I walked into the Mojave camp at sunset to deliver letters for my sister. By morning I was holding a half-Vampyren baby and counting candles for a Christmas no one in the world had survived to celebrate twice.
Dark vampire romance. Half-alien half-human baby. Widow heroine. Touch-starved hero. Forced proximity at a winter camp. Slow burn. Found family. A Christmas built by survivors.
My name is Cora King. I am thirty-seven years old. I came to Mojave to deliver letters for my sister, scout the camp's absorption capacity, and ride back to Urbana in three weeks. I have been counting since I was twenty. The number I will not write down is six.
Drew is twenty. Half-Vampyren. Raised by a human foster mother who taught him to read out of Steinbeck and to count out of nothing, until she died of an infection his body shrugged off. He walked eleven days from the LA southern approach for a chance to meet a baby he had only heard a rumor about. He has not stayed anywhere more than three months in twelve years.
The camp's first Christmas after the three-species council is being built one ritual at a time — a Frost poem, a Vampyren naming-of-the-dead in the old cant, a Lucian communion-quietening that lasts twelve hours in the cold. The Mojave winter drops to fourteen degrees the night the silence begins. There is a half-Vampyren baby asleep on her father's chest at the center of the camp. Drew and Cora have been asked to keep watch at the family-tent flap.
Neither of them said they would stay past New Year.
Neither of them has any idea what they are doing yet.
Auriel's First Christmas is a holiday novella in The Vampyren Invaders series. Slow-burn — no on-page consummation. The full spice scene belongs to Book 7. Standalone HFN with Book 7 hook. For readers of Charlene Hartnady, Christine Feehan, J.R. Ward, Ruby Dixon, and Laurann Dohner. ~47,000 words.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Dark vampire romance. Half-alien half-human baby. Widow heroine. Touch-starved hero. Forced proximity at a winter camp. Slow burn. Found family. A Christmas built by survivors.
My name is Cora King. I am thirty-seven years old. I came to Mojave to deliver letters for my sister, scout the camp's absorption capacity, and ride back to Urbana in three weeks. I have been counting since I was twenty. The number I will not write down is six.
Drew is twenty. Half-Vampyren. Raised by a human foster mother who taught him to read out of Steinbeck and to count out of nothing, until she died of an infection his body shrugged off. He walked eleven days from the LA southern approach for a chance to meet a baby he had only heard a rumor about. He has not stayed anywhere more than three months in twelve years.
The camp's first Christmas after the three-species council is being built one ritual at a time — a Frost poem, a Vampyren naming-of-the-dead in the old cant, a Lucian communion-quietening that lasts twelve hours in the cold. The Mojave winter drops to fourteen degrees the night the silence begins. There is a half-Vampyren baby asleep on her father's chest at the center of the camp. Drew and Cora have been asked to keep watch at the family-tent flap.
Neither of them said they would stay past New Year.
Neither of them has any idea what they are doing yet.
Auriel's First Christmas is a holiday novella in The Vampyren Invaders series. Slow-burn — no on-page consummation. The full spice scene belongs to Book 7. Standalone HFN with Book 7 hook. For readers of Charlene Hartnady, Christine Feehan, J.R. Ward, Ruby Dixon, and Laurann Dohner. ~47,000 words.
Genre: Paranormal Romance