Prowled Darkness (Dante's Circle, #7)

Prowled Darkness (Dante's Circle, #7)

Carrie Ann Ryan



Dedication


To my Readers.

Thank you loving this series even more than I thought possible.





Acknowledgements


I can’t believe its over. I started the Dante’s Circle series years ago thinking it would be fun to write as many as paranormal creatures as possible. And yet each time I started a new book, I got to find so many new worlds, I knew I’d fall in love over and over again.

Thank you Kennedy Layne, Stephanie, Charity, Chelle, and Dr Hubby for helping me with Prowled Darkness. You guys pushed me to finish this one the way it should have been!

Thank you for following me through this journey and I hope you love this story as much as I do.

Happy Reading!

~Carrie Ann





Prowled Darkness


Humans aren’t as alone as they choose to believe. Every human possesses a trait of supernatural that lays dormant within their genetic make-up. Centuries of diluting and breeding have allowed humans to think they are alone and untouched by magic. But what happens when something changes?

Eliana Sawyer’s life was rocked from its foundation twice in as many years. She risked her heart and had it shattered into a thousand pieces when Malik left her with no warning. While she’d normally raise her chin and ignore the pain, she can’t forget what he gave her before he disappeared from her life.

Malik Ward is a prince amongst the lion shifters and knows that one day he will have to take a mate. Only, his people can never mate with humans. Under the mistaken impression that Eliana was only human, he forced himself to leave before they’d crossed a line and he broke his vow to his people. Now that he knows the truth about Eliana, however, it will take more than groveling to win back the one woman fated to be his.

While Eliana and Malik embark on a new sensuous path that might lead to disaster, the realms aren’t ready to allow the final lightning-struck human to be enveloped into their fold. The couple will have to combat those plotting against them, as well as the broken promises and heated emotions they share.

Warning: Contains a Leo with a bite that’s worse than his roar, a woman with one last chance at the life she’s always dreamt of, a flame that could extinguish with the wrong sacrifice, and the final journey in the bestselling Dante’s Circle series.





Chapter One


Time changed in an instant. One minute, you’re drinking a beer with your friends, talking about the increasingly scary storm outside; the next, you’re flying through the air with your body slamming into the nearest wall when lightning strikes. Or rather, when lightning strikes inside the room and hits you and six of your friends dead center.

Eliana Sawyer’s life changed the moment she felt the energy of the gods ricochet through her body. The world as she knew it became grey, and the things that went bump in the night became all too real. The paranormal world wasn’t that of fiction anymore; now, she lived it. The way she saw the world, the way she saw life and fate changed. She couldn’t plan a future the same way she had. She couldn’t fall in love the way she’d thought to in the past.

After the lightning strike, six of her friends had found out the hard way what happened when they fell in love with someone paranormal—they became paranormal themselves.

Now, years later, here Eliana was—alone, all too human, and on the outside looking in.

Of course, she wasn’t that alone anymore. She never would be again. While her friends had fallen for angels, demons, dragons, and wolves, she’d fallen for a mere human. A human that had taken her heart and shattered it into a thousand pieces, all the while leaving her with nothing but an echo of what he had once been, what they had once been together.

That wasn’t the only thing he’d left her with.

He’d also left the life currently growing in her womb.

Eliana pressed her hands over her belly and tried to not think about everything that had happened in the past, and instead, worry about the future. Of course, the only thing she’d been doing for the past eight or so months had been worrying, but she couldn’t seem to do anything else. Her emotions ran from excitement over the new baby because, damn it, she was going to be an amazing mother; to dread over the fact that she’d be doing this alone. The stops between the two emotions weren’t picnics either.

Malik had left her high and dry with no way to contact him—going so far as to change numbers so his friend—and Eliana’s friend’s mate—Tristan couldn’t even get ahold of him. Tristan had tried to reach out as soon as he’d heard about the pregnancy, but Malik was nowhere to be found. She didn’t want to think about the fact that he’d so clearly cut all ties with the part of his past that was about her, but it was hard not to when the evidence of their relationship was currently doing a little dance on her bladder.

The little squirt tended to do that at all hours of the night. And the day for that matter. She’d heard stories from her friends about how some of them had sleeping little babies during their pregnancy. How those babies had been content to hang around and only perk up with a dose of caffeine. Yet her squirt was apparently a future soccer star.

Why wouldn’t her baby be? It wasn’t as if anything else in recent years had gone easily for Eliana, so why would this?