by Cara Wylde
(Alma Venus Shifter Brides #0.5)
Publication date: March 31st 2021
Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Romance
The war between humans and shapeshifters must end. There has been too much bloodshed, and it’s time for the factions to sign a peace treaty. But there is one man, one wolf warrior, who does not want peace. Not even when humans would be forced to provide shifters with brides to bear them heirs. Ruarc Bloodmoon is not interested in a willing human bride. All he wants is power.
Alma is the only daughter of the future representative of the human faction, and she is ready to sacrifice herself to keep her loved ones safe. Ruarc will listen to no one and negotiate with no one, but maybe he will, if she offers herself to him. If she becomes the first shifter bride in history, maybe he will finally see that peace is the only way for humans and shifters to move forward.
Note from the author: This is a prequel to the Alma Venus Shifter-Brides series, which currently has four completed novels and various bonus novellas available on Amazon. The series is complete, and ready for you to devour.
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Excerpt:
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“What?” She must have heard him wrong. There was no way Ruarc Bloodmoon had just said he was sorry.
“I’m sorry for what my brother did to you. I never thought he would...” He shook his head. “I never thought any of them would...”
She huffed, regaining some of her courage. “I told you they were all treating me badly. You ignored me.”
“I didn’t think it would come to this. Having a human in our midst is new to us.”
“But your kind kidnaps female women and impregnates them all the time!”
“Not Clan Bloodmoon.”
She looked at him with wide eyes. “But you said... I mean, you keep saying, over and over, that you’ll just take what you want. That you don’t need a clause in a peace treaty to provide you and your kind with human brides, because you’ll just... take them.”
“And I didn’t lie. It’s true, technically, and many wolf clans have done that already, many bear clans, dragon clans, fox clans... But not Clan Bloodmoon.”
“Why?”
His jaw tightened. He was silent, and Alma understood this was a touchy subject for him. There was a reason, and that reason was probably something big. Quickly, she debated with herself whether it was a good idea to press on and make him tell her, or whether it might’ve been smarter to let it go and wait for him to be ready. She was leaning toward the second option, but then Ruarc pulled at a strip of fabric rather harshly, and her whole back tensed at the pain that shot through her muscles. On second thought, today had been tough, and she deserved an explanation.
“You owe me this,” she said in a firm tone. “You owe me the truth. I’m here, I’m yours, I’m at the mercy of your clan and your packs, so I deserve to know what I’ve gotten myself into.” She fixed him with her gaze, and to her relief, he didn’t look away. “I deserve to know who you are, Ruarc Bloodmoon. We’ll share a bed sooner or later, and you’ll plant pups in my belly. You owe me this.”
He sighed heavily. As he kept peeling her dress, revealing creamy inches of skin that were, unfortunately, covered in blood and dirt, he finally opened his heart to her.
“My mother was human. Our mother, since she gave birth to me, Klaus, and Norbert, and they are twins. She didn’t live long after she brought them into the world. Pushing out two wolf pups one after the other took a great toll on her weak, human body. She died soon after, and Delphine raised us with the help of the clan. My father kind of checked out after that. Even though he’d kidnapped my mother and forced her to be his bride, he’d loved her, and she’d come to love him. They weren’t together for long, since she got pregnant with me in their first year together, and as you probably know, the gestation period of a wolf pup is shorter than a human baby’s. Then, when I was two years old, she got pregnant again. So, I only got to spend the first two years of my life with her. I barely remember her now. I was too little.”
When he fell silent again, Alma hung her head. “I’m sorry.”
“Humans are fragile. They break too easily. That’s why neither I, nor my brothers have ever been interested in taking human brides. That’s why I, personally, don’t need that peace treaty they’ve been negotiating for weeks. Power, that’s all I need. To live my life without having to respect ridiculous rules. I want to be free, and I want my wolves to be free. And if the males in my clan want to take human wives, that’s their business, and I don’t care how they go about it. After all, my father stole my mother from her parents’ yard, and they were happy in the end.”
“She didn’t have a choice.”
About the Author:
Cara Wylde loves to write about strong, feisty women and their hot Alphas who will do anything to make them happy. Her books are filled with romance and just a dash of mystery, suspense, and that eerie atmosphere she fell in love with reading too many gothic novels. With a master's degree in Comparative Literature, she can't help but play with tropes and themes from various genres, trying to come up with fresh perspectives on the paranormal characters her readers love so much. Vampires, shapeshifters, demons, witches... Cara will always make sure they get their own twists.
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