Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author
RACHEL VINCENT
âI liked the character and loved the action. I look forward to reading the next book in the series.â
Charlaine Harris
âVincent is a welcome addition to the genre!â
Kelley Armstrong
âCompelling and edgy, dark and evocative, Stray is a must read! I loved it from beginning to end.â Gena Showalter
âI had trouble putting this book down. Every time I said I was going to read just one more chapter, Iâd find myself three chapters later.â
âBitten by Books on Stray
âVincent continues to impress with the freshness of her approach and voice. Action and intrigue abound.â
âRT Book Reviews
Find out more about Rachel Vincent by visiting
mirabooks.co.uk/rachelvincent and read Rachelâs blog at urbanfantasy.blogspot.com
Also available fromRachel Vincent
The Shifters series STRAY ROGUE PRIDE PREY SHIFT ALPHA
Soul Screamers series MY SOUL TO TAKE MY SOUL TO SAVE MY SOUL TO KEEP MY SOUL TO STEAL IF I DIE
And look for the thrilling third instalment in
Rachelâs new Unbound series
OATH BOUND
coming soon
This one is dedicated to my editor, Mary-Theresa
Hussey, who seems to see what I envision for a story even before Iâm able to make that clear in the manuscript. This book was tough. Shadow Bound is the most difficult book Iâve ever written and there were days when living in Koriâs head put me in a very scary place. My editor reminded me that shadows cannot exist without the sun. Kori needed balance. She needed Ian. And Mary-Theresa helped me find the man Ian needed to be, both for Kori and for their story.
I learned a lot with this book. Thank you.
Thanks, as always, to my critique partner, Rinda Elliott, the first to read everything I write. Thanks most of all for your willingness to tell me when I suck. The truth is greatly appreciated.
Thanks to #1, my husband, for endless patience. This book and the subsequent revisions took up a crazy three and a half months of our lives and I may not have been the most pleasant person during that time.
A huge thank-you to the MIRA Art department for the SHADOW BOUND cover art. The models are perfect. The colors are beautiful. The tone is dead-on. I love it.
And, of course, thanks to all the readers willing to give this dark and twisted world a chance. I promise, there is a light at the end of the tunnelâ¦.
Kori
If you live in the dark long enough, you start to forget what light looks like. What it feels like. You may remember it in an academic sense. Illumination. A possible source of heat. But after a while those abstract memories are all you have left, and theyâre worth less than the memory of water to a man dying of thirst.
I didnât know how long Iâd been in the dark. Long enough for most of the pain to fade into dull aches, though the latest batch of bruises would still have been visible, if anything had been visible. Long enough that I couldnât remember what shade of gray the walls were. Long enough that when the light came on without warning, it blinded me, even through my closed eyelids.
Iâd lost all sense of time. I didnât know when Iâd last showered, or eaten, or needed the toilet in the corner of my cell. I didnât know when Iâd last heard a human voice, but I remembered the last voice Iâd heard, and I knew what the sudden light meant.
Light meant a visitor.
And visitors meant pain.
The door creaked open, and my pulse leaped painfullyâfear like a bolt of lightning straight to my heart. I clung to that one erratic heartbeat, riding the flow of adrenaline because I hadnât felt anything but the ache of my own wounds in days.
If not for the pain, I couldnât have sworn I was still alive.
âKori Daniels, rise and shine.â Milligan was on duty, which meant it was daytimeâoutside, anyway. In the basement, it was always night. There were no exterior windows, and no light until someone flipped a switch.
The dark and I used to be friends. No, lovers. When I was alone, I walked around naked just to feel it on my skin, cool and calm, and more intimate than any hand that had ever touched me. The dark was alive, and it was seductive. We used to slide in and out of one another, the shadows and I, always touching, caressing. Sometimes I couldnât tell where the dark ended and I began, and at some point Iâd decided that division didnât really exist. I was the dark, and the dark was me.
But the darkness in the basement was different. It was false. Broken. Weakened by infrared lights I couldnât see, but I could feel blazing down on me. Caging me. Draining me. The shadows were dead, and touching them was like touching the stiff limbs of a loverâs corpse.
âKori,â Milligan said again, and I struggled to focus on him. On my own name.
The guard shift change had become the ticking of my mental clockâthe only method I had of measuring time. But my clock skipped beats. Hell, sometimes it skipped entire days. If there was a pattern to the granting of meals, and showers, and company, I hadnât figured it out. They came when they came. But mostly, they didnât.