by Zoe Chant
Handcuffed to the Bear (Shifter Agents # 1), by Lauren Esker. A bear-shifter ex-mercenary and a curvy lynx shifter searching for her best friend's killer are handcuffed together and hunted in the wilderness. Can they learn to rely on each other before their pasts, and their pursuers, catch up with them? A full-length novel.
Keeping Her Pride (Ladies of the Pack # 1), by Lauren Esker. Down-and-out lioness shifter Debi Fallon never meant to fall in love with a human. Sexy architect and single dad Fletcher Briggs has his hands full with his adorable 4-year-old… who turns into a tiny, deadly snake. Can two ambitious people overcome their pride and prejudice enough to realize the only thing missing from their lives is each other?
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, by Lauren Esker. Curvy farm girl Julie Capshaw was warned away from the wolf shifters next door, but Damon Wolfe is the motorcycle-riding, smoking hot alpha of her dreams. Can the big bad wolf and his sheep shifter find their own happy ending? A full-length novel.
The Christmas Tree Bear, by Rosie Lynne. Bear shifter Willis Barnett meets his fated match in Charlotte Caldwell when she hopes to earn extra money as Santa Helper’s on Willis’ family farm turned Christmas Tree Town for the holidays. A romantic comedy novella.
The Strength of the Pack, by Jorrie Spencer. Seth Kolski, a werewolf, hides his heritage and passes for normal. Until he meets Jamie. A full-length novel.
Taming the Beast, by Honey Dover. Beauty is a paranormal investigator hired to deal with a man cursed to become a monstrous beast. Helping him recover his humanity will change her life. A novelette.
Claimed by the Wolf, by Candi Jackson. Zenobia Jones ends up pregnant after a night with a billionaire—and lands herself in a war between werewolf packs. A full-length novel.
The Right Bear's Arms, by Nora Eli. After a sizzling one night stand with bear shifter Jake, curvy Katie realizes her perfect man is everything she's tried to avoid. If they can both stop running from their pasts, they may find a destined future together. A novelette.
Discovering the Dragon, by Sofia Stone. When reporter Chloe Martin investigates Lancaster Gold, she finds herself tangled up with the oldest son—Isaac Lancaster, billionaire dragon shifter. A novelette.
Special Sneak Preview - Tropical Dragon Diver
Shifting Sands Resort, Book 5
Chapter 1
The last notes of her song were fading out of the room as Saina rose carefully from the foot of the bed.
The man at the other end of the bed remained still, one arm flung back on his pillow as he drooled on it. Saina nudged him with a finger and decided with relief he would probably sleep for a while. Her lullaby had done its work, and he’d fallen asleep without laying one greasy finger on her.
If she was lucky, he’d be snoring for a few hours, and wake up not the slightest bit wiser for his little nap, every memory of Saina and her music nothing more than a distant fantasy. She gathered the skimpy dressing gown around her shoulders and drew in a breath.
It was a big room, for a boat, but it wasn’t big enough to hide much in. The safe in the closet gave her a moment of pause, but she knew that what she was really after wouldn’t fit in the shoebox-sized compartment, so she continued her hunt until she found the suitcase under the bunk. It was locked, but too ridiculously heavy for its size to be clothing. The handcuff hanging open off the handle made Saina certain this was her goal.
She slipped her hairpin kit out of her dark, upswept hair and wriggled it into the lock, grateful that it wasn’t a digital system. A few careful movements, listening diligently, and the tumblers fell away and clicked open. Saina unsnapped the clasps and tipped the lid back to expose bricks of pale gray, plastic-wrapped, just as it had been described.
This was it.
She sat back on her heels. She hated this whole job, every part of it was distasteful and wrong, even if the people on this yacht were all low-life smugglers who deserved no better. But her directions had been very specific and her Voice… her Voice needed her. No one else was going to come to her rescue, so it was up to Saina.
She went to the closet and got the lurid pink carry-on she had bought the week before, emptying its contents on the floor.
The bricks all but filled it, leaving room for one dress smashed on top, and her evening purse with her phone and makeup. The rest of the clothing, she stuffed into the handcuffed suitcase, shoving what was left to the very back of the closet.
Saina paused at the doorway and cracked the door, and was glad to see that the short hallway was empty. Sounds of carousing still came from the lounge towards the bow of the yacht, and she crept down the stairs towards the stern, pulling the luggage behind her as quietly as she could manage.
Two guards were standing outside the door out onto the back deck, smoking cigarettes and talking loudly.
Saina observed them through the windows, and looked past them to the dinghy tied along the side of the boat. It was pitch black out, in the very early hours of the morning. The tropical air was warm and thick with humidity. She suspected that a storm was coming.
Saina chewed on her cheek for a moment, considering her options. There weren’t many. She sighed, sucked her breath in, loosened her dressing gown, and sauntered out of the door like she owned it.
Her appearance arrested their conversation, and she heaved a dramatic sigh, nearly upsetting her breasts out of the skimpy lingerie she was wearing. “Good evening, boys,” she sing-songed.
“It’s that lounge singer Anders picked up at Jaco yesterday,” one of them recognized.
“And what a bore that guy was,” Saina said, giving them both appraising looks. Anders hadn’t gotten anything more from her than a nap, but they wouldn’t know that. She put one hand on her round hip and inspected her fingernails on the other.
They stared, cigarettes hanging at the edges of their mouths, before exchanging looks. Saina immediately dubbed them Skeptical and Hopeful in her head, based on their expressions.
Skeptical eyed her overloaded rolling luggage curiously, while Hopeful couldn’t stop staring at the cleavage spilling out of the frilly little number she was wearing. Saina turned her attention on Skeptical, humming lightly under her breath.
“You looking to give us a little private show?” Hopeful suggested gleefully.
Saina answered with a few bars of an appropriate pop song:
“Are you looking
For a good time?
Have you got yourself
A thin dime?”
By the time she hit the second chorus, they were both swaying in place, the smile on Skeptical’s face as broad and entranced as Hopeful’s.
She kept singing as she went to work, persuading them with her song that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. There was nothing to see, they were simply lost in a simple fantasy of their own imagination. It would have been easier to simply drown them than to keep singing, like any one of her sisters would have, but Saina couldn’t bring herself to do that.
Not even to drug-running scumbag mercenaries like this.
She pulled the pink bag behind her to the stern of the ship and lifted the cowling off the inboard motor. It took only a few strong yanks to disconnect the fuel and easy-to-reach electronics, and Saina used a fire extinguisher to dent the ignition mechanism so it wouldn’t be an easy fix. The last thing she wanted was for them to be able to follow her. A glance showed that the disruptions to her song as she worked hadn’t broken the spell over Skeptical and Hopeful, but she knew she didn’t have much time or breath left.
Hauling the dinghy down from its rack and getting it over the side of the boat was a Herculean task, and Saina wished, not for the first time, that sensible shoes fit with the image she was trying to attain.
The dinghy splashed into the water, and Saina struggled to get the heavy luggage over after it, her song stuttering with the effort.
Then, as she drew in a breath to get Skeptical and Hopeful back on track, her luck ran out.
On the deck above, there was a sudden shout and Saina looked up i
n alarm to spot another guard, this one with a girl hanging on his arm, dressed much as she was and looking vacant and tipsy.
Saina weighed her options. She wasn’t sure that she could enspell the guard before others came to his alarm cry, and she wasn’t sure how many more she would be able to sing insensible - she’d already spent more of her energy than she anticipated. Instead of standing her ground, she kicked off her heels and vaulted over the edge of the boat into the wobbly dinghy. She flipped out the choke and yanked the tiny outboard to life.
The guard’s shouts intensified, and Saina heard others answer. Hopeful and Skeptical shook off the last of her song in confusion. Frantically, she pointed the dinghy away from the yacht and kicked it up to high gear, cursing its powerless motor and slow speed.
Still, the yacht and the shouting began to drop away in the darkness behind her, and Saina breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe she would actually get away with this. Maybe…
Distant shots fired and bullets shattered the air around her. Saina dived to the bottom of the inflatable boat, covering her head and biting her lip against her cries of fear as they blasted around her for a length of time that seemed impossibly long. They couldn’t see her in the darkness, so the shots were wild, and she knew that was her only saving grace. As it was, the boat lurched sickeningly and she knew it had been hit. She could only hope that it had multiple floatation pockets, and that what hadn’t been compromised was enough to keep her afloat until she could get somewhere safe.
The motor hummed blissfully on, pushing her further and further away from the disabled yacht, and the shots became more and sporadic as the shouts got more distant. Saina’s cries of fear turned to sobs of pathetic relief as she thought she might escape with her life.
She crouched again, leaning to one side as the boat, clearly deflating on the other side, tipped and sagged. She scanned the water ahead, hopeful for lights, but saw nothing.
Behind her, another few shots rang out, and she was driven forward, nearly out of the boat, as pain and fire bloomed to one side of her back.
Bastian drew in a deep breath of salty air. It was already windy, and he could smell the storm that was coming, though the sky above was still clear and sunny.
A sensible dragon would be taking cover, going to ground while the winds were too high to fly in. It was the sort of day to curl in one’s hoard and count precious things, while the weather became wet and unfriendly.
But Bastian was no kind of sensible dragon.
In human form, he passed the empty pool deck, double-checking that the lounge chairs had all been secured and the towel cabinets were shut and latched. The bottles of sunscreen and lotion had all been stashed away, and the kickboards and pool floats were all behind doors. The sign declaring no lifeguard was on duty was already up, flapping noisily in the rising wind. Bastian grinned at it. A storm, rare here, meant a day off, and he was going to make the most of it.
He walked along the strangely bare deck. The few guests, like dragons, would be tucked away in their safe cottages, avoiding the wind and weather. As for the other staff, Bastian had no idea where they were, but he was just as glad not to encounter them and have to explain where he was going.
The steps down to the beach were littered with loose sand and Bastian shifted as he walked down them. One step was a sandaled foot, the next, a claw that spanned three of the white concrete steps. He may not be the largest dragon from his family, but he was far from the smallest. His scales gleamed green and gold, faceted like jewels.
Bastian paused at the lifeguard tower, taking a moment to appreciate the familiar view. The beach swept to either side, white sand stretching to meet sapphire water. The little beach bar was shuttered up, all the chairs safely inside. The dock was empty; the resort owner, Scarlet, had not replaced the boat that had been destroyed the week before.
He swiveled his head to look behind him. He was tall enough in dragon form to look easily onto the tiled pool deck, a useful trait as a lifeguard that enabled him to watch both swimming areas. Above the pool deck, the vacant bar deck looked down, and above that the restaurant deck. The steep structure of the Costa Rican island meant the resort was built in tiers, and it gleamed white in the sun.
The palm trees framing the pool were beginning to whip in the building wind, and Bastian could see the dark clouds beginning to gather behind the crest of the hill above him.
A dragon face wasn’t arranged for grinning, but Bastian’s inner human certainly was.
He had the day for himself.
He had the wide ocean for himself.
He walked down by the dock, where the ocean fell away more quickly than the swimming and sunbathing area and he could wade in and begin swimming almost at once.
At first, the swimming was awkward, clawed feet and powerful legs were not arranged for paddling, and wings, even tucked tightly against his side, dragged on the waves and wind.
Then Bastian sucked in a deep breath and dived, pulling all his limbs against his body and letting his massive tail propel him fully under.
No longer divided between air and ocean, he cut through the water as if he’d been born there, not a creature of fire, but of saltwater.
He had to surface near the breakwater; it grew too shallow there to stay beneath the waves, and he climbed over the rocks and paused, shaking water droplets off his big head and spreading his massive wings before he tucked them against his body again and returned to the element he preferred.
Fish scattered before him, and a pod of dolphins gave him wide berth, but Bastian paid them no mind. His human had eaten well from the resort kitchen and he had no need for legless prey this fine morning.
He was on a different kind of hunt, instead, and as he drifted along the sandy ocean floor, still holding his breath, he closed his eyes and let other senses take over.
At first, there was nothing, then, like distant musical notes, he felt the first tingle of treasure.
His lungs cried out for air, and Bastian oriented himself and returned to the surface to refill. However he loved the water, he still required air, like any dragon.
He dived down in the direction of the pull once he had sucked in a big breath.
The bit of treasure gave itself easily up to his big claws, digging down through the deep sand, and Bastian did a lightning fast shift so he could tuck it into his human form’s belt pouch and shift back before he opened his senses to the next one.
Each time he returned to the surface for air, the waves and wind were rougher and rougher, once even breaking directly into his face as he was sucking in his breath.
He coughed and sputtered, thinking wryly that his family would feel vindicated if he died by drowning. That alone made him stubbornly decide to stay out in the storm. He floated at the surface, bobbing on the giant swells as he refilled his lungs and prepared to dive again.
A sudden wave of treasure sense broke over him more strongly than the wave of saltwater had. It dwarfed the little tingles that had called him earlier, and Bastian almost swamped himself responding to it.
There was a shark, he realized, as he dove back into the water, then he was surprised to sense another through the waves, until he realized that beneath the treasure sense was something else: blood.
He was not quite as fast as a shark, but Bastian put every ounce of his swimming strength into cutting the distance between his goal and himself.
By the time he got there, swimming up from beneath, there were three sharks circling what Bastian realized was a half-deflated dinghy, adrift without power and reeking of treasure and the iron tang of blood.
He could not roar underwater, nor flame the sharks, but he could growl, and the water took the vibrations of his claim to the interlopers.
The sharks circled one last time in confusion, then retreated some distance, continuing to swirl just out of his reach.
Bastian had no interest in them, and considered them no threat. Even without flame, he was a dragon, many times their size and strength, and
no stranger to the ocean. He had claws like swords, and his jewel-faceted scales were solid protection against their teeth.
He surfaced to inspect his spoils, refilling his lungs.
The sad, wilted dinghy had clearly taken a beating, and it was being tossed on the wild waves, making it difficult to get close. Bastian’s treasure sense was threatening to overwhelm him. There was something precious and rare here.
When a wave washed over the dinghy, sloshing into the bed of the boat and what lay there, instinct made Bastian open his mouth and challenge the ocean itself with a roar. This was his, his treasure, his to crown his hoard with.
The uncaring ocean answered by slapping another wave at him, driving the half-limp boat up against his chest.
Finally, Bastian could look into the boat itself, and he dismissed the lurid pink suitcase that was deforming the bottom of the boat without a second thought; his treasure was not in the heavy luggage. It was the figure, a limp woman wearing something flimsy and soaking wet, plastered to every lush curve. Her long dark hair was loose around her shoulders like a cloak. She was face-down in the boat, barely breathing, and even in the storm-dark, Bastian could see that blood had dyed the water in the boat dark crimson.
He carefully rolled her over, using a dragon claw like a surgical tool, and her face was the most beautiful golden color that he had ever seen.
This is our mate, he realized in wonder.
His human added anxiously, She’s been shot!
Bastian could see that she had a wound, still oozing sharp-smelling blood, just above her heart. His human was alarmed at the amount of the blood she must have lost so far, but Bastian only knew that she was every treasure he had ever sought, and that he must take her safely to his hoard and give her everything that he had.
Another wave threatened to rip the sinking boat away from him, just as the clouds above opened up and began to drench them in rain.