Paranormal Romance

Ice Wolf, The Arctic Brotherhood Series, Book One

They are the Arctic Brotherhood.

They are deadly fighters, fierce protectors and loyal mates.

Elliott Wilder is a mild mannered Alaskan college professor. Wilder craves the things most people find boring. Seclusion. Monotony. Anonymity. But what Wilder craves most of all is the thing he can’t have… memory loss. Four hundred years ago, Wilder and the other members of the Arctic Brotherhood were captured and tortured by the leader of the Siberian werewolves. Wilder is still haunted by memories of that night, when he wasn’t able to protect his leader.
Now the Siberian wolf is on the loose and seeking revenge. Not only must Wilder lead the brotherhood, he must fight the attraction he feels toward its newest recruit, Jenny Piper. Jenny offers Wilder a glimpse of the life he can’t have. As the brotherhood races against time to save humanity from the horror their enemies unleashed on the world, Wilder must reach inside himself to find the leader the brotherhood needs and the mate Jenny craves.

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Shadow Wolf, The Arctic Brotherhood Series, Book Two

The second book in the new Arctic Brotherhood series–heart-pounding werewolf romances by Jane Godman that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

They are the Arctic Brotherhood.

They are deadly fighters, fierce protectors and loyal mates.

Samson Lee last saw Valetta Rickard five years ago when a shared a kiss almost led him to break the promise he had made to himself. Now Valetta has disappeared, and Samson has promised her father he will find her. When Samson finds Valetta leading a rogue gang of bloodthirsty Arctic werewolves, he soon discovers that all is not what it seems. As soon as they see each other again the feelings they denied all those years ago resurface.

Valetta is Shadow Born, a rare and mystical werewolf with legendary powers. If she chooses, she can destroy a whole species. A power that an evil hunter wants so that he can destroy the Arctic wolves. Samson, together with the other members of the brotherhood, must find the hunter before he can put his plans for Valetta into action. At the same time, Samson must put the past behind him and convince Valetta that she is worthy of love.

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Storm Wolf, The Arctic Brotherhood Series, Book Three

They are the Arctic Brotherhood.

They are deadly fighters, fierce protectors and loyal mates.

Ever since her father was killed just over a year ago by the Arctic fighting force known as the Brotherhood of the Midnight Sun, Odessa Santin has been the leader of the Siberian werewolves. The Arctics and Siberians have been at war for centuries. So when Odessa has sex with an Arctic stranger, it is the craziest thing she has ever done.

Dan Lowell is a member of the Brotherhood of the Midnight Sun. Lowell is aghast when he realizes his mystery Siberian lover is Odessa Santin, particularly as he needs to confront her because he believes she has been poisoning the Arctic environment. The physical passion they feel for each other is equaled by their sizzling animosity as they argue over the allegations.

Lowell soon discovers that Odessa is being framed, and someone is trying to reignite hostilities between the two packs. For the first time ever, the Arctics and the Siberians agree to put aside their differences and unite against a common enemy. As they work together, Lowell and Odessa begin to realize that their feelings for each other run deeper than they thought.

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Wolf Slayer, The Arctic Brotherhood Series, Book Four

They are the Arctic Brotherhood.

They are deadly fighters, fierce protectors and loyal mates.

Kyle Madden is the cop in charge of the elite task force hunting a murderer known as the Cage Killer. He is also a werewolf and a member of the Arctic Brotherhood. When his team find one of the Cage Killer’s victims alive, Madden faces some tough choices. It emerges that the crazed killer is targeting werewolves. Will Madden be able to uphold his vow to keep the human and werewolf parts of his life separate?

Maria Delgardo knows she is lucky to be alive after escaping the clutches of a serial killer. Even so, her injuries are horrific and the murderer has made it clear he intends to finish the job. She only feels safe with Madden, the handsome cop who rescued her from captivity. Maria’s whole world is turned upside down when he tells her the reason why she was chosen by the Cage Killer.

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Wolf Hunter, The Arctic Brotherhood Series, Book Five

They are the Arctic Brotherhood.

They are deadly fighters, fierce protectors and loyal mates.

Six months ago, the Arctic Brotherhood was torn apart when a respected former member, Hendrik Rickard was murdered. Cindy Harper, Hendrik’s best friend and housekeeper, is still struggling to come to terms with his death when she feels an invisible presence watching her. Alone and frightened, she turns to the only man who can help her.

Sebastian Novak is the maverick of the Arctic Brotherhood. Infuriated at the lack of progress they have made toward defeating their sworn enemy, Chastel, Sebastian wants to go on the attack. The discovery that Cindy is being targeted, increases his fury further. Forced to deny his feelings for Cindy in the past, Sebastian is overwhelmed by the strength of his desire for her as he protects her from this new threat.

Sebastian and Cindy succumb to the intensity of the attraction between them, but their lives are thrown into turmoil by a series of unexpected events. Before they can claim the happiness they have long denied themselves, they must face the evil mastermind determined to destroy the brotherhood.

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Wolf Leader, The Arctic Brotherhood Series, Book Six

They are the Arctic Brotherhood.

They are deadly fighters, fierce protectors and loyal mates.

Their sworn enemy is dead, but the Arctic Brotherhood can’t relax. Fenrir, the Norse god of destruction is still determined to destroy the world. Vigo Durand agrees to lead the team against the most feared werewolf the world has ever known, but dark secrets from his past are threatening to catch up with him.

Amber Merova has been on the run for the last five years ago. When she meets Vigo, her werewolf mating impulse almost overwhelms her human instinct for survival. Almost. Feisty, determined, and hostile, Amber initially turns down Vigo’s offer to stay with the Brotherhood. When it looks like the men who murdered her pack have caught up with her, she has no choice but to take his offer of protection.

Both seem damaged beyond repair, but, as they work together to bring down Fenrir, they discover hidden ties that bind them together. Before they can look to the future, they must unravel the mysteries of the past.

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Otherworld Protector, The Otherworld Series, Book One

A Sorcerer…Secrets and Seduction… 

When Stella Fallon journeys to Spain for a dream job, she never suspects that a cataclysmic confrontation is looming. Or that she is the last in an ancient line of dark sorcerers.
For her new employer—an electronics billionaire—is actually a Faerie King desperate to harness Stella’s powers so he can rule the Otherworld.
The only one who can protect Stella is a man she once thought her guardian angel. Cal becomes human, but his centuries-old secret could destroy her trust. Still, the pair cannot deny their white-hot attraction as they seek refuge in a cave to prepare for a battle of epic magnitude…

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Excerpt
Copyright © 2015 Jane Godman
All rights reserved

Stella Fallon was in the process of discovering that there is nothing so hysteria inducing as the realization that you have given up your job and traveled to a new country, spending every penny of your savings in the process, in pursuit of a dream that doesn’t exist. Okay, so it had been a crap job. And the savings had just about covered her plane ticket. As she stared up at the vast crumbling mansion, these extenuating circumstances did not provide Stella with one single morsel of comfort. If the house was empty—and it certainly looked that way—she was officially homeless, jobless and, once she had paid the taxi fare, had exactly one hundred euros to her name.

“This is the right house, senorita. For sure.” The driver repeated the statement he had made a few minutes earlier. While his tone was patient, his eyes were wary as they met hers in the rearview mirror. Possibly he could sense her rising panic. He might even have been cursing the fact that, from the long line of eager tourists and experienced businessmen waiting for taxis at the airport that night, he was the one who ended up with this quirky-looking girl. Whatever his emotions might be, he was clearly fearful of not getting his cash and impatient at being kept waiting now that he had delivered her to her destination.

“It can’t be.” Although the driver had spoken in Spanish, she responded in English and he made a helpless, uncomprehending gesture. Stella corrected her mistake. “No es posible.”

“Si. This is the address you gave me. La Casa Oscura—” he gestured into the pitch-blackness beyond the car windows “—it is well-known in this city.”

La Casa Oscura. The Dark House. Except it shouldn’t be dark. According to the emails Stella had received, it should be lit up in welcome for her. Or, if “lit up” might be construed as an overenthusiastic approach to greeting a new junior employee, there should at least have been some sign of life. There was none.

“You want me to take you to a hotel in the city center for tonight? That way you can come back in the morning. Check the place out in daylight.”

The suggestion made sense, and Stella was about to dent her precious hundred euros further and agree. That was when she felt it. Felt him. There was the familiar flicker of movement on the outer edge of her vision. She knew from experience there was no point in trying to capture it. He existed only on the periphery. Looking directly at him would cause him to disappear. But it was enough. Well-being, warm, mellow and welcome flooded her veins. Her protector was here.

“No.” Taking out her wallet, she counted out the right number of notes for the fare and added a tip.

“I can wait here until you are inside,” the driver offered as he pocketed the money. Stella could almost see him assessing the possibility of being featured as the bad guy in the following day’s tabloid headlines.

Cabbie abandoned lone Brit-girl tourist at death house, saying “I wanted my supper!”

“I’ll be fine,” Stella assured him and he shrugged a doubtful shoulder. She could hardly explain her newfound bravado to him. As she clambered out of the car, juggling her backpack and laptop case, the driver hauled her wheeled suitcase out of the trunk. With a final glance over his shoulder and shrug, he returned to the car. Stella waited for him to drive off before she turned to look up at the house. The darkness here on the hillside above the city was so allencompassing that what she saw was the outline of the hulking building and none of its detail. First impressions were everything, and this one definitely didn’t feel comforting.

Although the house itself, like its name, was cloaked in obscurity, there was enough light from the street lamps for Stella to make her way unhindered through the vast wrought-iron gates. Thoughts of medieval prisons and torture chambers sprang into her mind. All useful ideas for future game projects, she assured herself, making a mental note. Her feet crunched onto a gravel drive. This, in turn, opened out onto a large, paved square and Stella noticed, with a feeling of profound relief, that there were several cars and motorbikes parked to one side of this area. In the darkness, she could not distinguish makes or models. One of the cars was definitely low-slung, sleek and probably expensive. Moncoya expensive? At the very least, the cars were evidence that the house might not be an abandoned ruin, after all.

Stella commenced a crab-like gait—dragging the huge suitcase, backpack and laptop bag—across the square to the house. As she did, her movements triggered a series of blindingly bright, fluorescent floodlights. It was surreal. If she looked up, would she see a hovering UFO? Or would she be surrounded by armed guards, dressed in black uniforms emblazoned with the gold Moncoya Enterprises M, and made to lie facedown on the ground while they searched her luggage for signs that she was a spy for a rival company?

Reminding herself that a fertile imagination was a necessity, not a liability, in her line of work, Stella continued up to the now clearly visible front door. This was a huge, green-painted structure, set within a vast facade of faded terra-cotta stone. The floodlights cast an eerie gloom that made the house appear to be suspended in space.

Stella didn’t quite know what she had expected. Relocation to Senor Moncoya’s Barcelona residencia will be a requirement of the post. That was what the email had said. Since she’d have agreed to anything—Relocation to the moon? Where do I sign?—for a job with Moncoya, she hadn’t really thought this bit through. Story of your life, she told herself as she pressed the bell next to the front door. No wonder that peripheral protector of yours has to work overtime.

The door was opened, not—as a tiny part of her had hoped—by Ezra Moncoya himself, but by a grungy-looking youth with dreadlocks and a beard that was plaited.

“You must be Stella,” he said, throwing the door wide as he grabbed her suitcase and laptop bag. “We’ve been expecting you.”

As she stepped across the doorstep into the vast white-and-chrome foyer, Stella knew her first impression had been wrong. She was in the most right place she had ever been.

Cal watched as Stella stepped over the doorstep of La Casa Oscura and the door closed behind her. As if the house itself was swallowing her up. He chided himself for the overimaginative foolishness of such thoughts. He had always known that this time would come—had known it since a time long before Stella’s birth. This precise moment was the reason he had taken the assignment, even though watching over mortals was beneath him in so many ways. Nevertheless, he had to take a moment to wonder at the staggering recklessness of his charge. Unlike Cal, Stella had no idea of who she was, of either her lineage or her destiny. So surely a little bit of caution would not have gone amiss in the circumstances.

He smiled reminiscently. She had always been the same. Even from the earliest age, the little girl with the spiky blue-black hair and wide green eyes had been a trouble magnet, hurling herself from one dangerous situation to the next with a bring-it-on fist pump and a grin. Her behavior had been so far outside Cal’s expectations that, on Stella’s sixth birthday, he had sought an audience to request advice on the matter.

“Never doubt the gravity of what lies ahead. For her or for you.” The Dominion, one of the leading angels of the fourth choir, had worn the traditional long gown, hitched with a golden belt. As a symbol of the seriousness in which he held his task of regulating the duties of lower angels, he had carried a golden staff in his right hand and the seal of his office in his left. Although Cal was easily equal in rank and power to the Dominion, by that time he had been fighting on the side of the angels for so long he always felt slightly overawed by such overt symbols of celestial authority. “When you joined us, you were handed the most demanding of tasks. Now, through this girl, yours is the responsibility for ensuring that peace is restored so that the border between the living realm and Otherworld remains intact.”

“I understand and have gladly accepted the burden you placed upon me. It is just—” Cal had thought back to the escapade that had prompted him to request this meeting. It hadn’t been that bad, he had reasoned. No one had been injured. The truck driver should have known better than to leave his vehicle unlocked with the keys in the ignition. And who’d have thought the skinny little girl Stella had been back then would have been able to get the hand brake off anyway? “I had not anticipated that a major part of my role would be to keep her alive until the prophecy can be fulfilled.”

“You must do whatever it takes,” the Dominion had assured him with a dignity that befitted his position.

So he had. What he hadn’t known then was how much he would enjoy it. Even now, nineteen years after the “do whatever it takes” conversation with the Dominion, Cal still found Stella’s cheeky grin irresistible. He’d broken a few rules along the way. They both had. There had been occasions when he’d had no choice but to materialize to help her out. It wasn’t exactly forbidden, it was just not recommended. Distance was the key to a successful relationship between protector and charge. The difference for them was that, unlike other mortals, Stella was conscious of Cal’s presence even when he didn’t appear before her in human form. That caused him some anxiety. She should not have been aware of him, of course. That wasn’t normal. But Stella was not an ordinary charge. And he had just watched his far-from-average charge walk into the situation he had dreaded since the day she was born.

The time had come. The prophecy was about to be realized at last. While the coming change in their relationship saddened him, Cal’s fighting spirit was roused by the prospect of action. This moment signaled the transformation they had all been waiting for. Casting a glance heavenward at the unusual formation streaking the sky with its three golden tails, he moved through the thick terra-cotta wall and followed his charge into La Casa Oscura. Or—as it was known throughout Otherworld—Moncoya’s lair.

“This place is amazing.” Stella placed her backpack down and turned in a circle to get the full effect. The faded beauty of the neoclassical facade she had glimpsed outside was in complete contrast to the stark modernity of the interior. The entire lower floor of La Casa Oscura was one vast, open-plan room and the whole of the rear wall was glass, affording a soaring, dramatic view across the nighttime city. At opposite right angles to this, another full wall was taken up with rows of computers and games consoles, each of which was linked to its own enormous plasma screen. Circular seating islands had been created at random intervals, breaking up the white-tiled floor space. In one corner, there was a sensory area with bubble tubes, soft lighting and—Stella noted as she completed her twirl—two men asleep on large beanbags. A shelf lined with hundreds of glass jars, filled with every kind of sweet, cookie and candy imaginable, sat alongside a soft drinks machine. It was a grown-up playroom.

The man who had opened the door to Stella nodded his agreement and gestured to the drinks machine.

“Get you something? I’m Diego, by the way.”

Stella accepted a bottle of chilled water gratefully. “Do you live here?”

Diego snorted. “Only the privileged few get to actually stay here in la casa. The rest of us drop by when there is a big project to work on or a deadline to be met.” He nodded in the direction of the sleeping men. “Thirty-six hours straight. We’ve been trying to iron out a kink in a new games title. Just about cracked it. Some people can’t take the pace. So you’re the crowd fund girl Moncoya’s been raving about.”

Stella felt a blush tinge her cheeks. Moncoya and raving were not words she ever thought to hear put together and then applied to her. It was the stuff of every gamer’s fantasy. “Is he here?” She tried not to sound too eager.

“Moncoya? He doesn’t greet new employees in person, you know.”

Her enthusiasm popped like bubble gum on a pin. Of course he didn’t. How stupid of her to ask. Just as she was about to stammer out an apology for her foolishness, the front door opened and, with perfect timing, Ezra Moncoya walked in. Even if Stella had not spent an obsessive amount of time doing internet searches for her new employer over the past week, she would have known him anywhere. Let’s face it, she thought, looking into the most unusual eyes she had ever seen, unless you had lived as a hermit in a remote cave for the past twenty years, you could not fail to recognize Ezra Moncoya. And to an aspiring games designer, Moncoya was a god. He had been Stella’s idol for as long as she could remember. While the other girls in the children’s home had pictures of boy bands on their bedroom walls, Stella had Moncoya advertising posters, snippets cut from magazines and game covers.

He was of less than average height with a slight build, but Moncoya’s presence instantly filled the vast room. He wore evening dress, but managed to bring a touch of his unique flair to the conventional outfit. Tuxedo and trousers in midnight blue were perfectly contoured to his slender physique, and he wore a cravat in place of a bow tie. It was his face, however, that drew—no, commanded—Stella’s attention. It was a face that graced the cover of thousands of electronics periodicals as well as the gossip pages of every international newspaper and magazine. Moncoya’s chiseled beauty was legendary, almost as well-known as his sexual prowess, but nothing had prepared Stella for the reality of the man. How had she reached the age of twenty-five without knowing you really could have your breath taken away by the presence of another human being? Moncoya ran a hand through his signature mane of tousled, morning-after hair, its highlights ranging from honey gold to caramel. The diamond studs in his ears caught the light. Until that instant Stella would have laughed if someone had told her she could find a man who wore black nail polish and blue eyeliner attractive.

It was those eyes that drew her in and captured her, she decided. Bluer than a summer evening, the irises were edged with gold as if encircled by fire. The effect was devastating. Once you looked into Moncoya’s eyes, you couldn’t look away. Not even if your life depended on it. She shook the foolish, intrusive thought away.

It didn’t seem to concern Moncoya in the slightest that Diego, after an initial blink of shock at his employer’s entrance, had faded away, leaving them alone. Or that, without the benefit of an introduction, a girl he had never met was gazing at him in spellbound silence across a distance of several feet. A slight smile touched his lips and he moved forward, holding out both hands.

“Stella Fallon. You are everything I hoped you would be.” It seemed a strange comment since, in those few seconds, she had no way of demonstrating the abilities for which he had hired her. Such was the force of his personality that she took the outstretched hands. The oddest feeling, like a slight electric shock, shimmered from her fingertips then tingled throughout her whole body at his touch.

Get a grip, Stella. He probably has this effect on women all the time. Stella collected herself with some difficulty. “Senor Moncoya, I want to thank you…”

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Otherworld Renegade, The Otherworld Series, Book Two

Claiming her felt like his destiny…but could prove to be his ultimate undoing.

Desperate to flee a horrific arranged marriage, Princess Tanzi turned to the only man who could help. Lorcan Malone, infamous necromancer, had vowed to come to her aid whenever she needed him. And even as they traveled from the mortal world into the fantastical Otherworld, Tanzi knew her true need ran deeper than just a rescue.
She was his enemy’s daughter. A renegade like Lorcan had no business craving a Fae princess, one intended for a greater calling. Yet he was powerless to resist the pull to do more than protect Tanzi…

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Excerpt
Copyright © 2015 Jane Godman
All rights reserved

“Trust me, Tanzi. If you need me, I will know.”
Those words, spoken by Lorcan Malone in the heat of battle, must have been a bit of Irish blarney. He probably didn’t even remember who she was, let alone recall their strange encounter on that fateful day. So why, in this moment—when she was in more trouble than she could ever have imagined possible—was she suddenly experiencing a fierce longing for the bad-boy necromancer with the twinkling blue eyes?

It’s called clutching at straws, she told herself. It’s what you’re doing right now instead of facing reality and finding your own way out of this madness.

“What are you thinking, my daughter?” Moncoya, exiled King of the Faeries, watched her face.

“I’m thinking that defeat has unhinged you. That you have finally done what others have whispered of for years and taken leave of your senses.” Never before had Tanzi spoken so boldly to him. Defiance was the trait her twin sister, Vashti, proudly exhibited. Tanzi had always been the acquiescent one. Until now. There were some things she could not bow down and agree to. This was one of them.

Moncoya’s perfect features hardened with fury. His blue eyes, so like her own with their sidhe ring of fire encircling the iris, lit with a brighter inner blaze. His fingers tightened on the arm of his chair so that his knuckles gleamed white in stark contrast to the black polish that decorated his perfectly manicured nails. Tanzi braced herself. His retribution would be swift and merciless. She couldn’t hope to match him in strength, but she might be able to outrun him.

The outcome hung in the balance for seconds that stretched into minutes. Then Moncoya laughed. It was a brittle, mirthless sound that set Tanzi’s teeth buzzing. She knew that laugh well. It had never boded well in her childhood. She didn’t imagine things had changed. Unexpectedly, he relaxed back into his seat.

“My child, you are overwhelmed by the honor I have arranged for you. I should have foreseen this.” He rose, draping a deceptively casual arm about her shoulders. “Walk with me a while.”

They stepped through a set of double doors straight onto a sand-and-shingle beach. The entire island, known locally as the Silver Isle, seemed to be made up of sand. Even the ocher-hued cliffs looked ready to crumble into grit at the touch of a fingertip. Ferns, wild fennel and coarse bamboo grasses clung determinedly to soil that was a combination of granule and dust. Tanzi thought of her father’s palace, of the precisely laid-out gardens leading down to the elegant lake. She glanced back over her shoulder at the beachside villa they had just left. Sea breezes and salt water had taken their toll on its elegance so that it had a faded charm she doubted her father would acknowledge. In comparison with the soaring, white marble palace she had called “home” for all her life, it was a shack. Moncoya was as out of place here as a diamond in a dung heap.

“You made sure no one followed you?” Moncoya withdrew his arm from about her shoulders as they walked along the water’s edge. Secrecy surrounded this hiding place. If he was discovered, he faced trial and inevitable execution.

“Of course.” Tanzi was offended at the question. Would he have asked Vashti the same thing? She doubted it. Yet we both trained with the Valkyrie. We are equally astute when it comes to warfare and subterfuge. It came back to the same weary argument. The same reason Tanzi had been summoned to be the recipient of his latest piece of “good news” instead of her twin. Moncoya viewed Vashti as the son he had never had. Tanzi’s only value to her father was as a pawn in the marriage stakes. Not this marriage, father. The sacrifice you are asking of me is too great.

“Tell me what has been happening at the palace in my absence.” Three months had passed since the cataclysmic battle that had forced Moncoya into hiding. It felt like three years.

“There is a peacekeeping council known as the Alliance in place. Each of the Otherworld dynasties has representation on it. The Alliance itself is led by Merlin Caledonius.”

Moncoya’s expression hardened further at the name. “That half-blood cur will pay dearly for his part in this.”

Merlin, the greatest sorcerer the world had ever known, was Moncoya’s half brother and the man who had brought about his exile. Cal, as he preferred to be called these days, had widened the existing gulf of hatred between the two men further by falling in love with and marrying the woman Moncoya had hoped to make his queen.

Tanzi paused, looking out across the turquoise waters toward the horizon. She drew a deep breath. “My father, you wrong him. He is man of conscience who is doing a fine job of uniting the dynasties…” Moncoya’s growl of rage told her she had gone too far.

“Am I, the greatest leader Otherworld has ever known, to be forced into hiding while he lives in luxury in my royal palace? Am I to endure the knowledge that he has stolen the necromancer star, the woman I chose as my own, from under my nose? Must I kick my heels in this backwater while you, my own daughter, take the seat that should be mine at this pathetic council table—” He broke off, his voice ragged. When he spoke again, his tone was softer, the words a caress. “But you know nothing of these things, my child. It is wrong of these men to ask you to involve yourself in their political machinations. They seek to trick you.”

Tanzi bit her lip. How could she explain it to him when he insisted on viewing her as a helpless dupe? Being part of the Alliance had brought her new life. Oh, she had been regarded with suspicion initially by many of the council members. She was Moncoya’s daughter, after all. They saw her as the spoiled brat sidhe princess who had been his consort—his puppet—in the past. Together with Vashti, she had blindly carried out his wishes. But things had changed three months ago on that battlefield. She had changed.

A pair of laughing Irish eyes came into her mind once more and she determinedly dismissed them. Cal and his wife, Stella, treated her as their equal, and with their help she was learning how to be the voice and conscience of her people. She was developing an understanding of compassion and democracy. Tanzi cast a sidelong glance at her father. She was learning that there was a way to rule other than Moncoya’s iron-fisted style.

“Let us leave this talk of the mongrel sorcerer for another day. I look forward to dealing with him when the time comes. This marriage I have arranged for you is the highest distinction ever to be bestowed upon a woman. Through this union, I will not only be able to come out of this undignified hiding and return to my palace, I will be the undisputed ruler of all Otherworld.” Moncoya’s lips thinned into a smile. “There will be no need for their puny Alliance when that day dawns.”
“And what of me, Father? While you become all powerful, what will I become?”

He paused then, perhaps considering for the first time the true implications of what he was asking of her. Such was his arrogance, she might have known he would not allow her feelings to influence him for long. “You will be revered above all others.”

She shook her head. “I will not do it.”

His face was set. The silken note in his voice made the threat even more menacing. “You have no choice.”

“By all the angels, Father, you cannot intend to force me into this!”

Moncoya’s lips smiled but Tanzi’s heart quailed at the look in his eyes. “Given the bridegroom I have chosen for you, might I suggest you refrain from speaking of angels in the future?”

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