Loving Lucius — Skhye Moncrief

72,000 word novel (only text of story calculated) translating into 300 pages in paperback



Blurb:



She thinks it's impossible to hide her freakish powers. He thinks she's trying to worm herself under his skin to gain entry into his clan's secret Shifter laboratory.



Things couldn't get any tougher when Lady Elise's life flounders deep in The Wild after the extraterrestrials terminated her warlord father's reign over his city. On the run from the aliens, her father passes Elise and her sisters into the care of some Shifters. But that's not what troubles Elise. Her father has offered her body as the prize to one of the Shifters in exchange for their help in safeguarding his daughters. And the icing on that cake is founded in her father's dangerous secret about his daughters' true father--a secret he shares with only Elise, a secret she dare not utter, one explaining the three sisters's unusually strong psychic powers of healing. Powers that strike fear in Normals. She literally lives in fear of skin-to-skin contact with anyone and of witch hunts. Being labeled a witch is no better than being connected to the aliens who invaded Earth--aliens responsible for her psychic powers. This little skeleton in Elise's closet is best left buried therein. But now she's the foreigner with life and limb at the mercy of strange Guardians who ask questions, watch, and listen to tattling heartbeats...



Lucius is into exhuming secrets. Although, maybe he's best named Luscious, his tools for exhumation aren't the standard shovel and bucket of that sort of business. Well, that's when a Shifter's inner Wolf tosses them aside for mating. He's fighting a needy Wolf and his clan's safety when he takes on saving Elise and her sisters. But all it takes is one infiltrator to learn the truth about his sire's pre-AEI governmental medical laboratory and all bets are off that Earth will ever be controlled by humans again. Trusting Elise sets off all sorts of alarms--untimely omens that warn he's definitely risking being next in line to head his sire's clan as well as his clan's safety and humanity's. But nature seems to have it in for the unlikely duo. And whether they like it or not, the best fix for the problem is tied to Elise bending to temptation of the touch and LOVING LUCIUS.