Since moving to Boston, Kyle Slidell has met only a few of his neighbors, including Tobias Rogan. Kyle is very interested in Tobias, and is ecstatic to learn that Tobias wants him, too.
But his neighbors have a secret: They’re a werewolf pack, and Tobias is their Alpha. When one of the wolves attacks Kyle, he learns the truth in a hurry–and in the most painful way. Now he’s a werewolf too, and as a vegan is at war with his wolf aspect, who craves meat.
With Tobias’s help and love, Kyle must adjust to his new life. But can he protect the pack and his lover from a werewolf seeking revenge against Tobias?
Warnings: References to sexual assault.
This is a rerelease.
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An Interview with Kyle Slidell
KC: Hi! Karenna Colcroft here, interviewing Boston’s only gay vegan werewolf, Kyle Slidell. Kyle, how are you today?
KS: Pretty good, thanks. And Boston’s only? I think I’m more unique than that.
KC: You might be. You are pretty unique. Why vegan, anyway?
KS: I’ve been vegan for years. It started as a way of honoring the memory of a partner who passed away, and I decided I liked it and wanted to stick with it.
KC: Even as a werewolf? How does veganism even work for a werewolf?
KS: It works pretty well for me. Seriously, when I’m in wolf form, I retain the ability to think like a human, which apparently isn’t common among werewolves. My human brain and wolf brain disagree somewhat about the veganism thing, but the human side wins out. I just make sure to take in extra protein when I shift.
KC: So the human side is pretty stubborn. Has that always been the case?
KS: I’ve always been stubborn, yeah. I haven’t always been a werewolf. That’s actually pretty new.
KC: How did you become a werewolf?
KS: Uh-uh. Spoilers. You’ll have to read Salad on the Side to find out.
KC: Refusing to answer. I guess you really are stubborn. Okay, on a different track, you live in East Boston. Have you always lived there?
KS: No, I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and moved to the big city to work in tech after college. My company transferred me to Boston, and here I am.
KC: And your pack? Are they outside the city?
KS: Nope. The whole pack lives in a group of buildings on the waterfront in East Boston. Which has its plusses and minuses, especially when Tobias and I want alone time.
KC: Tobias is your mate, right? Can you tell us a little about him?
KS: Only a little. It isn’t my story to tell. He’s the pack Alpha, and he’s been a werewolf for a long time. He’s a good person, and I’m proud to be his mate.
KC: I’m happy you found each other!
KS: Well, you wrote the book, so I guess you had something to do with it.
KC: True. Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
KS: Being a werewolf isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Luckily, I only have to shift at the full moon. I’m not exactly thrilled to be a werewolf, but I am happy to be with Tobias, so I guess it worked out. And I hope readers enjoy our story.
KC: Thank you, Kyle. I appreciate you talking with me.
KS: Again, you’re the author…I kind of have to do what you want.
KC: I wonder about that sometimes. You have a tendency to do your own thing.
KS: Just part of my charm.
Karenna is giving away a $20 Amazon gift card with this tour:
No! Oh, God, anything but this!
That was the first conscious thought I’d had since the wolf had bitten down. I didn’t know what it meant at first.
Then I opened my eyes. Nothing looked right. Everything around me appeared flat and muted. I definitely wasn’t in the garden anymore, but since I couldn’t see things properly, I couldn’t tell where I was. Inside, somewhere. Not my apartment. I was lying on a floor; that much I could tell.
When I tried to stand, my legs didn’t want to cooperate. Then I caught a glimpse of my foot.
It was covered in fur.
Shit. Wolf bite. Wolves didn’t live in Boston.
Maybe werewolves did. Even though as far as I knew those didn’t exist.
I tried to see my body. Fur, check. Pretty off-white color, or at least I would have thought it was pretty if it didn’t cover me. Snout protruding out far enough to see, check. Four paws with claws sticking out from the end of each… finger? Toe? Didn’t know what to call them. Check, anyway.
Shit.
At least my head moved the way I wanted it to. I glanced around, trying to gain some sense of place. This time, I spotted two humans crouching nearby. One of them was Tobias. Even as a wolf, I recognized the regret and sadness in his expression.
Tobias was there, and that meant he knew what had happened to me. My brain refused to go any farther than that.
The other human… After a second, I recognized her too. The hair color gave it away, perfectly matching the color of the fur on the wolf that bit me.
Fucking Melia. She eyed me with a contemptuous smirk which vanished quickly when Tobias glanced at her over his shoulder. He turned back to me, and Melia glowered. “He should be dead.”
“Fortunately for you, he isn’t,” Tobias snapped. “I thought you’d learned better control than this, Melia. Clearly I overestimated you.”
Melia bowed her head. “I’ll do better in the future. He could have died.”
As a wolf, tone of voice wasn’t quite as obvious to me as it was when I was human. But something in the way Melia spoke caught my attention. She meant what she’d said. I should have been dead, because that had been her intention. Maybe I was wrong, but the fury and contempt in her eyes confirmed it.
I snarled and tried to stand, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to get those four legs under me. Tobias raised his hands and took a couple steps toward me. “Kyle, easy,” he said softly. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Melia said. “Tobias, I didn’t mean—”
“Shut up, Melia,” Tobias ordered without taking his eyes off me. “You’re here to see the results of your poor control, not to make apologies. I don’t think Kyle will accept your apology easily.”
I managed to move my head in something resembling a nod. Fuck if I’d ever forgive the bitch! It hadn’t been my fault I’d wandered into the path of a frigging werewolf. Like I’d even known there would be a wolf in the garden. It wasn’t the sort of thing people usually considered when going out to pick strawberries. “Oh, I’d better be careful; there might be a werewolf out there.” Right. Not outside horror movies.
Hopefully they’d figure out soon how to change me back so I could get things ready for my dinner with Tobias the next night. I’d be sorely pissed if that had to be put on hold.
The next night. Except I didn’t think it was “next” anymore. I had no clue how long I’d been unconscious. The sunlight streaming through the window beside me pretty clearly told me that it wasn’t night any longer. But if it wasn’t night, why was I still a wolf? Didn’t werewolves only shift when it was dark?
I blinked at Tobias and he caught the question. “It’s your first shift, Kyle. You changed while you were out cold and it’s going to take your body and mind a little while to coordinate so you’ll go back to human. That’s how it works for all of us our first time. And we can shift whenever we want.”
All of us. Now I couldn’t prevent myself from grasping the truth. The truth Tobias and Mrs. Frelich had been so damned determined to keep from me. Tobias was one of the wolves. And he’d probably made sure none of the other neighbors would ever see anything he didn’t want them to. Tobias, the man I lusted after, was a fucking werewolf. I didn’t even know what to think about that.
“You have to eat something, Kyle,” Tobias said. He crouched low to look me in the eye. “You’ve been unconscious for three days, since Melia attacked you. You don’t know how sorry I am about this. I wanted to protect you from it.”
Even in my current form, my heart and a couple other things responded to his words. He did care about me. Maybe at our dinner he would have admitted all this to me. Though I certainly understood why he’d been reluctant. Without seeing it for myself, I probably wouldn’t have believed him.
He might have told me the truth, though, and if I’d believed him, if I hadn’t thrown him out, who knew where things might have ended up? I knew where I would have wanted them to end, whether Tobias was a werewolf or not.
Karenna is a polyamorous, nonbinary human who splits time between the home she shares with her husband and the one she shares with her committed partner. She also has two adult children and a bonus son, three grandchildren, and two and a half cats. (Half in terms of time the cat lives with her, not in terms of the cat itself…)
Author Website: http://www.karennacolcroft.com
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Thank you for hosting me (and Kyle)!