The Thread
Prologue for A Pack Forms, Volume 1 in the Draoithe Saga
Meet Luke and Eli before they meet one another. Both have secrets they don’t want to share.
He agonizes over how to introduce himself. She’s finished with men controlling her life. Both have pasts that make everything complicated.
Can he overcome his anxiety? Can she trust a man?
The Draoithe Saga
Steamy hot, wickedly delicious steamy urban fantasy and paranormal romance tales set in a dream to live for. Draoithe is a place where myths, legends, and fairytales walk unmolested among the strange and wonderful, where finding a life mate brings balance, and where the magic from the past lives again! Welcome to the dream...
Steamy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Stories with Fated Mates 18+ HEA! NC!
***Warning: Adult Themes, Fantasy Violence, and/or Explicit Sexual Situations. Intended for a Mature Audience.
Excerpt
1 Eli Miller
Summer of 2013
Sometimes a girl just had to do what a girl had to do. It was simply time to move out of El Paso. She’d waited long enough to put the wheels in motion on getting a new start.
It likely wouldn’t happen overnight. It did have to happen, eventually. A trip was the first step along that journey. She had the money she needed. There’d never be a better time to buy her dream house in the forest of East Texas.
Eli wanted to see a bit of the town of Tyler and its inhabitants. Maybe she’d get a chance to take some pictures.
She’d been to Tyler a couple of times in the past. It was just big enough to offer her what she needed as far as employment and city life went, and just small enough that she could get away from all of that as well.
Her realtors had lined up quite a few prospective properties for her to look at. Surely one of them would be the right one.
The realtor team who offered to show her the houses was willing to work around her crazy long-distance relocation needs. Her financing was all in place. She hoped it was enough to get what she needed.
She drove straight into the downtown area. The old bricked streets were quaint. The quirkiness of old-world charm meeting present-day travel needs appealed to her.
Eli parked, plucked a loose thread from the lapel on her blouse, and twirled it between her thumb and forefinger before letting it fly away on the light breeze. She walked around the old downtown and took pictures of the skyscrapers, the square, and the old churches. After the long drive, she needed to move around a bit to get rid of the stiffness.
She found herself some dinner and got hit on which was flattering. He was handsome, not her type, and probably a bit too young.
She flirted with him under a false name for a bit. She wasn’t staying and felt that leading the man on was wrong.
Eli politely let him off easy and skipped out of the restaurant. She’d already paid for her meal before handsome showed up.
The last thing she needed was to go from one failed relationship to another. It was time she focused on Eli Miller for a change.
After dinner, she located her hotel and checked in. For the first time in a very long time, she was truly alone. She’d traveled by herself. The relationship between herself and her children’s father had soured to a point where she’d just needed an escape.
Catching Javier cheating seriously wounded her heart. The constant going out, partying, and staying gone whole weekends had ruined it all long before that. The cheating had led to ugly fighting, bickering, and so much tension between them that neither of them spoke often with one another even though they occupied the same residence as her house had been rented out.
The forest of East Texas with the towering pines interspersed with maple, oak, sweet gum, poplar, and other deciduous trees made the tiger inside want to purr. She could roam the forest at her leisure.
Eli could almost feel the dappled light of the shadowed forest floor and smell the leaf litter as it moved beneath her clawed paws. That appealed to her far more than any offer any man might make to her at the moment. Her tiger didn’t like the desert.
Eli shivered with unrestrained delight at the prospect of finally being able to regain her freedom and start her life over in a place as beautiful as Tyler. The next week was going to be great.
