Title: Descendant

Author: L.E. Royal

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 10/11/2022

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Female

Length: 66100

Genre: Paranormal, LGBTQIA+, romance, paranormal, shifter, werewolf, bisexual, alpha, secret community, conspiracy

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Description

She was never his to claim, and men were never her type. Until Mikel.

Twenty-one-year-old Violet Page finds herself and her bad attitude kidnapped from her local sapphic club. When she’s subjected to a bizarre ritual gone wrong, Violet is saved at the last moment by an older man named Mikel Davis, and claimed as his. Violet struggles to understand her circumstances and the strange town of Forest Bluff—a hidden community of werewolf descendants where she’s apparently condemned to be bitten and mated by Mikel in order to join the pack.

Hoping to return to her younger sister, Violet is eager to escape, but as she spends more time with the mysterious but kind Mikel, despite their age gap, their attraction becomes a connection that can’t be denied. When she uncovers a dark secret regarding the alpha and her father, the mayor of her hometown, Violet and her friends land at odds with the corrupt leader. In a world unlike anything she’s ever known, can Violet help Mikel take his place in the pack, and will she find her own along the way?

Excerpt

Descendant
L.E. Royal © 2022
All Rights Reserved

“So, you’re like, a lesbian or something?”

The lights flashed. Violet turned from the bar, knowing who she’d find. The gray-eyed boy who’d been popping up all night stood beside her stool, one hand in his pocket, his friends not far behind.

“Listen, dipshit”—she smiled at him—“I’m just not interested. You can keep buying my drinks though, if you want.”

He was objectively attractive but forgettable, and he loved himself entirely too much. She snatched her drink off the bar—three fingers of whiskey on the rocks in a cool crystal tumbler that shone against her black nails in the club’s colored lights—and disappeared back into the crowd.

Hands touched her; fingers pressed the smooth leather of her jacket, grazed the rough black denim of her jeans and the smooth skin of her stomach, which was bare below her crop top. Violet gave herself over to it. The night had turned pleasantly soft at the edges three drinks ago, and it didn’t matter that the blonde she’d gone home with a few weeks earlier was pressed against her front, dark eyed and interested again. Violet smiled at her and moved with the music, shedding the weight of the week and reality as she went.

She lived in the haze. Everyone and nobody recognized the mayor’s eldest daughter. She was a regular in places like this, dressed too dark, too revealing, as her bad attitude clung to her like a stain.

“Hey—” Voices tried to interrupt. She brushed them off with a smirk or a middle finger, dancing just to feel eyes on her and to try to feel nothing at all.

When her momentum finally broke, she peeled a red-headed woman’s hands off her, eyed her appreciatively, and decided the redhead was a serious contender for this evening’s aftershow party, before she made a beeline for the exit.

Goose bumps pricked her skin in the cold November air that smelled like pine needles and failure. Frankston, New Hampshire, might as well be Nowhere, and for now, she was stuck here, thanks to Magnus.

It took two tries to light her cigarette, and when she did, Violet leaned back against the cool brick wall and watched the plume of smoke rise from her lips, toward the stars. It was a waxing moon, bright white-silver in a sooty, cloudless sky.

She jumped when something warm touched her collarbone and snapped her gaze down, and Violet was surprised to see gray eyes again, harder out here than they’d been under the lights. Danger, something far off said, and inside, she laughed.

“Woah, Craig. Warn a girl before you creep up all sneaky.” She smiled her best condescending smile.

“My name. Is not Craig,” he gritted out.

Violet shrugged and held out her cigarette for him to take a drag. The back of his knuckles connected with her fingers, fast, then the little white stick was rolling along the floor, and she was flexing her aching hand.

Danger, something insisted in the single breath of pause that followed. Mentally, she shrugged.

“Listen, psychopath,” she hissed, stepping forward into him and ignoring the prickle of foreboding as she realized they were alone, the music thrumming on inside without them. “I get it. You have a small dick, and your smaller feelings are hurt because I’m not fucking interested.” She reached forward to hold his chin, smiling up at him. “You’re not my type, Billy, I’m sorry. But we can be friends. You’re crazy and honestly, I can relate.”

It wasn’t unusual, the spite, condescension, and confidence that lived in her voice. Oil-black and slick like ink, it was armor. When his fist moved too quick to follow and slammed into the side of her head, it didn’t save her.

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Meet the Author

L.E. Royal is a British born fiction writer, living in Texas. She enjoys dark but redeemable characters, and twisted themes. Though she is a fan of happy endings, she would describe most of her work as fractured romance. When she is not writing, she is pursuing her dreams with her multi-champion Arabian show horses, or hanging out with her wife at their small ranch/accidental cat sanctuary.