Should she struggle to survive alone or give in to desire and risk the – perhaps deadly – company of others?

In a world where plague has swept civilization away like leaves in a storm, where viruses that cause people to shift and change have altered what it is, for most, to be human, a few survivors hold out in a desperate attempt to save the human race. Selene lives alone in the forest, protecting herself from human and shifter alike until one day a stranger turns up: a young man called Skinner, out on a quest to hunt down and destroy any shifter he can find. Torn between desire and fear, Selene must confront her true nature and make some impossible choices if she is to survive this harsh, post-apocalyptic future.

Hunted: a Shifters’ World novella – a shapeshifter erotic romance of survival and desire in a deadly future from the co-author of Seduced by Moonlight and The Touch.

“He put a hand to her face then, his knuckles brushing along her jaw and then he buried his fingers in her hair, tipping her head back. His mouth came down on her neck: hard lips and then the wet heat of his tongue and the delicious pain of raking teeth, dragging across her skin to that point where too hard is exactly hard enough.”

Extract

The cage was not high enough for her to stand, so she sat in the middle, her knees drawn up to her chin, as if huddling into a fetal ball might somehow protect her.

At first there was no sign of them, but eventually they came. As the shadows grew longer and the sun fell below the tops of the trees, they came.

First, a man. Naked, his body scrawny and white, almost luminously so in the growing twilight. Dark hair matted his chest, and the silvered hair on his head was long and his beard thick and unkempt.

He came to stand by the bars of her cage, making no attempt to cover himself so that inevitably her eyes were drawn to that thick knot of hair at his crotch and the semi-hard shaft of his manhood.

“Please…” she said softly, eyeing the cage’s bars warily. “Please don’t…”

She started to rock back and forth and all the time the man just stood there, studying her.

So close, his scent was almost overpowering, an intense, sweaty musk. An animal scent, one that reached deep inside her and started to wake something primal.

“No, please don’t.” She shut her eyes tight, fighting the thing, the beast within.

After a long silence, she hoped that he had retreated. When she opened her eyes she saw a beast, fully in wolf-form, charging towards her, and then throwing itself at the cage. The impact was like an explosion. The bars clanged and groaned, and for a moment she thought the cage was going to topple over or collapse under the onslaught, and then the beast fell back with a yowl of frustration.

After another long pause, the thing rose to all fours and snarled, shook itself and then trotted up to the bars, sniffing.

“Go, please,” she whispered, but the thing stayed there, following the perimeter of the cage, sniffing all the way round as if it might find a weakness.

That was when she felt that shifting again, and a painful clicking of her spine as her body tried to settle into a new form.

“No. Please, no.”

She had to fight it. Had to resist.

Had to deny that beast within when with every breath she could smell the shifter circling her cage, and the distinct scents of others, not too far away now.

“I am human. I am Selene.”

Another shifting, an easing. I am Selene.

——-

Ruby Fielding is a British author, currently living in the heart of a New England forest. She travels widely, and has lived in England, Scotland, the US, France, India and Australia. Wherever she happens to be living, you’re likely to find her at the nearest wifi hot spot with her laptop and a large mug of coffee.

She writes mainly paranormal erotica and romance, sometimes in collaboration with her old friend Polly J Adams; their joint stories are published separately and collected together into the single volume, Seduced by Moonlight.

All the latest news on Ruby’s writing and publishing can be found on her website and on her Amazon author page; also, why not join her mailing list, or hook up with her on Facebook?

Hunted: a Shifters’ World novella is currently available from:

• Amazon.com
• Amazon.co.uk
• Barnes and Noble
• Kobo
• Google Play
• …and it will be available from Smashwords and All Romance eBooks soon!