The Beholder

“Hold still, I won’t hurt you,” he grumbled, his lips brushing her pant leg.

“I told you not to touch me,” she said, her body shaking uncontrollably.

It had to be her magic that was driving him crazy.

“Don’t worry, it won’t happen again,” he said, voicing a direct order to himself. For his inner beast wanted Nina Rainwater in the worst way.

And she had no idea how much danger she was in at the moment.

Dear Reader,

Whatever you do, don’t ask Nina Rainwater if she likes being the baby in her family. You see, she lives in the shadows of her older and more bodacious sisters—Fala and Takala, who have extraordinary powers. All Rainwater women are connected through white magic. Their unique abilities are passed down through the female line.

If you asked Nina about her gift, she’d probably tell you it’s nothing. But don’t be fooled. She possesses the gift of tongues. She can communicate with any creature, alive or dead, and she has sacrificed her whole life in using her gift to help others.

So when she discovers Kane Van Cleave, a beast of a man, with a sinister past and even bleaker future, she finally meets a creature she’s unable to help…

Connie Hall

Award-winning author CONNIE HALL is a full-time writer. Her writing credits include six historical novels and two novellas written under the pen name Constance Hall. She is thrilled to now be writing for Nocturne.

An avid hiker, conservationist, bird watcher, painter of watercolors and oil portraits, she dreams of one day trying her hand at skydiving.

She lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband, two sons and Keeper, a lovable Lab-mix who rules the house with her big brown eyes. For more information, visit her website or e-mail her at [email protected].

www.millsandboon.co.uk

It is said that the Creator formed the earth and all life. He left the Maiden Bear to rule over his creation. The newborn mother earth still spewed furnaces of molten rock. Earthquakes trembled and churned and gouged the hills and valleys of her skin. Consequently, all living creatures were thrown together helter-skelter, forced to establish hunting grounds in this tumultuous world. Maiden Bear hoped they would live in peace, but the animals and humans were neophytes, driven strictly by instinct alone, and many fought over sparse hunting grounds. There was much dissent, for the animals could not communicate among themselves or with any other creatures.

Maiden Bear knew she would have to do something so the animals could understand each other or death would reign supreme and the earth would become barren. So she sought out the Patomani tribe, her followers, and bestowed one female brave with the Gift of Tongues. This new emissary could translate the language of life and death and could communicate with any type of being. Consequently, the creatures communicated through her, and they learned not to fear each other as well as those different from themselves. Thus, order and peace were established, and every creature found its mark on the web of life.

Maiden Bear was so greatly pleased with the progress of her mediator, she decided to pass the extraordinary gift down through the Patomani female line to a deserving and sensitive soul.

“Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.”

—Quida

Blue Ridge Mountains

A feeling of doom woke Emma Baldoon. She glanced at the clock. Midnight. The witching hour.

She sat up in bed. In the silence her breaths sounded like the beat of huge wings. For two days now a strange quiet had saturated the air, squeezed every sound from it: the kind of stillness that swept over a graveyard at night.

Emma shivered, rubbed her arms and heard her four parakeets rustling in their cage. She left her bed. Her gaze swept the dark shadows in the cabin as she found the cage and opened the cover. Her babies thrashed around in the bottom, banging their bodies against the bars.

“Shh, quiet, little ones.” She opened the door. In a flurry of feathers they flew out and landed on the rafters, huddling together. It calmed them for the moment.

She glanced up at them and shook her head. Yesterday morning they had stopped eating. She thought they might be getting sick. Now she feared it was something much worse.

Suddenly the sheep bleated and baaed, their bodies ramming the paddock fence. If they didn’t stop soon, they’d knock the fence down. Bessie, Emma’s milking cow, caught the fever and lowed in distress. Even the chickens squawked in the coop. She firmly believed animals had a sixth sense when it came to danger, and they were definitely warning her. What was upsetting them?

Over the past twenty years, she had lived alone, ever since her husband, Harvey, had died. She had never felt insecure or afraid…until tonight.

She hurried back to the gun case. With trembling fingers, she groped for the loaded 20 gauge Mossberg. A long time ago she had learned the hard way that an unloaded shotgun was useless.