Book Title: True North (Yule Lads #1)
Author: TA Moore
Publisher: Rogue Firebird Press
Cover Artist: TA Moore
Release Date: December 15, 2023
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Tropes: Opposites attract, star-crossed, enemies to lovers, fish out of water, work romance…sorta, betrayal, Christmas romance
Themes: Sins of the past, forgiveness, found family.
Heat Rating: 4 flames
Length: 40 500 words
It is the first book in the Yule Lads series.
It does not end on a cliffhanger.
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Santa’s missing. Presumed Dead.
Blurb
Despite what his co-workers say Belling, Montana paramedic Dylan Holly does not hate Christmas.
It’s just that as an ex-foster kid he learned early on that Christmas just didn’t have much relevance to his life. He’s seen no evidence since then that he’s wrong.
That said, if Santa ever delivered a six-foot plus wall of hot muscle under his tree he’d be willing to reconsider. He’s even sourced an available one locally in the taciturn Somerset North and his impossibly blue eyes.
So really, at this point the ball is in Santa’s court.
There’s just one problem. Well, just one to start with anyhow. The battered, dying man someone dumped from a height onto Dylan’s car outside the Just-as-High, Somerset’s bar. He gave Dylan an old, well-worn watch and begged him to keep it safe.
Now Christmas is relevant to Dylan’s life in the worst way. The Winter Court has loosed their Wolves on the world and Dylan is on the run with Somerset North. A man who seems to know a lot more about what is going on than a Montana bar owner with exceptional shoulders should.
It turns out that Santa is missing, presumed dead. And the key to the hotly disputed succession crisis is a foster kid who never celebrated the season.
The first thing he saw was his car. Or what was left of it.
Broken chunks of glass from the windows were scattered over the frosted pavement like glitter. Splashes of bright, hot red were mixed in with it. Blood smelled different in the cold, but Dylan still recognized it.
He jogged across the snowy pavement toward his flattened car.
The next thing he saw was a bare foot, the nails grayish and the tips of the toes split and raw, dangling through the broken windscreen. It led up into a leather-clad leg, the heavy-wear practical leather of a biker rather than fitted and fashionable, and the slack sprawl of a body cradled in the caved-in roof of the Chevy.
“Shit,” Dylan said.
He crossed the last few feet to the car and scrambled gracelessly up onto the hood. The metal was so cold that he lost skin where his fingerprints stuck to the hoarfrost. They’d grow back. Dylan pulled himself half up onto the roof to look at the man. His face was swollen and discolored, badly beaten, and the white T-shirt he had on was plastered to his chest with blood.
He was breathing, but it was labored and wet. Spit bubbled pinkly between his lips with each shallow exhale.
“It’s OK,” Dylan said. The chatter was autopilot, something for a panicked patient to focus on. Or that was the theory. This guy didn’t look like he could hear much, so it was mostly for Dylan’s own benefit. “We’re going to get you some help. It’s going to be OK.”
That sounded like a lie. Dylan ignored that as he pulled the man’s bloody shirt up, the fabric sticking to his fingers, to check out his chest.
Bruises dappled his ribs and chest in ugly, dark patterns. Those, Dylan noted down in a detached little part of his brain for later, were older than the other injuries. Long, ragged cuts carved over the man’s ribs, skin and muscle flayed back until Dylan could see bone and the deflated flap of a lung.
Dylan set his phone down by his knee. He took his heavy jacket off and then pulled his T-shirt over his head. It was makeshift but the best he could muster. He wadded it into a ball and pressed it against the seeping wounds. The pressure he had to apply made the man groan and open his eyes. They looked black, unfocused, and glazed.
“I’m sorry,” Dylan said. “I know it hurts, but I have to stop the bleeding. Try to stay calm.”
He dug his fingers into the cotton, already soaked with blood, to hold it in place while he grabbed his phone. He’d not turned the light off, and it played over the man’s limp body as Dylan fumbled with the screen. It turned the dark, sticky wounds into fresh, gory red ones.
9-1-1, he jabbed into the touch-screen.
Dylan listened to the ring impatiently until it clicked over to the dispatcher’s voice.
“What’s your emergency?” she asked.
“This is Dylan Moffat,” he said. His teeth had started to chatter, but he still got it out. “I’ve got a thirty-something male with contusions and penetrating injuries to the chest and stomach at the Just-as-High on Coptic and Sedgeway. He’s also showing signs—”
The man grabbed Dylan’s arm with hard, desperate fingers. His grip was so tight that the pain made Dylan drop the phone. The screen flickered as the tinny voice of the dispatch asked for him to come back.
“I came to… tell you,” the man slurred out. His eyes were unfocused, the pupils mismatched. “Something… happened. He’s gone. None of us can find him…”
He forced Dylan’s hand over and pressed something cold and hard into his palm.
“You have to keep it safe,” he rasped out. “Hide it… for him. Promise.”
TA Moore is a Northern Irish writer of romantic suspense, urban fantasy, and contemporary romance novels. A childhood in a rural, seaside town fostered in her a suspicious nature, a love of mystery, and a streak of black humour a mile wide.
Coffee, Doc Marten boots, and good friends are the essential things in life. Spiders, mayo, and heels are to be avoided.
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