Title: Return
Series: Awakened
Fate (Book Three)
Genre: Young
Adult Paranormal Romance
Publication Date:
October 6, 2014
For Chloe, the ocean was supposed to mean safety and for a time, it almost did. She overcame the Sylphaen’s drugs. She discovered an unforeseen attraction to Zeke, one that he shares for her. A life underwater seemed possible, until she learned that nothing was as it appeared.
After an unspeakable betrayal shattered everything she thought she knew about Zeke’s world, she and Zeke have fled the ocean for the one place Chloe never expected to want to go.
Home.
But the challenge of living as a mermaid over a thousand miles from the ocean isn’t the only problem facing her. Home has changed. Enemies are waiting, ones she never saw coming. Her little Kansas town is full of surprises.
Including Noah, the guy she left behind.
Purchase:
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Other books in the Awakened Fate series
Awaken, book #1
Only 99¢!
Descend, book #2
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Excerpt
“…do it in Jeri’s old room.”
Earl’s words filtered through the
cotton stuffing in my head, barely making sense.
“Yeah, well, seemed fitting.” He
paused. “Listen, Richard, I called you as a courtesy, on account of how you
said one got away from you yesterday. But it took me an hour after the girl
collapsed to get the boy to finally conk out, and with that damn scum-sucker
metabolism of theirs, you know I can’t promise either of ‘em will be down for
long. You and your boys want any part of this, you better hurry up and get
here.”
Alarm struggled through me,
weighed down by an exhaustion that wanted to smother my mind back into sleep.
Scum-sucker? He…
“Hang on,” Earl said as though
interrupting someone. “One of them ain’t breathing the same as they were.”
My heart began to pound harder
while I fought to open my eyes. Breathing? He sounded so far away. How could he
hear anyone breathing?
Footsteps clunked on the hardwood
floor. Light pierced the blackness around me as I managed to lift my eyelids. I
was on the bed, facing the doorway. In the window seat, Zeke was slumped, his
head resting on the wall. The room was dark around us, though the hall light
was on.
Earl came to the door. In one
hand, he held a phone to his ear, and at the sight of me, he made an angry
noise.
“What’d I tell you? The girl’s
awake.”
He dropped the phone onto the
window seat as he strode toward me, and all my dull commands to my muscles
couldn’t make my body move. Striding past me, he retrieved something from the
dresser and then returned with a sports bottle in his hand.
I tried to pull away, but he just
reached down and grabbed my head from behind, lifting it toward him. With his
teeth, he popped open the top of the bottle and then shoved it into my mouth.
Bitter-tasting liquid flooded my
throat. I choked, the drink spewing from my lips, but he just dropped the
bottle and clamped an enormous hand over the lower half of my face.
“Swallow,” he ordered.
I stared up at him. His grip
tightened on my hair, tugging at my scalp.
“Now.”
Someone shouted angrily from the
tiny speaker of the cordless phone, their words indecipherable. Earl’s face
darkened and he glanced to the window seat.
Spikes crept from my forearms,
finally answering the frantic signals from my brain. As he turned back toward
me, I flopped my arm out like the dead weight it was, succeeding in catching
his side.
With a pained cry, he lurched
away, his hand leaving my mouth.
I spit the liquid out and
struggled backward, half-crawling and half-tumbling from the opposite side of
the bed.
“Zeke,” I croaked.
He didn’t move.
Earl made a furious noise while he
straightened, clutching at his side. Blood darkened his flannel shirt.
But he didn’t look startled. He
didn’t look surprised in the least by the tips of the iridescent knives
protruding from my skin.
“What…” I tried. “Why are you…”
He glanced from me to Zeke, and
then to the phone still laying on the window seat. Annoyance twisted his face.
He reached over, retrieving the bottle from the floor, and then he returned his
gaze to me.
Clutching the edge of the bed, I
trembled. “Please. I’m not your enemy.”
“Tell that to my daughter.”
My brow furrowed.
He started around the bed. I
scuttled backward, my legs still refusing to hold me, though the spikes
listened and grew longer. Half-sprawled on the floor with my back to the wall,
I lifted one of my arms in front of me like a shield.
Earl stopped.
“I don’t…” I managed, breathing
hard with the effort of keeping my arm up. “I don’t know your daughter.
Please.”
A snarl curled across his mouth.
“Please,” he repeated scornfully.
He kicked my legs, toppling me
sideways. His hand came down on my wrist, avoiding the spikes, and he twisted
it. I shrieked as pain shot through my arm. Dropping the bottle from his other
hand, he took my throat.
“Stab me again and I break your
neck right now,” he growled.
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About Skye
Skye Malone is a fantasy and paranormal romance author,
which means she spends most of her time not-quite-convinced that the things she
imagines couldn't actually exist.
Born and raised in central Illinois, she hopes someday to
travel the world – though in the meantime she’ll take any story that whisks her
off to a place where the fantastic lives inside the everyday. She loves strong
and passionate characters, complex villains, and satisfying endings that stay
with you long after the book is done. An inveterate writer, she can’t go a day
without getting her hands on a keyboard, and can usually be found typing away
while she listens to all the adventures unfolding in her head.
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Giveaway
