The Black Dagger Brotherhood: An Insider's Guide

Advice and FAQs

As this section is for writers, I think I’ll start by listing my eight writing rules up front in a nice little group:

I. P & R—PERSIST AND REINVENT

II. WRITE OUT LOUD

III. OWN YOUR OWN WORK

IV. PLOTLINES ARE LIKE SHARKS

V. SWEAT EQUITY IS THE BEST INVESTMENT

VI. CONFLICT IS KING

VII. CREDIBLE SURPRISE IS QUEEN

VIII. LISTEN TO YOUR RICE KRISPIES

Writing is hard stuff, and publishing is a difficult business to break into and survive, much less thrive, in. But here’s the thing. I don’t really know much in life that isn’t hard. Being a mother is difficult, and so is being a teacher or an accountant or an athlete or a student. My point is, I’m not sure whether writing is any more scary and heartbreaking and exhilarating than anything else. I do know that the eight rules above have taken me this far—and I hope they’ll continue to see me through the ups and downs of my endeavors.

I’ve had a lot of writers, both prepubbed and published, come to me for advice. I’m always flattered, but also a bit at a loss in describing how I do what I do or why it’s worked thus far (and I never take for granted that it’s going to keep working). Routinely, however, I make a couple of recommendations for each of the various stages of the process, which follow below. I would like to note, however—and this is important—this advice is for people who are trying to get published. You DO NOT have to write solely to get published. I wrote for years just for myself and was perfectly happy doing so. What is laid out hereafter is for folks who are doing something that is quite specific—and it must be said that a published book is a very distinct animal and NOT THE BE-ALL AND END-ALL.

I’ll try to get off my soapbox now. But I just think it’s important for folks to know that if you write, you are an author. Period. You don’t need a publisher or consumers to validate what you are doing. Getting a book on the retail shelves is just one avenue some people choose to explore—but not the only one. Collecting the oral history of your family for the next generation or writing in journals to record your thoughts for yourself or jotting down descriptions of a thunder-storm for no other reason than you like how the lightning travels across the black sky—that all counts and it all matters.

Right, advice for those who want to get published:

1. Finish a book. Even if you don’t like it, or you don’t think it’s good enough, see one of your projects through to the end. Discipline is mission critical to publication, and no matter how enticing the other ideas in your head may be, get to the final page on at least one of your WIPs (works in progress). If you find yourself getting distracted by the buzz of new characters or concepts, write them down in a notebook or Word document to save for later. But teach yourself to finish what you start. Writing can be a drag. It can be nothing more than a series of tiny, incremental steps that drive you nuts. In every single Brotherhood book, particularly while revising, I’ve wanted to scream from frustration because I’m convinced that what I was working on was the longest book in history and it was NEVER going to be finished. That’s just part of the process.

2. Find other writers. I joined the Romance Writers of America (www.rwanational.org) after I’d finished my first marketable project, and I’ve met all my writer friends through RWA. There are local chapter meetings across the country, e-mail loops you can participate in, contests you can enter your writing in, regional conferences, and a magazine that comes every month with tons of information in it. Additionally, every year there’s a big national convention, which is great for networking with other writers and which offers opportunities for appointments with editors and agents, as well as classes taught by experts. RWA also has on its Web site incredible resources on craft and business—essentially everything that has to do with romance writing. If you want to get published, I strongly recommend joining, but RWA isn’t the only group available. And if you want to get published in another genre, there are other nonprofits that likewise encourage content-specific networking (like mystery or horror or sci-fi).

3. Don’t write to the market, but be strategic. In terms of subgenres (like paranormals or romantic suspense or historicals), if there’s something that’s hot that publishers are buying, it never hurts to put your hat in the ring if what’s being bought is something you’ve legitimately got in you to write. The Brothers and I are an example of this. By the same token, if there’s something that you want to write but isn’t selling very well, if your goal is to get picked up by a publisher, you might consider exploring some of your other ideas and seeing if they’re in a subgenre that’s moving a little bit more. HOWEVER, that all being said, if you write what you’re passionate about, your enthusiasm is going to come through on the page and make for a better reading experience—and things change. What’s hot now may be replaced with something else in another year. Hold on to your rejected manuscripts—you never know when you might resubmit to someone else or in another form in the future.

4. Write your book for you, then see who it fits with. It’s a good idea to know what individual publishers/editors are buying, and it does make sense, once you’re finished with a project, to send it to the right place: For example, you wouldn’t want to get a medieval romance to an editor who’s looking for paranormals (more on how to find out who’s buying what in a little bit). The great thing about having a good agent is that they’ll know on whose desk to place your work. Some editors like to work with dark stuff, others like comedy, and personality matches are always a plus in the editor/author relationship. If you haven’t found an agent yet and are submitting without one, ask other authors whose material is similar to yours who they’re working with (but, again, more on agent/editor searches in a little bit).

5. Category or single title is a personal choice. There are a couple of different avenues to explore when it comes to getting published in romance, and I’m not talking in terms of subgenre. The two big ones for print books are categories versus single titles. Categories, such as Silhouette Special Editions or Harlequin Intrigues, are shorter stories that fit into clear guidelines laid out by the publisher in terms of content and page count. Single titles are the longer, stand-alone books. There are pluses and minuses to doing both: You don’t need an agent to approach category editors, whereas for the most part, if you want to sell a single title, you’re going to need representation. Categories, therefore, can be a really good place to break into (and a TON of supersuccessful authors like Elizabeth Lowell, Suzanne Brockmann, Lisa Gardner, and Jayne Ann Krentz got their start with them). Also, categories can help you find your niche in the marketplace a little quicker, because the guidelines for submission are so clear—there are lines that feature suspense, paranormal, humor, you name it. I tell folks to check out www.eharlequin.com for the list of category lines and their submission guidelines. EHarl, as we call it, also has terrific resources on craft.

In my career, I kind of started out bass-ackwards, doing single titles first, then going to category when I wanted to keep doing contemporary romances while the Brothers were getting started. I love writing my categories (Silhouette Special Editions under the Jessica Bird name), and they’re a great break from the Brotherhood books—lighter and quicker, they clean my palate. I will say, though, that I do not find them appreciably easier to write just because they’re shorter—good work is hard no matter what the page count is.

As for the single-title market, compared to getting picked up in category, it can be more competitive, and as I said, there is most often the rate-limiting step of needing an agent. However, you do have more freedom in single title in terms of page length, content, and subplots, as well as the potential for earning more money—although there is more risk, too. If you don’t sell, there is a perception out there that you will get dropped more quickly than in category.

The choice depends on where you are in your writing and the kind of stories you want to write. And it’s not a one-or-the-other kind of thing. You can try a single title or start out in category, it’s really just what appeals and what you think your material is best suited for.

6. A note on e-pubs. I don’t have a ton of knowledge on e-pubs, so I usually refer folks to friends of mine who have been brought out by them and have firsthand knowledge of which ones are the best in terms of author support and business ethics. I think e-pubs can provide a really good opportunity for professional editing and are a great avenue to bringing your name forward to the market much more quickly than would otherwise be possible. I also think they can be groundbreaking in terms of what kind of content they’ll publish and can be an outstanding place to see through a project that might otherwise be deemed too racy or too controversial. I do think authors should be careful—going with those companies that are more established and getting an independent read on contracts before you sign is only smart (as well as apropos in ANY business endeavor).

7. Agents are desirable. From what I understand from the editors whom I know, their slush piles have grown geometrically over the past few years. I’m not exactly sure why—maybe it’s the advent of computers, who knows. But this phenomenon, in addition to the squeeze publishing is currently under, means that editors are understandably even more overloaded and cautious than ever before.

This is where agents come in. The editors I know use agents as a kind of gateway for screening projects, and they rely on recommendations from them when it comes to choosing which material to review and perhaps bid on. A good agent has relationships with editors in every house at every level and knows where to place proposals. In addition, they can vouch for your project with their reputation, giving you even more credibility.

A good agent doesn’t have to be your friend and they shouldn’t be. They should tell you the things you don’t want to hear and be honest about where you are in your career and where you’re going. Each one is different, just like each author is different. Some want to have a say in content, others stress promotion; some are hand-holders, others are bulldogs. The key thing is to find a connection that works for you. And remember it’s a relationship like any other. Be professional and honest and expect the same, and never, ever shoot the messenger. If your agent is doing their job right, you’re going to hear things you don’t like or wish were different. The key thing is working together to solve problems and getting your work out to as many people as possible.

8. How do I find an agent or a publisher? The best advice I can offer here is go out and get the most recent version of Writer’s Market. This yearly reference volume is a great guide to what agents and publishers are looking to buy. The listings are grouped by agent (or agency) and by publisher as well, and give names, addresses, and statements as to who is looking to represent or acquire what. RWA also does a yearly report on agents and publishers that is specifically geared toward romance (another great boon that comes with membership). Further, if you know published authors, it also helps to ask around and find out who they are represented and published by, how they like their agent and editor(s), and what kind of experiences they’ve had. Sometimes you can even get someone to pass your work on to their representative, which can be very helpful—although this is something you should wait to have offered to you, not something you should pressure another author for.

It may take several tries to get represented or picked up by a publisher, but it’s a case of persist and reinvent until it works. And when it comes to agents, if you can’t find one to take you on, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are out of luck, because again, some publishers don’t require them.

9. Multiple submissions require full disclosure. Certainly sending out the same project to a couple of different agents (or publishers, if you are unrepresented) at a time can potentially reduce the duration of the process, but it can also land you in hot water if more than one of the folks wants to represent or publish you. If you do choose to multiple-submit, disclose the fact right up front—and be sure you do not send it to agents or editors who refuse multiple submissions.

10. Be professional. And this is about everything. Make sure your submissions are spell-checked and properly paginated with appropriate type-face and margins (Times New Roman 12 or Courier 10, double-spaced, one-inch margins all around)—as well as bound with a rubber band. When talking to folks, be polite and concise. If you’re going to an editor or agent appointment at a conference, dress appropriately. Be on time—if you tell someone you’ll get something to them by a certain date, leave yourself wiggle room for emergencies and have the material drop on the day you committed to. Write thank-you notes. Speak well of others or shut your piehole. Sure, a lot of this is no-shit-Sherlock, but it matters. God willing you’re going to have a career in this business, so you might as well start building your reputation and good name from day one.

11. Do not submit too early. This one was HUGE for me. What I’m talking about is your material. There is a tremendous temptation to finish whatever you’re working on and get it out to an agent/editor as quickly as possible—or at least there was for me. The thing is, though, you can make a first impression only once, and you’d be surprised at the kind of faults you can find in your work if you go back one more time with fresh eyes. My rule of thumb was (and is) to FORCE myself to sit on whatever project I was working on until I could give it one final read-through. It was brutal, because of course I was curious about what the editor or agent was going to say and whether I would get bought. But the thing was, I was never sorry I waited.

Here’s a perfect example. My first published book, Leaping Hearts, was not the one I got my first agent with. I wrote it during the process of trying to find representation. By the time I was picked up, I knew LH was much stronger than what I’d sent out, so I told my agent at the time to wait until I could get the new material to her. I actually delayed what went to market by a couple months in order to get LH right. But it was the correct thing to do, and my agent agreed with me. Leaping Hearts was a much stronger book and it was sold quickly.

The thing is, it’s in my nature to want to beat deadlines, but rushing compromises the work. I’m not saying that you should get caught up in analysis paralysis, where you go over the material so many times you crush it by overediting. But there is a ripening period for the writing that has to occur, and over time you’ll figure out what that is for you and how many revisions you need.

12. Promotion. Once you’re sold to a publishing house and have gone through all of the editorial and production steps that culminate in your book being bound within a cover, you’re going to want to consider the various options for promotion.

I’ve talked to a ton of authors and agents and editors about promotion because, like everyone else, I’m still trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. And you know what the consensus appears to be? (And this is after convos with hugely successful authors and very powerful publishing houses, mind you.)

No. One. Has. A. Clue.

There seems to be no quantifiable link between any one author-driven promotional activity and book sales. That being said, however, there are things that authors can do to help support what their publisher does for them.

a. Brand yourself, and build your promotions around that brand. Ask yourself what kind of books you write and create a definition. For example, dark erotic paranormals are J. R. Ward, and everything I’ve done for promo has the dark erotic paranormal vibe.

b. Definitely establish a Web presence. Get a Web site that reflects your brand, and get an e-mail address where readers can reach you and you can respond to them.

c. Consider an interactive forum. Whether it’s a message board for your readers or a Yahoo! Group or a blog (either by yourself or with others), be active and engaging and enthusiastic about your work on the Net.

d. Offer a newsletter. I’m a little behind the boat on this, only just now having developed one, but at least I had my message boards and Yahoo! Group to get word out about my releases and appearances beforehand. For better or worse, the initial two weeks of a single-title release are a make-it-or-break-it time, and the more folks who know you have something new on the shelves, the more likely they are to buy during those critical first fourteen days.

e. Do guest days at other blogs/message boards/Yahoo! Groups. Network with your friends and see who will host you for a day around your release time. Conduct a contest to generate traffic, or talk about an interesting subject concerning either your books or yourself.

f. Signings and conferences. Attend them and be outgoing.

g. Merchandising and promo items. Bookmarks and pens and other give-aways can help keep you in readers’ or booksellers’ minds.

All of the above can certainly help—but all of it is also a time suck. For me, the writing must come first, and I’ve had to take the guilt out of all the other things I could be doing on the promotion front. The bottom line is, you need to write the best book you can…then worry about how to promote it. There are a lot of times when I’ve had to make choices about what not to do because I’ve needed to write. It’s hard, though, and I know a lot of authors who struggle with this issue. You have to do well in the marketplace if you’re going to stay published—but there’s a lot that we as authors don’t have control over, and promo sometimes feels as if it is the only thing we can do to increase sales.

And now…for the single most important piece of advice I’ve ever been given.

The Golden Rule: Do the best you can for where you are. This deceptively simple concept transformed me, and it was a gift that came at just the right time: If you check out the acknowledgments in my books, you’ll see that I always thank “the incomparable Suzanne Brockmann.” There’s a good goddamn reason for it.

Let me paint a picture. Way back in July of 2006, I went to the RWA National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. At that point, Dark Lover had come out in September of 2005 and, against all odds and expectations, had hit the New York Times extended list three weeks after its release. Which made NO sense on a lot of levels. Then Lover Eternal was released in March 2006 and it did even better, staying on the extended list even longer and selling spectacularly well. Readers were starting to get a head of steam up about the Brothers, and my publisher was really excited and my agent was totally thrilled and Dark Lover was up for the RITA for best paranormal…

And I was…about to have a nervous breakdown.

See, one year prior to all this, I’d assumed I was never going to be published again.

When I went to Atlanta, I was losing it. I had no clue why the Brothers appeared to be working in the marketplace, I had no control over whether they would continue to do well, and it was incredibly difficult to go from being myself (grotty little writer in her boxers and her slippers) to being J. R. Ward (this, like, wunderkind thing).

Now, I’d had the good fortune of meeting Suz Brockmann through the New England chapter of RWA a couple of years before, and was, like most people I knew, in awe of her and her success. I was also a total fangirl over her work, having read it for years.

Plus, she was (and is), as they say, wicked nice.

By some stroke of luck, Suz agreed to see me for a quick one-on-one at that RWA in Atlanta, and my mom and I met her in a quiet hidey-hole in the hotel’s massive lobby. As we all sat down, I wanted to make a good impression and try to not show how clueless and terrified I was. And I was terrified. Good news is in some ways harder for me to deal with than bad news because I trust it less…and at the moment I truly was at the end of my rope from self-doubt and fear and disorientation.

So Suz and I are talking and she’s giving me all this great business advice and everything…and in the back of my mind I’m thinking, Don’t lose it, don’t embarrass yourself…

I almost made it. Until she sniped me with kindness.

Toward the end of the meeting, Suz puts her hand in this little cloth bag she’d brought with her and takes out this book. Leaning forward, she says, all casual no-big-dealy, “Hey, I brought you an ARC of my new book.”

I looked down at what she was holding out to me. To this day, I remember precisely what the cover of it looked like: shiny white with a little red pattern, the title in bold with her name underneath.

I reached forward and carefully took the book.

The thing is, I’ve read Suz for years. She’s like Elizabeth Lowell to me. She’s the author I curled up with at night and read until my eyes went double from exhaustion…and I still kept going. She’s the one who I can remember seeing at a conference with a hundred people standing in line just to meet her—for two hours straight. She’s the gold standard for being kind and nice to readers. And she’s the one who wrote the book that I read and then walked around my condo for hours in tears over because I was convinced I would never be as good as her on her worst day.

I fucking lost it. Took that damn ARC to my chest, curled around it, and cried all over myself.

In. Front. Of. Suz. Brockmann.

And my mother.

On the third floor of the lobby of that hotel in Atlanta…so it was in public.

I still cringe.

Suz, of course, handled it graciously, and listened as I blubbed on about the fact that I was fricking losing it and I didn’t know if I could keep the quality of my writing up and I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to meet the deadlines and I was worried about not doing the very best job that any author now or in the past or in the future could do with the opportunities I’d been given.

Suz let me go on and on, and when I’d worn myself out like a hamster on a spinning wheel, she looked at me and said she knew exactly what all that was like. She knew precisely how it was to want to be perfect and do a perfect job and somehow earn the success you’d been gifted with. The thing was, she said, as time passed she learned that if you shoot for absolute perfection, you’re going to fail by definition—and that “perfect” simply cannot be the standard, because you will burn yourself out.

Doing the very best you can with where you’re at is what matters.

When I was younger, particularly when I was doing the lawyer/corporate America thing, I nearly killed myself trying to be perfect, and I was on the same path back then with the writing. But Suz opened my eyes—and I figured what worked for her was good enough for me.

(Note: I asked her to read this part before this book went to print to make sure she was comfortable with being mentioned—and she said that the advice she gave me was a “pay it forward kind of thing”—it was first given to her by a wonderful Harlequin writer, Pat White, who got it from a book called The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Now I’m passing it along. Kind of cool, huh.)

So, look, on the publishing journey…don’t beat yourself up. Do the best you can. Inevitably, real life is going to get in the way of the quality or the quantity of your writing…or your enthusiasm or your faith in your dream…or your success. Know this going in, and find yourself some good support, whether it’s friends or other writers or your family or your dog—and remember that there are only guidelines, no hard-and-fast rules for anything, whether it’s craft or business or success. I always temper whatever advice I give with the caveat that what’s worked for me may not be right for someone else, and that everything is just an educated guess. And that’s okay.

Because miracles happen.

Every day.

The thing is, if you don’t put yourself out there, it makes it a lot harder for them to find you. So, please, take a chance and see where it leads. And be kind to yourself along the way. At the end of the day, all we can do is believe in ourselves and work hard…the rest is left to fate.

Oh, and be grateful.

I know I am.

The Black Dagger Brotherhood Proposal

A lot of writers who are starting out on their journey to get published ask me questions about query letters (which are the correspondence you send out introducing you and your project to agents and/or editors) and proposals. Writer’s Market has some good examples of query letters. Bottom line is keep it on one page, detail your project succinctly, but with enthusiasm, and list your writing credentials (such as any publishing credits you have, contests you’ve won, and professional memberships [like RWA]). Include also any relevant personal information that pertains to the particular material (i.e., you’re a pediatric nurse who’s writing about a heroine who’s a pediatric nurse).

Proposals are generally the outline of your book, which is all about telling, not showing, and the first three chapters of the manuscript. What follows is the exact proposal I sent out for the Brotherhood through my agent (you can read the first three chapters in the book if you like). Right off the bat, I’m going to tell you it’s way too long—so if you follow this example, I encourage you to do one full version for yourself, then pare it down for agents/editors. I made up the format myself—I’d never seen anyone else’s proposals at that point and just focused on what I would want to know about the series if I were an editor. I will say that I think the layout works especially well with paranormals—you’ll note I include the rules of the world as well as an overview of every major character and their role not only in the book, but in vampire society.

For me, it’s cool to go back and read it through and see the changes in content. The vast, vast majority of the discrepancies that show up are because I misinterpreted what I saw, or because I saw more later which changed the implications of these original scenes. In a few cases, however, the differences came about because there were holes in what I was shown and I filled them in with stuff I made up. For example, when I first saw Phury and Z, I didn’t know they were twins, didn’t know much about them at all. Rather than leave the slate blank, I developed some background for them both that I thought was suitably dramatic. The truth came out though as I actually drafted the full manuscript.

And the same was true for the way Dark Lover ended. While I was outlining, the scenes stopped coming to me at the point that Wrath was in the clinic after he got shot. That just didn’t seem like the right way to end the book, however, although it was all I had. I tried to come up with more—and I put in some things—except I sensed that wasn’t what really happened. Fortunately the rest of the scenes downloaded during the writing, and the Brotherhood ended up together, still in Caldwell, at Darius’s compound.

You will see that I made no mention of the Omega—that was because he wasn’t clear to me. At least not until the drafting! Then I knew more than enough.

You’ll also note, particularly in the introductory section, that I talk about my having “given” Wrath a critical weakness or “constructed” a situation to bring a woman into his life. This was, of course, not how things went down at all—but I was understandably wary of telling editors that these vampires were in my head, telling me what to do! I figured it was a good idea to present the story as though I was at least nominally in control of the material. Even if the truth was anything but that.

And I never did use uta-shellan in the series. I just went with shellan.

Oh, and the anticipated word count? Waaaaaaaaaaaaay off on that one!

Last word: I’ve reproduced the file below right off my computer and it’s not going to be copyedited as part of the editorial process of this insider’s guide—what you see is exactly what went out to market, mistakes and all. The purpose is to show that I did my very best to make sure there were no errors, but there are and though that’s not desirable, it still sold. This is not to encourage laziness—but part and parcel of the whole no-one’s-perfect thing.

Dark Lover By J.R. Ward Single Title, approx. 100,000 words

OVERVIEW/THEMES

A well-constructed world of vampires can amplify the very best elements of romance: hot sex, high stakes, and soaring emotion can come together in a unique, contemporary setting. For this kind of book to work properly, the Rules of the World have to be firm and unyielding and these laws must be constructed to encourage acts of heroism and sacrifice for love. Contrasts are critical and have to play strongly through out the plot: strength vs. weakness; righteousness vs. evil; loyalty vs. betrayal; love vs. hatred; loss vs. communion; these essential forces must all be represented. The heroes need to be supermen facing foes of worthy stature. And the heroines need to have strong backbones and sharp intelligence.

And did I mention there has to be lots of fantastic sex over the course of steamy nights? Yeah, I guess that comes under the hot sex part.

In planning this book, I started with a warrior hero who needs to be healed by love. Wrath is a four hundred year old vampire, the last of his line, the only pure bred of his race left on earth. He has incredible physical strength, he’s menacing and sexy, and he’s blind. With respect to his disability, I thought it would be important to give him a critical weakness. His lack of sight forces him to rely on others and provides a good contrast to his otherwise physical invincibility. His poor vision does not hinder his ability to fight, however.

Wrath has been at war with members of a dark arts society of vampire hunters since he went through his transition. Vampires in this series are born without their race’s characteristic features: fangs, super strength, longevity, photophobia, and the need for blood don’t come to them until some time around their twenty-fifth birthday when they undergo an agonizing physical transformation. To survive, they don’t drink from humans, they need a vampire of the opposite sex.

Prior to his transition, Wrath was scrawny, prone to sickness, weak. As a result of his poor health and eyesight, he was unable to save his parents when they were attacked by the vampire hunters. This contrast between Wrath’s earlier feebleness and his current status of super-strength is at the crux of his internal conflict. His inability to protect those he loved is a failure he has never forgiven himself for. His vengeance and self-hatred have consumed his soul and shut out all avenues of love and caring.

Wrath is a menace to be sure, but he’s worthy of being liberated from his emotionally barren world. The trouble is, in order for his salvation to occur, he’s got to learn that he can take care of someone and that he is worthy of love. Because he avoids personal relationships, I had to construct a situation whereby he was forced to have a woman come into his life.

Beth Randall, the heroine, is resilient, super-smart, physically beautiful and the half-human daughter of one of Wrath’s band of warrior brothers. When her father is killed by their enemies, Wrath is forced to accept Beth as a responsibility and help her through her transition. Through being with Beth, and supporting her, Wrath is compelled to relive his own transition and the deaths of his parents. Beth helps him process the events more accurately and he is able see how his perceived failure to protect those he loved from death was not in fact the result of a lack of honor or internal weakness of his. This helps to free him of his burden of self-hatred and heals his emotional scars, leaving him able to love her with passion and commitment.

As for Beth, when we meet her at the beginning of the book, her life is as lonely and emotionally barren as Wrath’s. Having grown up in the foster care system, she has no idea who her parents were and she has no familial support system whatsoever. She’s stuck in a nowhere job. She longs for a relationship but can’t seem to make the right connections with men. She also has no clue that she’s half-vampire. When Wrath enters her life, she’s swept up into a new world that gives her the opportunity to love and be loved as well as to find a family. And through Wrath, she finally gets that critical link to a parent she’s always wanted. She also gets a good dose of excitement and passion.

The secondary romance features Wrath’s shellan, or titular wife, Marissa and a hardened homicide detective. Marissa has loved Wrath for centuries but he’s always been out of her reach emotionally and physically. She’s a gentle soul who’s lonely and she longs for the day when Wrath finally sees all she has to offer. Marissa’s a tricky character to portray. She can’t come across as a doormat because that’s boring. But she needs to be a foil to Wrath’s dark menace and their incompatibility has to be believable.

In the course of the book, Marissa realizes Wrath will never love her and this frees her to find her heart’s other half in Detective Butch O’Neal. Butch is a good man who, not unlike Wrath, can tread the edge of madness when he lets his anger out. His daily life is a bleak stretch of death and red tape and he’s been slowly losing his soul, figuratively speaking, for years. He meets Marissa and her inner purity refreshes him and gives him an optimism about life and love that he’s lost. He also finds the vampire culture to be more compatible with his temperament. The complications inherent in him being a human and Marissa a vampire will only be partially solved by the end of the book. Their future will not be clear.

A note on Wrath’s foes. In large measure, the average vampire in this series (apart from the heroes) simply wants to live in peace and co-exist with humans without being discovered. Vampires have been hunted systematically since the Middle Ages out of intolerance and a lack of understanding over their race’s need to drink blood. Terrible acts of violence have been perpetrated by members of the so-called Lessening Society and vampires have been driven nearly to extinction. A select corps of vampire warriors are the defenders of the race and Wrath is the strongest arm among this band of brothers.

The band of brothers offers avenues for development of a series. Each one of the six of them have a crucial weakness. They have lost family, been betrayed by friends and lovers, suffered and endured great pain. They fight for their race, facing their enemies with courage and skill, but at the end of the night, all but one go home alone. The manner in which love tames a savage beast of man, revealing his caring, nurturing core, is a universal tenet of romance. Each of these men are in need of salvation and deserving of the love they require in order to be healed.

This story is set in a large town in upstate New York that is located on the Hudson River. It’s the beginning of July and the weather is hot with thunderstorms sweeping through the area regularly and marking the nights with lightening flashes and the deep rumbling of thunder. In the book, the interior settings are urban and in large measure gritty: dance clubs; apartments; the police station; a diner; a martial arts academy. The contrast is where Wrath stays. The chamber he uses is housed in a lavish mansion. The exteriors are likewise mostly stark: dark streets; back allies; parking lots; a stretch under a suspension bridge. I believe the sober tone of the book’s scenery sets off the contrast of love’s warmth, comfort and light to its best advantage.

Again, I’m convinced that vampire love stories have the perfect blend of fantasy and romance. The format is elastic enough so that magic and ritual can be present in contemporary settings but the themes are universal and enduring. I am thrilled to be working on this project and excited by the characters and their lives.

And did I mention that the vampires are just plain sexy hot?

Thank you for your consideration.

Beth Randall is turning twenty-five and unhappy in her life. She was raised in the foster care system and she’s been unable to find any information on either of her parents. The only thing she knows is that her mother died in childbirth. This lack of knowledge has been difficult bear and she feels groundless, wondering if she’ll ever really know who she is. Or where she belongs.

Her job as a reporter is an outlet for her frustrated searching and she takes satisfaction in finding the answers to other people’s lives. She covers the police blotter for the Caldwell Courier Journal and she spends a lot of time down at the station with the cops. A couple of them have asked her out but she’s never been too interested. On the whole, men find her extraordinarily attractive but ultimately they leave her cold. She wonders sometimes if she isn’t a lesbian because she just doesn’t seem too interested in having sex with men. Then again, she isn’t attracted to women, either.

When she looks ahead ten years, she can’t picture anything changing. She sees herself going to work day after day, getting nowhere fast at the paper, and going home to her cat. She longs for family, for love, for connections to people, but she just can’t seem to relate to the men and women around her.

Lately, Beth hasn’t been sleeping well. She’s also been hungry all the time and eating constantly but at least she’s not putting on any weight. She can’t shake the feeling that something bad is about to happen to her and the fact that she has no one who she can really talk to makes her ever present feelings of loneliness all the more acute.

Wrath was born in the 17^th century to a pair of adoring parents. His father was the chief of their race and a respected leader. His mother was a kind, compassionate female. Wrath’s birth was celebrated throughout their world as vampires rarely conceive and many of their infants are still born. The race took relief in knowing that their traditions would survive after his father’s death and they intertwined their hopes and dreams with Wrath’s future as chief.

But Wrath was sickly as a child, scrawny as a teenager, and there was concern he wouldn’t survive until his middle twenties when his transition would finally strengthen his body. His eyes were of particular concern as his sight was poor even before he matured. His parents and their servants watched over him constantly and he grew up believing that the world was a safe, orderly place in spite of his health problems.

On the night of the slaughter, no one was prepared for the attack. Vampires had coexisted with humans with few problems up until the late Middle Ages in Europe. With human society fragmented and warring, and communication being limited by geography and language barriers, vampires were able to successfully evade notice. This peaceful era changed with the religious and intellectual developments of the 17^th century in human culture. At that time, a secret society was established to hunt vampires down.

Wrath’s parents were tortured and killed in front of him. He survived only because his father forced him into a crawl space and locked him inside just before the attackers came in. Wrath watched the slaughter with horror, and when he was released by the servants the next day, he buried his parents according to custom and vowed revenge. It was a pathetic covenant. With his under-developed body he knew he was no warrior. During the mourning period, as his people came by to pay homage to him as the last surviving member of a pure bloodline and the new chief of their race, he despised himself and his weakness even more.

Wrath set off alone and traveled Europe for three years, trying to find out more about the men who killed his family. He had no money, having left all his worldly goods behind, and with his pitiful body, he had no way to earn from his labor. He was attacked and beaten, mugged, threatened, and left for dead by humans a number of times. Somehow he managed to scrounge by, eating scraps and fetid animal carcasses until he finally found work as a servant.

When his transition hit, it caught him unaware because his parents had sheltered him and not told him what to expect. After drinking from a female vampire who materializes before him, he grows six inches, his muscles develop into rugged flesh, and he finally has the physical force necessary to exercise his vengeance.

Wrath spends the next four hundred years hunting members of the society and being hunted by them. He despises humans both for their cruelty to him before his change and for the fact that their race has spawned the society of vampire hunters. He lives a warrior’s life with few possessions other than his weapons and no ties except to his band of brothers.

Marissa, the female vampire who came to him on the night of his change, was chosen by his parents to be his mate but he has no love in him to give her. He never sees her unless one of them must feed and he knows their relationship is slowly killing her. He’s asked her to find someone else but she’s refused and her loyalty makes him uncomfortable because he knows he hasn’t earned it.

His band of brothers are six other vampires he’s met through the centuries. They fight mostly alone but they share information and coordinate strategy when they need to. He’s aware that the others look to him as their leader because of his bloodline and his strength as a fighter but it’s a position and an adoration he doesn’t want. He prefers the sting of hatred to any warmth and he sees himself not as a hero for defending his race but as someone who’s just marking time until death puts him out of his misery.

Marissa is Wrath’s shellan, or wife, but her gentle nature makes her wholly unsuited for him. As Wrath and her do not share the kind of relationship that most vampires have with their mates, she lives with her brother. She is utterly devoted to Wrath and hopes that someday he will stop fighting and find that he loves her. She’s a virgin, has never even been kissed, and she’s socially isolated. Other males will not approach her out of deference to Wrath and the females pity her. She feels as though she exists in the shadows, watching other people’s lives unfold while her days and nights are stagnated by her paralyzing hope.

Butch is a homicide detective who’s strong sense of justice and passion for victim’s rights can at times take his temper over the edge. He’s tough on perps, protective of the innocent, and no one’s fool. He’s a good man but he’s living a hard existence and he’s lost his faith in humanity. His life revolves around his work, he’s never been married, nor has he ever had a meaningful relationship with a woman. He’s very lonely and sometimes he thinks that if he gets killed in the line of duty that’s alright.

Marissa’s brother, Havers, is a vampire physician, a dedicated healer. As Havers and Marissa’s siblings have died of a disease specific to vampires years ago, and their parents are likewise dead, Havers has always looked after her. A year ago, he lost his shellan when she died trying to give birth to their stillborn son. Now, he feels as if his sister is all he has left. He’s compassionate by nature and the pain that Marissa suffers in her relationship with Wrath really upsets him. He wishes that she could find a mate who truly cared for her.

Darius, Tohrment, Rhage, Vishous, Zsadist and Phury are a band of warriors who revere Wrath. They are a deadly group who have sworn their lives to protect their race and they are revered and somewhat feared by other vampires. Darius had an affair with a human woman twenty-five years ago and the woman died in childbirth. He’s lost two sons to his enemies and he’s worried that his half-human daughter, Beth, won’t survive her transition. Tohrment is the only one with a living uta-shellan, or first and only wife, and he worries about the safety of his family. Zsadist has a scar running down his face from having been tortured after his own brother betrayed him. Rhage is fiery in his personality, capable of flying off the handle at any moment, and he loves women. Vishous is the strategist of the group, possessing a frighteningly powerful mind but being haunted by dark visions which often come true. Phury had his children and uta-shellan killed by his enemies fifty years ago and has an artificial leg as a result of a battle injury.

A note on the names. The English words such as rage, fury, vicious, sadist, torment and wrath are derived from the traditional vampire warrior names which came first.

The Lessening Society is a totally self-contained, self-supported group of vampire hunters that operates outside of the law. Members of the society, called lessers, are humans who have traded their souls in return for a hundred years of sanctioned killing. They are vicious sociopaths, soulless killers with violent backgrounds or psychiatric pathologies who hunt for pleasure and like to torture. They have a high death rate so there is a constant demand for new society members. These recruits are drawn from a number of arenas, typically self-defense- or sports-related because the society favors the physically strong. In this book, a martial arts academy provides a fertile training and proving ground for new recruits.

Lessers can move around freely during the day. On occasion, they fight with each other over territory. They are physically stronger after their indoctrination and live to be a hundred while showing no signs of aging. They are also impotent and smell a little like baby powder.

Mr. X is an up and coming leader in the Lessening Society. He started training in the martial arts when he was in his teens, and when he was indoctrinated as a lesser, he went through a spec ops military program and then returned to the Society. He’s brought a new level of technology and violence to the society’s endeavors.

—Vampires are a completely different species from humans

—They live much longer lives than humans but are not immortal

—At around age 25, they ‘turn’, meaning they must feed from a vampire of the opposite sex to survive

—They will feed from humans but the strength they take from a man or woman doesn’t last long

—After their transition, they are sensitive to light and blinded and burned by the sun

—Vampires can dematerialize at will but only if they are at the height of their strength

—When they dematerialize, they may not take others with them

—Vampires can read emotions in others

—Vampires are able to sense the geographic location of their mate

—Vampires heal quickly but maybe killed by a catastrophic injury

—They reproduce very infrequently and sometimes with humans

—Half-breeds, if they survive the transition, are subject to all of the above

Darius, one of the band of brothers, asks Wrath to meet him out at a Goth bar in downtown called Screamer’s. He knows that Wrath’s unlikely to help his half-human daughter through her transition to a vampire. But Darius is desperate. He loves his daughter and she has a better chance of surviving the transition if she can be with Wrath because his blood is pure. Darius waits for Wrath to arrive, thinking of how much he hopes she’s spared agony of the change and the life of a vampire.

At the same moment, his daughter, Beth Randall, walks home from her job at the local paper down Trade Street. She walks by the bar her father is in. While she’s thinking about the lonely evening ahead, she’s followed by two college boys. At first, she’s not afraid when they approach and start to harass her. But then one of them grabs her and drags her into an alley. She fights but ultimately they pin her against a building behind a dumpster. While one holds her arms, the other rips her shirt off and starts to fondle her. Even though she’s terrified, she forces herself to pretend that she’s willing to have sex with the primary attacker. When he lets his guard down, she strikes him where it hurts most and then knees him in the nose as he doubles over. His friend is so surprised that he doesn’t stop her escape. She runs home.

Back at Screamer’s, Wrath finally appears. As he makes his way to Darius, humans trip over themselves to get out of his way. He takes a seat with Darius and waits for the other vampire to speak. When he hears what Darius wants, he flat out says no. He hates himself for turning his warrior brother down, but he wants no part in the transition of a half breed. That would require a compassion that he just doesn’t have.

Wrath leaves the bar because he has to meet Marissa, his shellan, or female mate. Unlike most vampires, he does not have a sexual relationship with her, they merely feed off each other as they need to. Because he’s consumed with hunting his enemies, there’s no room in his life for. Her brother, Havers, with whom she lives, disapproves of the relationship which was established by Wrath’s parents four centuries ago. So Marissa won’t have to deal with her brother, Wrath frequently meets her in a room in Darius’s mansion.

Wrath is headed for a dark alley to dematerialize to Darius’s when he senses he’s been tracked. It’s a member of the Lessening Society, a group of humans who have sold their souls to become vampire killers. He draws the lesser into the shadows, slits its throat with a martial arts throwing star, and takes its wallet and cell phone. Wrath stabs the lesser through the heart, causing it to disintegrate. Wrath then dematerializes to Darius’s guest chamber. Marissa comes to him and feeds. In their scene, the dynamics of their relationship are very clear. Marissa is very attached to him, hoping that someday he will turn to her and realize that her love is what is missing from his cold, warrior existence. He’s strained by her devotion and loyalty and loathes himself for all he cannot give her. Before he can take her back to her brother’s house, there’s a knock on the chamber door. It’s Darius’s butler. Darius has been killed by a car bomb outside of Screamer’s. Wrath tames his rage so that he can get details and asks Fritz to call the band of brothers together. Before the butler leaves, he gives Wrath an envelope from Darius. When Wrath is alone, he lets out his vengeance, causing a black whirlwind of anger to swirl around him.

When Beth gets home, she takes a forty-five minute shower and finds that though her nerves are shot, her body is recovering. She’s starving. After she eats, she’s sitting with her cat, thinking that she should file a report with the cops, when the phone rings. It’s Jose De La Cruz, one of the policemen who’s taken her under his wing. He tells her about a car bomb that’s just exploded outside a bar downtown. He urges her to be careful when she shows up on the scene because Hard Ass, a.k.a., Homicide Detective Butch O’Neal, is on the case. Though she tries, Beth finds herself unable to talk about what happened for fear of breaking down. She tells Jose she can’t go to the crime scene tonight and has to reassure him that she’s fine when he gets worried about her. After she hangs up, she decides she must make a report after all and heads out, taking pepper spray with her.

The band of brothers show up at Darius’s. Wrath must give the wallet and the cell phone to someone else because he can’t see well enough to go through them. The wallet yields a driver’s license and the cell phone has a call log that one of the brothers says he’ll investigate. The brothers are looking to Wrath for leadership and for once this doesn’t annoy him. He tells them that they are going to go raiding in retaliation. Typically, large scale battles with lessers are to be avoided because the carnage attracts the notice of human police. But Darius’s death can not go un-avenged. The immediate quest for the brothers therefore is to find the nearest Lessening Society training and recruiting facility and take it out. These facilities move often and typically take the form of some kind of legitimate business in the human world as a shield.

When the brothers leave, Wrath takes out Darius’s envelope and opens it. Inside is a sheet of paper and a picture of what appears to be a dark-haired female. Wrath calls Fritz in to read the note to him. Darius has left his mansion, Fritz and his half-breed daughter in Wrath’s care. Wrath curses.

Downtown, Beth arrives at the bomb scene, looking for Jose. She’s not there as a reporter, she’s come to file a report on her attacker so that he can’t hurt some other woman. Jose’s not around but Butch O’Neal comes over, annoyed that she’s arrived on the scene. When he sees her split lip, he pulls her into a quiet corner and demands to know what the hell happened to her face. She prevaricates and asks to talk with Jose. She doesn’t want to relive the trauma of the attack with someone like Hard Ass O’Neal. Butch pressures her and doesn’t back off until she threatens to do an expose on his heavy handed interrogation techniques. He leaves her and she goes back to her apartment in a cab.

An hour or so later, Beth is getting ready for bed when her cat starts acting oddly. He’s pacing in front of the sliding glass door which opens out to the cruddy little courtyard behind her place. A knock on her front door gets her attention. She looks through the peephole and groans. It’s Butch O’Neal. She opens the door and he barges in, looking around and taking a seat. Earlier in the night, Butch responded to a report of a guy down and bleeding in an alley off Trade Street. Putting it all together, he’s deduced that Beth was attacked on her way home and he’s come to try and help.

Outside, in the courtyard, Wrath is in the shadows watching. When Beth opens the sliding door to let some air in, he catches her scent and is enthralled. He also recognizes that the change, her transition, is coming on fast. He overhears her and the cop talking.

When Beth finishes recounting her attack, Butch leaves her place and goes to the local emergency department. He finds her assailant, who’s dressed exactly as she described, and does a hard number on young Billy Riddle. At the end of the meeting, Butch has Billy pinned on the floor of the hospital room and is rubbing the kid’s nose into the linoleum. He arrests Billy.

After the cop leaves Beth’s apartment, Wrath comes into her home. He terrifies her so badly, he’s forced to erase the memory of him from her mind so he can try again. Early in the morning, she wakes up from what she assumes is an awful nightmare, grateful that the horrible night is finally over.

Wrath goes back to Darius’s house and down into the guest chamber. He showers and shaves and then takes out a black marble slab. After pouring pebble-sized, rough cut diamonds onto the platform, he knees on the rocks naked, prepared to observe the death ritual in honor of Darius. He will sit in the position unmoving for the whole day and reflect on the proud warrior who’s now gone. Before Wrath goes into his trance, he thinks of Beth and vows that not only will he protect her, he will help her through her transition.

After Butch books Billy Riddle into holding, he leaves his office, headed for his squalid apartment. On the way out, he meets up with a prostitute named Cherry Pie who’s a regular overnight guest in the women’s holding cell. They talk and go their separate ways. On impulse, Butch heads back to the Screamer’s neighborhood and pulls up in front of another bar. A woman comes out and they drive over to the river, parking underneath the bridge over the Hudson River. While the woman is having sex with him, Butch looks out at the river, thinking how beautiful the sunlight on the water is. When she asks him if he loves her, he says, yeah, sure. He knows she doesn’t care that he’s lying and he feels the desperation of his life intensely.

The next scene features the lesser who set up the bomb under Darius’s car. Mr. X is a martial arts instructor working out of an academy in town. He’s decided that to win the war against the vampires, spec ops techniques should be used and he posts the details of his bombing on a secured Lessening Society website. His good mood lasts all day long. When his four o’clock Kung Fu class arrives, he’s still smiling. He’s about to start his students sparing when one comes in late. It’s Billy Riddle. His nose is bandaged and he has to sit out the session. Mr. X lets Billy lead the class’s warm-up.

Towards the end of the day, Beth goes to the police station. Butch tells her that her attacker’s been sprung on bail. Butch has discovered that Billy has a juvenile record and is the son of a powerful businessman. Beth tells him that she will take the stand and testify if the plea bargaining negotiations fall through. When Butch asks her how she’s doing, she deflects his concern by asking about the bombing. He counters by asking her whether she’s had dinner. She tells him she’s not eating with him but he dangles a detail about the bombing in front of her and walks out of the office. She ends up following him.

Across town in Darius’s mansion, Wrath is getting ready to go out when Marissa materializes in his chamber. She’s sensed his pain over his loss and has come to try and ease his suffering. Caught up in his drive to avenge Darius, and his need to get to Beth to talk to her about her transition, Wrath tells Marissa to go home. He goes to Beth’s apartment, and while he waits in the shadows for her, he reflects on his own transition. This flashback is important to establish one of his essential internal conflicts. Prior to his transition, he was a weakling, incapable of protecting his parents when they were slaughtered by lessers in front of him. After the deaths of his mother and father, he struck out on his own, unable to bare the reverence with which he was held by other vampires solely by the accident of his birth and his pure blood. When he emerged from the change, his body having mutated into a tower of strength, he was on his way to becoming a warrior. But it would be a cold, hard path.

Beth comes home having found dinner with Butch to be surprisingly relaxing. She changes for bed and gets annoyed with her cat who’s back to pacing and purring at the sliding door. She’s about to get in bed when Wrath comes into her home. This time, he’s smoking a drug which has relaxing properties, and as he exhales into the air, Beth finds that she can’t run from him. Her body won’t move. And then she discovers she’s not all that interested in bolting. As he comes up to her, she’s overwhelmed with lust for him. They end up making love and it’s explosive. An important note: the drug Wrath uses has no aphrodisiac properties, it’s just a relaxant and the reader knows this. I thought it would be very unattractive of him to seduce her with some kind of sex drug and take advantage of her.

Across town, Mr. X heads out into the night. He approaches Cherry Pie and they strike up a deal for sex. In a dark alley, she starts to come on to him and he cuts her throat. His plan is to capture a vampire, using her blood as bait. Sure enough one of them, not a solider but a civilian, approaches. Mr. X shoots him with a tranquilizer gun but it has no affect and the vampire turns on him. Mr. X uses a throwing star in the course of their combat. He prevails against the vampire but is disappointed that his plan failed.

Meanwhile, in the basement laboratory under another mansion in town, Marissa’s brother Havers looks up from his work on vampire blood typing. The grandfather clock in the corner has started to chime. It’s time for a meal and Havers goes to his sister’s room. He finds her staring off into the night and her sorrow cuts at his heart. Marissa is incredibly precious to him, especially since his shellan died. He feels as if, because of his sister’s gentle nature, she needs to be with a civilian male who will care for her, not just use her for her blood. He asks her to come down to eat but she declines. He senses that she’s been to see Wrath, even though she just fed the night before. He asks her why she puts herself through this. She tells him it’s fine. Havers counters that Wrath shows her no respect, no doubt forces her to feed in some back alley. That’s not true, she protests. She tells him that they meet at Darius’s a lot of the time because Wrath stays there. You don’t have to do this to yourself, he says. She doesn’t answer him and he leaves her, feeling his own brand of loneliness as he goes down to a sumptuous table and finds himself having another meal by himself.

In her apartment, Beth stirs when she feels something soft on her face. It’s Wrath. He’s running his fingertips over her features, desperately wishing he could see her. He tells her she’s beautiful and for once the comment doesn’t turn her off. Wrath’s cell phone goes off and he leaves the bed. It’s one of the brothers. There’s a number of businesses in the call log of the phone Wrath lifted off the lesser he’d killed the night before. They’re going to go check them out and want Wrath to come in the event they find a facility and all hell breaks loose.

Wrath starts to dress. Beth watches him and is surprised when her cat, Boo, leaps up into his arm and purrs. A low sound comes out of this menacing man as he purrs back. Beth asks what his name is. He tells her and recites his cell phone number, making her repeat it until she remembers it. He tells her he has to go and may not be able to get back to her tonight but she should call him if she gets followed or if she feels afraid at any time. Wrath drops Boo and straps on a shoulder holster. That’s when it hits her. Obviously, Wrath’s been sent by the boys at the police station to protect her. She asks him if Butch sent him. Wrath comes over and sits next to her. He debates telling her it was her father but he has to meet his brothers and doesn’t want to open that issue without having the time to really talk to her. Wrath kisses her and asks her to come to him in the day. He gives her Darius’s address and she agrees to drop by in the morning. He figures that they’ll be able to talk in the chamber and there’ll be time to answer all of her questions then.

After he leaves, she falls asleep, totally sated. She wakes up in the morning, and when she steps out into the sunlight, her eyes ache. She figures it’s a hangover from whatever he was smoking around her. She goes to her office because it’s too early to go see Wrath. She gets a call from Jose. A prostitute was killed in an alley over night. When Beth arrives at the police station, Butch is there and he tells her that there was a throwing star found in the alley, similar to one found around the car bomb. There’s probably some kind of turf war going on between the pimps, he says. They talk a little more and he asks her out to dinner again. She tells him no but thanks him for sending his friend to her. Butch asks what the hell she’s talking about.

Beth leaves, disturbed by the ramifications of what she did the night before. She’s had sex with a total stranger. Who looks like a trained killer. It felt somehow different if Butch or one of the cops was involved and suddenly the idea of going to some address to meet that man strikes her as foolhardy. Just as night is falling, she calls up Butch and asks him if he still wants to have dinner with her. She doesn’t want to be alone and eating with him is better than being jumpy at home.

At Darius’s house, Wrath’s been prowling around his chamber all day long, waiting for Beth to arrive. And his temper was on a short leash before she blew him off. The night before he and his brothers had cased several places including a monastery, a prep school, a martial arts academy, and a meat packing plant. It wasn’t clear that anything suspicious was going on in any of them. They also went through the dead lesser’s apartment, learning nothing.

The moment the sun goes down, Wrath leaves the mansion and goes on the hunt for Beth through the city. He’s aware as he moves around that he feels fatigued but he shrugs off the sensation, consumed with the need to find her. He ends up waiting for her behind her apartment. When Butch pulls up to the front of the building with her, Wrath senses her presence and approaches the car. Butch leans over to kiss Beth just as Wrath looks inside. Even with his poor eyesight, he recognizes what’s happening. His first instinct is to rip the door off, drag the human male out, and bite him. But he controls himself with discipline and sticks to the shadows. Jealousy and possessiveness are two emotions he’s not real familiar with and he’s surprised at the depth of his feelings.

Beth is not attracted to Butch and tells him so. She gets out of the car and walks across the street to the front door of her building. Butch waits to make sure she gets inside safely, but just before he takes off, he sees a giant of a man heading around to the back courtyard. Butch gets out of the car and follows.

When Beth walks in her apartment, Wrath is at her back door. He’s about to enter when Butch cocks his gun and tells him to freeze. Wrath turns and confronts Butch just as Beth opens the door and runs outside. Butch demands that Wrath put his hands on the building and spread his legs. Wrath toys with the idea of killing the cop but he doesn’t want to terrify Beth. Besides, not even Wrath can survive a bullet to the head fired at point blank range. With Beth looking on, Butch pats Wrath down and starts peeling weapons off him. Daggers, blades, and throwing stars get spread out on the picnic table. Butch tries to get Beth to go inside but she won’t leave. He asks what the hell Wrath was doing casing the building. Wrath says he was just out for a walk. Butch presses Wrath into the wall, drags his arms behind him, and puts cuffs on him. Wrath asks what he’s being arrested for and Butch says concealed weapons, trespassing, stalking, and maybe murder. He tells Wrath that throwing stars like his have been found at two murder sites.

As Butch starts to lead Wrath off, Beth wonders if Wrath killed that prostitute after he left her apartment the night before. She just can’t understand how a man can have such different sides. He was so gentle with her when he held her after they’d made love. She jumps in front of the men and demands a chance to talk with Wrath. Butch tells her to go inside and lock her doors. He drags Wrath off with Beth jogging along side. She asks Wrath why he’s come to her. Wrath looks over at her and tells her that her father sent him. She stops, stunned.

Butch puts Wrath in the back of the car and drives him down to the station. Butch keeps an eye on him in the rear view mirror because something tells him that even handcuffed the man is deadly dangerous. They pull up to the back of the station. As Butch gets him out, Wrath steps back into the shadows. Butch is trying to pull him forward when Wrath breaks free of the cuffs like they’re made of twine. Wrath grabs Butch, lifts him off the ground, and holds him against the building. For the first time in his adult life, Butch is sure he’s about to be killed. And how ironic that he can see the window of his office while it’s happening.

Wrath is tempted to end the man’s life but there’s something intriguing about the guy. He’s not terrified as most human males would be. He’s resigned, like he’s looking forward to death, and Wrath sees a little of himself in Butch. Wrath tells Butch that he’s not going to harm Beth. On the contrary, he’s come to save her. At that moment, Beth leaps out of a cab and runs over to them. She tells Wrath to put Butch down. Butch is dropped to the ground, dazed.

Beth is determined to find out about her father and urges Wrath away from the station before Butch regains his wits. She hails a cab and Wrath tells the driver to take them to Darius’s mansion’s neighborhood. He has them dropped off a block or two away and they walk to Darius’s. Fritz, the butler, greets them at the door.

Wrath leads Beth into the drawing room and down to the guest chamber. She’s frightened but determined to learn about her father. Wrath’s bedroom is a foreign place with its spooky black walls and candles but she doesn’t feel as if he presents a danger to her.

Before she can demand that he talk, he starts asking her a bunch of weird questions. Has she been more hungry than usual? Has she been eating a lot but not putting on weight? Are her eyes more sensitive to light? Does she feel achy? Are her front teeth sore? She thinks he’s crazy and asks what any of that has to do with her father.

Wrath takes off his jacket and tosses it on the bed. He paces around before taking her hand and sitting her down on the sofa. He tells her that her father’s name was Darius and that he has recently died. She says that she was told her father died before she was born. Wrath shakes his head and explains that Darius and he have fought together for many years and that her father’s love for her was very strong. She asks why, if her father care for her so much, he never bothered to introduce himself. Wrath doesn’t answer but smoothes back her hair. You’re going to get sick soon, he says softly. You’re going to get sick and you’re going to need me.

Beth loses track of what he’s saying. He’s going on about how he’s going to help her through some kind of illness but she’s only interested in her father. Who was he, she demands. He was as I am, Wrath says. He takes her face in his hands. And slowly opens his mouth.

Beth takes one look at his fangs and pushes him away, horrified. She leaps from the sofa and runs for the stairs. He lets her go, dematerializing to the front of the house just as she bolts out of the door. She takes his appearance in with utter disbelief and veers away wildly. Wrath lets her run her fear out, keeping close behind. When she finally exhausts herself, he picks her up from the ground and holds her as she starts to cry. She just keeps saying, over and over again, that she doesn’t believe him. She just can’t believe him.

Back at the police station, Butch drags himself inside and immediately puts out an APB for Wrath and for Beth. He goes to Beth’s apartment but she’s not around. He goes trolling downtown, but when he can’t find her, he goes back to her apartment.

Wrath carries Beth back to the mansion. Down in the chamber, he draws her against him and holds her. She’s numb but eventually her mind clears enough so that she turns and looks at him. He drops a kiss on her mouth, thinking only that he will soothe her but the flame between them leaps to life. Driven by the insanity of what he’s told her, Beth unleashes her frustration on his body and they make love with an all consuming passion. As Wrath is entering her, he bares his fangs and nearly sinks them into her neck. He comes dangerously close to feeding from her, something that he shouldn’t do because she hasn’t gone through her transition. Feeling his desperation for Beth’s blood and his increasing fatigue, he knows that he’ll have to call on Marissa soon.

The next morning, Butch goes back to the station and is called into the captain’s office. He’s told that he’s being placed on administrative leave for what he did to Billy Riddle. Butch tells his captain that the kid deserved worse. He leaves his badge and his gun and heads out, determined to keep looking for Beth. He calls Jose at home and tells him what happened. He asks if Jose has found anything out about the stars that were picked up at the two crime scenes. Jose tells him he thinks at least one of the weapons was purchased at the local martial arts academy. Butch decides to go over and check the place out.

Back at the mansion, Beth wakes up in Wrath’s arms. He’s been awake and holding her for hours. She asks softly what her father was like. Wrath tells her that Darius was brave and strong, everything a warrior should be. She asks him what it is that he and Darius are fighting against. He tells her about the Lessening Society and its history of hunting vampires. He tells her that her half-brothers were slaughtered by lessers. She asks him who he’s lost and he shares with her the horrible deaths of his parents. She strokes his face and says she’s sorry. His anguish is utterly apparent and so is his self-hatred. When he tells her he blames himself, she helps him see how powerless he was, given his physical stature and the fact that he was locked in by his father. She tells him that no one in that situation could have stopped the deaths. No one.

There’s a knock on the door. Wrath pulls on a robe, puts his sunglasses back on, and answers it. Boo, her cat, bounds through the room and throws himself into her arms. She laughs and hugs him. While she’d been asleep, Wrath had asked the butler to go and get Boo from her apartment.

Wrath thanks the butler and catches sight of her father’s door. When they’re alone, he tells her he wants to show her something and draws her from the bed. He takes her across the hall to Darius’s bedroom. She walks in and is awed by the sight of dozens of photographs of her at various ages. They’re everywhere in beautiful frames. (She finds out later that Fritz the butler had taken them.) She also finds a picture of her mother. Wrath waits by the door as she explores her father’s room. As he watches her, he realizes that he wants to take her as his uta-shellan, his one and only mate. His wife. The thought then occurs to him that she may not survive her transition. He’s filled with a cold dread.

Beth is incredibly touched at both her father’s obvious adoration of her as well as Wrath’s quiet support as she goes through the room. He answers her questions thoughtfully and each bit of information he shares is a precious gift to her. When she finds a diary, she asks him to come over. She can’t read the writing because it’s in a language she doesn’t know. As she holds the journal out to him, she realizes that he’s not even looking at it. She puts the book down and reaches to his face. She slowly takes off his sunglasses. Whenever he’s been without his glasses previously, it’s been dark. Here, in the light from a lamp, she sees that his irises are a pale, milky green, the pupils tiny, unfocused pinpoints. You’re blind, she says softly. Wrath feels an instinctive shame at his disability and tries to push her hands away. He worries that she’ll think he can’t protect her and tells her that he can still take care of her. Somehow, I don’t doubt that at all, she whispers while kissing him.

Out in town, Butch arrives at the martial arts academy and sees Billy Riddle leave. Butch goes inside and talks to one of the instructors, a guy named Joe Xavier. Butch can’t put his finger on it but there’s something not right about the man. Xavier answers his questions about throwing stars and then casually asks Butch who he’s looking for. No one in particular, Butch replies. He asks if Mr. Xavier would mind if he bought one of the stars. They’re not for sale, the man says, but I’ll give you one. Butch takes the star and puts it in his pocket. He leaves and drives over to the newspaper to see if Beth’s come in. No one’s seen her.

Beth leaves the mansion later that day, thinking she should go to work. She stops by her apartment, changes, and heads downtown. When she gets to the paper, her editor demands to know where she’s been. She’s missed two deadlines and he threatens to fire her. She sits down and writes two columns but her mind is really on Wrath. As fantastically unbelievable the story he’s told may be, it somehow makes sense. It explains why she’s always felt so different from the people around her. And how for some reason she’s always felt as if someone was looking over her.

As the sun sets, Wrath calls for Marissa. She arrives in the chamber, pleased that he’s reached out for her because he’s obviously disturbed. On Wrath’s side, his mind is consumed by Beth. He’s worried that she’s out in the city without him, he can’t get the memories of making love to her out of his mind, and he’s petrified of her coming transition. Marissa offers him her wrist but, as Wrath closes his eyes, he sees Beth. In a surge of remembered passion, he goes for Marissa’s neck.

Marissa feels him take her in her artery and she’s shocked. His body is fully aroused as he drags her against him. This is what she’s always waited for and she grabs onto his shoulders, reaching into his mind with hers. She gets a vivid image of the female he’s thinking of and her heart breaks. She finally lets her hope go. She knows that he will never, ever feel this way about her. A tear slips from her eye as he drinks.

Across town, Mr. X sets out in search of another prostitute to use as bait to catch a vampire. This time, he’s brought a net with him that’s strung with silver cording. He kills another woman in an alley, leaving her to bleed out. When a vampire comes by, he traps the male in the net. Mr. X walks over and shoot several darts into the male. When the vampire loses consciousness, Mr. X drags him over to his car and drives him out into the country where Mr. X lives.

Beth walks back to her apartment to pick up some clothes and checks her messages. Butch has called her several times and she’d also heard at work that he’d been trying to find her. She gets him on his cell phone. He tells her to say put because he’s coming over. She’s waiting for him when her stomach starts feeling nauseous. She pops a couple of TUMS but the feeling just gets worse.

Wrath finishes with Marissa, and when he pulls back, she tells him that she’s releasing him of their covenant. He takes her hands in his and tells her he’s sorry. She murmurs that they were a bad match from the beginning. He vows to always protect her but she tells him that she’ll find someone else to do that. She dematerializes.

Wrath goes upstairs and the warrior brothers come to him. While Wrath was with Beth the night before, they were watching the martial arts academy. They noticed a steady stream of lessers going in and out at three a.m. and believe that it is the center.

Meanwhile, Butch arrives at Beth’s apartment and buzzes the intercom. When she doesn’t answer, he goes around to the back. Through the glass door, he sees her laying face down on the floor, curled in a ball. He breaks the glass of a window with the butt of his gun and goes inside. She’s writhing in pain. He starts to call 911 when she stops him. She gives him an address and begs him to take her there. He tells her he’s not taking her anywhere but an emergency room. She grips his arm and drags his face close to hers. She tells him if he wants her to live, he has to take her to Wrath. It all becomes clear to Butch. Wrath has gotten Beth hooked on heroin and she’s in withdrawal. If he takes her to an ER, she could die if she can’t get the drug. He picks her up in his arms and carries her to his car. Driving like a bat out of hell, he goes to Darius’s house.

Wrath and the brothers are in the drawing room when they hear a pounding on the door. Drawing their weapons, they go over in a group. Wrath opens the door. Butch barges inside with Beth in his arms. Wrath takes her from him as the brothers watch in astonishment. He carries her as if she is utterly precious and disappears into the drawing room.

Across town, Marissa has returned to her room and crawls into her bed. When her brother comes up later, in hopes of bringing her out to a party, he looks in horror at the fresh wounds on her neck and the bruising of her pale skin. Havers is consumed with rage at Wrath. He goes into his laboratory, convinced he has to do something.

Back at Darius’s, Wrath lays Beth gently on the bed in the chamber. She’s suffering and his hand shakes as he takes out his dagger. He makes a move toward his wrist but stops because he wants to hold her close when she drinks. He makes a small cut in his neck and picks her up, cradling her. As she drinks from him, he rocks her back and forth, ancient prayers he thought he’d forgotten falling out of his lips.

Upstairs, the brothers circle Butch. Butch is distraught about Beth, tired of dealing with drug pushers and their carnage, disillusioned about his job. When one of the brothers pauses in front of him, Butch lets his rage out, taking the larger man down to the floor. In a matter of moments, Butch is flat on his back, totally pinned, with an elbow crushing his wind pipe. The guy sitting on his chest is smiling tightly and commenting to the others that he kind of likes Butch. Just as Butch is about to pass out, one of them comes forward and pulls the man off him.

Butch looks up at his savior while he gasps for breath. The man staring down at him has a scar running over his cheek and the deadliest eyes Butch has ever seen. This is really it, Butch thinks. This time he’s finally going to die. But instead of killing Butch, the man pronounces that they will wait for Wrath before deciding what to do. At that moment, a butler dressed in black livery bustles in with some hors d’oeuvres. Butch can’t believe his eyes. The guy passes a silver tray around and then tells the men that if they’re going to do any killing, would they please be so kind as take their business out into the backyard?

Down in the chamber, Beth finishes drinking and Wrath holds her through the pain. At one point, he’s convinced she’s dying but she pulls through. Two hours before dawn, the agony finally relents and she falls asleep.

Upstairs, Butch is stripped of his jacket and his captors go through his pockets and find the throwing star. You have a background in martial arts, one of them asks. Butch tells him no. So what are you doing with this is, comes the next question. It’s a friend’s, Butch replies. They ask him some questions about the marital arts academy in town. For some crazy reason, he almost thinks that they’re all after the same thing: the man who set the car bomb and might be killing prostitutes. The butler interrupts with an announcement that dinner is served. While the other men start to head out of the room, the one with the scar hangs back and tells Butch that he’s welcome to try and escape. The front door’s unlocked. But if Butch leaves, the man’s going to hunt him down like a dog and kill him in the street. When Butch is alone in the drawing room, he considers his options. He’s worried about Beth and decides, Scar Face’s threat not withstanding, he will not leave.

In her bedroom across town, Marissa rolls over fitfully. She feels weird and it takes her a while to realize she’s mad. No, she’s beyond mad. She’s way into fury. She throws the sheets back and dematerializes. She figures that Wrath will be coming back home soon so she reappears in Darius’s drawing room. She’s tired of hiding herself away with Wrath and hopes his warriors are with him when he returns. She wants to tell him off in front of an audience.

Butch is walking around the drawing room, pausing to look at the antiques and thinking that drug dealers end up with way too much money, when suddenly, there’s a woman in front of him. He feels his breath catch. She’s so ethereally beautiful, he almost forgets how to breathe. She has a delicate face, bright green eyes, and cascades of blond waves falling her back. She’s dressed in some kind of flowing white gown or robe. With a knee jerk protective instinct, Butch looks out in the hall, thinking he should take her away. He can’t imagine what a delicate beauty like her would be doing with a group of rough neck thugs like that. She’s so pure, he thinks. She’s so utterly pure.

Marissa is surprised at what’s in front of her. It’s a human. In Wrath’s house. And the man is staring at her as if he’s seen a ghost. He clears his throat and sticks out his hand. Then he withdraws it and wipes his palm vigorously on the seat of his jeans. He puts the hand out again and introduces himself as Butch O’Neal. She considers the palm he’s offered her but takes a step back. He drops his hand and just keeps staring at her. What are you looking at, she asks, bringing the lapels of her gown closer. She wonders if maybe he senses she’s a vampire and is disgusted by her. A flush hits his cheeks and he laughs awkwardly. He apologizes and says she’s probably sick of men laying eyes on her. She shakes her head. No males ever look at me, she murmurs. To herself, she thinks that this was one of the hardest parts of being Wrath’s shellan. No males and few females would even meet her in the eye for fear of what Wrath might do. God, if they’d all only known how little she’d been wanted.

The human takes a step closer. I can’t imagine the men don’t stare, he says. He smiles at her and his eyes, they’re so warm, she thinks. She’s heard so many stories about humans. How they hate her race, would burn her kind at the stake if they could. This one doesn’t seem violent, though, at least not towards her. What’s your name, he asks. She tells him and then he wants to know if she lives in the house. She shakes her head.

Butch cannot take his eyes away from her. He knows he’s behaving like a perfect ass but he really wants to reach out and touch her, just to make sure she’s real. Would you mind—he shuts his mouth. What, she prompts. May I touch your hair, he whispers. She seems shocked and then a look of determination crosses her face. She takes a step towards him and he loves the way she smells. Like clean air. She tilts her head down and one long lock of her hair falls forward. Butch takes the silken strands between his fingers. Soft, he thinks. So soft.

Marissa closes her eyes as his hand grows a little bolder. She feels the touch of his fingertips on her cheek and instinctively she turns her face into his palm. Her body starts to feel warm and time seems to slow. She’s confused by the change in herself, a little frightened of the attention of this male. But she likes it. She likes the way he’s looking at her.

Back at his home, Havers has spent the night pacing in the garden. He knows how to take Wrath out of his sister’s life but the method goes against his principles and his commitment to his race as a healer. Unsure, he goes up to her bedroom. When he finds she’s gone again, he makes up his mind. He dematerializes and projects himself to a retched part of the city. Dressed in his expensive clothes, he looks totally out of place among the leather and chain set downtown. He begins to pace the streets and alleys.

With Beth sleeping soundly, Wrath leaves her to go talk with the brothers. When he pushes open the painting and steps into the drawing room, he sees Butch and Marissa standing close together. Wrath is astounded at the attraction he senses between them. It’s on both sides. Before he can say anything, Rhage comes in from the dining room, a dagger in his hand. He’s heading for Butch, having obviously seen the same thing Wrath has and believing that Marissa is still Wrath’s shellan. Wrath’s commanding voice pulls Rhage, Butch and Marissa up short. Wrath notes with approval the way Butch instinctively protects Marissa with his body. Rhage smiles and tosses the dagger over to Wrath, obviously assuming Wrath wants to kill the human. Relax, Rhage, Wrath mutters. And leave us.

Butch looks up at the bigger man, thinking about Beth and now also worried about the blonde woman behind him. He feels a movement and realizes that Marissa is actually putting herself between him and the drug dealer. As if she could protect him. Butch starts to protest when Marissa speaks sharply in a language he doesn’t recognize. She and the dealer talk for a moment and then the dealer actually smiles. He walks over and kisses Marissa on the cheek. And then with a quick movement, the dealer reaches around her body and grabs Butch around the neck. From behind his sunglasses, the man’s shooting a glare right into the back of Butch’s skull. Marissa starts to push at the dealer’s chest but she gets nowhere. The dealer then smiles tightly and whispers in Butch’s ear, she’s intrigued by you. I don’t disapprove. But hurt her and I’ll- Butch cuts the man off, tired of having people vow to kill him. Yeah, yeah, I know, he mutters. You’ll bite my head off and leave me in the street to die. The dealer’s lips open as he grins and Butch frowns. There’s something wrong with the guy’s teeth, he thinks.

Beth stirs, feeling stiff. She reaches out for Wrath, and when he’s not there, she opens her eyes. Her sight is still with her. She gets up, looks down at her body. It feels the same. She does a little jig. Works the same, too. She dresses in a black robe which smells like Wrath and goes upstairs. She notices on the way up that she’s not breathless at all from the exertion. Which is a bonus, she thinks. Maybe there are benefits to the whole vampire thing.

When she gets to the top of the stairs, it takes her a minute to figure out how to push the secret door open. And then she steps into the drawing room. Butch is there with a gorgeous blonde woman. The two of them are sitting on the couch and both look up. Butch comes over to Beth and gives her a hug. Beth can feel the blonde watching her closely, as if the woman’s measuring every inch of her. There’s no hostility in the blonde’s eyes, though. Just curiosity and something oddly close to awe. Butch introduces the two of them, and when Beth asks where Wrath is, he tells her he’s in the dining room.

Beth walks across the hall and her feet slow when she sees a group of deadly looking men sitting around a table with china on it. The scene is totally incongruous. All these hard ass guys in leather eating with silver. Then she sees Wrath. He’s sitting at the head of the table. The moment he sees her in the doorway, he rushes over to her. He takes her into his arms and gently kisses her. Beth is dimly aware that all conversation in the room has ceased and that the other men are staring at her. Wrath asks her softly how she’s feeling and it takes her a little time to reassure him. He asks if she’s hungry and she says she has the oddest craving for chocolate and bacon. He smiles and tells her he’ll bring her some of both from the kitchen. He pulls back and then seems to realize he needs to introduce her. Wrath points at the men around the table, telling her their names and then introducing her. After saying her name, he uses a word she doesn’t recognize and then heads for the kitchen.

Beth watches him go and then there’s a rush of sound in the room as the men push their chairs back and stand up in a group. Daggers appear in their hands and they start for her, moving with purpose. She panics and backs into a corner. Just as she’s about to yell for Wrath, the men drop to one knee in a circle around her, bow their heads to her, and thrust their daggers into the floorboards at her feet. The handles wobble from the force, the blades flashing in the candlelight. Umm, nice to meet you, too, she says lamely. The men look up at the sound of her voice. Their harsh faces are reverent, their eyes shining with adoration.

In the bad part of town, Havers is sensing the coming dawn and worried that he’ll lose his resolve when a lesser finally starts to track him. Just as the lesser is about to attack, Havers stops him by offering information on a great vampire warrior. The lesser pauses. Havers points out reasonably that he’s small potatoes. If the lesser wants to take down a real vampire, he should get reinforcements and go across town. Havers gives the address of Darius’s home, where he knows Marissa has been meeting Wrath.

Meanwhile, back in the drawing room, Butch and Marissa are talking when she says that she has to go. Why, he asks. And where? When can I see you again? She says she doesn’t know. Can they have lunch? Dinner? What are you doing tomorrow night, he asks. Marissa smiles a little. It feels kind of funny to be pursued. She likes it. She considers the options for places to meet and finds, oddly enough, that seeing the human at Darius’s house feels right. She tells Butch that she’ll meet him the following night. He then offers to give her a ride home. She says that she’ll take herself home. She stands up, and forgetting that he’s a human, dematerializes in front of him.

Butch leaps up from the sofa. He looks around. Rushes forward to feel the air where she’d stood. He puts his head in his hands and decides he’s losing his mind. At that moment, Wrath and Beth appear in the doorway. Butch wheels around, stuttering. Beth smiles at him and steps forward, taking his hand. Butch, I’ve got some things to tell you, she says.

As the sun rises, Mr. X opens up the martial arts academy. He’s still not where he wants to be with the capturing of vampires. The one he caught last night died too fast. Mr. X signs on to the internet and there’s a posting for him. It’s from a Mr. C. Mr. X calls the other lesser, and when he hangs up the phone, he’s grinning. At that moment, Billy Riddle walks into his office. Billy tells him that he’s considered his offer and he wants to come on board. Mr. X gets up and puts his arm around the boy. Perfect timing, he says. I could use some help with a new job. Billy asks if they’ll go out tonight. Mr. X shakes his head. Tonight, we’re going to have to initiate you, son. Then you can go hunting.

That afternoon, Beth wakes up in Wrath’s arms to find him staring down at her with a grave face. What’s wrong, she asks. He kisses her softly. He tells her he loves her. He wants to be her protector. Her warrior. He wants to be with her for the rest of their lives. She wraps her arms around him and tells him that’s exactly what she has in mind. He grins and says that they will have the ceremony as soon as the sun falls. We’re getting married, she asks. He nods and tells her he’ll have Tohrment’s shellan Wellsie bring a dress for her. Beth tells him she loves him and they make love.

That night, the brothers assemble at the mansion. Beth meets Wellsie, a gorgeous red head, and likes her immediately. Marissa shows up and Beth is amused at how Hard Ass seems to have a bad case of love at first sight for the delicate blonde. Wrath decides to have the ceremony down in his chamber and the men work to clear the room of furniture. Beth and Wellsie help Fritz get the food ready and Beth marvels at how natural everything feels to her. She feels as though she belongs with these people, even if their ways are a little strange. She’s carrying a roast beef out to the dining room table when she sees Fritz pouring a big bag of Morton’s salt into a silver dish. She’s about to ask him what it’s for when Wellsie says it’s time to get changed. The men are ready downstairs.

Beth changes into a long white dress and follows Wellsie down the stairs into the earth. When she walks into the chamber, she sees Wrath dressed in a black satin robe and pants. The men are lined up in a row, wearing similar clothes with nasty looking daggers hanging off jeweled belts. Butch and Marissa are also there as is Fritz, the butler. Wrath smiles at her from behind his sunglasses. Tohrment approaches her. We’re going to do as much of this in English as we can so you’ll understand. She nods. He calls Wrath forward and addresses her. This male asks that you accept him as your hellren, Tohrment says. Would you have him as your own if he is worthy? Yes, she says, smiling at Wrath. Tohrment addresses Wrath. This female will consider you’re proposal. Will you prove yourself for her? I will, Wrath says. Will you sacrifice yourself for her? I will, Wrath repeats. Will you defend her against those who would hurt her? I will, Wrath repeats. Tohrment steps back, smiling. Wrath takes her into his arms and kisses her. Beth wraps her arms around him and feels as if she’s come home.

But then Wrath steps back. He undoes the sash of his robe and takes it off, revealing his bare torso. Wellsie comes up behind Beth and holds her hand. It’s going to be okay, Wellsie whispers. Just breathe with me and don’t worry. Beth looks around in alarm as Wrath removes his sunglasses and kneels in front of his men. Fritz brings forward a small table with a pitcher and the silver bowl she saw him filling upstairs.

Tohrment stands before Wrath. What is the name of your shellan? She is called Elizabeth, Wrath says. Tohrment unsheathes his dagger and bends over Wrath’s bare back. Beth gasps and lunges forward but Wellsie holds her in place. You’re marrying a warrior, Wellsie whispers. This is how they do things. But it’s wrong, Beth exclaims. I don’t want him to- Wellsie cuts her off. Let him have his honor in front of his brothers, she says urgently. He’s giving his body to you. It’s yours now. Beth struggles, repeating that he doesn’t need to do this to prove himself to her. But this is who he is, Wellsie says. Do you love him? Yes, Beth says, closing her eyes. Then you have to accept his ways, Wellsie replies.

One by one, Wrath’s men step forward and ask him the same question before unsheathing their dagger and bending over his back. When they are finished, Tohrment takes the bowl of salt and pours it into the pitcher. He rinses Wrath’s back off and then dries his skin with a pristine white cloth. Tohrment takes the cloth, rolls it up, and puts it into an ornate box. He stands over Wrath. Rise, my lord, he commands. Wrath stands up and Beth sees a pattern on his back, running across his shoulders. Tohrment gives Wrath the box and says, take this to your shellan as a symbol of your strength and your bravery, so she will know that you are worthy of her and that your body is now hers to command.

Wrath turns and crosses the room. Beth anxiously scans his face. He seems perfectly fine. In fact, he’s positively glowing with love, his pale, blind eyes sparkling. He drops to his knees, bows his head, and holds up the box. Will you take me as your own, he asks. Hands shaking, she accepts the box and is relieved when he stands up and puts his arms around her. She holds onto him tightly as the others break into cheers and applause. Can we not do that again, she whispers. He laughs and says she better brace herself if they have children.

The celebrations last throughout the night and Butch and Marissa spend time talking. As dawn approaches, they are upstairs in the house, looking around. Marissa turns and says she must go. She’s grown more relaxed with the human and she thinks he is very attractive. Butch approaches her slowly. He seems terribly serious. All night long she’s had the sense that he’s working hard to make her feel comfortable. The shift in him intrigues her. What’s the matter, she asks. I want to kiss you, he says in a low voice. She senses both his desire and his restraint. Anxious but not scared, she steps forward and feels his hands land softly on her shoulders. His lips are soft and gentle as they brush against hers. She closes her eyes and leans into him. A sound, something like a growl of satisfaction, rumbles through his chest. He deepens the kiss, his tongue sliding inside her mouth and stroking hers. His hands are warm on her waist, his heart a steady, surging beat against hers, his body stirring wildly but held firmly in check. He pulls back, eyes scanning her face as if he’s afraid he’s come on too strong. Was that alright, he asks softly. She smiles. It was beautiful, she says. A female couldn’t ask for a better first kiss. Butch’s eyes flare in surprise. Marissa puts her hands on his face. Let’s do it again, she says, drawing him down to her.

Beth and Wrath spending the following day sleeping after their furniture is put back in order. After the sun goes down that evening, Wrath and the brothers talk with Butch who tells them what he knows about the martial arts academy which isn’t much. The decision is made that the brothers will go out in a group, infiltrate the place, and go on the offensive. At Wrath’s request, Butch agrees to stay home with Beth and guard her. Wrath tells Beth that he’s just going out to take care of some business. He doesn’t want to worry her but she’s no fool. As the men arm themselves, she tries to keep Wrath home. What can be so important, she demands. It’s about your father’s death, he says. We need to find out who did it. Your father deserves to be avenged. Beth finally lets him go, feeling uneasy.

Out in the suburbs, Mr. X and Billy, who’s now known as Mr. R, leave Mr. X’s farmhouse. Mr. C doesn’t show because he’s been killed by another lesser in a fight over territory. Their plan is to stake out Darius’s house and wait for the legendary warrior vampire who’s taken up residence there to return at dawn. Mr. X has brought the net and the darts. He finds it ironic that the house of the warrior he blew up is where he’s going. He’d assumed that because the vampire who’d owned it had been killed, no other vampire would stay there because the place is hot. When they arrive, they scope out the mansion. They sense that the warrior vampires have left but there appears to be at least one female in there.

Inside, Marissa arrives and she and Butch sit with Beth. Beth feels like a third wheel and begs them to go upstairs. She’ll be fine. Butch thinks it over, and after checking the windows and doors and activating the security system, he allows as how he and Marissa will go into the living room across the hall. That’s as far as he’s willing to compromise. Beth curls up on the couch in the drawing room.

Mr. R trains his binoculars on the house and sees Beth. I’m going to really take that bitch down this time, he says to Mr. X. I want to beat her until she bleeds. Mr. X considers him thoughtfully and suggests a change in plan. How would you like to get her right now, he asks Mr. R.

Beth hears something hit the window. She goes over and looks out. There’s no one there. A moment later, an explosion racks the mansion. She’s thrown against the wall. As Butch runs into the room, two men come through the hole where the window used to be. One of them calmly shoots Butch. And the other is Billy Riddle.

Wrath and the brothers are battling with lessers inside the martial arts academy when he gets a terrible feeling in the center of the chest. He pulls out of the battle as soon as he can and flashes to the mansion. He finds chaos. Butch is down, the security system is going off, Marissa is hysterical, and Beth is gone.

Mr. X and Mr. R arrive at the farmhouse with Beth, having tied her hands and legs together. Mr. X is happy about the unexpected direction things have taken. Given that she’s a female, she offers certain new avenues for torture. Besides, the warrior will come after her. She’s obviously either his wife or his girlfriend or his sister. So it’s a win/win. Two for one. They take her inside.

Because Beth has fed from him, Wrath is able to sense where she is and he materializes in front of the farmhouse. Breaking through the door, he takes both lessers on in a ferocious fight. Beth works herself free of her holds, and with a physical strength she’s never had before, she attacks Billy Riddle. She slams him down and when Wrath throws a dagger at her, she stabs Billy and he disintegrates. Although Wrath prevails with Mr. X, Wrath is critically wounded. Beth rushes to his side. Using Wrath’s phone, she frantically calls Butch’s cell phone, hoping someone will answer it.

Marissa picks up. When she hears what’s happened to Wrath, Marissa, who’s already called upon her brother to help treat Butch’s wound, demands that Havers go to Wrath. As her brother refuses to meet her eyes, she has a terrible suspicion that he had something to do with the attack. Filled with rage, she confronts him and demands that he help Wrath. Havers, who’s been conflicted all along with his course of action, admits his culpability and flashes out to the farmhouse. It’s clear that Wrath is close to death and the only hope is for him to feed. Havers begins to role up his sleeve when Beth pushes him out of the way. Use your wrist, Havers tells her. Wrath eventually takes Beth’s blood and stabilizes enough for them to get into a car. They have to drive him because he’s unable to project himself. Darius’s place is too dangerous to stay in and dawn is coming. They decide to go Havers’s house. It takes both of them to carry Wrath down to the laboratory.

After a long day of anxious waiting, Wrath comes around. As Beth holds him and cries, he hates his life as a warrior for the first time. With Beth now being his wife, he doesn’t want her exposed to the violence. They hold each other until Havers comes into the lab with Marissa. Havers looks agonized and he admits to Wrath what he did. He volunteers to let Wrath take his revenge in a ritual that will result in Havers’s death. Wrath tells him, no. They’re even now, for what Wrath did to Marissa all those years.

When the brothers show up at Havers’s, Wrath and Beth accept an invitation to go to Tohrment and Wellsie’s while Wrath finishes recovering. Wrath is still too weak to dematerialize himself so Beth, Butch and Marissa decide to drive him west. As they get on the highway, Beth smiles at her vampire husband, thinking that she asked for an adventure. And boy did she ever get one.

A month later, at Tohrment and Wellsie’s ranch in Colorado, the brothers are in the war room getting ready to go out hunting. Wrath has taken up the role as leader of the brothers and he’s accepted his position as the Chief of his race. Vampires have started coming to him, asking him to resolve disputes and bless their children, traditional duties of the Chief that have been missing since the death of Wrath’s father. Beth is adjusting to her role as the chief’s uta-shellan. Butch and Marissa are happy but struggling with the implications of his mortality.

As the brothers ready themselves to go out, Wrath frowns as he sees Beth strap on a dagger. What are you doing, he asks. I’m coming with you, she says. Why, he demands. To fight, she replies. Oh, no, you’re not, Wrath counters, because I forbid you from warring. Beth kicks up her chin. Excuse me? You forbid me, she says. As the two of them square off, the brothers quickly file out of the room.

On the other side of the door, the brothers listen to muffled, angry voices. So who do you think’s going to win this one, Tohrment asks. The brothers make their wagers. The door opens. Wrath walks out looking fierce, pulling his leather jacket on. A moment later, Beth appears, wearing two guns and a dagger. She’s smiling. As the brothers laugh, Wrath puts his arm around Beth and kisses her. None of you look too surprised, he says to his brothers. Yeah, Tohrment replies. We all bet on her.

Together, Wrath and Beth disappear into the night.

The vast majority of things I see in my head get used in the books—which is why the Brotherhood novels are so long! And most of the time, if I do take something out, I use it elsewhere. However, there are some scenes that I have set aside, and I’ve included some below with commentary.

I trimmed this out of the beginning of Lover Awakened, due to length issues. I really like the scene and wish I could have taken it further, as it was the beginning of an entire subplot involving the trainees. Reading it again, I’m reminded of how far John has come—at this point in the series, he was just starting to meet all the Brothers and had a lot to learn about his new world.

Standing in the training center’s gym, waiting shoulder-to-shoulder with the other trainees for the next jujitsu position command, John was beat. His brain was blank-slate exhausted, his body aching. He felt like he’d been picked clean and left for dead.

Okay, so that was a little melodramatic. But not by much.

Class had started as usual at four in the afternoon, but they’d had to make up for the time they’d lost the night before. So instead of ending at ten o’clock, it was now two a.m. and they were still being put through their paces.

The other guys looked tired, too, but John was damn aware that no one was as wrung out as him. For some reason, his classmates were handling the training better than he was.

Some reason? Christ, he knew why. Not only did he have to work harder at everything because he was an uncoordinated boob, but after that whole therapist, visit-to-his-past-nightmare, he hadn’t been able to sleep, so he’d been groggy and out of it to begin with.

Up front, Tohr was giving the lineup a hard look. Dressed in black nylon sweats and a muscle shirt, the Brother was every inch the drill sergeant, with his military buzz cut and his blade-sharp blue eyes. John tried to stand up straighter, but his spine refused to crank to attention. He was utterly out of gas.

“That’s it for today,” Tohr barked. As the trainees sagged, he frowned. “Any injuries I don’t know about?” When no one spoke up, the Brother glanced at the clock that was mounted in a steel cage on the concrete wall. “Remember we start at noon tomorrow and run until eight p.m. instead of our usual time. Hit the showers. Bus will be ready in fifteen. John, can I have a minute?”

As everyone else dragged their sorry asses across the blue mats toward the locker room, John stayed behind. And said a little prayer.

The bus rides to and from the training center were hell. On a good day, none of the other trainees talked to him. On a bad day…he wished for the silent treatment. So even though it made him a coward, he was kind of hoping Tohr would tell him he could stay and work in the office or something.

Tohr waited until the steel door clanged shut before he transformed from drill sergeant into father. Putting a hand on John’s shoulder, he said softly, “How we doing, son?”

John nodded briskly even though his dishrag state pretty much said it all.

“Listen, the Brotherhood was late getting out tonight, so I need to leave right now to do patrols. But I was talking to Butch earlier. He said if you wanted to hang with him for a while, that’d be cool. You can shower at the Pit if you want, and he could take you home later.”

John’s eyes popped. Hanging with Butch? Who was, like, totally the shit? Man…talk about prayers answered. The guy had come in just two days before, taught this rip-cool class on forensics, and had every one of the trainees decide they wanted to be a homicide cop like him.

Hanging with him…plus not having to deal with the Hades Express to get back home?

Tohr smiled. “So I take it this is a yeah, right?”

John nodded. And kept nodding.

“You know how to get there?”

Same code? John signed.

“Yup.” Tohr squeezed his shoulder, the big palm transmitting all kinds of warmth and support. “Take care, son.”

John took off for the locker room and for once didn’t hesitate as he stepped inside the hot, humid maze of metal lockers and social hierarchy. As usual, he made no eye contact with anyone on the way to number nineteen.

Funny, both his locker and he were in the back and on the bottom.

When he grabbed his duffel and slung it over his shoulder, Blaylock, the red-head, who was one of only two who didn’t ride him with insults, frowned.

“Aren’t you changing for the van?” the guy asked while he rubbed his hair with a towel.

John couldn’t help smiling as he shook his head and turned away.

Which, of course, meant Lash had to step into his path.

“Looks like he’s going to go chase after the Brotherhood.” The blond guy made elaborate work out of strapping on a huge diamond watch that was “from Jacob and Co., you know.” “Bet he’s gonna polish daggers for them. What are you going to use on their blades, John?”

The urge to flip him off was so strong, John actually lifted his hand, but Christ, he didn’t want to dick-toss with the asshole. Not when he was Pit-bound and bus-free. Turning away, he took the long way out of the locker room, going down another whole aisle of benches and lockers to avoid the conflict.

“Have fun, Johnny,” Lash shouted. “Oh, and hit the equipment room on your way out. For those knee pads.”

As laughter echoed, John pushed open the door and went down to Tohr’s office…thinking he would give anything for Lash to know what it was like to get picked on.

Or maybe pounded into submission.

Going through the back of Tohr’s supply closet and coming out the other side in the underground tunnel was like walking into sunshine: a singing relief. Sure, there were only ten hours of freedom in front of him, but that was a lifetime under the right circumstances.

And being around Butch was definitely the break he needed.

John walked quickly toward the main house, and he paused when he got to the stairs that led up to the foyer. Tohr had said it was another hundred and fifty yards farther down to the Pit…so he kept going. When he found another set of stairs, he was relieved. The tunnel was dry and dimly lit, but he didn’t like being in it alone.

Sticking his face into the registry field of a video cam, he hit the summons button and resisted the urge to wave like an idiot.

“Hey, man.” Butch’s voice was clear as a bell as it came through the intercom. “Glad you made it.”

The lock was sprung and John took the stairs fast. Butch was standing in the doorway at the top in a black-and-gold smoking jacket.

The guy had the best clothes John had ever seen. He’d taught class in a pin-striped suit that looked like something out of a magazine.

“You can use my bathroom to shower in, because my roommate, who’s off rotation tonight, is micromanaging that goatee of his.”

“Whatever, cop,” a deep male voice called out.

“You know it’s true. You so suffer from OBD—” Butch glanced over. “That would be Obsessive Beard Disorder. Hey, listen, J-man, I was going to head into town, you cool with that?”

John so loved it when Butch called him J-man. And he really loved to be asked to go anywhere with a guy like him.

As he nodded, Butch smiled. “Good deal. I’m getting another tat. You have any?”

John shook his head.

“Maybe you’ll get one.”

A tattoo. With Butch? Man, this night was looking up.

While John nodded, Butch smiled and glanced around. “You ever been in our place, John?”

When John shook his head, the cop gave him a quick tour, and it was clear the Pit was Guy Central. There wasn’t a lot of furniture, but there were plenty of gym bags, and a legion of Scotch and vodka bottles. The foosball table was righteous sweet. So was the massive high-def TV and the incredible bank of computers in the living room. The place also smelled great, all smoke and leather and aftershave.

Butch led the way down a hall. “V’s in that bedroom.”

John glanced through the doorway and saw a huge bed with black sheets and no headboard. Weapons and thick books were all over the place, kind of like a library had been taken over by a squadron of Marines.

“And I’m in here.”

John walked into a smaller bedroom…that was choked with men’s clothes. Suits and shirts were hanging from racks with rollers on them. Ties and shoes were everywhere, and there were easily fifty pairs of cuff links on top of the bureau. It was like the inside of a department store. A very, very expensive department store.

“Bathroom’s all yours. Clean towel’s on the back of the toilet.” Butch took a squat crystal glass of Scotch off the bedside table and put it to his lips. “And you should also think about that tat. Place where I go’s top-notch. They’ll ink you right.”

“You trying to corrupt a youth there, cop?”

John looked to the doorway. A huge man with a goatee and tattoos on his face stood in the threshold. He had on a set of leathers and a black T-shirt and a glove on one hand, and his eyes were the diamond white of a husky’s, the rims around the irises superblue.

Staring at him, one word came to John’s mind: Einstein. The guy just oozed IQ—it was the eyes, those penetrating, icy eyes.

“This is my roommate, Vishous. V, meet John.”

“What’s doing? I’ve heard a lot about you.” The guy offered his palm and John shook it.

“And as for the tat,” Butch said, “he’s of age. Right? Twenty-something.”

“He should wait.” V turned to John and started signing. Perfectly. If you get one done before your transition by a human, it’s going to distort when you go through the change. Then it’s going to fade in a month or two. If you wait, though, I’ll ink whatever you want into you, and I’ll do it so it stays.

John could only blink. Then he dropped his duffel and signed, Wow. Are you deaf?

Nope. Heard from my man Tohr this is how you communicate, so I taught it to myself the other night. Figured we’d run into each other sooner or later.

As if learning an entire language took no notable effort.

“Hey, I’m feeling left out over here.”

“Just giving the man a little advice.”

John whistled to get V’s attention. Will you ask Butch what he’s going to get for a tattoo?

“Good question. Cop, what’re you getting done tonight, man? Tweety Bird on your ass?”

“I’m adding to an old one.” Butch went over and threw open the closet doors, taking off the robe so he was just in his black boxer-briefs. “What to wear…”

John tried not to stare and failed. The cop was built. Big shoulders. Thick, fan-shaped muscles flaring out from his spine. Arms that were cut. He wasn’t as immense as a vampire like Tohr, but he was easily one of the bigger human men John had ever seen.

And all across the small of his back was a tattoo. Done in black ink, the geometric pattern took up a lot of space. It was a series of lines—no, it was a numerical thing. Groupings of four lines with a diagonal slash. Five of them and one lone line. Twenty-six.

V pointed to John’s duffel. “Hey, man, your bag’s leaking. You got shampoo or some shit in there?”

John shook his head and then frowned when he saw the stain in one corner. He went over and pulled back the zipper. There was something on his clothes, something white, opaque…

“What the hell is that?” V said.

Oh, God…had someone…?

Butch nudged John out of the way, put his hand right in there, then lifted his fingers to his nose.

“Conditioner. Hair conditioner.”

“Better than what I thought it was,” V muttered.

Butch’s hazel eyes lifted upward. “This yours, J-man?” When John shook his head, the cop asked, “You got problems at school you ain’t talking about?”

The man’s face was dark, as if he were prepared to go hunt down whoever was screwing with John and his stuff and pound them into the ground like a tent pole. And for a moment, John entertained a happy little picture of Butch popping Lash a good one and then stuffing the guy into a locker.

But he wasn’t about to have his problems solved by someone else.

As he shook his head, Butch’s eyes narrowed and he looked at V. Who nodded once.

Then Butch went all smiles, fronting real casual-like. “I’ll call Fritz and he’ll clean your clothes. And don’t worry, we’ll find you something to wear tonight. No problem.”

John looked at V, not falling for the no-big-deal on the cop’s face. Tell him it’s nothing. Tell him I can handle it.

V just smiled. “Butch already knows that, don’t you, cop?”

“That it’s no big deal and he’ll take care of it? Yeah, I know, J-man.”

I thought you didn’t understand sign language?

Butch shook his head. “Sorry, don’t read hands yet. But I know from assholes, son. Like I said, you don’t worry about a thing.”

The man kept grinning, his expression entirely pleasant. As if he were going to enjoy getting to the bottom of the problem.

John looked at V for help. Except the vampire just crossed his arms over his chest and nodded again at Butch. Totally onboard with the plan.

Whatever plan it might be.

Oh, crap.

The following scene is not really a deleted one, but something I edited a lot in the revisions of Lover Awakened, mostly because I didn’t like the vibe. (The scene in the book starts on p. 344.) Bottom line, I thought this came across as too rough for Z and Bella’s good-bye, but now I wish I’d gone with what I saw in my head. I think the scene in the printed book was good, but this is better:

Bella packed up her things in less than two minutes. She didn’t have much to begin with, and what little she did have she’d moved from Z’s room the night before. Fritz would be coming for her things soon and would drive them to Havers and Marissa’s. Then in another hour she would dematerialize to their house and Rehvenge would meet her there. With a guard.

Stepping into the dim bathroom, she turned on the lights over the sink and double-checked the counter to make sure she had everything. Before she stepped away, she looked at herself in the mirror.

God, she’d aged.

Under the pool of illumination, she lifted her hair off her neck and turned this way and that, trying to find some way to see her true self. When she gave up after God only knew how long, she let the weight fall and—

Zsadist appeared behind her in the shadows, taking shape from thin air, darkening the darkness with his black clothes and his weapons and his mood.

Or maybe he’d been there all along and only now chose to reveal himself.

She stumbled back, banging into one of the marble walls with her hip. As she cursed and rubbed the sore spot, she refiled through her vocabulary for all the ways to tell him to go to hell.

And then she smelled him. His bonding scent was strong.

Z stayed silent, but it wasn’t like he needed to say much. She could feel his eyes. Could see the golden glow out of the corner he was in.

She knew exactly why he was staring at her. And couldn’t believe it.

Bella backed even farther away, until she hit the shower door. “What do you want?”

Wrong words, she thought, as he stepped into the light.

As she saw his body, her mouth went lax.

“I want to mate,” he said in a low voice. And he was more than ready.

“You think…Christ, you think I’d lay with you now? You’re deranged.”

“No, I’m psychotic. At least, that’s the clinical diagnosis.” As he took off his dagger holster, the door shut behind him and the lock turned. Because he willed them to do so.

“You’re going to have to force me.”

“No, I won’t.” His hands went to the gun belt at his hips.

Bella stared at what was straining against his leathers. And wanted it.

God, she wished he would hold her down and not give her a choice. That way, she could be absolved of what she was about to do and hate him more deeply. She could…

Z came forward until he was right in front of her. In the straining silence between them, his chest lifted and compressed. “I’m sorry I’m a bastard. And I wouldn’t be pushing you at Phury if I didn’t think it was the right thing for both of you.”

“Are you apologizing just because you want to be with me right now?”

“Yes. But it’s true anyway.”

“So if you weren’t hard at the moment, you’d just let me go?”

“Think of this as good-bye, Bella. The last time.”

She closed her eyes and felt the heat coming off him. And when he put his hands on her, she didn’t jump. As his palms locked on her throat and tilted her head back, her mouth opened because it had to.

Or at least, that was what she told herself.

Z’s tongue pushed inside of her as his hips came up against her lower belly. As they kissed there was a ripping sound—her shirt as he tore it in half.

“Zsadist,” she said hoarsely when he went for the button on her jeans. “Stop.”

“No.”

His mouth dropped down to her breast and her pants hit the floor and then he lifted her up and carried her over to the counter. He was purring loudly now as he forced her knees apart with his head and knelt before her, his eyes fixated on her sex.

So he knew exactly how turned-on she was.

Bella put her hands between him and where he was going.

“Zsadist, if you do this, I will never forgive you.”

“I can live with that.” He moved her arms away easily, trapping her wrists. “If it means I can be with you this last time.”

“Why the hell do you care so much?”

He pulled her hands forward, flipping them around so they faced upward. When he stared downward, he shook his head. “Phury didn’t feed from you, did he. No marks on your neck. Your wrists.”

“There’s still time.”

“He said you couldn’t bear it.”

Great, that was the last thing she needed Zsadist to know.

“And this is my punishment?” she said bitterly. “You’re going to force me—”

Z dove down to her, his mouth going straight to her core. With all his demand, she expected him to eat at her, but instead the soft strokes of his lips were so loving they brought tears to her eyes. As he released her hands, her cheeks went wet, and she held on to his head, bringing him closer still.

His eyes stared up at her while she climaxed against his tongue, watching her as if storing precious memories.

“Let me take you to the bed.”

She nodded as he came up her body and buried his glossy lips in her neck. The scrape of his fangs gave her a momentary flash of hope. Maybe he would finally feed—

But then he picked her up and willed the door open…and the passion left her. She was leaving. And he wasn’t going to stop her.

Wasn’t going to take her vein now, either.

He sensed the change in her immediately. “Where have you gone?”

“Nowhere,” she whispered as he laid her down on the bed. “I’m going nowhere.”

Z paused, looming over her, perched on the precipice. But then he worked his fly, springing loose that huge arousal. As he got up on her, his pants around his thighs, she turned her face to the side.

His hands stroked her hair back. “Bella?”

“Do it and then let me go.” She opened her legs wider to accommodate him, and as his erection hit her core, he groaned, his weight shifting in a jerk. When he didn’t penetrate her, she closed her eyes.

“Bella…”

“I’d reach down and put you inside, but we both know you can’t stand to have me touch you. Or do you want me on all fours? More anonymous that way. You’d barely know what you were fucking.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Why not? Hell, you’re not even naked. Which makes me wonder why this needs to happen at all. Now that you know how to take care of yourself, you don’t have to have a female.” Her voice cracked. “You most certainly don’t need me.”

There was a long silence.

She heard a hissing sound. And then he bit her.

Zsadist sank his fangs in deep and shivered at the first rush of Bella’s blood. The richness, the thick, heavenly texture pooled in his mouth, and when he swallowed, it coated the back of his throat.

He couldn’t stop.

When he’d decided to take her vein, he’d told himself he was allowed only one single, great pull, but once he started he couldn’t break the connection. Instead, he gathered her in his arms and rolled her to the side so he could curl himself around her better.

Bella cradled him close, and he was sure she was crying again as she held him, because her breathing was raw.

Stroking her naked back, he tucked her hips into his, wanting to comfort her as he took from her, and she seemed to ease. Even as he didn’t. His dick was screaming, the tip about to blow off.

“Take me,” she moaned, “Please.”

Yes, he thought. Yes!

Except, oh God, he couldn’t stop the drinking long enough to get inside her: The strength pouring into him was too addictive and the response of his body was too incredible. As he fed, he felt his muscles knitting together, forming a steel weave over the hardening cage of his bones. His cells were absorbing the essential nutrients he had deprived them of for a century and putting them to immediate use.

Afraid he was going to take too much and kill her, Z eventually forced himself to release Bella’s throat, but she just grabbed onto the back of his head and pushed him down. He fought his impulse for a moment, but then growled, the sound loud and low as a mastiff’s. With a rough lift and twist, he repositioned her and nailed her on the other side of the neck, biting hard. Now he was crawling over her, trapping her underneath him, the bonding scent pouring out of him in waves. He was the carnivore standing over its prey while it fed, his arms flared and bent while he held himself up, his thighs spread over her lower body.

When he was finished he tilted his head back, took a deep breath, and roared loud enough to rattle the windows, his body twitching with the kind of power he’d known long ago, and only from the vile, forced feedings of the Mistress.

Zsadist looked down. Bella was bleeding from the two wounds he’d given her, but her eyes were shining and the unmistakable scent of the female sex rose from her. He licked up both sides of her throat and kissed her, pushing into her mouth, taking, dominating what was his…marking her now not just with his scent but his will.

He was drunk on her, greedy and needy. He was the dark, raw hole that had to be filled. He was the dry pit; she was the water.

Z reared up and whipped off his shirt. Looking down at his nipples, he looped his pinkies into the piercings and pulled at them.

“Suck on me,” he said. “Like you did before. Now.”

Bella sat up, splaying her hands over his belly as he let himself fall back on the bed. When he was stretched out, she crawled onto his chest, putting her mouth just where he wanted it. As she took one of the hoops in, he roared again, not giving a shit who else in the house might hear him.

He planned on being as loud as he wanted. Fuck it, he planned on yelling the damn door down.

As she sucked, he shrugged out of his leathers and reached down, taking himself in his hand and stroking. He wanted her mouth there, but as wild as he was, he wouldn’t force her.

But she knew what he wanted. Her hand took the place of his on his dick, and she fell into a rhythm that nearly killed him. She slid up and down on his shaft, slipping back and forth over his head, all the while licking and tugging at his nipple. She was in total control, playing him hard, and he loved it, loved the suffocation, the sweat, the agony of wanting to come while never wanting her to stop.

“Oh, yeah, nalla…” He dug into her hair, panting. “Work me out.”

And then she moved down his chest and onto his belly. In anticipation, he bit his lower lip so hard he tasted his own blood.

“Is this okay with you?” she asked.

“If you don’t mind—” She covered him with her lips. “Bella.”

Her mouth was glorious. Wet and warm. But he wasn’t going to last more than thirty seconds like this. He sat up and tried to get her head out of his lap, but she fought him.

“I’m going to come…” he moaned. “Oh, God…Bella, stop, I’m going to…”

She didn’t. And he…

The first convulsion snapped him in half so hard he fell back on the mattress. The second lifted his hips up, pushing him farther into her mouth. And the third took him to heaven.

As soon as he could pull his shit together, he reached for her, bringing her mouth to his. He tasted his bonding scent on her lips and tongue and liked it there.

Relished it there.

He rolled her over. “Now it’s your turn. Again.”

“Are you okay?” Zsadist said some time later.

Bella opened her eyes. Z was lying next to her, his head on his curled arm.

God, her neck was sore, and so was the inside of her. But the hedonistic glory he’d let loose was worth the creaks and groans. Zsadist had loved her hard, just as she’d always wanted him to.

“Bella?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“You said you didn’t want to be avenged. You still mean that?”

She covered her breasts with her hands, wishing real life had stayed away a little longer. “I can’t bear the idea of you going out and getting hurt because of me.”

When he didn’t say anything, she reached out and touched his hand.

“Zsadist? What are you thinking?” The silence went on and on until she couldn’t stand it any longer. “Talk to m—”

“I love you.”

“What…?” she breathed.

“You heard me. And I’m not going to say it again.” He stood up, grabbed his leathers, and pulled them on. Then he went into the bathroom. He came back a moment later fully armed with his daggers on his chest and his gun belt fastened around his hips.

“So here’s the damage, Bella. I can’t stop hunting that lesser who did those things to you. Or the bastards he works with. Can’t. So even if I were picture-perfect like Phury, even if I could pull his smooth moves with the polite shit, even if I wouldn’t make your family cringe, I can’t be with you.”

“But if you—”

“I’ve got war in my blood, nalla, so even if I hadn’t gotten all fucked-up in the past, I would still need to be in the field fighting. I stay with you, you’re going to want me to be different than I am, and I can’t turn into the kind of hellren you’re going to need. Eventually my nature would blow up in both our faces.”

She rubbed her eyes. “If I follow that logic, why do you think I can be with Phury, then?”

“Because my twin is wearing out. He’s getting tired. I’m part of the reason, but I think it would have happened anyway. He likes teaching those recruits. I could see him training full-time, and we’re going to need that. That would be a good life for you.”

Bella dropped her hands in anger and glared at him. “I really need you to shut up about what you think would be best for me. I’m totally uninterested in your theories about my future.”

“Fair enough.”

She stared up at him, focusing on the scar that ruined his face.

No, not ruined, she thought. He would always be beautiful to her. A beautiful horror of a male…

Getting over him was going to be as hard as getting past her captivity.

“There’s never going to be anyone else like you,” she murmured. “For me…you will always be the one.”

And that was her good-bye to him, she realized.

Z came to her, and knelt by the side of the bed, keeping his yellow, glowing eyes downcast. After a moment he took her hand, and she heard a metallic sound…then he pressed one of his daggers into her palm. The thing was so heavy she almost needed two hands to hold it. She looked at the black blade, the metal reflecting light like a pool at night.

“Mark me.” He pointed to his pectoral, right above the star-shaped scar of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. “Here.”

With a quick lean, he reached to the bedside table for the little dish of salt that had come with her food. “And make it permanent.”

Bella hesitated for only a second. Yes, she thought…she wanted to leave something that endured on him, some small thing that would serve to remind him of her for as long as he breathed.

She shifted around and braced her free palm on his opposite shoulder. The dagger grew lighter in her hand as she took the vicious point of the weapon to his skin. He twitched as she dug into him and blood welled, trickling down onto his ribbed stomach.

When she was finished, she put the knife aside, licked her palm, and sprinkled salt onto it. Then she pressed her open hand to the cuts she’d made over his heart.

Their eyes held as the B she’d made in the Old Language fused permanently into him.

This scene was taken out of the Butch/Marissa material that was moved from Lover Eternal to Lover Revealed. My reasoning was because of my usual length and pacing concerns—I thought this early visit to his family that I saw in my head was just too much. There was already a lot going on in Butch’s book, and leaving this in (and going further with it) was a distraction that was largely unnecessary, given the way the O’Neal dynamic gets tied up at the end of the story.

That being said, it’s so cool to read. Remember, this was written back at the beginning of Rhage’s story, when Butch is still getting acclimated to the Brotherhood’s world—and its restrictions:

Butch caught the remote as it came flying at him without moving from his prone position on the couch. His body was sublimely comfortable: Head on the padded armrest. Legs stretched out. Red Sox throw blanket tucked around his feet. As it was around seven a.m. the shutters were down, so the Pit was dark as midnight.

“You turning in?” he asked as V stood up. “Right in the middle of Shaun of the Dead? How can you stand the suspense?”

Vishous arched his back as he stretched his heavy arms. “You know, you sleep less than I do.”

“That’s because you snore and I can hear it through the wall.”

V’s eyes narrowed. “Talking about noise, you’ve been quiet the last couple of days. You want to tell me what’s doing?”

Butch picked his glass of Scotch up from the floor, balanced it on his stomach, and reached for the bottle of Lagavulin that was on the coffee table. As he poured himself some more hooch, he watched the brown rush flicker in the blue-gray glow of the TV.

Damn, he was really throwing back the stuff lately.

“Talk, cop.”

“My old life came calling.”

Vishous scrubbed his hair until it stood up on its ends. “How so?”

“My sister v-mailed me yesterday on my old phone. Her new baby’s getting baptized. Whole family’s going to be there.”

“You want to go?”

Butch tilted up his head and took a long drink. The Scotch should have burned its way to his stomach. Instead it just eased on down the well-trodden path.

“Maybe.”

Although he had no idea how to explain what had happened to him.

Yeah, see, I got fired from Homicide. And then I met these vampires. And now I kind of live with them. I’m also in love with one of their kind, but that’s sort of dead in the water. Am I happy? Well, it’s the first vacation I’ve ever had in my life, I’ll tell you that much. Plus the clothes are better.

“V, man, why me? Why you boys letting me hang in here?”

V leaned forward and took a hand-rolled off the little stack he’d made next to his couch. His gold lighter made a hiss before it spit flame.

The Brother stared straight ahead as he exhaled, his profile getting obscured by the smoke.

Which was the same color as the TV, Butch thought randomly. Blue-gray.

“You want to leave us, cop?”

Well, wasn’t that a good goddamned question. The call from his sister had reminded him this couldn’t last; this odd interlude with the Brotherhood couldn’t be his whole life.

But where did that leave him? And them? He knew all about the Brothers. Where they lived, what the rhythms of their nights and days were. Who their women were, if they had one.

The very fact they existed.

“Didn’t answer my question, V. Why’m I here?”

“You’re supposed to be with us.”

“According to who?”

V shrugged and took another drag. “According to me.”

“That’s what Rhage said. You going to tell me the why of it?”

“You’re in my dreams, cop. That’s all I’m going to tell you.”

Okay, that was hardly reassuring. He’d heard the moaning sound track to whatever V conjured up when he was asleep. Not exactly the kind of thing that made a guy optimistic about his future.

Butch took another deep one from his glass. “And if I want to leave? What happens then? I mean, my memories are long-term by now, so you can’t scrub me. Right?”

The flicker of the TV played over the hard lines of Vishous’s face.

“You want to look at me, V?” When that profile didn’t turn, Butch cupped his glass and sat up. “Tell me something, if I leave, which one of you is supposed to kill me?”

V put his fingers on the bridge of his nose. Closed his eyes. “Damn it, Butch.”

“You, right? You’ll do it.” Butch drained his glass. Stared into the bottom of it. Refocused on his roommate. “You know, it would help if you’d look at me.”

V’s ice white eyes flashed across the way. And they glowed with regret.

“It would really kill you, wouldn’t it?” Butch murmured. “Putting me in the ground.”

“It would absolutely kill me.” Vishous cleared his throat. “You’re my friend.”

“So what’s it going to cost me?”

V frowned. “Cost you?”

“To go to my sister’s kid’s baptism.” Butch cracked a smile. “A foot? No, an arm. An arm and a leg?”

Vishous shook his head. “Shit, cop. That isn’t funny.”

“Ah, come on. It’s a little funny.”

V laughed in a burst. “You’re sick, you know that?”

“Yeah, I do.” Butch put his glass back down on the floor. “Look, V, I’m not going anywhere. Not in a disappearing way. Not right now. I’ve got nothing out there waiting for me, and I never fit in all that well anyhow. I am going to go up to Boston at the crack of dawn Sunday morning, however. I’ll be back Sunday night. You got a problem with that, well, tough.”

V blew out some more smoke. “I would miss you.”

“Don’t be a sap. I’ll be away twelve hours.” When V looked down, Butch grew serious. “Unless…we have a problem?”

After a long while V walked over to where all his computer shit was. Picked something off the desk.

Butch caught what was thrown at him.

Keys. To the Escalade.

“Drive safe, cop.” V smiled a little. “Don’t say hi to the family for me.”

Butch laughed. “That’s not going to be a problem.”

Now it was V’s turn to get good and grim. “If you’re not back by Sunday night, I’m coming after you. And not to bring you back, true?”

Butch realized in the silence that followed that this was a fish or cut bait moment. He was in the Brotherhood’s world for good. Or he was fertilizer.

He nodded once. “I’ll be back. Don’t you worry about that.”

This was taken out of Lover Enshrined. Originally it was where Phury and Cormia see each other when he comes back from his rescue efforts during the sack of Havers’s clinic. What it grew into, however, was their walk down the hall of statues and then his shower and her feeding from him…all of which went further than the below in terms of developing their relationship. This is the problem with what I see in my head: I saw the below play out…but I also saw all of the scenes that are in the book as well. Fitting everything that happens in together and deciding what’s more material to the story to protect pacing is always a judgment call.

Phury left Fritz to keep tidying up Wrath’s study. It was just as well the king wasn’t there. The head of the Brotherhood should get a report on what went down from a Brother.

As he came up to his room, Cormia was standing in the hallway, hand at her throat, looking as if she were waiting for him. Or maybe he just hoped that was the case.

“Your grace,” she said with a bow.

He was too tired to correct her on her formality. “Hey.”

As he went into his room he left the door open, because he never wanted her to feel as if she couldn’t talk to him, no matter how exhausted he was. He figured if she had something to say she’d follow him, and if she didn’t she’d go on to her room.

He went around and sat down on his bed, reaching for his gold lighter and a blunt before his weight had settled on his ass. He lit up, thinking that after a night like tonight there was no way in hell he was going to cut back on the red smoke. This was exactly why he needed the stuff.

As that first draw went down into his lungs, Cormia appeared in his doorway. “Your grace?”

He looked down at the blunt, focusing on the glowing orange tip. It was better, safer, to keep his eyes off her slim body in that long flowing robe. “Yes?”

“Bella is well. Jane says so. I thought you’d want to know.”

Now Phury glanced over his shoulder at her. “Thank you.”

“I prayed for her.”

He exhaled. “You did?”

“It was right and proper to do so. She is…lovely.”

“You’re a very kind person, Cormia.” He went back to staring at the hand-rolled, thinking that he was raw tonight. Absolutely wild on the inside, and the inhaling wasn’t helping much. “Very kind.”

When his stomach growled, she murmured, “May I make you something to eat, your grace?”

Even though his stomach rumbled again, as if it were thrilled with the prospect, he said, “I’m okay, but thank you.”

“As you wish. Sleep well.”

“You, too.” Just as the door was shutting, he called out, “Cormia?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you again. For praying for Bella.”

She made some kind of noncommittal noise, and the door clicked into place.

Even though he needed a shower, he slid his legs up onto the mattress and leaned back into the pillows. As he smoked, he was relieved as his shoulders gradually loosened and his thigh muscles relaxed and his hands released from the claws they’d turned into.

Closing his eyes, he let himself drift along, and images played on the backs of his lids, quickly at first, slowing as they continued. He saw the bodies in the clinic and the fight that happened and the rapid evac. Then he was back here looking for Wrath—

A picture of Cormia bending down over the roses barged into his brain.

With a curse he rolled up another chub, lit it, and settled back against the pillows.

Man, she had been so beautiful in that reflected light on the terrace.

And he thought of her standing in the hallway just now, her robing wrapped around her such that it formed a V between her breasts.

In a hot flash of insanity, he fantasized that instead of letting her walk out of his room, he’d taken her hand and drawn her farther inside. He pictured himself tugging her gently over to his bed and laying her down where he was now. Her hair would be all over the pillowcases in gold strands, and her mouth would be parted just as it had been in the movie theater when he’d approached her.

Of course, he’d have to take a shower first. Naturally. There was no way he’d expect her to put up with a male who’d not only been humping boxes of bandages for a couple of hours, but had also been in a fistfight with a lesser.

Yada, yada, yada…fast-forward through him scrubbing down under the hot water.

He’d come back in his own white robe and he’d sit on the bed next to her. In order to calm her—well, to calm them both—he’d start by stroking her face and her neck and her hair. And when she tilted her head back to give him access, he’d put his lips to hers. At this point his hands would work down the robe’s two halves until he got to the sash. He would loosen that slowly, so slowly she wouldn’t be shy about the fact that he was about to see her breasts and her stomach and her…everything.

He went everywhere with his mouth.

That was what happened in the fantasy. Everywhere. His lips, his tongue…every inch of her got attention.

The images were so off the chain that Phury’s hand had to find the ache between his own thighs. He meant to just rearrange himself in his pants, but once he made contact it wasn’t about relocation…it was the only thing that had felt even remotely good in so long.

Before he knew what he was doing, he put the blunt between his lips, unzipped, and let himself wrap a palm around his cock.

The rules of his self-imposed celibacy had held that doing this kind of pump action was a no-no. After all, it seemed pointless to deny himself sex and yet open the door to masturbation. And the only time in his life he’d worked himself out had been during Bella’s needing and that was about biological necessity, not enjoyment—he’d had to either relieve himself or go insane, and those orgasms had been as hollow as the empty bathroom he’d had them in.

This didn’t feel hollow.

He pictured himself going where he wanted to be most…between Cormia’s legs with his head…and his body went crazy, his skin heating until you could have put a pot on his abs and boiled water. And shit got volcanic as he imagined his tongue finding its way through her core to the sweet, welling center of her.

Oh, God…he was stroking himself. There was no denying it. And he wasn’t going to stop.

Phury took the blunt from his lips, flicked it into an ashtray, and moaned, his head falling back as he parted his legs. He did not want to think of what he shouldn’t do. He just needed one slice of ease and happiness, one small piece of joy…just this moment when he was warm. He’d watched his brothers find love and settle down in strong matings, and he’d wished them well from the sidelines—while knowing all along that would not be his future. And that had been okay for a long time. Now, though, it didn’t feel okay anymore.

He…wanted things. For himself.

Anxiety started to bleed into his pleasure, like an ink stain on pale cloth.

He stopped the spoil by focusing on Cormia in his head. He saw himself treating her with both gentleness and power, handling her body…

“Oh, yeah…” he groaned into the still air of his bedroom.

This moment he would steal for himself, and he told his guilty conscience he deserved it for all the hard work he’d done.

He was alone. No one would ever know.

Cormia carefully balanced the glass of milk and the plate of stacked bread and meats while she lifted a hand to knock on the Primale’s door. She wished she’d put the “sandwich” together better. Fritz had shown her what to do, and undoubtedly his would have looked less disheveled, but she’d wanted to move quickly, and she’d wanted to make it herself.

Just before her knuckles made contact with the wood, she heard a moan, as if someone were hurt. And then another.

Concerned for the Primale’s well-being, she went for the knob and pushed her way into his room—

Cormia dropped the sandwich plate. As the thing bounced on the floor, she stared across at the bed while the door shut by itself.

Phury was leaning back against the pillows, his spectacular, multicolored hair streaming out around his head. His black button-down shirt was pushed up to just below his rib cage, and his pants were undone and shoved down to the tops of his golden thighs. One hand was on his manhood, and his sex was thick and glossy at the broad tip. As he stroked the length hard and strong, his other hand was down below on the potent sac underneath.

Another moan broke through his open, rosy mouth; then he bit down on his lower lip, his fangs punching into the puffy flesh.

His hand started moving fast and his breath came even harder and he seemed to be on the verge of something tremendous. It was beyond wrong to watch, but she couldn’t have left to save herself…

His nose flared, the nostrils opening wide as if he were catching a scent. With a growl he convulsed, his stomach muscles tightening up in a rush, thighs striating. As pearly white jets came out of him, his brilliant yellow eyes flipped open and focused on her. The sight of her seemed to hurt him even more as he barked out a curse and his hips thrust upward. More of the satin cream came out of him, and it seemed he would never stop, his neck straining, his cheeks red and flushed.

Except he wasn’t in true pain, was he, she thought. His eyes held on to her as if she were the fuel of it all and he didn’t want what was happening to him to end.

This was the culmination of the sexual act.

Her body told her so. Because every time the Primale surged, every time he groaned, every time his palm licked over the tip of his sex and shot down to the base, her breasts lit up and what was between her legs wept even more.

And then he was still. Spent. Satiated.

In the silence she felt the wetness on the insides of her thighs and looked at what was all over his stomach and hand and arousal.

What a glorious mess sex was, she thought, imagining what it would be like to have what was on him in her.

As her mind churned, she realized the Primale was staring at her in fuzzy confusion, as if he weren’t sure whether he’d dreamed her up or she was really in his room.

She walked forward, because with what had just happened, and the way the room was saturated with his dark scent, his outstretched body was the only destination she was interested in.

His eyes changed as she got closer, as if it were dawning on him that she was actually with him. Shock replaced his dreamy satisfaction.

She put the glass of milk down next to his ashtray, looked at his stomach, and her hand went forward without conscious thought.

He hissed, then sucked in a breath as she made contact. What was on him was warm.

“This is not blood,” she murmured.

His head shook back and forth on the pillow, his expression one of amazement, as if he were surprised by her boldness.

She lifted her finger up, recognizing that what had come out of him was the source of the dark spices in the air—and she wanted whatever it was. Glossing her lower lip, she then ran her tongue over what she’d put on herself.

“Cormia…” he groaned.

The sound of her name wrapped the room in a private, heated insulation that was tangible, and in the suspended, protected moment, it was just him and her together. There was nothing but their bodies, a stunning simplicity in the complex structure of the way they’d met and come to be mated.

“Let’s leave our roles behind,” she said. “And our entanglements.”

His face tightened. “We can’t.”

“Yes, we can.”

“Cormia…”

She dropped her robe, and that pretty much ended the conversation.

But as she got up on the bed, he shook his head and stopped her. “I’ve been to see the Directrix.”

As her name leaving his lips had created a special place, his words now sliced through the warmth and heady promise in the room.

“You set me aside, didn’t you.”

He nodded slowly. “I wanted to tell you, but then everything went down at the clinic.”

Cormia looked at his gleaming sex and had the strangest response. Instead of failure she felt…relief. Because he desired her even though he didn’t have to. Because it made what she wanted to happen so much more honest. Later she would dwell on the emotional ramifications, but now she just wanted to be with him. Female to male. Sex to sex. No traditions weighing on the act or giving it any larger implications.

She put one knee up on the mattress, and Phury grabbed hold of her wrists, stopping her. “Don’t you know what this means?”

“Yes.” She put her other knee up. “Let me go.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

She stared boldly at the straining length at his hips as it lay thick as her forearm up his belly. “And neither do you. But you want this, too. So let’s take this time.” She shifted her eyes up his chest to meet his wary, hot stare, and for a moment she was saddened. “You will have many others. I will only have you. So give this to me now, before… —„her heart was broken over and over again“—Before you must go on.”

His conflict played out in his eyes, and it was a testament to his honor. But she knew what the outcome was going to be. And was not surprised when he gave in, his hands no longer restraining her but pulling her to him.

“Dear God,” he whispered, sitting up and taking her face in his palms. “I need a minute, okay? Lie down here. I’ll be right back.”

He stretched her out with gentle hands, then left the bed and went into the bathroom. The shower came on, and when he returned his hair was in damp ringlets around his shoulders and chest.

He came to her naked, a warrior in his physical prime, his sexual need standing straight out from his spectacular body.

He paused next to the bed. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Even though she’d been told it was going to hurt, she wasn’t turning back. She couldn’t explain her resolve, but it was going to carry her through.

She would have him now, and what would come thereafter be damned.

Cormia held her hand out to him, and when he put his palm in hers, she brought him down to her body.

Phury allowed himself to be drawn onto the bed until he lay beside Cormia’s stunning naked form. Her bones were tiny compared to his, her body delicate next to his brawn.

He couldn’t bear to hurt her. He couldn’t wait to get into her.

His hand shook as he brushed a piece of blond hair off her forehead. She was right, he thought: It was better this way for both of them. This was a choice. The Primale obligations were a duty.

This would be his first time, and hers as well.

“I’m going to take care of you,” he said. And not just when it came to tonight.

Although…damn, he had no clue how to make love to a female. Sex was one thing. Making love was altogether different, and suddenly he wanted to be all about finesse. He wanted to have had scores of lovers so he knew how to make sure Cormia got the most out of him.

He let his hand drift down to her neck. Her skin was soft as the still air, so finely grained he couldn’t see the pores.

She arched her back, the pink tips of her breasts surging.

He licked his lips and leaned down to her collarbone. Closing his eyes, he hovered just above her body. He knew the instant he made contact there was no going back.

Her hands went deep into his hair. “Will you not begin, your grace.”

He flipped his eyes up to hers. “Call me Phury?”

She smiled, a shy blossoming of happiness. “Phury…”

After she said his name, he put his lips to her skin and breathed in her scent. His entire body trembled, he wanted her so badly, and instinctively he pushed his hips until his cock was trapped between his thigh and hers. When she gasped and arched again, he latched onto her nipple.

Cormia’s nails went into his scalp, and he growled as he suckled and tugged at her. His hand closed on her other breast, and he twisted his hips so that his arousal got held in an even tighter grip.

Oh, shit, he was going to…

Yup. He came. Again.

Groaning wildly, he tried to stop. Except she didn’t want him to—instead of pulling back, she shifted herself closer and moved with the surges of his orgasm.

“I love when you do that,” she said in a guttural voice.

He found her mouth desperately. That she didn’t seem to care that he was a loser who had never done this before and had just prematurely ejaculated all over her thighs meant the world to him. He didn’t have to pretend to be strong. In this private moment he could just be…him.

“It might happen again,” he moaned against her lips.

“Good. I want you to do that all over me.”

He growled loudly then, his marking instinct pricking to attention. Yes, he thought. He was going to do that all over her. In her as well.

He swept his hand down her body to her legs, then shifted so he could move up her long, lean muscles to her core. His palm dragged through what he’d left on her, and he took his essence with him as he found her sex.

Which was running with honey, wetter than if she’d just bathed.

Cormia cried out and threw open her legs.

He went for the heart of her with his mouth before he had a clue where he was going. It didn’t matter that he had no technique to lead with. He needed to taste her, and that was going to happen only if his lips met hers—

“Oh…sweet female,” he said into her well. He was aware his fingers were biting into her thighs and that he was holding her splayed open, but he couldn’t help himself.

She didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. Her hands tangled in his hair and pressed him against herself as he dragged his tongue deep and deeper still. He rubbed his face in a circle, then started sucking and swallowing. He was ragged with thirst, feeding from her sex and off the sexual current between them, carried away—

She’d just started to come when the phone rang—and it was a no-brainer to stay right where he was. He could tell that she was rolling off the cliff of release by the way she stiffened and lifted her head so she could meet his eyes. She was nervous, excited, worried.

“Trust me,” he said to her. Then he made a point out of his tongue, tilted her hips up, and penetrated her.

She called out his name as she had her orgasm.

And that was when someone pounded on his door.

The following was taken out of Lover Enshrined because everyone thought it needed to be scrapped! My editor, my research assistant, and my CP (critique partner) all were like, “You don’t need it”…and I caved because I understood their point. Phury’s book ended powerfully, and tacking on something that happens years later diffused the closure. So here’s the epilogue that wasn’t:

Five years later…

“I’ve got her!” Phury called out to Bella as he scooped his niece up into his arms. Nalla giggled and buried her little face in his hair, which she loved to do, holding on to him with her strong grip.

Bella came racing around the corner of the Brotherhood’s library and then stopped short, her silver gown settling in a lovely swirl around her legs. The diamonds around her neck sparkled like fire, as did the ones on her wrists and at her ears.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I swear she’s as fast as her father.”

“You look so spectacular,” Cormia said from behind him.

“Thanks.” Bella fiddled with the gown. “This is not my usual style, but—”

“It barely does you justice.” Zsadist came into the library, looking like a vicious version of Cary Grant. His tuxedo fit every tight line of his body and mostly hid the SIG under his arm.

He did the stern thing as he shook his finger at his daughter. “Now, are you going to be good for your uncle and your aumahne?”

Nalla nodded gravely, as if she had just agreed to assume leadership of the continental United States. “Yes, Daddy.”

Z’s smile pretty much lit up the galaxy. “That’s my girl.”

Nalla grinned and held out her arms. “Kisses, Daddy.”

Z took her for a hug, and then she was reaching for her mother.

“Okay,” Zsadist said, all business as he passed his daughter over to his shellan. “We’ll be at the Met until eleven. Then we’re having dinner back at Wrath’s place. I have my beeper, my cell phone, my BlackBerry—”

Phury clapped his twin on the shoulder. “Take a deep one, my brother. In with the good air.”

Zsadist did the best he could. “Right. I mean, I know you’ll be fine with her. I mean, you’ll be fine…you’re all going to be just fine—”

Phury checked his watch. “And you’re going to be late. You’ll be lucky to get there by the time the intermezzo starts.”

“I’m so excited,” Bella said, giving Nalla back to Phury. “Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. It’s going to be fantastic.”

“Assuming you can get your baby daddy out the house.” Phury gave his twin a little shake. “Go. Be with your shellan. It’s your anniversary, for God’s sake.”

They left the library about twenty minutes later. Maybe twenty-five.

Phury shook his head. “He’s got some serious separation issues, that one.”

“Oh, and you’re much better?”

Phury turned around. Cormia was on the couch, their sleeping son, Ahgony—or Aggie, as he was known—in her arms. The young’s fat fist was holding on to his mother’s thumb, as was his habit even when he was out like a light.

“I resemble that remark.”

“Story, Uncle?” Nalla said. “Please?”

“Of course, which would you like?” Even though he knew.

As he sat down on the couch next to Cormia, Nalla pointed to the book of fables he had made for her. “The one of the warrior.”

“Now, that’s a surprise.” He winked at Cormia. “Do you mean the one with the warrior and the maiden?”

“No, Uncle. T’other one.”

“The warrior and the ship.”

Nalla giggled. “No, Uncle!”

Phury nodded with grand seriousness. “Right. The warrior and the game of pinochle.”

Nalla looked confused. “What knuckle?”

Cormia laughed, her beautiful green stare so lovely Phury couldn’t look away. For a moment, he was struck once again by the fact that their son had his mother’s eyes, that incredible shade of spring leaves.

As Nalla squirmed, Cormia said, “Phury, don’t torture her.”

Phury settled his niece on his lap, kissed his shellan, and brushed the smooth cheek of his son. Then he opened the book and started to read in the Old Language.

“‘There once was a warrior strong of limb and stout of heart, who tarried in the woods upon a windy day…”

Aggie’s eyes opened and he let out the sound that young did when all was well with them, a kind of contented bubbly sigh. Phury recognized it well, because he’d heard it a lot from Nalla and now from Aggie. The sound was something they did when their bellies were full and their parents were right with them and a voice they found pleasing to the ear was embarking on a story.

As Phury lost the rhythm of his words, Cormia reached out and squeezed his hand.

She always knew, he thought. She always knew…She knew he was thinking of his parents and of his brother, of the past and the future, of hopes and dreams and fears.

She knew everything that was in his head and everything that was in his heart, and none of it put her off. She knew he worried about staying sober, even after all these years. And knew he was glad their son looked like her, because he took it as a sign that whatever biological link to addiction he carried might not have been passed on to the young. And she knew that he still struggled with feeling like he wasn’t doing enough for everyone around him.

She knew all of this and she loved him anyway.

He kissed the inside of her wrist and looked at the next generation. He hoped that life had only good things in store for the young, that the moonlit night would always be clear for them, and that the wind would always be gentle, and that their heart’s deepest love would be returned by a worthy mate.

But he knew it wasn’t going to be easy, and they would face challenges he couldn’t even imagine.

Here was the thing, though: He had faith in what he saw in those eyes of theirs. Because they came, on both sides, from survivors. And that, more than any guarantee of an easy life, was going to see them through.

Phury cleared his throat.

And kept on reading to them.

So those are just a few examples of what I’ve taken out. You’ll note there isn’t anything from Dark Lover, because Wrath’s manuscript was tight from the get-go—with only that scene I’ve posted on my Web site (www.jrward.com) being deleted. There isn’t much from Lover Eternal, because again, I used almost all of the Butch and Marissa material in Lover Revealed. Lover Unbound was likewise tight.

There are a couple more scenes in old files. It was so much fun rereading these, maybe someday I’ll go back and see what else I can find!