Runaway Mate
A Fated Mates RH PNR
by Romy Lockhart
Genre: Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance
Jillian
is ecstatic when she finds out she’s become more than a wolf
shifter. The instinct she’s always had that she was meant for
something different is validated when a gator-bite turns her into a
hybrid shifter with two distinct animal forms.
Her
parents are the opposite of thrilled, and plot to have her gator
exorcised before it can fully emerge. She’s been promised to the
Alpha’s son, and he won’t accept a hybrid.
She
does the only thing she can. She runs.
Her
new animal form skews her senses when she goes into heat and every
gator shifter she comes across looks like an appealing option.
Are
the guys she just met the mates she’s truly meant for, or are they
destined to break her heart?
Runaway
Mate is a standalone new adult fated mates reverse harem romance with
college-aged characters, serious steam and an HEA.
EXCERPT
No matter what I do, the heat I’m under doesn’t cool one little bit. I shift back to human form eventually, and every part of me aches with the need to be touched. It’s almost excruciating.
I can’t walk without spreading my arousal down my thighs, and I know I’d do anything either one of those guys asked if I got anywhere close to speaking to them.
Damn. I seriously need a plan that doesn’t include sexual favors as an appetizer.
It really doesn’t help that I’m naked. I need to sneak into that motel and steal a sheet or something.
At least give the illusion of modesty and self-control.
Sighing, I pace around the edge of the forest until I realize I can see a gas station across the road.
Maybe I could pull a Terminator and pretend like I’m a robot from the future who needs to steal someone’s clothes. I guess at least this isn’t the motel, where the hot gators are.
Fuck it.
I stalk out of the woods and straight across the empty road toward the gas station.
I try to come up with a plan that doesn’t involve putting on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s accent as I walk. The best I can come up with is amnesia. I don’t know who I am, or where I came from, but I’m here now so can someone lend me some clothes? Ugh. I don’t know. It’s the best I can come up with while I’m going out of my mind with desire.
I push open the glass fronted door and step inside.
The breath is knocked from me when I see the red-head from the motel is standing behind the counter, hunched over a notepad. The sexy flutters come back at lightning speed. He has bright green eyes, fair skin with light colored freckles and the hottest lip-chewing habit I’ve ever seen on a guy.
Drown me in my own saliva. I’m gone.
Then, he looks up, and his startled stare reminds me I’m naked. He drops his pencil and it rolls away, under a shelving unit. He opens and closes his mouth, and then just locks gazes with me. It’s weirdly intense. If he was staring slack-jawed at my tits I could handle it. This?
It makes me want to believe in the Goddess of Wolves so I can beg her to make sure this guy tastes as good as he looks. A swell of possessive desire rushes over me.
He’s mine. I don’t want anyone else to have him.
Not now. Not ever.
I forget all about my amnesia plan. I walk over there and shoot him a smile.
“I kind of lost my clothes. Can you help a girl out?”
He nods. “There’s a rack full of T-shirts over there. Take anything you like.”
I take a look and pick one that’s big enough to hang down over my thighs. I yank off the tag and sling it over my head. The door’s opening when I turn back to him.
The air goes out of the room when the big guy from before steps inside.
He’s a real mountain of a man, and my gaze takes in every inch of him hungrily.
There’s definitely muscle going on under his shirt, but he’s also just kind of big built. Thick neck, thick arms. Inked up arms, which is even hotter. I can’t wait to see what else is thick about him.
I raise my stare to his face and I can see his expression is kind of scowly. His eyes are dark and his hair is dark with lighter ends in a natural highlights kind of way.
I don’t know whether to be sad he missed seeing me naked or kind of relieved.
I bite down on the compulsion to ask them both to come into the woods with me.
My wolf likes that idea way too much. Wait. Why does my wolf like it so much?
Are these guy’s hybrids too?
“I’m Jillian,” I introduce myself, when it seems obvious these two are not great at starting conversations. “I think one of you brought me here in a car?”
“Sorry,” the big guy tells me. “I thought you were hurt.”
“I’m not mad,” I tell him. “I got sick when I tried to shift. A gator bit me, and I was shifting into a gator for the first time. At least, I was trying to. It didn’t seem to work.”
“It worked,” he tells me. “You were a gator when I picked you up.”
“No shit?” I ask, breaking into a smile.
He gives me a small smile back. “No shit.”
“It worked then. I’m a hybrid.”
“You wanted to be?” The red-head asks.
“Can you guys give me your names? I really don’t want to be calling you Red and Big Guy in my head all night.”
Red snorts. “I’m Phoenix, this is Mason. It’s nice to meet you, Jillian.”
“Nice to meet you too,” I tell him.
“So, you wanted to be a hybrid?” he asks, as if it’s unbelievable to him.
I guess hybrids get kind of a raw deal. “I always knew I was meant to be more than a wolf.”
“The hand of fate,” he says, surprising me. “It works in mysterious ways.”
“It really does. You guys are hybrids too, right?” I ask, needing to know for sure.
“We are,” Phoenix admits. “Wolf-gator hybrids.”
Just like me. I’m honestly shocked that I’m so attracted to guys who are part wolf.
I’ve never been into wolves before. Not once. Not ever.
Is the heat changing who I’m attracted to, or doesn’t it matter as long as there’s a gator side in there somewhere? I honestly don’t know. I’m not sure I even care anymore.
REVIEW 5*
Runway mate is a hybrid shifter RH romance. Jillian’s a wolf shifter but
the match her father wants for her feels wrong. When a sexy gator
shifter bits her she’s force to look at what she really wants.
This was an interesting concept and the first book I’ve read in the series. It can be read as a standalone and available on KU.
Romy Lockhart writes paranormal reverse harem and M/F contemporary romance. All of her books contain steamy scenes between consenting adults. All of her reverse harems have harem ever afters, and all of her romance novels have happy endings.
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Giveaway #1
Paperback of Hybrid Rejected
