Metamorphosis by Jennifer Carole Lewis
Publication date: February 2016
Genres: New Adult, Paranormal Romance
Cover designed by Streetlight Graphics
Ron McBride thought his life couldn’t possibly get any worse. He’s been physically transformed, hunted across most of North America and is haunted by the failures of his past. Now it looks like he’s about to die in the Canadian wilderness.
When he wakes up in the tiny community of Bear Claw, he thinks he’s died and gone to heaven. Particularly when he meets Lily Charging Bull, a beautiful young woman whose family runs almost everything. But there’s a reason why no one has found Bear Claw before.
Lily and her family are skinwalkers, able to shift between human and animal form. For generations, they’ve protected the lalassu who can’t blend easily with human society, often lethally. The question is, will they offer Ron sanctuary or will he vanish like last year’s snow?
When he wakes up in the tiny community of Bear Claw, he thinks he’s died and gone to heaven. Particularly when he meets Lily Charging Bull, a beautiful young woman whose family runs almost everything. But there’s a reason why no one has found Bear Claw before.
Lily and her family are skinwalkers, able to shift between human and animal form. For generations, they’ve protected the lalassu who can’t blend easily with human society, often lethally. The question is, will they offer Ron sanctuary or will he vanish like last year’s snow?
Goodreads:
EXCERPT
Chapter One
Snow’s ethereal silvery beauty was best appreciated by
someone who wasn’t having to slog through it, Ron McBride decided, pushing his
way through clinging white drifts. Halloween might be a few weeks away but this
far north, winter already had a solid grip. Light-headed and dizzy, he shook
his head against the illusion of the dark trees merging with the sky, forming a
cage around him.
Without the strength of his enhanced muscles, this
cross-country detour would have dropped him hours ago. As it was, he began to
wonder if he’d made a fatal mistake. Hell of a thing if his paranoia ended up
killing him.
Four months of running. Four months of carrying the
burden which weighed down his jacket pocket. Never staying in any one place for
more than a few days. Always making his way further north and west, searching
for the tiny community Virginia Harris had told him about. He’d already learned
the fine art of scrounging for cash-only day labor but after his captivity he
needed to be extra careful. It was too easy to accidentally lift more than he
should have been able to or move faster than human reflexes allowed. People
noticed and then he had to leave quickly before his hunters showed up on his
trail.
He’d been moving steadily, trying to fulfill a promise
with little more than one name which didn’t appear on any maps and another name
which had been an alias. He’d been forced to try and research both without
drawing any attention to himself. All he could do is keep moving forward and
hoping that he would eventually find someone who would recognize one or the
other. He was exhausted, worn out from constantly being on edge. He’d had a few
lapses, blackouts which ended with mad scrambles to escape. Just a few days to rest. If he could get
them, maybe he could finally start planning rather than reacting. Find a way to
fulfill his promise and then find a way home.
Yesterday, he’d hitched a ride with a trucker who’d
promised to take him to one of the remote supply towns in northern Canada, near
the Alaska border. Ron couldn’t even remember the name through the fatigue fog
drowning his brain. It had been lost but he did remember the man at the rest
stop, poking at the collection of sunglasses, candy and toiletries under the
harsh fluorescent lights. The one dressed in plaid and jeans, with a baseball
cap pulled low over his features. There had been a jarring addition to the
traditional trucker uniform. Expensive leather boots.
He didn’t know who the man was or what he was doing
there, but he wasn’t about to take the chance. He ducked back out the door and
began to walk. The snow fell lightly on him, promising to cover his tracks in
fluffy obfuscation. His dark clothes would help him to disappear into the dense
woods.
Nearly twenty hours later, his choice didn’t seem so
brilliant anymore. There was a lot of wilderness up here. He could wander for
weeks and never come across another human being. He only had a few basic
survival rations in his backpack. Without warmth and shelter, he wasn’t going
to have to worry about his former captor finding him. His corpse would vanish
without a trace.
The picturesque puffs of snow floating down from the sky
might make a lovely postcard but they clung to his hat, hair and clothes,
melting and refreezing into dense chunks of ice, weighing him down. His fingers
shook with cold despite being pressed into his armpits as he walked. He needed
to stop soon and take a chance of pursuit catching up to him if he wanted to
survive. Just a little further.
The light faded rapidly into grey-blue twilight. Ron knew
he needed to stop and build a shelter except his body seemed to have acquired a
terrible inertia, plodding endlessly. It took more effort than he wanted to
believe to force himself to stop and actually look at his surroundings.
Black silhouettes of pine trees jutted into the sky all
around him. The steadily falling snow piled into waist high drifts. He needed
some bare ground and a fire. Numbly, he remembered a lesson in survival
training. Birch bark burned, even when wet. Staggering through the snow, he
peered into the forest, searching for tell-tale white trunks.
His frozen fingers bled as he pried strips of bark from a
birch and broke branches to burn from a nearby pine. He found a small gap in
the snow, blocked by three large trees growing close together. He used a branch
to sweep away the sparse accumulation of snow and laid out the supplies for his
fire. It took him three tries to get a match to light and another three before
he got a piece of birch bark alight. Luckily the branches he’d broken were
relatively dry and pitchy, catching easily and flaming brightly.
The warmth hit him like a truck, sparking an irrational
temptation to crawl directly into the tiny fire to thaw his frozen body. He
clenched his jaw against the pain of blood returning to numb extremities. He’d
give himself a little time to warm up and then he’d go collect more wood and
see about a shelter. Just a little time.
His weariness seduced him into dangerous unconsciousness.
Ron felt as if he’d only closed his eyes for a moment when a snuffling sound
popped them back open. His fire had burned out and the cold ground had leached
the remaining warmth from his legs. It was dark, far too dark.
His body wanted to collapse back into sleep. A tiny piece
of his brain shrieked warning that if he did, he would never wake again. He
needed to get up and get moving again.
As he rocked back, preparing to rise, the darkness in
front of him moved.
Adrenaline cleared away the twin clinging cobwebs of
exhaustion and cold. The image in front of him suddenly resolved into perfect
terrifying clarity.
A bear stood less than five feet away from him.
Ron’s hands trembled as he watched the animal. It was
monstrous, the shaggy head easily the size of his torso. Even on all fours, the
shoulders would reach his waist and the massive hump over them would be halfway
up his chest. If it stood, he guessed it would measure ten feet. Dark brown
shaggy fur blended into the darkness, except for a short slash of golden brown
over its shoulder, like a crescent moon.
The bear huffed at him, clacking its jaws together.
Controlling his fear, Ron slowly moved up, using the tree trunks for balance.
If he could go slowly enough, maybe he could get out of range before it took an
interest in him. His legs were numb and sore, ensuring he would have no chance
of outrunning the creature.
Except it didn’t seem aggressive.
It kept looking at him as if trying to figure out what he
was. Perhaps it hadn’t seen a human before. If ignorance kept it from trying to
eat him, Ron could happily let it continue. He thought bears were supposed to
hibernate in winter, though. He vaguely remembered reading that a bear who was
awake in winter was considered especially dangerous.
“Good bear. Nice bear,” he croaked.
The bear’s ears went flat against its skull, exactly like
an annoyed cat. It snorted and shook its head.
“You don’t want to eat me, Mr. Bear,” Ron continued. “Go
on and find a pik-i-nik basket somewhere.” He stopped as the creature let out a
low growl.
Okay, so much for the human-voice-calms-wild-animals
theory. The bear reached out with an enormous paw and raked through the remains
of his fire. A few glowing coals shone amid the ashy flakes. Then it poked at
the remaining crisped fragments of birch bark, growling again.
When it turned and began to amble away across the
clearing, Ron saw his chance. He eased himself around the trees and started
walking slowly out of the bear’s sight. A good plan and one which might have
worked if his legs had cooperated.
His stiff limbs collapsed under him, dropping him to the
ground with a massive thud. The bear’s attention immediately swung back to him
and primitive instinct took over. It didn’t matter how many times he’d been
told to never run from a wild animal, his feet were pumping before his brain
could consciously give instruction.
Running wildly through the woods, he heard the bear
crashing behind him. This is it, he
told himself. I’m going to die now.
He tried to summon his enhanced strength for a leap into a tree but his abused
muscles had already had enough. He slammed into the trunk and then rolled down
the hill on the far side, his backpack flying off and scattering his belongings
across the snow.
A tree graciously halted his downward tumble, catching
his head and shoulders with a tooth-rattling abrupt stop. Stunned, he could
only stare at the top of the ridge as the bear looked down on him.
The life of Ron McBride, ended by Canadian wildlife.
Embarrassing, but at least no one would ever know. He braced himself for the
inevitable crunch of jaws.
The bear stared at him, outlined against the inky sky.
Then it turned and walked away.
He couldn’t believe his luck. Instead of being a bear’s
before-bedtime snack, he was going to get to die of a combination of exposure
and a concussion. He patted his jacket, feeling for the hard lump he carried.
Still intact. He tried to force himself to his feet but he was too weak.
Wearily, he stared at the green and blue lights floating in the sky above.
Maybe this was for the best. All the things he’d done and seen. Maybe they
should go to his grave with him.
Resignation pulled him down into the darkness.
Praise for
Revelations: Book One of the Lalassu
From Writer
in Progress: http://writerip.blogspot.ca/2015/05/review-revelations-jennifer-carole.html
“This is
one of the best love stories I have read in a long time.”
From
Romance Novel Giveaways: http://romancenovelgiveaways.blogspot.ca/2015/04/revelations-by-jennifer-carole-lewis.html
“I was on
the edge of my seat with ‘Oh my gosh, WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!’ almost constantly
coming out of my mouth.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Carole Lewis is a full-time mom, a full-time administrator and a full-time writer, which means she is very much interested in speaking to anyone who comes up with any form of functional time-travel devices or practical cloning methods. Meanwhile, she spends her most of her time alternating between organizing and typing.She is a devoted comic book geek and Marvel movie enthusiast. She spends far too much of her precious free time watching TV, especially police procedural dramas. Her enthusiasm outstrips her talent in karaoke, cross-stitch and jigsaw puzzles. She is a voracious reader of a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction and always enjoys seeking out new suggestions.
Author links:https://twitter.com/
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http://www.pastthemirror.com/
Thanks for sharing my cover. It's been great hearing the feedback of what everyone thinks. - JC Lewis
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