Cimmerian Shade: A Limited Edition Paranormal Romance & Urban Fantasy Collection Read online

  Unbeknownst to either, dark secrets, hidden since Remy’s birth, are about to be uncovered and Remy will be confronted with a life-altering decision. With the help of her sister and some unexpected allies, Remy must decide if she will fight and risk her heart or continue running from her destiny.

  Dragons Curvy Concierge by Mychal Daniels

  When Bronwyn Scott finds herself way over her head as the first-time business owner of a personal concierge service, she’s not about to fall for a rich mystery man trying to test her professionalism at every turn.

  Determined to make her business a great success to find and show the mother who left her at birth that she made something of herself, Bronwyn has no time for games or entitled, gorgeous rich dudes.

  MacMillan “Mac” Kelnar is at that time in his life where his business can run itself, he’s successful, powerful, and a mature Dragon who’s paid his dues.

  When he sees his mate across the parking lot of a Home Improvement Center parking lot as she suffers a hit and run, he’ll stop at nothing to have her, even if that means pretending to hire her as his personal concierge.

  Determined to have his mate, this Dragon won’t stop at nothing until his mate realizes that the only services he’s interested in are having all of her.

  Credence - Moon Dragons by Decadent Kane

  Torren is days away from competing in the Draconic Challenge and earning the prize he needs to complete his magic credence. His sky-high dream of apprenticing with the Ancients is finally in sight. The last thing this solitary moon dragon needs is a mate dragging him down to earth, and a human one at that. Not that his body will listen.

  Dovie is minding her own business—literally—when a handsome stranger walks into her bookstore. One spontaneous orgasm later, she’s left with no choice but to close up shop. The last thing she needs is an overbearing dragon dragging her to his mountain and telling her to shelve her dreams in favor of a stupid contest. Not that her body will listen.

  Torren and Dovie must fight their treacherous attraction to each other or sacrifice their ambitions forever. But moon dragon magic doesn’t choose lightly, and when darker forces shatter the peaceful mountain enclave the dragons call home, human and moon dragon alike will have to reconsider just what they need to achieve a happy ending.

  Kiss of the Fallen by Kharma Kelley

  Dear Readers,

  I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted nothing to do with the war brewing among all the Supernaturals and have grown tired of fighting all these centuries. All of us are screwed up anyway; but who am I to judge who drinks blood and who eats souls?

  As luck (or lack thereof) would have it, I get sucked into one last mission with the vampires and the next thing I know, I find a half-naked demon chained to my bed; and let's just say she is not happy. And, as much as I enjoy seeing a beautiful woman grace my bed, unfortunately, I'm not happy either.

  Of all demons, someone delivers to me a Black Blood Slayer; demons bred to do one thing and one thing only: kill vampires. Her blood is spiked with a desire I long to tame, but if I do, I could be six-feet under...again. And this time forever. But her fighter's spirit and tenderness shakes me to my missing soul, wanting to claim her with a need I cannot name. But with both of us on the run and my people gunning for us, how can I be sure she wants me to love or to kill?

  -Commander Tristan Castillion, Vampire Royal Guard

  Selene by Shelique Lize

  My name is Selene and I am a moon goddess. Between my siblings and me, we control the balance of the universe. Without us, the mortal and immortal realms would be thrust into eternal chaos. Don’t ask me what that means. It’s what I’ve been told for as long I can remember. I have never questioned my existence because it was the only life I have ever known. Then one day, everything changed when I became enthralled with the earth.

  I couldn’t resist the alluring beauty that beckoned me almost every single night. My curiosity was so fierce and dominate, it was becoming impossible to ignore it and I gave in. I found the only god brave enough to take me to the mortal realm but he wanted something in return. He wanted my body, and I gave it to him.

  I went to earth and experienced life like never before. It was like my eyes were opening and I started to question my entire existence. Feelings all of a sudden are very present and then everything changed again, when I fell in love with a human.

  Being a goddess has never been so complicated.

  One Last Lullaby by Kallysten

  When Kirsten walks back into Jacob’s life after years of estrangement, it’s not to resume the relationship she once ended abruptly. Instead, she’s there to work as a mage for the same agency in which Jacob is a Special Enforcer... or at least, that’s her story and she’s sticking to it. Whether Andrew, her boss and one of Jacob’s fathers, hired her for her skills or to get her back in Jacob’s life is anyone’s guess.

  Although Jacob is determined to see in Kirsten a co-worker and friend, he still loves her as much as he ever did. He used to believe she was ‘the one,’ and even years after she broke up with him he still doesn’t understand what happened. It doesn’t help that every little thing she does reminds him of what they once shared.

  As the agency battles deadly demons night after night, the relationship between Jacob and Kirsten goes from awkward to downright painful... until one botched magic spell traps them in a strange world inhabited by the demons, and the only way back will require them to reveal to each other their most painful secret...

  Lust by Liz Gavin

  Magical, sinful New Orleans attracts many lost souls who find haven at kinky Club Desire. Marcel Revault is the real deal: bound to the house, haunting it for over 150 years. Clara Hervaux, movie-star extraordinaire, indulges in her dark side as a club regular. As an empath, she’s gotten hooked on Marcel’s otherworldly sexiness. When Clara goes missing, Marcel uses their empathic link to find her, but can he break the curse to save her? Or will Clara fall prey to the jealous witch who cursed him?

  Witch Playground by Isis Pierce

  When Samantha Smith agreed to cast a spell to sneak her friend Sassy into the hottest paranormals’ club in Vegas, she never thought she’d actually get caught. Now she’s facing a trial and the possibility of losing everything—including her magic, and maybe even her life. To get out of legal trouble, she might have to sleep with a vampire or go to hell with a bounty hunter. Maybe both. And that’s a whole new kind of trouble.

  Frozen Soul by Catherine Banks

  A wolf's love is forever...and so is the bond of the pack.

  Even after she broke it off with their Alpha, Tysen, the pack still loved Jess. So when they discover her current boyfriend, Jon, is literally draining her soul, her wolf family is right there to come to her rescue. Back amongst their ranks, the bond she shares with them, and Tysen, grows stronger than ever, and she can't deny how desperately she's missed them all.

  But now the truth of Jess and Jon's relationship comes blasting through the door and brings everyone to their knees; she's sacrificed more for the pack than any of them realized.

  The question now remains: is there a way for Tysen to save her soul?

  Taste Of Darkness by Catherine Vale

  Natalya should have known better than to watch the handsome fisherman from the shadows, but she found herself drawn to him, night after night. If she had only stayed away from him, he would not be facing the darkness that will now haunt him for eternity. But she couldn’t stay away, and now it’s too late; he’s been turned into an abomination, a creature that will never again be free.

  Natalya is all that Caine has left. He just doesn’t know it yet.

  Natalya knows better than anyone what it’s like to have her world ripped out from under her, forced into the darkness, never to walk in the sun again. It wasn’t long ago when she was turned into a blood-sucking vamp, a ruthless killer. So when she finds herself to blame for an innocent human being turned, she knows that it’s up to her to save his life. But when Ca
ine awakens to discover what he has become, will he ever be able to find his place in a world, where he just doesn’t fit in? And can he learn to forgive Natalya long enough to fight alongside her?

  When a merciless pack of werewolves scent the newly created vamp, they will stop at nothing to destroy him, and everything he loves. Caine must learn to embrace his darkness, if he wishes to survive.

  What Lies Within Us

  Kiki Howell & Gina Kincade

  What Lies Within Us © 2016 Gina Kincade, Kiki Howell

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  WHAT LIES WITHIN US

  DARK MAGIC, KIDNAPPINGS, satanic weddings, and two men out to claim her heart.

  Kyna Hughes travels to Ireland only to find out her whole life has been a series of well-orchestrated lies. Thrust into days of dark magic, secret societies, mystical hauntings, and ultimately, kidnappings and satanic weddings, she struggles not to lose her heart to one of two men—a hunky former Navy SEAL hired to protect her, and a sinister Wizard hired to train her to develop her hidden powers.

  Chapter One

  OMINOUS FANFARE GREETED her arrival in County Monaghan. Lightning shred the fall of dusk as a grisly storm surrounded the car. Her every nerve vibrated with electricity; the well read letter in her hand trembling in the heat of her clenched fist. Her last minute research of this part of Northern Ireland had not done the place justice. Beauty, that of a rolling and majestic nature even in the dark downpour, stole her already shallow breath.

  The thousand slices of light tearing through the sky reflected in the grey water beside the road. Kyna perceived the ominous black shadows cast by the trees as decrepit, arthritic fingers reaching out for her from the heavy flowing stream. A resounding flood of sound, deep undulating thunder, made her curl her body in on itself as she angled away from the window streaming with tears from the sky. The squall so violent, she imagined the glass would shatter. Never one to cower, she swore in a whisper to herself. Ever since she’d landed in Ireland, someone or a something, specifically an indescribable dark presence, followed her. Sure, it made no sense, but she couldn’t convince her over-stimulated brain and racing heart.

  Trying to swallow despite the dryness in her mouth, looking straight ahead, her gaze following the peaks and valleys of the deserted stretch of road, she sought a moment’s peace from the raging internal war. Deep breathing exercises had yet to award her tranquility. This unexpected twist in her life over the past few days propelled her toward her wits end. From the moment she’d pulled the cream-colored, gold-trimmed envelope containing the correspondence from her mailbox, every part of her being had been altered in some way. From bursts of indefinable energy making her want to run a marathon, to unbidden ideas reminiscent of familiar dreams, to a feeling of having a sixth sense that warned of impending danger, she warred within to maintain some semblance of composure. She didn’t understand her own body anymore, but had not the time or the mental capacity to analyze the abrupt changes as she traveled.

  Erratic thought patterns plagued her instead, a barrage of unanswered questions. Prior to that fateful letter, she’d just been a girl from the foothills of the Alleghany Mountains, having lived her whole life in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia. Her mother’s confession of her true heritage came when confronted with the communication, the damned letter, scrolled in a shaky hand, from an aunt from Ireland she never knew existed.

  Apparently, Kyna was more Irish than she knew, as in born in Ireland and adopted through the Irish Mafia into the United States. The father she barely remembered, a man who’d died in a mining accident when she’d been barely five years old, had ties to the organization. She’d been a black market baby, for the love of all that is holy! The adoption had born conditions. Telling the poor child of her adoption a deal breaker, punishable by death. None of these random facts brought about feelings of safety and security as she traveled abroad to meet her aunt on her biological mother’s side.

  The letter, the freaking destroy-a-simple-life letter, ranted on for two pages of a heartbreaking tale. Her birth mother, Alana O’Riagain, had passed away a few years ago. Her aunt, Saoirse O’Riagain, now desperately wanted to meet her only living relative. Kyna’s birth father and his family were all long ago buried, so whatever perceived danger her mother had given her away to protect her from had passed away with them. Maybe her tired eyes played her for a fool, but even now Kyna swore the words on the paper in her hand depicting imminent danger appeared written in an even shakier scrawl.

  Rain assaulted the car window with the unrelenting onslaught of gunfire. Her pulse beat a rapid-tattoo, as if she were under attack. Another round of multiple lightning strikes flashed the dark sky to bright, ones that crossed the distance of the sky to the ground, bringing Kyna out of her murky thoughts of a re-written past to a clearly foreboding present. Just ahead, the first visuals of her aunt’s home in Armaugh appeared and disappeared in brief glimpses granted by the windshield wipers and the lightning.

  Her breath caught at the vast size of what resembled a castle on a hill. A steep incline of land seemed formed to hold up the formidable, three-level, stone façade. The structure consisted of several three-sided bays stuck together and one four-storey imposing tower to the right side. On the tower hung corner bartizans. These came into view as they made the sheer climb closer to her ancestral home. These rounded, grey stone turrets, cut with windows, multiplied her sense of being watched, that some sinister being stood sentinel over her, overseeing her every move.

  Crazy. All of it. She’d lost her mind to the sense of foreboding, and she had to get it back in the immediate future. Tough, a fighter in an impoverished world, surely she could handle whatever this display of wealth held for her. But, little made sense. Her past lay in a shamble of lies around her feet. Her future looked...well, scary. She had a lot to sort out, and planned to get right to it once she met her aunt.

  Her mouth had remained parched and her shoulders tense since she’d landed in this country. Her body betrayed her in various other ways as well. Strange sensations of heat in her core coupled with flashes of what she could only refer to as static electricity along her limbs, made her feel a foreigner in her own skin.

  As her driver pulled up to the grand entrance to the residence, put the car in park, grunted, and pulled himself out of the vehicle, Kyna took advantage of another long streak of lightning strikes to gaze upon this veritable castle of a house. The bays had mullioned windows, curvilinear gables, and tall, dark brick chimneys. While she presumed the stone to be a light grey in the light of day, it accosted her with looming shades of smoke, as if old and charred, from her storm-shielded, misty view.

  The metallic shriek of her door opening sent a wave of panic crashing over her. From her teeth set on a painful edge, to that cold slither of fear down her spine, she forced herself to ignore each physical sensation, each body betrayal. She looked toward her driver as a streak of lightning silhouetted him, made him a dark outline like that of a large, monster-figure looming over her. He had several inches on her, as well as a bulky, full-muscled build one could only achieve with hours in a gym or steroids, she assumed. As he reached for her hand, the strength of his grip intensified to painful when an explosio
n of thunder cracked over them seconds later. She reminded herself, as a means of comfort, what little she knew of the man. Aedan Dunne, employed by her aunt, served as head of security; a man the woman trusted with her life.

  In a brief conversation at the airport, Kyna had learned through grumbles of words in response to her barrage of questions, that the man had been injured then forced into an early retirement from the Navy SEALs. Irish-born, he’d come home in hope of finding similar work, something where a mere leg injury would not be the big deal the military had made it out to be. While he may not be able to hide underwater at night in frigid water for hours like he used to without pain and cramping of the damaged muscles, he could surely protect on land, a home and a woman. From what her aunt had written of Aedan, while he may be short on words, failure wasn’t in his vocabulary.

  The cool sweat covering her skin intensified with the firm grip Aedan took of her waist once she stood. While casting shy glances at his face, what she could see of it for the shadows created by his hood: sharp cheekbones chiseled into a grimace, out of the corner of her eye she caught the image of a man and a woman in black uniforms run to the trunk of the car and grab her belongings in a swift and sure manner. To her, the rain-soaked stones that made up the pathway to the inset of the main door resembled yet another insurmountable obstacle. Really, she’d reached that point in her day. Every little thing currently escalated to dramatic portions. Never the type to make a mountain out of a molehill, she straightened her spine, lifted her head, and pushed her shoulders backward, determined not to start now.