Evie Meyers’ life is one spent on the run. Every minute of every day, her life is in danger if anyone should suspect the truth about her ancestry. Her father was willing to risk everything to keep the truth hidden, even from her, but the lies he fabricated were exposed when her high school crush, Clay Jacobs, inadvertently stumbled upon her secret. His discovery puts Evie at risk from a secret organization tasked with washing the world clean of nonhumans—and Clay is one of its deadliest soldiers. Forced into a war she doesn’t understand, all because of what she is, Evie is left with no choice but to flee with her father to escape persecution.
When Clay reappears in her life, battle scarred and mysterious, Evie is unprepared and terrified as he forces his way back into her heart. When the battle catches up with her, and a tragic accident tears apart the peace she discovered, she finds herself alone and without the protection of her father, or her lover. Now, she needs to keep her secrets hidden and learn to survive on her own in a world that wants her dead, all while searching for the missing piece of her heart.
Excerpt:
I WAS HALFWAY up my drive when the sight of three delicate star-shaped flowers wrapped in soft cream paper resting against my doorstep stopped me in my tracks. A prickle of fear crept over the back of my neck, and the air around me warmed by a few degrees. That simple bouquet of white might have been innocuous on any other doorstep, but in front of my house it was something much more dangerous. It meant that I’d been discovered.
Forcing myself to move, I approached the parcel with caution. The closer inspection did nothing to quell the unease that held my heart in a vice-grip. Magnolias. There couldn’t have been a surer sign that the one person from my past who knew my secrets and wanted me dead had found me.
I twisted around to face the road, carefully scrutinizing each of the cars parked along the side of the quiet street. The possibility that his gaze could at that very moment be firmly fixed on me was enough to cause the now-familiar tingles to spark in the tips of my fingers.
He can’t be here, can he?
The tiny hairs on the back of my neck raised as I realized that yes . . . yes he could be.
It was what he did after all. Hunt. Kill. Destroy.
My skin flushed with heat at the possible sinister motives behind the flowers. Since the incident a few years ago, I’d come to accept that this would forever be my body’s natural reaction to stress. My heart clenched with fear at the danger implicit in the situation even as my stomach fluttered with the recollection of what those flowers had once represented—what he had once meant to me. Memories of the time I’d walked with him beneath a canopy of those blooms, and everything that came after, overwhelmed me. A shudder raced down my spine.
What does it mean? Another, more vital, thought pushed the others out of my mind. How could he have gotten close enough to leave flowers?
Neither Dad nor I had the slightest suspicion that danger lurked nearby. If we had, then we would have been miles away long before the flowers could have turned up. I didn’t understand it because we were usually so adept at avoiding exposure. We had to be; it could prove deadly otherwise.
I pushed the thought out of my mind and began to consider the houses around me. I shifted my gaze toward the windows and scanned them all, examining each one for the telltale fluttering of curtains or shutters suddenly snapping closed when my eyes fell onto them. Once I was sure that there was definitely no one watching me, I bent to examine the floral package in more depth.
Are they a warning? The thought struck me as ridiculous even as it crossed my mind. From what I understood about his family and their beliefs, the flower couldn’t have been a threat or a warning either. People like me didn’t get warnings. Just death.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
(Per Goodreads)
Michelle Irwin has been many things in her life: a hobbit taking a precious item to a fiery mountain; a young child stepping through the back of a wardrobe into another land; the last human stranded not-quite-alone in space three million years in the future; a young girl willing to fight for the love of a vampire; and a time-travelling madman in a box. She achieved all of these feats and many more through her voracious reading habit. Eventually, so much reading had to have an effect and the cast of characters inside her mind took over and spilled out onto the page.
Michelle lives in sunny Queensland in the land down under with her surprisingly patient husband and ever-intriguing daughter, carving out precious moments of writing and reading time around her accounts-based day job. A lover of love and overcoming the odds, she primarily writes paranormal and fantasy romance.
Michelle lives in sunny Queensland in the land down under with her surprisingly patient husband and ever-intriguing daughter, carving out precious moments of writing and reading time around her accounts-based day job. A lover of love and overcoming the odds, she primarily writes paranormal and fantasy romance.
Thank you for posting about the release <3
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