Like I said, one scary dude.
Clouds moved in front of the sun, and the temperature dropped noticeably. I gestured to Ford that we were done. Wheeling left, he made one more pass in my grandfather’s line of sight, then soared away. Grandpa sighed in disappointment when the dark form that was Ford dipped below the shield of distant trees.
I released the brakes on the chair. “We’ve got to get you back. Loretta will be looking for you. Besides, I want you to meet my boyfriend. He’ll be here any minute.”
“How did you—” Grandpa began.
I squeezed his shoulder gently. “I told you. No questions.”
He looked back at me. “It really was a thunderbird, wasn’t it?”
“It was.” I pushed the wheelchair toward the paved path. “After all this time, we finally found our thunderbird.” My thunderbird.
Keep reading for an exclusive excerpt
The Night Owl and the Insomniac
By j. leigh bailey
A Shifter U Tale
Long nights lead to intrigue… and infatuation.
Chronically ill with a mysterious condition, Yusuf “Joey” Franke escapes his family’s and doctors’ smothering by moving halfway across the country to enroll in Cody College. Not long after arriving on campus, some of his symptoms disappear, only to be replaced by debilitating insomnia. Joey spends his nights wandering the halls of his dormitory and hanging out with Owen, the gregarious and affable night shift front desk monitor.
When he suddenly shifts from a sick college kid to a massive Asiatic lion, Joey discovers another side to Cody College—it’s a haven for shifters… like himself and Owen, a part-time great horned owl. And being a shifter is hereditary, which means his parents have some explaining to do.
When Joey and Owen investigate, they discover more than they bargained for—a family deception, a dangerous enemy with international connections, and a love that might be too new to survive the backlash.
Chapter 1
A ghost roamed the corridors of Matthison Hall every night.
Okay, maybe I wasn’t ghost, but I sure as hell wasn’t living. Not in any real sense. I was a shell of a human, lacking vitality. Lacking personality. Lacking… everything. I’d honestly thought escaping the sterile, nearly clinical existence of my parents’ house—not to mention their well-intentioned but completely overwhelming smothering—would change me. Not make me healthy; not that. I’d long given up any hope for medical science to advance enough to diagnose my encyclopedic collection of symptoms, let alone cure me.
I’d hoped going to college, living on my own, doing something normal for once in my miserable life would somehow actually make me normal. Here at Cody College I wouldn’t be surrounded, monitored, coddled. I wouldn’t be pricked, prodded, and tested on a daily—sometimes hourly—basis. There would be no more experimental treatments, no more carefully designed diet plans. I was twenty-one, for crying out loud. It was time to live my life on my terms, even if those terms went against medical and parental advice.
By God, if I wanted to eat donuts and pizza at three in the morning, then that was exactly what I’d do.
That particular stride toward independence ended up being a disappointment. Turned out pizza gave me heartburn and donuts made me queasy.
Such was my life.
Instead of celebrating my junk food rebellion, 3:00 a.m. found me drifting through the halls for the tenth night in a row.
Freaking insomnia.
It was bad enough I couldn’t easily fall asleep, but the jittery restlessness that came with it made it impossible to even sit still. So instead of going stir-crazy, trapped in the painted cinder block walls of my dorm room, I prowled the residence hall with little faith I’d eventually tire and pass out.
The worst part was, other than the insomnia, I felt better than I had in years. Maybe it was the fresh mountain air, but the debilitating headaches I’d suffered from for as long as I could remember had become less frequent. My body temperature always ran a little high, but there’d been no dangerous fever spikes in the last two weeks. If it wasn’t for the twitchy restlessness and the onset of insomnia, I’d have thought I’d finally found an effective therapy.
I pushed into the main lobby, starting to count. It was exactly ninety-seven steps from the entrance of the south wing to the entrance of the north wing. I didn’t pay much attention to my surroundings, as I’d made this same trek through the building every night for almost two weeks. Either my physical exhaustion had caused my vision to blur, or a new and less-than-exciting symptom had joined the Medical Mystery Tour that was my life. Or it might have been complacency or obliviousness. Whatever it was, one moment I skirted the bank of student mailboxes on my left, the next I lay sprawling on my back, staring up at the boring beige ceiling tiles.
The squeak of rubber on marble told me I wasn’t alone. “Holy shit. Dude, are you okay?”
I closed my eyes. I wasn’t hurt. In fact, my landing had been relatively smooth, rather like a runner sliding into home on a Slip ’N Slide covered in Jell-O. Speaking of Slip ’N Slide, water seeped through my flannel pajama bottoms. Ick.
“What happened? Didn’t you see the sign?” The voice, a surprisingly deep voice, wrapped around me like campfire smoke at midnight. The body accompanying the voice dropped next to me. “Careful,” the guy said, pressing a hand into my chest as I tried to sit up again. “We should make sure you’re okay before you move.”
I held my breath at the warmth building at the point of contact between his skin and mine. The thin cotton of my shirt wasn’t much of a barrier between us.
It had been so long, years really, since anyone had touched me without the protective layer of vinyl medical gloves. I wanted to press into the touch, to prolong it.
But I couldn’t stay here, lounging in… who knew what.
“I’m so sorry. I was watering the plants and got a little carried away with this one. I made a bit of a mess, as you can see, and I had to get the mop. The Wet Floor sign was behind the desk, but I had to go to the supply closet to get the mop.” His words all rushed together, to the point I wasn’t convinced he breathed enough to get them out. Lack of breath clearly didn’t stop him, though. “I was only gone for a minute, and I didn’t think anyone would be running around at this time of night. At least not on a Tuesday. If it had been a Friday or Saturday, I’d have been more careful.”
“I’m fine,” I said to cut off the barrage of words. After taking a mental inventory, I admitted I really was okay. I brushed aside the hand still pressed to my chest and pushed myself into a sitting position. Part of me really didn’t want to break the connection. It felt like the touch, simple as it was, started to fill in the hollow places in my body.
The damn insomnia was making me loopy.
Then I looked up and nearly fell back again.
I’d seen him before. More often than not he manned the front desk of the dormitory during the overnight shift. But none of my midnight wanderings had gotten me close enough to catch those amazing eyes. They were large and round and somehow filled his face in a way reminiscent of an anime character. And they glowed. Well, not glowed, but the irises were the brightest amber—almost yellow—color I’d ever seen on a person. They were, in a word, incredible.
J. LEIGH BAILEY is an office drone by day and romance author by night. She can usually be found with her nose in a book or pressed up against her computer monitor. A book-a-day reading habit sometimes gets in the way of… well, everything… but some habits aren’t worth breaking. She’s been reading romance novels since she was ten years old. The last twenty years or so have not changed her voracious appetite for stories of romance, relationships, and achieving that vitally important Happily Ever After. She’s a firm believer that everyone, no matter their gender, age, sexual orientation, or paranormal affiliation, deserves a happy ending.
She wrote her first story at seven which was, unbeknownst to her at the time, a charming piece of fan fiction in which Superm
an battled (and defeated, of course) the nefarious X Luther. (She was quite put out to be told later that the character’s name was supposed to be Lex.) Her second masterpiece should have been a bestseller, but the action-packed tale of rescuing her little brother from an alligator attack in the marshes of Florida collected dust for years under the bed instead of gaining critical acclaim.
Now she writes about boys traversing the crazy world of love, relationships, and acceptance. Find out more at www.jleighbailey.net or email her at [email protected].
By j. leigh bailey
DREAMSPUN BEYOND
SHIFTER U
#3 – Stalking Buffalo Bill
#13 – Chasing Thunderbird
Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS
www.dreamspinnerpres.com
Coming in March 2018
Dreamspun Beyond #15
Rome and Jules by Tara Lain
Two werewolf households, both alike in dignity….
Rome Siracusa, youngest son of the alpha of the nouveau-riche Siracusa pack, wants to be a faithful son and pack member, but he’s got two big secrets. One, he’s blessed with enhanced hearing, vision, strength, and the ability to shift at will. Second, he’s gay, a fact he can’t admit to his deadly homophobic father.
Rome crashes a party at the mansion of his pack’s greatest enemy, the ancient, pure-blooded Havillands. Jules, the gay son of the drunkard alpha, is being married off to a rich entrepreneur. Smitten and moved by the beautiful male’s plight, Rome tries to find a way to save Jules—while digging himself deeper into pack politics and navigating his own arranged marriage. Secrets climb out of the caves as the werewolf gods speak through the mouths of their children, and the two great families clash, suffocating the hopes of star-crossed lovers.
Dreamspun Beyond #16
Mage of Inconvenience by Parker Foye
Can they find the magic in a practical union?
West is on the run from his werewolf pack, but if he cannot renew his magical defenses, he won’t get far. What he needs is a mage….
Julian is part of a wealthy and ancient family, and one day, his legacy will include his mother’s vast library of spell books—and the knowledge he needs to correct his past mistakes. But his inheritance comes with a stipulation: he has to be married before he can collect. What he needs is a husband….
West and Julian can help each other, and at first they don’t want anything further. But as they dodge meddling cousins, jealous rivals, and an insidious drug, it becomes clear that their lives are entwined in ways they never imagined—and they’re in greater danger than they thought possible.
Coming Soon to
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Published by
DREAMSPINNER PRESS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Chasing Thunderbird
© 2018 j. leigh bailey.
Cover Art
© 2018 Aaron Anderson.
[email protected]
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dreamspinnerpress.com.
Digital ISBN: 978-1-64080-112-7
Mass Market Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64108-032-3
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2017948533
Digital published February 2018
v. 1.0
Printed in the United States of America
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