face her.
Darkness reigned in his father’s eyes as they burned scarlet, rage that flowed into the room from him and drove Calistos to act, because he wasn’t sure his father wouldn’t hurt her if he had to do the deed himself.
Persephone moved before Cal could muster the strength to intervene, gliding towards Hades and gently lifting her hand as she reached him, closing it over the vial.
“Allow me, my love.” She carefully took the violet glass bottle from him, brushing her fingers along his as she did so, a soothing caress that worked its magic on his father and had the rage in his eyes ebbing away again.
Cal deserved his father’s fury for bringing this mortal into his world, and for returning when he had been banished to the human world to defend the gates to the Underworld, protecting them from a calamity the Moirai had foreseen centuries ago.
This woman was an innocent, caught up in this because of him, because he was as reckless as his family believed him to be.
More reckless in fact.
If they knew the things he did, they would lock him away in Esher’s cage to keep him safe.
Persephone tipped the vial upside down and back again, pulled the stopper from it and held it out to the woman. “Only a drop. It will not hurt you and you can return to your world, to where you belong.”
The blonde looked as if she wanted to say something as she gazed into Persephone’s eyes, and as those tranquil blue-green orbs shifted to him, but then she nodded.
Opened her mouth.
Accepted the drop his mother placed on her tongue.
She closed her rosy lips, shut her eyes and swayed, a frown flickering on her brow.
When she opened her eyes again, they were dull and unfocused. She stared straight ahead of her, at his mother, a blank expression on her face.
“You have a few minutes to return her to her world before the waters take full effect.” Persephone handed the vial back to Hades, who curled sharp claws around it and levelled a black look on him, one that warned Cal that he wanted to speak with him about what he had done, and it wouldn’t be a pleasant conversation. His mother eased towards Cal and touched his arm, offered a smile that shone with love, and mischief. “I suggest you go now. Time is of the essence.”
It was. She was giving him an out, a chance to run before his father could explode at him over what he had done, and he was going to take it.
He let her help him from the bed, his strength returning as he shuffled towards the woman with her assistance. When he reached the blonde, he seized her arm, focused and muttered the words to activate the favour mark that Hermes had bestowed upon him at his birth. Blue light shone from the ancient writing on his right forearm and he focused on where he wanted to be as he looked at the woman. A portal shimmered into being just behind her, rippling like water as it expanded to fill a space large enough for both of them to pass through.
“Calistos,” Hades started.
Cal shoved her through and followed her, grimaced as they landed in the damp parking lot of a hospital. His father was either going to summon him to chew him out, or send a Messenger to do it for him.
Either way he would deal with it. He was well aware of the massive cock up he had made, and he deserved the wrath his father was going to level at him.
He looked at the woman, taking in her dull eyes and how she stared off into the distance, completely unaware of the world around her. Vulnerable.
He released her arm and lifted his hand, brushed rogue honey strands back into the plait that curved over the top of her head, and feathered his fingers down her cheek. She didn’t react.
“Sorry,” he murmured, the apology tasting hollow on his tongue, not nearly enough to make up for what he had put her through. He couldn’t imagine how frightened she had been—of him, of the world he had taken her to, and of his father.
He should have stood up for her. He cursed low as he stroked her cheek, as she continued to stare straight ahead of her, across the busy car park. He was weak right now, still recovering from his injuries, but he should have defended her.
Protected her.
He looked down at himself, at the bandages and dressings that covered his healing wounds, and at the crimson and black that stained her clothing—his blood and daemon blood. She had helped him, and he should have helped her. She had been afraid, and he had allowed his father to go ahead and wipe her memory.
He should have fought.
Esher had fought their father, had gone against him and had gotten what he wanted.
Cal’s courage had failed him.
Or maybe he just wasn’t as insane as his older brother.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He grimaced. No guesses needed to know who it would be and why they were messaging him.
He pulled his phone out, slowly, guilt fusing with anxiety inside him, a sickening sense of anticipation that set him on edge. He turned the screen towards him and grimaced again as he spotted his oldest brother’s name at the top of a very short message. Keras was pissed.
The message was three words.
Meeting. Tokyo. Now!
Apparently, his father had sent a Messenger as predicted, only he had sent it to his brothers.
The worst part about having six older brothers? Having seven mothers. It wasn’t as if there were centuries between them. Hell, there was less than forty years between him and Daimon, the second youngest. Cal was over seven hundred and sixty years old. Didn’t stop them from treating him like a kid though.
They were overprotective and overbearing.
Had been ever since they had lost his twin sister.
Pain struck across his skull like lightning and he flinched and rubbed his forehead, cursed low as that agony spread through him, condensing in his chest. He held himself together through sheer will alone, breathed through the pain and the fear, reaching for the other side. The pain slowly passed, the impending sense of doom lifting with it.
He hated that he couldn’t even think about Calindria without fear of blacking out. He wanted to remember her, needed to remember the good times, because right now he was on the verge of stepping off into the darkness and he knew he wouldn’t come back.
The abyss beckoned.
Offered oblivion and an end to his pain. His suffering.
The only hope he had left in this world was the hope that through death he might be able to see her again.
The woman beside him murmured something. He stared at her, silently apologising again for everything he had done, and how she was going to feel when she came around, her memories of him stolen from her.
Would she feel as lost as he did whenever he blacked out and couldn’t remember anything? Would she hate that feeling as much as he did?
He hated that he had inflicted it upon her.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered again, lingering now, unable to bring himself to part from her while she looked so lost, so vulnerable.
He forced himself to take a step back and break contact with her.
Her stunning eyes gradually gained awareness.
Calistos stepped, a term he and his brothers used for teleporting, leaving her before she noticed him. Darkness embraced him, a cool and comforting touch as he passed through his connection to the Underworld to emerge on the other side of the planet in Tokyo.
He had barely touched down in the elegant formal garden of the ancient Japanese mansion before Ares, his second eldest brother, was collaring him. His brother’s hand briefly closed around the back of his neck, the scalding heat of it warning him that Ares wasn’t happy. It worked in Cal’s favour.
Ares’s power over fire had manifested when they had been banished to the mortal world, meaning his brother couldn’t touch anything without risking setting it aflame, especially when he was in a bad mood.
Which was around ninety percent of the time.
The only one who was apparently immune to his power was Megan, his wife, a Carrier who had inherited the power to heal from her ancient Hellspawn ancestry.
“Move it. You’ve got some fucking explaining to do.” Ares moved up behind him, a wall of heat that had Cal moving towards the wooden porch of the Edo period single-storey building despite the fact he wanted to run in the opposite direction.
Mostly because in his current mood, Ares wouldn’t be allowed into it. Esher would see to that. Esher protected the mansion that was his home as fiercely as he protected his family.
“Shit, man, you royally fucked up.” Valen greeted him at the door, his violet-haired brother grinning like a fool. The puckered scar tissue that ran down his jaw and neck pulled taut as that grin widened. “Good luck.”
Valen slapped him on the back as Cal kicked his boots off and entered the building, stepping into the long rectangular room that made up the communal area of the mansion.
To his right, Esher sat with Aiko on one of the cream couches in the modern TV area, holding her tucked close to him on his lap, fussing over her. Aiko murmured sweet things to him in stilted English, soothing him, increasing the guilt Cal felt. Apparently, his little trip to the Underworld had reminded his brother of when Aiko had been killed, and how he had fought to bring her soul back to the mortal world.
Great.
Esher was on edge enough as it was these days, without Cal adding to his burden. All Esher could think about was hunting the wraith, Eli, one of the ranks of their enemy. It was taking all the power Aiko had over his brother to keep him from losing control and surrendering to that need.
To his other side.
Thankfully, it appeared two of his brothers had found reasons not to attend his trial.
Although he could have lived without Keras being present.
His judge, jury and possible executioner towered before him, his backdrop a beautiful manicured garden of topiary and gravel framed by the white paper panels that had been pushed open to reveal it, an immaculate vision that suited his oldest brother.
As always, Keras wore perfectly pressed black slacks, expensive polished black leather shoes, and a crisp black dress shirt. If his brother had been worried about him at all, it didn’t show in the hard lines of his sculpted features or the sharp edge to his green eyes.
“You want to explain what happened?” Keras said, deep voice as calm and smooth as an ocean on a still day. His brother was just as unpredictable too. He schooled his features well, hid his emotions from everyone, but sometimes, just sometimes, he reacted.
Like when Cal was rubbing him the wrong way, which was pretty much every day.
Cal shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
Keras’s green eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember. How convenient.”
Cal glared at him. That was a low blow. Forgetting things was never convenient for him. He despised that he couldn’t recall what had happened before he had come around on that hospital gurney surrounded by a few too many curious mortals.
“Easy,” Ares murmured from behind him, and Keras levelled a black look on him that warned him to stay out of this.
Cal knew his brothers well enough to know that wasn’t going to happen. Ares would have his own choice words to say to him about what he had done, but he wouldn’t let Keras go too far, or strike low blows meant to wound.
“Try to remember, because our father is… furious.” Keras managed to pick a word that perfectly conveyed what Cal had felt coming from their father.
Probably because Cal could feel it coming from him too.
Cal cocked his right hip, rubbed his jaw with his left hand, ignoring the dull, sore ache in his arm, and pursed his lips. “I met a really hot girl. Bee-u-tiful.”
“Calistos,” Ares said, the warning in his tone aimed at him now. “You know the rules. We all agreed to them. Hellspawn are involved with our enemy, so whenever we go to a gate or it calls us, we go together. Just admit you went to a gate, admit you messed up.”
Hellspawn was the name he and his brothers used for the breeds of daemons that Hades had allowed to remain in the Underworld after the last rebellion, when he had exiled all from the species who had been involved in the uprising and closed the gates to them. Hellspawn were allowed to come and go as they pleased with their father’s consent, travelling through the gates between the Underworld and this one.
Well, almost all the Hellspawn breeds were allowed to travel freely through the gates with Hades’s permission.
Since Keras had sent a Messenger to Hades about the possibility a necromancer was involved with their enemy, Hades had stopped giving permission to that breed, closing the gates to them and trapping them either in the Underworld or the mortal one.
Their father had also dispatched several of his legions to seek out the necromancers and bring them in for questioning, and every god and goddess allied with him was on the look out for them too.
So far, none had turned up.
“I have better things to do than this, so it would be appreciated if you would just fess up,” Valen put in. “I’m no saint, but even I agree that taking backup to the gates is the smart thing to do. The enemy knows we’re the keys to those gates now, and they know the only way to open one is to have us near it, so that means we work as a team. Safety in numbers and all that shit.”
Things had to be bad if Valen was going along with things rather than acting out and playing the rebel.
“Why didn’t you message for backup?” Keras moved a step towards Cal, a casual move but one that sent a cold chill shooting down Cal’s spine.
He preferred a little distance between him and his oldest brother when he was in a mood, and Keras was in a mood. He could see it now, building in his green eyes, a storm looming in the distance but rapidly growing stronger.
The sort Cal loved to unleash on the world.
He didn’t want to answer his brother’s question. To answer it, he would have to attempt to remember. Only pain lay that way.
“There must have been a powerful enemy involved.” Valen moved around him, casting golden eyes over Cal’s bare chest and ruined black combats. “Several of them. You were in bad shape. Father’s Messenger relayed that much.”
Valen placed a hand on Cal’s shoulder, and Cal shrugged it off, because seeing worry in his brother’s eyes was unnerving. He preferred the fuck-you-all brand of Valen. This new, softer version freaked him out.
“Try to remember.”
Cal looked at Keras as he spoke those words, catching in his eyes how much his brother needed him to explain, and therefore at least attempt to remember. Hades hadn’t just sent a Messenger to inform his brothers of what had happened in the Underworld. He had sent a request for information, one Keras needed to fulfil.
Hades wanted to know what had happened.
Their father had been on edge since Keras had sent the Messenger to inform him of their suspicions about a necromancer being involved. Keras had to send regular reports to him now, sometimes more than once a day depending on their father’s mood. Cal could understand why both Keras and their father were so insistent on getting every scrap of information available to them, because anything could be a clue as to who was involved or what the enemy planned to do next.
Cal sucked down a deep breath. He was doing this then. No question about it. His father wanted the details, and as much as it pained Cal, both physically and emotionally, he would do his best to provide them.
“Fine,” he grated and went to the couch that stood with its back to the main area of the room. “At least let me sit down in case I pass out. I’ve had enough knocks for a lifetime tonight.”
He slumped into the seat, leaned back against the soft cushions and closed his eyes, ignoring Esher’s muttered words about dirtying the cream material.
He focused inside of him instead, on the darkness of his mind, conjuring an image of the first thing he remembered on coming around. The white room. The humans. The beauty, staring at him from the doorway, fascination mixed with fear in her striking eyes. He remembered speaking to her.
Cal forced himself to go backwards, denying the need to roll forwards and replay everything that had happened with her. He remembered pain. Incredible pain. Jerky movements. Someone lifting him. The paramedics?
He pushed back further, and gritted his teeth as fire spiderwebbed across his skull, red veins of it that he could almost see as it burned his mind, bringing darkness in its wake. He struggled against it, stretching for the memory that felt just out of reach, hoping this time he would be able to recall it all without the abyss devouring him.
The darkness roared up on him, a towering black wave that threatened oblivion, but he pushed back against it and a faint image flickered in his mind, and a feeling went through him.
He popped his eyes open and let everything go, releasing it in a rush of breath as he sank deeper into the couch.
“Well?” Ares knelt beside him, concern in his dark eyes, his overlong tawny hair mussed and pulled from the leather thong he wore it tied back with. His brother dropped his hand to his black jeans-clad knee. “Did you remember anything?”
Cal nodded.
While he couldn’t recall what had happened to him between fighting a horde of daemons and waking in that hospital room, he could remember a few things.
Like where he had been.
“Seville. I was at the twin gate.” The one that had been bound to his twin sister before he had been forced to seal it shut and close it down, leaving him feeling as if he had lost her all over again. “A lot of daemons showed up. I think I ended up teleporting to get away from them.”
His brothers exchanged sympathetic glances. Would they be so sympathetic if he told them what else he had remembered?
He hadn’t fought back.
In that moment, he had felt so empty, so hollowed out, that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to fight the daemons.
He had wanted to die.
Death wasn’t the answer. Keras was right about that. Dying wouldn’t reunite him with Calindria. To see her again, he needed to find whoever had her soul and discover the location of it. He had to live.
But it was so hard to do that.
The daemons had caught him at a low point, when the pain of closing the gate linked to her had been too raw and too much for him, opening him to the thought of escaping it all by letting oblivion claim him.
Part of him hated that he had sunk this low, that he had craved death, because Keras was right about another thing too.
Calindria wouldn’t want it.
She would want him to live.

Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you’re a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.

If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:

WEBSITE|BLOG| FACEBOOK| TWITTER| GOODREADS| INSTAGRAM

 

NOTE: The Reading Cafe is NOT responsible for the giveaway. If you have any questions, please contact the author.

Enter the grand tour-wide giveaway to win one of a $75, $50 or $25 Amazon Gift Card at the Calistos book page. This giveaway is international and open to everyone, and ends at midnight on August 16th.

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Marek (Guardians of Hades 4) by Felicity Heaton-Review & Giveaway

Marek (Guardians of Hades 4) by Felicity Heaton-Review & Giveaway

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date May 26, 2020

Prince of the Underworld and Lord of Earth, Marek was banished from his home by his father, Hades, two centuries ago and given a new duty and purpose—to keep our world and his from colliding in a calamity foreseen by the Moirai. Together with his six brothers, he fights to defend the gates to the Underworld from daemons bent on breaching them and gaining entrance to that forbidden land, striving to protect his home from their dark influence.

Haunted by a betrayal that shattered him and set him on a dark path of vengeance, Marek closely guards his heart, as determined to keep it safe as he is to wipe the scourge of vampires from the world.

Until a hunt lands him in the presence of a beautiful woman who threatens to steal that heart as she battles his sworn enemy, her graceful moves igniting a passion so fierce and hunger so deep it consumes him.

Caterina’s sole purpose for the last decade has been freeing her brother of the curse of being turned into a vampire. When an alluring dark warrior steps in to help her battle a nest of bloodsuckers, her entire life is tipped off balance. She knows deep in her heart the warrior can help her save her brother, but can she trust a man who is driven to slay every vampire he meets?

When Marek’s enemy emerges from the shadows, and Caterina is pulled down a dark rabbit hole into a dangerous world, will they be strong enough to overcome their pride and their prejudices or will a dark turn of events shatter both their hearts?

•••••••••

Sandy’s REVIEW:MAREK is the fourth instalment in Felicity Heaton’s contemporary, adult GUARDIANS OF HADES erotic, paranormal/fantasy romance series very loosely based in Greek mythology, focusing on seven brothers- the sons of Hades and Persephone -sent to Earth to guard the gates to the Underworld. This is Prince of the Underworld and Lord of Earth Marek, and vampire hunter / human Caterina’s story line. MAREK can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty but I recommend reading the series in order as the brothers struggle against an unknown enemy to keep the human world and the Underworld from colliding.

NOTE: The Guardians of Hades series is Felicity Heaton’s interpretation of, and does not follow, the actual Greek mythological family tree or events.

Told from several third person perspectives including Marek and Caterina MAREK follows the building relationship between Prince of the Underworld and Lord of Earth Marek, and vampire hunter / human Caterina. Approximately ten years earlier Caterina’s brother Guillem was attacked, and Caterina is desperate to find a cure to prevent her brother from becoming a vampire but ten years of hunting and killing vampires, and her brother remains a shell of his former self, slowly succumbing to whatever disease is slowly eating away at his body. Caterina isn’t the only hunter in Barcelona destroying the hundreds of nests of vampires in her city, and in this Caterina struggles with her attraction to the warrior who may or may not be human himself. Enter Prince of the Underworld and Lord of Earth Marek, the man/the god with whom Caterina will fall in love but all does not go well for our story line couple when Caterina is targeted, and finds herself doing the bidding of someone who promises to fix what ails her dying brother, a bidding that will cost Caterina her humanity. What ensues is the slow building relationship between Caterina and Marek, and the potential fall-out as Caterina becomes the puppet of a powerful enemy, threatening to destroy Marek to take control of the Gates to the Underworld.

Marek despises the vampire with every fibre of his being having been betrayed by one in his past. Alone in his quest to take down the vampires, Marek battles between head and heart when he discovers another ‘warrior’ as desperate as he to kill the vampires that broke his heart but protecting the Gates to the Underworld comes at a cost, as Marek and his brothers find themselves in a constant battle with the numerous daemons that are constantly coming through the portals of H*ll.

Caterina is determined to destroy every vampire in existence believing one of the vampires is her brother’s maker but the more vampires Caterina kills, her brother becomes weaker with no sign of recovery. Meeting Marek, a man who claims not to be human, finds Caterina working together in an effort to rid the city of her brother’s ‘killer’ but working together means their mutual attraction grows with every encounter.

The relationship between Caterina and Marek is slow to build. Marek is at the command of his father, as well as the summons of the gate he continues to guard but someone or something is trying to gain access to the Underworld, using both Caterina and Marek in their endeavour, placing Caterina in the direct line of fire when Marek’s enemies forces Caterina to turn on the man with whom she is falling in love. The $ex scenes are passionate and intimate without the use of over the top, sexually graphic language and text.

Once again, all of Marek’s brothers including Ares and his mate Megan (ARES #1), Valen and his mate Eva (VALEN #2), Esher and Aiko (ESHER #30) Daimon, eldest brother Keras, , and baby brother Calistos play secondary and supporting roles; their mother Persephone, and their father Hades, as well as a number of daemons, shape-shifters, and wraiths. We are introduced to Caterina’s brother Guillem, who finally succumbs to the powers slowly taking over his body.

MAREK is an action packed, ensemble story line wherein the reader is privileged to the internal dialogue, introspection and thoughts of the leading characters. Marek is compelled to kill the vampires he blames for betrayal; Caterina is hoping to cure the brother she so desperately loves. The premise is engaging, energetic and captivating; the characters are colorful, dynamic and spirited; the romance is seductive and steamy.

•••••••••••••

Julie’s Review: Marek the Guardian of the gate In Seville and the “earth” element is book 4.

Marek is on a mission, to seek out and destroy all and any vampires he comes across.

Betrayed by a lover, he slaughtered her nest and now he’s on a mission to wipe them all out!!

Caterina is looking for a cure for her beloved brother.

Bitten by a vampire, he’s slowly dying, he hasn’t got much longer, so if she can find his “sire”, then Caterina hopes he will become human again.

Looking for vampire nests in Barcelona she hopes to come across the vampire and kill it, before it kills her brother!!

Coming across Caterina was a surprise, and before he knows what’s hit him, he has a partner to back him up on the hunt. But what will he do when he finds out her secret? Will he help or will he end her brother’s life?

Caterina wasn’t expecting to find out that not only do vampires exist, but other monsters and gods roam this earth too. Can she trust Marek with her brothers secret, or will she walk away to protect him?

This book was a total surprise, I wasn’t sure of Marek’s background story. We know something dark happens in his past, but being betrayed by a vampire lover, wasn’t one of them. And it has to be a big betrayal as he’s bent on taking them all out, and he’s not suppose to!! (Vampires are permitted to go to and from the underworld)

He’s also in the middle of his brother’s “love life” and he hates that his brother Keras doesn’t speak to him unless he has to! (The story between Keras and the goddess of war looks to be a long standing one, and will I’m sure the story will be a good one)

Have to admit I was a little taken aback with how quick the main characters fell for each other (considering how in love he was previously!) but what he feels for Caterina is completely different from what he felt with Airlea.

Liked how the storyline is different from the rest (in fact all the stories are different)

It’s great that we get a little more information with each story that’s told. The ongoing war with the unseen forces that want control of both the underworld and this one.

And the surprises just kept coming in this one…..

As all the books in this series, it’s really well written, fast paced, loaded with fight scenes and twists.

We interact with all the brothers and the women in their lives.

We laugh along with the funny moments. And I wanted to shake them too!! And a few moments had me reaching for the tissues!!

The series is coming to an end soon ?and that’s sad! But I’m looking forward to reading the next brother.

It’s going to be epic!

Julie ?

Copy supplied for review

BOOKS IN THE SERIES:

Book 1: Ares
Book 2: Valen
Book 3: Esher
Book 4: Marek
Book 5: Calistos – Coming July 28th
Book 6: Daimon – Coming Fall 2020
Book 7: Keras – Coming Fall 2020

 

 

He had never been one for believing in signs, but as Marek watched the skull made of bubbles slide down the glass shower screen, a bad feeling stirred deep in his gut.
He finished scrubbing the suds from his hair and slicked it back, running both hands over his head as his eyes strayed back to the skull now stretching and deforming into something resembling Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream.
It meant nothing. Omens weren’t real.
If the bad feeling came from anywhere, it was because things had gone too quiet since the wraith had broken into the Tokyo mansion and rescued the shapeshifter female he and his brothers had managed to capture. It had looked as if she was going to be a valuable source of information, that Esher could break her down and convince her to talk if he had enough time.
Marek and his six brothers had held her in their grasp for only a few hours before the wraith had used the memories he had stolen from Esher to penetrate the barrier around the mansion and had whisked her away through a portal.
Now, they were back to square one. They had an enemy and they had no clue how many were in their ranks or what they planned to do next. All they knew was that this band of daemons wanted to destroy the gates he and his brothers protected between the mortal world and their home, the Underworld, to merge the two realms into one they would control.
Keras was still annoyed about the fact they had lost their only source of information, as well as other things.
Marek couldn’t remember the last time his oldest brother had said more than two words to him. At every meeting Marek attended, Keras spoke to the others about their reports and what he wanted them to do next, but when it came to Marek, all Keras dished out was the cold shoulder.
Marek cursed Enyo under his breath, not foolish enough to do it aloud in case the damned goddess of war was able to hear him. It was time she overcame whatever it was that stopped her from facing facts and his brother, before she ended up getting Marek killed. The next time she showed up on Marek’s doorstep, she was getting the cold shoulder treatment.
Or he would damn well teleport to wherever Keras was so she was forced to see his brother again.
It was about time they both faced their feelings.
Keras was as in denial as Enyo was.
The skull continued to mock him. Marek swiped the side of his left hand across the glass, obliterating it, and shut off the water. He didn’t believe in signs.
He made his own destiny.
The Moirai could tell him the future all they wanted, but what good were the seers when they couldn’t tell him the details? He and his brothers had been stuck in the mortal world for two hundred years thanks to the fates and their sketchy facts. Their father, Hades, had banished them from the Underworld to protect the gates and await the attack the fates had foreseen, believing it would motivate them and give them reason to focus all of their effort on their mission so they could return home.
Two centuries of waiting and the enemy had finally made themselves known.
War was coming.
Marek couldn’t wait.
His gut swirled with a dark hunger, one that had been steadily building over the last two weeks and pressed him to obey it. He flexed his fingers as his thoughts trod a dark path, feeding that hunger with images of beautiful carnage, of walls painted crimson, and blood rolling down his body as he stood amidst the aftermath of a battle.
The image wasn’t one he had witnessed, but one that was to come. Marek could tell the future too in his own way. He could predict the result of a hunt—because he always won. Nothing stood between him and the high of victory, not when he was hunting. His blood burned with need as his hunger got the better of him, and he stepped out of the shower, unable to deny it any longer.
Tonight.
He would make that vision real tonight.
He dried off and scrubbed a towel against his dark hair, mussing the waves into curls as he stared at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t surprised to find his normally brown eyes were black with the dark need to hunt, revealing the depth of his hunger.
He tried to keep his mind on other things as he tugged on his trunks and then his black combat trousers, and pulled on a tight black T-shirt, but his focus kept slipping, filling his head with pleasing images of fighting that roused another need in his veins, a trickle of pleasure that warmed him. His eyes slid shut as anticipation built, the thought of what was to come making him want to rush.
As always.
He clenched his fists, savoured the sting of his nails biting into his palms, and tamped down the urges, clawing back control. He would have his high soon enough. It was better he remained focused during the fight. Afterwards, when the twelve vermin he had been tracking for the last two weeks were little more than fizzing piles of flesh and bone, he could indulge himself and enjoy the bliss and satisfaction that came from killing them.
Vampires.
His father, Hades, would be angry with him if he discovered Marek’s need to slay vampires, a species his father viewed as allies. His brothers would probably be just as furious. Knowing that didn’t stop him. It couldn’t stop him.
The vampires needed to pay.
He had tried to deny the hunger to kill them, and it hadn’t ended well. The compulsion was strong, so powerful that it had driven him into his darker side—a side that came from Hades’s blood in his veins—and he had lost all control, becoming a slave to it.
His second-eldest brother, Ares, had found him a week later, caked with blood and grime. Apparently, he had located him by following the trail of carnage Marek had left in his wake. By his brother’s estimate, close to a thousand daemons had lost their lives to Marek’s blade, and on top of that he had slaughtered five Hellspawn.
Hellspawn were what he and his brothers called the daemon breeds that Hades deemed acceptable, ones who still served him and were allowed to travel freely between the mortal world and the Underworld.
Hades had forgiven him for killing them.
He doubted his father would forgive him if he became aware of the thousands of vampires he had slaughtered since then.
All of them in cold blood while fully aware of what he was doing.
Marek stalked into his bedroom, the terracotta tiles cool beneath his feet despite the thick heat of summer. Insects buzzed and chirruped outside, their song a soothing melody as he breathed deeply to focus, centring himself as he prepared for battle.
He felt the earth deep beneath him, sensed it surrounding him, and he closed his eyes as he allowed his connection to it to calm him further, and push out the frantic need building within him. Patience.
There were a dozen vampires in that nest in Barcelona, and he was going to butcher every single one of them.
Nothing was going to stop that from happening tonight.
He rounded his oak double bed that stood against the wall opposite the bathroom and opened a drawer on the side table to its right.
His dark gaze landed on the one thing it contained and the hunger roared back to life inside him.
He swallowed and reached into the drawer, his eyes slipping shut and pleasure rolling in on the wake of his hunger as his fingers made contact with the leather hilt of the blade. It was smooth beneath his touch, worn from centuries of use. He bit back a groan as he curled his fingers around it and lifted the blade, felt the delicious weight of it in his palm. He opened his eyes and looked down at it, shivered as he drew the curved knife from its sheath and the silver blade caught the low lights, reflecting them up at him.
The beauty of it hit him hard in the way it always did, had him transfixed as he took in every nick in the razor-sharp blade and recounted all the vampires he had killed with it, using the silver it contained to send them to their final deaths.
The need to hunt condensed inside him, boiled and raged, pushed at him until he surrendered to it. He swiftly sheathed the blade and jammed it into the waist of his fatigues, and focusing on his destination, he summoned his ability to teleport.
Darkness whirled around him, consumed him as he took a single step forwards. Familiar sensation washed through him, his connection to the Underworld lasting only a heartbeat before he emerged from the teleport. It was comforting nonetheless, and the closest he had been to home in two hundred years.
He landed in a cobbled alley surrounded by old cream stone buildings. The air was thicker here in Barcelona than in Seville, heavy with moisture that made it hard to breathe as the stifling heat bore down on him. He gave himself a moment to adjust to the summer temperatures, and then silently moved along the alley, using the shadows as cover as he stealthily approached the arched entrance of the vampire nest.
His senses sharpened as he focused them ahead of him, eager to count the number of foes awaiting him.
Only it wasn’t twelve signatures that popped up on his internal radar.
It was only five.
Marek cursed and moved faster, drawing his blade from its sheath at the same time. He could still eliminate these five, taking the edge off his hunger, and then he would wait for the rest to return. He reached the entrance of the building and stopped dead as the scent of spilled vampire blood hit him together with a feminine grunt and a hiss.
There hadn’t been any females among the vampires.
Was it a vampire?
Or a victim?
He eased the heavy wooden doors open and slipped inside. His eyes rapidly adjusted to the darkness that clung to the ground floor of the building, revealing the courtyard.
And a woman.
She stood in the centre of the courtyard, the low lights reflecting off her caramel-coloured hair as it tumbled around her shoulder, shifting in waves as she turned her head left and then right, eyeing the four male vampires moving to flank her. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she was facing off against the vampires, he would have thought her one of them with her tight dark clothing. She matched their style perfectly, calf-height black leather boots showing over her tight navy jeans and a form-fitting black tank revealing her toned figure.
A thin cut slashed up her left arm, a crimson trail from it reaching her elbow.
Darkness stirred inside him as she took in the vampires, her wide luminous hazel eyes bright with what looked a lot like fear.
A startling new urge blasted through Marek in response.
A need to protect her.
The dark-haired vampire facing her licked his fangs.
Not on Marek’s watch.
Darkness rushed through him, sweet and addictive, dangerously seductive as it subdued his softer emotions, leaving only raw rage and a black hunger for violence behind. His nails sharpened into claws, canines lengthening to match those the vampire was flashing at the woman.
His would-be victim.
Marek leaned his weight forwards and readied his blade, his gaze locking onto the male; mind racing to calculate everything about him, from his weight and height, to which foot he favoured and any possible weapons he had concealed on his body.
Satisfied that the vampire wouldn’t stand a chance, Marek pressed down on his right foot, intending to launch at the male.
Only the woman picked that moment to yell a battle cry and spin on her heel, a silver blur shining around her as she gracefully pirouetted.
And stabbed the vampire nearest Marek right through his heart with a short sword.
Marek rocked back on his heels.
She wasn’t a victim.
She was a warrior.
Breathtaking as she ducked beneath the blow from the blond male behind her and lashed out with her leg in a fluid sweep that looked as if she had performed it a thousand times. She caught the male’s ankles, toppling him, and spun back up to her full height as she brought her blade around.
It sliced clean through the throat of the vampire she had stabbed, cleaving his head from his body as he frantically clutched at the bubbling wound in his chest. The vampire slumped to land by what appeared to be the fizzing remains of another vampire, giving Marek a better view of the warrior as she took on the remaining three.
Part of Marek growled at him to intervene, to protect her as he had intended.
The rest of him was struck dumb by how gracefully she moved as she twisted and turned, blocked and attacked, undeterred by the way the vampires evaded her blows.
He had never seen anything like her.
It wasn’t fear that flashed in her hazel eyes as she spun on her heel and jammed her blade into the gut of the blond vampire. It was excitement. Pleasure. The same thrill he felt as he watched her.
Who was she?
The hunger that had gone dormant inside him the moment he had set eyes on her returned with a vengeance, snarling a black demand in his head as he watched her fighting the vampires.
Fighting his vampires.
It didn’t matter who she was. She was intruding on his battle, had ruined his plans for the night. These vermin were his to kill.
The woman slashed her blade across the leg of the blond vampire, cutting deep into his thigh through his black jeans, delivering another deadly blow of silver judging by how the vampire she had managed to kill was slowly melting away to nothing.
She leaned over and grasped the male by his hair, stared into his eyes as the silver consumed him, tearing pained hisses from between his clenched teeth as he convulsed.
Her first mistake.
A fatal one.
She had taken her eyes off the remaining two.
The tall dark-haired male grabbed her from behind, fisted her fall of caramel hair and pulled her head back, ripping a pained cry from her lips.
The vampire’s eyes blazed red as he bent his head to pierce her delicate neck with his filthy fangs.
Marek growled from the shadows, the feral snarl pealing from him before he could contain it as the need to protect her roared back to the fore, stealing control of him again.
The woman tensed.
The vampires froze.
Their glowing scarlet eyes edged towards him.
Marek launched at them on a roar.


 

Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you’re a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.

If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:

WEBSITE|BLOG| FACEBOOK| TWITTER| GOODREADS| INSTAGRAM

 

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Seduced by a Demon King by Felicity Heaton-Review, Excerpt & Giveaways

Seduced by a Demon King by Felicity Heaton-Review, Excerpt & Giveaways

SEDUCED BY A DEMON KING
Eternal Mates
by Felicity Heaton
Release Date: September 24, 2019
Genre: adult, paranormal, fantasy, romance

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date September 24, 2019

Saddled with a crown he never wanted, King Tegan of the Second Realm of demons is a warrior born for war stuck ruling in a time of peace, bound by the pact that cost his brother his life. Chafed by the ties that have held him shackled to his throne for the last thousand years, Tegan plans an escape from his prison—one stolen night meant to give him a taste of freedom, but one that will lead him to the greatest battle of his life.

A fight to claim the heart of a bewitching fae female who might be his fated mate.

According to many in her clan, and the idiotic incubi who infest the fae town where she lives, Suki puts the suck in succubus. Down on her luck, and in danger of being kicked out of the family she loves, she’s determined to prove her worth by bagging and tagging a powerful male. When she sets eyes on a mysterious, panty-melting demon warrior in a nightclub, things finally seem to be going her way, but his shadowed aura and guardedness warns he won’t be an easy mark.
Seducing him is going to be the fight of her life.

When the battle is done, will the victor have the forever they want, or will this war cost them both everything?

••••••••

REVIEW:SEDUCED BY A DEMON KING is the seventeenth instalment in Felicity Heaton’s contemporary, adult ETERNAL MATES paranormal, fantasy series. This is Demon King Tegan of the Second Realm of Hell, and succubus Suki’s story line. SEDUCED BY A DEMON KING can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous instalments is revealed where necessary. There is a slight cross-over with the author’s LONDON VAMPIRES series.

Told from dual third person perspectives (Tegan and Suki) SEDUCED BY A DEMON KING follows Suki, a reluctant succubus who struggles with the art of seduction. Forced by the elders to seduce a man, Suki finds herself at Underground, a London bar for the paranormal, where she will meet her future. Enter Demon King Tegan of the Second Realm of Hell, and the man with whom Suki will fall in love. What ensues is the slow building romance and relationship between Suki and Tegan, and the potential fall-out when Tegan discovers he was a pawn in a game between Suki and her sisters.

King Tegan is a reluctant king. He lived his life on the battlefield but the death of his brother one thousand years earlier found Tegan ascending to a throne he did not want. Heading to the human world in an effort to procure more books for his extensive library, Tegan discovers he is out of his element when it comes to women and love. Suki’s nickname amongst her kind is ‘sucky’. A succubus who is reluctant or unable to seduce, Suki struggles with everyday life. Meeting King Tegan gives Suki hope for the future, hope that is quickly dissolved when the truth is revealed.

The relationship between Tegan and Suki is slow to develop as Tegan is inexperienced in the art of wooing a woman; and Suki fears she will kill the man who calls to her heart. Unaware that Tegan is the Second King, Suki only knows that she wants a happily ever after, a HEA she has been told does not exist. The $ex scenes are passionate and intimate, without the use of over the top, sexually graphic language and text.

We are introduced to Suki’s sisters Allura Vidia, and their leader Cyrena; Tegan’s brother Ryker, several witches including Julianna as well as the appearance of Underground bartender and bar owner Kyter, witch Rosalind and her demon mate Vail: Commander Bleu of the elf legions; elven Prince Loren, elves Fynn and Dacian, Queen Melia of the First Realm and her advisor Isla, and demon King Thorne The demons and elves are about to go to war against a dragon hell-bent on destruction.

SEDUCED BY A DEMON KING is a story line told in narrative, through memories, thoughts, emotions and introspection, as well as interaction with others. As will most of the author’s stories and series, the face to face conversations are limited but the overall presentation is energetic and strong. The premise is engaging and captivating; the romance is seductive; the characters are colorful and powerful.

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

 

Book 1: Kissed by a Dark Prince  ( Just 99c right now!)
Book 2: Claimed by a Demon King
Book 3: Tempted by a Rogue Prince
Book 4: Hunted by a Jaguar
Book 5: Craved by an Alpha
Book 6: Bitten by a Hellcat
Book 7: Taken by a Dragon
Book 8: Marked by an Assassin
Book 9: Possessed by a Dark Warrior
Book 10: Awakened by a Demoness
Book 11: Haunted by the King of Death
Book 12: Turned by a Tiger
Book 13: Tamed by a Tiger
Book 14: Treasured by a Tiger
Book 15: Unchained by a Forbidden Love
Book 16: Avenged by an Angel
Book 17: Seduced by a Demon King – Coming September 24th2019

 

Tegan’s battle plan was sound.
A simple feint. Trick the eye. A stroke of genius.
With a dash of the fates smiling upon him, he might escape this prison tonight.
This castle had been his cage for a thousand years, since the night his brother had been murdered, the throne beneath him a shackle that held him fast, unbreakable except through death.
He ran a steady hand over his right horn, feeling the smoothness and the slight bumps where the enchanted gold had been inlaid into the grooves he had carved himself. Some of the bumps were barely noticeable, a sign of how many times he had performed this act since Edyn had died.
The plan was sound.
But still a trickle of nerves ran in his blood.
Or was that excitement?
It had been so long since he had experienced that emotion that he was unfamiliar with it now. He pondered that as he swigged from his pewter mug, the brew sweet on his tongue. One of the few pleasures he had left in his long and tedious life.
Excitement. Fear. Pain. The high of victory.
Everything he had loved had been stolen from him the night he had been thrust into a role he had never wanted.
Although perhaps he would have lost it all anyway, even if his brother had survived.
Peace.
He cursed that word.
He cursed Edyn.
He cursed the throne.
He cursed his kingdom.
Tegan mentally took that one back.
As much as he despised the truce with the First Realm of the demons and the elf kingdom, as much as he despised his throne and his advisers who sought to keep him tethered to it, safely holed up in his castle, he couldn’t blame his people for what had happened to him.
Perhaps he was the one who was cursed.
Cursed to lead a dull and peaceful life for the rest of his days.
Tegan leaned to his right, dropped his chin on his upturned palm as he planted his elbow against the arm of his black throne, and huffed.
He had been born for war, not peace.
Yet here he was, presiding over a feast celebrating the anniversary of the truce his brother had formed with the neighbouring demon realm and the elves.
Celebrating peace.
He could practically feel his life draining from him, one grain of sand at a time through an hourglass that was shielded by layers and layers of steel designed to keep it safe from harm.
What sort of demon wanted to be safe?
Peaceful?
He craved battle, adventure. A glorious war or two every decade wouldn’t go amiss either. But here he sat, his backside stuck to a throne he wanted no part of, doomed to rule a peaceful kingdom while the other demon kings indulged in lavish wars, were out there on the frontline spilling blood and breaking bones.
He lifted his cup to his lips again and took a deeper draught of the mead.
Gods, he was bored.
Cursed.
It was Edyn’s fault.
His older brother was meant to rule while Tegan did all the fighting as commander of their Royal Legion, not broker a damned peace treaty and then die, leaving the Second Realm in Tegan’s hands.
He growled low in his throat.
A few of the warriors celebrating at the long feast tables that lined the grand hall of the castle paused to look his way, their brew or their females forgotten as they checked on him. Tegan glared at them all, tempted to flash his emerging fangs as his mood took a sharp dark turn, plunging him into the mire of thoughts that had been his own personal hell since the night someone had placed a crown upon his head.
The warriors returned to their drinks, laughter spilling from their lips as they toasted him and cheered, as if that would lift his mood. He drummed his short claws against the layer of stubble on his cheek as he surveyed the room, dark gaze passing over the towering carved black columns that supported the vaulted ceiling high above him.
The candles in the middle of each long black wooden table illuminated the faces of his warriors, playing over their dark hair and horns, flickering over their bare chests as they shoved and laughed, caroused with the females he had brought in for the celebration.
At least someone at the feast was enjoying themselves.
Edyn had always said the people came first.
Something he and his brother had agreed upon. Although Tegan liked to place his warriors first, a hang up from his days serving in the legions, leading them and witnessing the toll battle took on them. Now peace took its toll on them instead.
So he had agreed to tonight’s feast.
His men needed to blow off some steam, and if drinking and females could supply them with an outlet for it, he would gladly sit through a thousand boring feasts. He couldn’t give them war after all.
He had once contented himself with feasts, mead and females. It had worked for a while, taking the edge off, but now he found them dull.
What he wanted now was a battle. A war. It was the only thing that could improve his mood. The news from the other demon realms wasn’t helping. Several of them had gone to war recently, and although he had lobbied his advisers and made a valiant attempt to let the Second Realm join the Third Realm in their battle against the Fifth, their answer had been the same as always.
He must maintain the peace.
Tegan huffed again.
Maintaining the peace was exhausting. It went against his very nature.
He went to take another mouthful of his brew and frowned at the bottom of the large pewter mug when he found it empty. He held it out to his right and the male standing there refilled it for him. He nodded, lifting his mug to thank the male, and drank deeply, emptying half the tankard in one go.
A few of the warriors in the room tugged females away with them.
Almost time to put his plan into action.
He just needed to be patient for a little longer.
But patience wasn’t his strongest virtue. It lacked a little.
He tapped his foot, jiggling the female seated on his left thigh. One he had completely forgotten about, even though she was about to become a key factor in his battle plan.
She immediately went into action, fawning over him, running fingers over his shoulder, shifting the material of his loose white shirt as she murdered his language so badly, he struggled to interpret her meaning. “My lord, your muscles. You are strong.”
Tegan slid her a look he hoped conveyed how irritating she was. It didn’t stop her. She prattled on, all smiles as she flicked blonde hair over her shoulder to reveal a hefty amount of cleavage. Unsurprising given how tight her red leather bodice was.
He wasn’t sure what species she was, and he didn’t care.
He tuned her out as he surveyed his warriors. Were they really content with feasting and females? He wasn’t.
How was he meant to continue like this?
He was a warrior at heart, but every day he had to pretend to be something else. Worse, he had to be someone else. He no longer recognised the male who obeyed the wishes of his advisers even though he was tired of hearing them all tell him he had to place the peace of the kingdom above all else. He no longer recognised the male who sat on the throne, listening to the complaints of his people.
They were not content, not as they were meant to be anyway. Many came to him to complain about everything from their neighbours to the travelling traders he permitted to roam through the kingdom to sell their wares.
He settled his gaze on two males, both close to his seven-foot height, both packed with as much muscle as he was. Commanders like he had been. Demons born for war. They weren’t content. They stood to one side, had been there all night, deep in discussion and ignoring the advances of the females.
Talking of war? Of glorious days long past but not forgotten?
He wanted to speak with them, to relive the days they had fought beside each other, the great battles they had witnessed in their years and the close shaves that had brought them dancing dangerously with Death.
The female seated on his knee showed no sign of moving though and the two guards who flanked his throne, standing slightly behind it as if he wouldn’t notice them there, would stop him if he tried to speak with them. No doubt they had strict orders from the court to keep him from talk of war and battles tonight.
The two males glanced his way, lingered and dipped their heads, raising their tankards at the same time. He could see the weariness in their eyes, as if they were a reflection of him. The inactivity grated on them as viciously as it did on him.
If he could give them war, he would do so in a heartbeat.
Tegan mentally took that back too.
As much as he hated the peacefulness of his kingdom, as much as he craved doing battle, he couldn’t just go to war. The majority of his people had become accustomed to this dreadful peace. They enjoyed it, finding pleasure in having a land dominated by stability and peace.
He was their king, whether he wanted it or not, and he couldn’t deny them that which they desired—a kingdom not at war.
More of his men left with females in tow. Soon.
The night was growing older, the feast becoming louder, the merriment infectious as the gathered warriors consumed mead by the barrel and sampled their females, selecting the one who would pass the night in their bed.
Soon.
He had successfully managed to pass the day evading his advisers, which had lifted his mood. Or that might have been the punishing training routine he had indulged in, competing in mock battle with four of the finest warriors in the Royal Legion. They were always kind enough to help him fill the tedious hours of the day and grant him some escape.
Tonight, he had meant to carry out his usual method of filling the dark hours.
A long time ago, that would have meant bedding one or more females, living up to the rumours that he had a harem of them at his disposal. He had quickly grown bored of females after ascending to the throne though.
Females were too compliant, always too willing to throw themselves at his feet in a grand effort to please the king.
So now he filled his night hours with a different sort of entertainment. A guilty pleasure he found himself indulging in more and more often recently.
Reading.
His aide called him voracious. He had a thirst for knowledge that kept the male constantly teleporting back and forth to the mortal world to bring him more books. Since becoming king, he had learned twelve languages, both written and spoken. He had studied the culture and history of every mortal country, and every fae and immortal realm. He had learned about music and art, and as much as he could about the modern human world.
He had read books on almost every subject imaginable.
He had a library in his private floors of the castle, a sanctuary few knew about, one he was adding new shelves to and expanding every year.
That was where he had intended to pass the night after managing to escape the feast.
Only he had finished his last book while dressing for the feast.
So his plans had changed.
Had grown more thrilling.
He meant to escape more than the feast.
More than the castle.
He meant to escape Hell for the first time in a thousand years.
Just the thought of seeing the modern human world with his own eyes had adrenaline surging through his veins and he couldn’t contain the smile that tugged at his lips as his heart soared. He turned it on the female as she sidled closer, attempting to conceal the true reason for his excitement in case the guards were watching him.
She fluttered long black lashes, her grey eyes sparkling at him as she stroked the horns that curled from behind the top of his ears, her fingertips lightly tracing the curve of them down to his lobes in a way that did nothing for him.
She leaned in closer still and murmured in his ear, her use of the demonic tongue leaving a lot to be desired as she mangled his language in an attempt to seduce him. “Your horns are so big.”
He supposed she meant to use the old adage about a demon’s horns having a correlation with the size of his manhood.
Some part of him felt that he should be enjoying her attention and the feast, but he wasn’t.
Something wasn’t right, and it hadn’t been for a long time.
The female pressed against him, her breasts threatening to spill from her corset as she leaned her side against his chest and her arm came to rest along his shoulder. She pushed her fingers through the longer lengths of his black hair and skimmed them over the shorn sides to tease the more sensitive base of his horns.
He still felt nothing.
He swigged his mead as she traced patterns on his chest, working her way over to the lacing on his shirt. She toyed with the ties, curled them around her fingers and tugged, clearly intending for him to move closer.
He took another mouthful instead.
He wasn’t interested in the female. He hadn’t asked for her company, had given her no indication he desired her attention, yet here she was, fawning over him.
“You have masculine beauty,” she husked, and he gritted his teeth. Whoever had taught her to speak the demon tongue had done a bad job of it. “Strong male.”
Did she think her praise would rouse his interest and make him want her?
It had quite the opposite effect.
He had lost interest in carousing with females when he had realised they were only interested in one thing—his throne.
He despised the fact every female he met viewed him as a throne, not a male. They wanted the power he could give them, the status. They didn’t really want him. Of course, he could sleep with them and discard them, slaking some of his hunger on them, but where was the fun in that?
He preferred a challenge, something that would appease his hunger for battle. If he couldn’t do battle physically, he would do it mentally. He wanted a female who would be that challenge for him, one who would make him fight for her.
His warriors and his younger brother Ryker, the current prince, weren’t complaining about his lack of interest in the females. All the more for them.
Gods, Tegan envied Ryker a little. He had freedom, came and went as he pleased, while Tegan was locked in his castle, only allowed out with an entire entourage of advisers and bodyguards, and even then it was only to official functions where the kingdom needed to be represented by its king.
Ryker had everything Tegan had lost, and Tegan would give anything to return to that life.
His dark eyes scanned over the feast. Edyn would have lapped this up. He would have loved sitting on the throne with a female on his knees, soaking up her praise and that of his people.
Tegan hated it.
A thousand years he had endured this dull and unsatisfying life.
That changed tonight.
His battle plan was sound, everything was in place. His strategy had been checked from all angles, every little thing accounted for and covered. All that was left was to put it into action.
He signalled the male to his right, who eagerly bustled over, his jug at the ready. Rather than allowing the male to fill his cup, Tegan placed it on the tray in the male’s other hand and nodded.
Tegan grasped the female’s slender wrist, pulled it from behind his head and pushed her forwards, forcing her off him. She tottered a little, giggled and swayed against him as he stood.
The two males guarding him immediately moved forwards.
Tegan turned on them. “I do not require an audience.”
Both males dipped their heads and pressed their right hands to their bare chests.
He cut them off before they could mention standing guard outside his rooms. “You are done for the night. Enjoy the feast and the females.”
The two exchanged a glance and then looked beyond him, to the males who were still celebrating, pawing at the females on their laps and calling out to the others that wandered around the room, seeking a partner.
The younger male on his right looked as if he might mention the orders the court had given them, but the other male grabbed him by the back of his neck and pushed him forwards, guiding him towards the nearest females.
Phase one of his plan successfully completed, Tegan tugged the blonde female towards the side door of the grand hall, one only he could access. She stumbled along behind him, still throwing compliments and things he supposed were meant to sound seductive. He paid no attention to her as he mounted the spiral steps, eager to reach his rooms and move on to phase two.
The female slowed him down, so he turned and scooped her up into his arms and took the steps two at a time instead, making swift progress towards his private floors. She stroked his chest and shoulders, even went as far as pressing kisses to his throat as he kept his focus ahead of him.
Almost there.
Light chased back the darkness ahead of him and he quickened his pace, his heart pounding harder as he thought about what he was going to do.
He set the female down as soon as he reached the broad torchlit corridor at the end of the stairs and pulled her along behind him as he stormed towards the door of his apartment. She continued to twitter, babbled words that were lost on him as he went over his plan again, ensuring everything was perfect.
He shoved the wooden door open with the flat of his hand and pulled her inside, shoved her aside and released her as he closed the door behind him. She moved around his drawing room, saying things he didn’t hear as she studied the paintings that hung on the black stone walls and ran her fingers over the glass that covered the long low display cases that lined them, eyeing his collection of weapons, helmets and other things from all the regions of Hell.
His trophies of war.
She fell silent, her eyes landing on him as he pulled his shirt off over his head and discarded it on the wooden floor.
Her throat worked on a hard swallow and she sidled towards him, heat kindling in her eyes as she approached. She raked them over his chest and stomach and that heat became a fire.
“You are beautiful, my lord.”
Tegan turned away from her, grabbed the black shirt he had laid over the back of his wine-red wingback armchair before leaving for the feast and donned it. Disappointment flared in her eyes.
He ignored her and tackled the buttons on his shirt. Buttons. They were fiddly small things, irritating him as he fumbled with them, trying to close the shirt of mortal fashion that Ryker had given him as a present.
He wasn’t sure how his younger brother could wear such things.
It was tight and restrictive, made his back itch as his wings pushed for freedom. He focused to keep them hidden as he adjusted to the confining feel of the shirt. If he attempted to swing his sword arm, he would rip the damned garment to pieces.
But then, he supposed it hadn’t been made for fighting in.
When he had first tried it on at Ryker’s insistence, his brother had assured him it was all the ‘rage’ for males to wear such tight clothing in the human world, an apparent attempt to reveal their physique whilst still being dressed.
Tegan glanced at himself in the mirror above the fireplace behind him when he was done with the buttons. He arched an eyebrow at his reflection. He supposed the cut of the cloth was rather complimentary. It stretched across his broad chest and tightly gripped his biceps, and even hinted at his muscular stomach.
“You look divine,” the female purred in approval in the common tongue and he conceded that he did look rather good in human fashion. “Do I get to peel it off you?”
He flicked her a glare, stooped and picked up his coin purse from the table beside his armchair. She swayed towards him, her eyes on his chest, clearly intent on unbuttoning the shirt he had just put on. He moved around her, crossed the room to a set of black wooden drawers, and pulled the one on the right open. He picked up a smaller coin purse and hung it with his other one on the waist of his black leathers.
He turned back to the female.
He would get into trouble with his advisers if they got wind of what he had done, but he didn’t care. He needed a change of scenery. He had been stuck in this castle for the last thousand years. It was time he got out.
It was only going to be for a short time. Everyone would think he was sleeping with the female in his quarters. He would be back before he was missed.
He just wanted a taste of the current mortal world to see if it was as exciting as the stories painted it to be, filled with marvellous technology that sounded like fantasy to him. He had heard tales of it from the Third King and his mate, glorious stories of a world that was vastly different to the one he remembered.
Electronic communication devices that could be used to speak with someone across the globe? Impossible.
Giant metal birds that carried mortals to far-flung destinations? Laughable.
But he had heard the stories coming from the Third Realm and the king himself had told Tegan all about the miracles of mortal technology. Thorne was using the technology to bring electricity into the demon realm he ruled.
Electricity.
Tegan glanced at the sconces burning on the black wall, at the dark wooden furniture of the office that adjoined his drawing room, and the paintings hanging on the walls. Mortals had things that took paintings. No, that wasn’t right. They called them photographs. They displayed them on their walls rather than paintings now, and such photographs appeared on electronic devices too.
Thorne had shown him such a strange device when the demon king had brought his new queen to visit. The mortal queen of the Third Realm had one in her possession.
It had been magic.
It had awed him.
A flat rectangle no bigger than Tegan’s hands side-by-side but it had been colourful and bright, and she had touched it and things had happened. His advisers had deemed it witchcraft of the darkest degree and warned him against it, but Tegan had been fascinated. He wanted to see more of these mortal inventions.
He wanted to possess them.
It wasn’t as if he was committing a crime by leaving the kingdom. He was king. He only meant to go out to a place the Third King talked about and also purchase some more books. Small steps. If the mission was successful, perhaps he would go out again.
He grabbed hold of the female. She pressed closer to him, sliding her hands over his chest and leaning into his embrace. Tegan kept hold of her as he summoned his portal. The black abyss opened beneath them and the female squeaked as they dropped into it. They landed in the free realm, in the middle of the town he had once visited. People on the black cobbled street between the obsidian stone buildings stopped to stare as he pushed her away from him and distanced himself.
“This is as far as you go,” Tegan said.
Confusion danced in her pale grey eyes and she tried to get closer to him again. He backed off a step, maintaining the distance between them, and the confusion turned to anger as he spoke.
“I am leaving now.” He took the smaller coin purse from his belt and tossed it at her.
She caught it and he teleported before she could give him hell, nerves and excitement clashing inside him as he dropped back into the black abyss.
Heading to the mortal world.
That filled him with an unsettling, but thrilling sensation.
His life had been static for the last thousand years.
Now he was going to taste freedom.
And something told him his life would never be the same again. 


 

Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you’re a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.

If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:

WEBSITE|BLOG| FACEBOOK| TWITTER| GOODREADS| INSTAGRAM

There are TWO (2) ways to WIN !

In addition to the  Grand giveaway below, Felicity is graciously offering an ecopy of any ONE book in her ETERNAL MATES series *excluding Avenged by an Angel and Seduced by a Demon King* (international) to ONE (1) lucky commenter at The Reading Cafe.

1. If you have not previously registered, please register using the log-in at the top of the page (side bar) or by using one of the social log-ins.

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3. IMPORTANT–> Sign up for Felicity Heaton’s NEWSLETTER <–

4. LIKE us on FACEBOOK and then click GET NOTIFICATION under ‘liked’ for an additional entry.

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6. Giveaway is open internationally.

7. Giveaway from September 28 to October 2, 2019

 

NOTE: The Reading Cafe is NOT responsible for the Grand Giveaway. If you have any questions, please contact the author.

Enter the grand tour-wide giveaway to win one of a $75, $50 or $25 Amazon Gift Card at the Seduced by a Demon King book page. This giveaway is international and open to everyone, and ends at midnight on October 8th. Enter now:http://www.felicityheaton.com/seduced-by-a-demon-king-paranormal-romance-book.php

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