Earning His Trust
Miracle Book 8 By Shea Balik
Cover by: Harris Channing
Release Date: January 9, 2019
#MM #Paranormal #Romance #Series
BLURB:
Iniko had a problem. His mouth often said things that his brain hadn’t thought through. It didn’t make him very popular with anyone. How he hadn’t been kicked out of Miracle was in itself a miracle. Iniko also had a gift to help others find their niche in life. But to do that, the men of Miracle would have to find a way to give him a chance. Greyson was stunned when he walked down the street of Miracle to discover a brash mouse shifter with blue and pink hair ordering about predators twice his size. So he was shocked when that man, who also happened to be his mate, ran from him in fear. Neither man had planned to ever find his mate. Now that they had, would they be able to find a way to deal with their pasts? Then again, nothing in life had ever been easy for either of them. Doom or happily ever after would start with Earning His Trust.
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If only Greyson had known how right he’d been, he might have tried to go back through that inferno to at least get his wallet. They’d been on the run for a week with only a few chances to steal clothes off clotheslines. Their luck with medical supplies was even worse.
Their only saving grace was Greyson’s ability to hunt the food they needed. He was a panther shifter, providing enough food for them was relatively easy. Keeping them warm enough without alerting whoever was chasing them was another matter entirely.
In the beginning, Greyson had believed they’d gotten away without anyone being the wiser they’d survived the fire. He’d been wrong. While hunting two days ago, he’d smelled their pursuers.
It meant no fires, especially at night when the early spring temperatures still dipped to freezing. Greyson and Ward did their best to find them some kind of shelter, but without heat, it didn’t offer much help.
If it wasn’t for Kylo, they would have easily evaded whoever was after them, but Kylo was barely conscious and his burns weren’t healing like they should. They needed help.
“There’s a town not too far ahead that we’ve heard accepts gay shifters.” Greyson wasn’t so sure he believed the stories, but they were running out of options.
He’d thought things would get better when the new Council had made it illegal to persecute gay shifters, but too many packs didn’t care what the new Council had to say.
“Are you crazy?” Ward demanded. “We barely made it out alive from the last Alpha and now you want us to beg for help from another one.”
Teddy unwrapped Kylo’s bandages and grimaced. “I don’t think we have a choice, Ward. Kylo’s wounds aren’t healing and he’s barely been conscious since this morning.” Teddy’s soft brown eyes held Greyson’s, then shifted to Ward. “He’s getting worse. We need medical help or he’s going to die.”
“Teddy and Greyson are right, Ward.” Elton reached out to put his hand on Ward’s. His own wince made it painfully obvious, that he could use a doctor, too. Even though Elton’s burn was only to his arm, it had gone to the bone.
He was healing but exhausted from being on the run with nowhere decent to rest, Elton wasn’t recovering as fast as he should.
If all that wasn’t bad enough, Greyson and his friends didn’t have any way to defend themselves. Greyson’s panther could take out quite a few lowlifes all on his own, but there were at least a dozen chasing them and Greyson had no doubt they all had guns.
As much as it galled him to admit, they needed help. Something that had proven dangerous in the past. If it weren’t for his friends, Greyson would have shifted into his panther long ago and lived in the middle of nowhere, where no one would have been able to find him.
Hell, his friends probably would have joined him if Ward wasn’t an Orca and Kylo a harp seal, making it impossible to find a place they could all live together in their animal form. Greyson still wasn’t even sure how these four men had decided they wanted to be friends with him.
All through his childhood, Greyson hadn’t had any friends. Then again, panthers weren’t exactly social creatures. They preferred to stay away from society as a whole and live in small towns or, if they could get away with it, completely alone in the middle of a forest or jungle.
That had been what Greyson had been planning on doing when he’d been kicked out of his home at the age of thirteen, the age when all panthers were expected to find their own way in the world. At least it was so when Greyson had been a kid. Nowadays, in developed countries, they were allowed to stay until they were eighteen so as not to draw attention to themselves from local governments.
Kylo was the first of his friends he’d happened upon. Greyson had grown up on the outskirts of the tiny town of Cutler, Maine. It had been a solitary existence, but Greyson hadn’t minded since his animal had yearned for peace and quiet.
Loving the water, Greyson had decided to try settling on one of the dozens of small uninhibited islands. He’d taken a small boat he’d built when he was ten and rowed out to find his new home. What he hadn’t expected when he landed on a small, lush, wooded island was to find a small boy, about his age, unconscious and bleeding along the rocky shoreline.
He’d instantly scented the kid was a seal shifter, as many of the residents of Cutler were. Greyson hadn’t been sure what to do about the kid. His conscience wouldn’t let him just allow the boy to die, so he loaded him up in his boat and headed back to the mainland.
He’d hoped to drop him off at the wharf and be done with the kid, especially since it would take Greyson two hours to row there and he still wanted to return back to his island to get settled before it turned dark. But when they were halfway to the mainland, the boy had woken up, scared out of his mind.
It wasn’t until Greyson followed the kid’s gaze to the water that he understood why. Greyson had been so intent on making good time rowing that he hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings. That mistake had almost cost them both their lives. For along the top of the water were a dozen fins of sharks that were closing in on them.
Shifters.
“Why are they trying to kill you?” Greyson demanded even as he put all of his muscle into rowing faster.
The kid’s head whipped around as if finally realizing there was someone else there with him. Terrified grey eyes stared at Grayson for several minutes as his body shook with fear.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Greyson promised when he realized how afraid the kid was not only of the shifters after him, but of Greyson, too.
There were several moments of hesitation in those grey eyes before the kid must have decided Greyson was telling him the truth. That, or he figured Greyson was the lesser of the two evils at the moment.
“I’m gay,” the kid blurted out. He nodded out to where the fins were gaining on them. “They don’t think I should be alive because of that.”
Greyson frowned.
He’d led a fairly solitary life, but his mother had warned him to never let anyone know he preferred men. It had stunned him to hear her say it for he’d never actually admitted to anyone, not even himself, that he was attracted to men and not women. He was only thirteen – sex hadn’t been something he’d really thought about much.
“Why would they kill you for that?” Greyson had no idea why it would matter which sex anyone preferred.
A slim shoulder lifted up as the kid shook his head. “No idea. All I know is they caught me kissing another boy.” His head lowered as his lip quivered. “The only reason I got away was because they killed him first.”
Horror had filled Greyson. Their world was a violent one. Shifters had an affinity to their animals and had to control that side of their nature or they’d all be at each other’s throats. It had been the first time Greyson had truly begun to understand the world he lived in.
“I’m Kylo, by the way,” the kid said. Those grey eyes looked at him regretfully. “I’m sorry you are mixed up in this.”
Even though Greyson would have preferred to live the solitary life he’d planned, he’d never once regretted saving Kylo, or Teddy when they found him beaten nearly to death six months later. Two years after that, they had stopped a man from shooting Ward after he’d caught Ward having sex with the man’s son. Elton had been the last to join them when they’d found him wandering around lost in the Florida Everglades when his family had driven him there and left him for being gay.
Life had taught all of them to not trust anyone, but if they wanted to save Kylo, they didn’t have any other choice.
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Shea Balik has always had a vivid imagination with stories running around in her head. Often her stories are taken from observations of other people with her own spin. Traveling is one of her favorite ways of fulfilling her passion of people watching. You never know, one day you may spark her imagination for her next book.
Whether at home or traveling she is usually in front of her computer writing or curled up with a good book.
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Where do you enter the giveaway, please?
I was wondering as well. The book looks amazing
The book sounds great, but where/how do you enter the giveaway.
I’ve never read this author before. I’ll have to check her out.
Sounds really good
This book sounds great. I need to check out the series.
I am sorry , for some reason the raffleecopter link dissapeared.
I will incl the comments below for the giveaway.
My Appologies
Dani x
Thank you Dani!!
What a way to start off the new year! This series has been a favorite of mine. It really means a lot to see others are interested in reading it. Thank you so much.
Congrats on the release! Cool cover.
Congrats on the new book! It looks amazing =)
Congratulations. This sounds so good!
Wow, that’s quite a twist. I don’t think I’ve read many stories with a mouse-shifter! Thanks for the giveaway opportunity and congrats on the new release!