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Ana froze.
She heard Ian’s unspoken message—the potential that there were things she might want him to do. His eyes told her as much, seeing her absorb the meaning, confirming it—smiling just there at the corner of his mouth.
Run away. Run fast.
Run to safety, where the flush of her awareness wouldn’t expand into a flush of wanting—of wondering what it would be like to be touched by such strength and consideration. As if this man might just give back as much as he received.
Ana took a sharp breath, using it to slap herself back to reality. There would be no running, no matter how smart it would be.
DORANNA DURGIN spent her childhood filling notebooks first with stories and art, and then with novels. She now has over fifteen novels spanning an array of eclectic genres, including paranormal romance, on the shelves. When she’s not writing, Doranna builds web pages, enjoys photography and works with horses and dogs. You can find a complete list of her titles at doranna.net.
Sentinels:
Leopard
Enchanted
Doranna Durgin
The Sentinels
Long ago and far away, in Roman/Gaulish days, one woman had a tumultuous life—she fell in love with a druid, by whom she had a son. The man was killed by Romans. She was subsequently taken into the household of a Roman, who fathered her second son. The druid’s son turned out to be a man of many talents, including the occasional ability to shape-shift into a wild boar, albeit at great cost.
The woman’s younger son, who considered himself superior in all ways, had none of these earthly powers and went hunting to find ways to be impressive and acquire power. He justified his various activities by claiming he needed to protect the area from his brother, who had too much power to go unchecked … but in the end, it was his brother’s family who grew into the Vigilia, now known as the Sentinels, while the younger son founded what turned into the vile Atrum Core …
Contents
Ana Dikau saw him before anyone else did.
The rest of the Atrum Core team crouched behind a camo blind in the pines uphill of the narrow, rocky trail, watching the camera feeds on a laptop encased in a rugged military shell. The wireless cameras pointed down along the trail, one of the less popular tracts of New Mexico’s high, looming Sangre de Cristo mountains.
But Ana watched the trail itself, and she saw Ian Scott first—a shock of bright silvered hair, long and spiky and pretty much unreal in the perfection of its fall across his forehead. Crazy lean features and cheekbones to match his jaw, a rangy body to match his face, and a way of moving that made her feel quiet and small and very much like prey—a flush of warmth and awareness.
Then again, she had practice at feeling like prey. And she was far too aware of this man’s Sentinel nature. The fact that he was so much more than human.
Snow leopard.
Walking into an Atrum Core trap.
Not to capture him—they knew better than that. There were far too many strictures between the Core septs prince and the Sentinel consul, between their factions as a whole. Direct action meant trouble. Even indirect action such as that they were about to undertake...
