Cover Reveal - - WULFE UNTAMED

Fans of Pamela Palmer's Feral Warriors series have been waiting a long time for Wulfe's story to be told.  While the book won't be released until January 28, 2014, we're excited to reveal the cover today!  We have it on good authority (from Avon Books) that Wulfe's story is "a wonderful, romantic love story" but we're also told that Pamela Palmer "doesn't make it easy on our wolfishly hunky Warrior!"  

Here's the synopsis of this long-awaited story:  

Wulfe knows the end-game is approaching.  The Mage are preparing to free the Daemon plague and Wulfe’s own small strain of Daemon heritage has been awakened. Worse yet, the beautiful human he once rescued needs saving again. Though Mage sentinels are the ones after Natalie Cash, Wulfe knows his heart is what she really should watch out for. He’ll do everything he can to protect her…and keep his distance. Running for her life while trying not to fall for this gentle, wounded warrior, Natalie’s world’s been turned upside down. But when the Mage begin to free the Daemons, it becomes clear that the Ferals’ only chance of defeating them is for Wulfe to use Natalie to harness the dark forces-and risk becoming evil in the process. The future of the world hangs in the balance, but can Wolfe endanger the woman he loves to save her?

And to further whet your reading appetite, here's an excerpt:

            “It’s me, boy. This might hurt, but I’ve got to staunch your wounds.”

            Her fingers pressed gingerly, burrowing through Wolf’s fur, as she sought the site of the stab she’d seen him take to the shoulder. Warm blood coated her fingers and she knew she’d found it. As gently as possible, she pressed one of the shirts against the wound, then started searching for any others.

            “Poor guy,” she whispered. “You chose the wrong night to come see me, but you probably saved my life.” She needed to get him to a vet. The beautiful animal made no sound, gave no indication of consciousness. He might be alive, but for how much longer?

            Something skittered across the floor downstairs, stopping her heart for another moment. Why hadn’t they followed her upstairs? For that matter, how in the heck had she fallen asleep on the guest bed in the middle of an attack on her house? None of it made a bit of sense. The last thing she remembered was hitting one of the nasties with the lamp and the other one grabbing her. Had he hit her, then? She didn’t hurt anywhere. Somehow, she must have stumbled up here and passed out.

            As she probed the dog’s side, she felt more warm blood and knew she’d discovered another wound. If only she could see them. If only she had a flashlight. Or…a camp lantern. Yes. Her camping supplies were stored in the closet in this room. Rising, she dug the lantern out of the bottom of the closet and turned it on only a little, bathing the injured animal in a soft glow.

            He had blood everywhere. Her gut cramped. How was she supposed to know how much of the blood was his and how much belonged to the men? They’d been dressed so strangely, like some kind of foreign army, in matching blue tunics. And swords.

            She pressed tee shirts against the two wounds she’d found so far, knowing she had to find the others, yet wondering what she was going to do with them if she did. She only had two hands. And no telephone or suturing supplies.

            “Hang on, Wolf. Just hang on for me. Sooner or later, they’ll leave and I’ll be able to get you to a vet. What are they doing down there?” She heard something roll across the hardwood foyer. Roll. Suddenly she remembered the way they’d broken down her front door and relief left her on a hard exhale.

            “It’s not them, it’s the wind. Of course, of course.” Leaping to her feet, she stroked Wolf’s head. “This is going to hurt, boy, but I have to move you if I’m going to get you help.”

            She scooted around to his back end and, as gently as she could, lifted his hips and lowered them again a few inches out from the door. Moving to his head, she did the same, back and forth, a few inches at a time until she nearly had him far enough from the door to open it. Once more should be enough.

            Sweat beading on her brow, she took a deep breath, squatted at his tail, and lifted his hips one more time.

            Suddenly, her hands were empty, the dog just…gone…exploding in a spray of colored lights.

            Natalie fell back, landing on her backside, then stared, jaw dropping, as a man appeared out of thin air…a huge, naked man lying on the floor right where the dog had been.

            She crab-walked back, the bed catching her in the shoulder blades. This isn’t happening.

                The man groaned and began to stir. Natalie tensed, her heart pounding violently in her chest as she pushed herself to her feet, then sank onto the bed when her legs refused to hold her.

            Slowly, the man sat up and leaned back against the door, his muscular body marred by half a dozen stab wounds, one on the shoulder…right where the dog’s had been.

            This isn’t happening. Dogs don’t turn into men. They don’t!

            But even as the argument roared in her head, her gaze took in the sight in front of her. The man was built, his waist narrow, his abs ripped, his biceps as thick as tree trunks, one adorned with a thick golden armband with what appeared to be the head of a wolf. His shoulders were easily half the width of her sofa. Her gaze continued up, reaching his face, and her heart clenched. Scars crisscrossed the flesh every which way, tugging down one of his lips, cutting across one eye. His body might be prime, but his face was made for nightmares. Within that ruined face, eyelids lifted revealing dark eyes that turned to her, contracting on a sheen of pain, radiating a dismay so raw it almost made her ache.

            “I’m not going to hurt you, Natalie.” His voice was low and urgent as he struggled to his feet, grimacing. Towering over her—he had to be a full seven feet tall—he watched her with eyes filled with the same intelligence, the same gentleness she’d seen in Wolf’s. “I would never hurt you.”

            She was shaking, her pulse racing, her stomach cramping from shock. But not from fear. Because as she stared into those dark eyes, she saw only truth and honor and kindness. And, odd as it was, she recognized the essence of the dog in the man.

            “I would never hurt you,” he said again, his voice throbbing with sincerity and desperation that she believe him.

            “I know,” she told him.

            And she did.

WULFE UNTAMED is available for pre-order in both mass market paperback and digital format.  Follow the links below:

Amazon

Amazon Kindle

Barnes & Noble   

For more information about the Feral Warriors series, visit Pamela Palmer's website.  

Today's Special - - Pamela Palmer

The Dishes are delighted to welcome paranormal author Pamela Palmer to the blog!  A Love Untamed (Dec. 26, 2012) is the seventh book in Pamela's popular Feral Warriors series.  Pamela is joining us today to blog about experiences and how they shape the people we become.

Welcome, Pamela!

Experience Makes the Man (or Woman)

Our past experiences, whether from early childhood, our teen years, or later, can, and often do, affect our perceptions, our actions, and many times who we become as we get older. We are, in essence, a combination of nature and nurture, who we started out changed by all we’ve experienced.

I’ve often wondered who I might be today if I’d grown up in one home, going to school with the same kids from kindergarten through high school. Instead, I grew up moving constantly. My dad was an Air Force pilot until he retired when I started high school. At fourteen, we moved into the eleventh house I’d lived in. Friendships were temporary things to me, but family was everything, even though mine was small—just my parents, my brother, and me. Home meant family, period. Because the house and the city we lived in changed constantly.

Moving all the time formed me, I’m sure of it. I handle change extremely well, as you can imagine. But I was also taught to embrace the changes in our lives by a mother who loved the Air Force life. She grew up in a small town dreaming of travel and adventure. She was the perfect Air Force wife. For decades after Dad retired, Mom claimed that every three years, she and the furniture headed for the front door, ready to move again.

My nomadic childhood may have formed me, but it was happy and left me with few traumas. The only one, really, happened when I was five and we were living in Boulder, Colorado. One day the Chinook winds barreled through Boulder at over 100 mph. Mom called Dad at work—he was in Denver where the winds were mild—and said, “The winds are terrible. I think you need to come home.” Dad told one of his co-workers he was heading home and the man shook his head. “The winds are nothing.” My dad’s reply, “In the eight years we’ve been married, this is the first time Pat’s ever asked me to come home. I’m going.” By the time he entered Boulder, he could hardly keep his big old station wagon on the road. Within an hour of his getting home, the plate glass window in the living room blew out. Then other windows started to go. The house was less than a year old. By the end of the night, my brother’s room, a lower level one of our split-level, was the only one in the house with the windows still intact. We all slept in that one small room that night. I’ve never forgotten it. And to this day, when the wind starts blowing hard, I tense, subconsciously waiting for the windows to break.

Past events, past traumas, change who we are, or at the very least, affect us in ways we often neither realize nor understand. Sometimes, if we’ve been victims of violence or trauma, we know exactly what’s changed us, even if we can’t do anything but live with it.

In A Love Untamed, the heroine, Melisande, is an immortal, an Ilina mist warrior. Yes, she’s virtually indestructible, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be hurt. And she has been. Melisande is over 5000 years old. That’s a lot of time to acquire baggage. And Melisande has baggage, in spades. It’s no wonder her emotional armor is three feet thick, and no wonder no one’s been able to penetrate it. Not until Kieran, the new fox Feral Warrior, takes an interest in her and begins to burrow not just under her skin but beneath those impenetrable barriers. It hurts when defenses shatter. But sometimes that’s the only way to start healing.

The back cover blurb for A Love Untamed:

The newest member of the elite Feral Warriors brotherhood, Fox is eager to prove himself on the frontlines of battle against the Daemons. When paired with the legendary Ilina warrior, Melisande, he expects the fierce beauty to quickly fall under the spell of his quite considerable charm. Instead, he finds himself spellbound by a woman who's his match in every way.

Beneath Melisande's brittle exterior lies centuries of pain and a violent hatred of all shape-shifters--a hatred that slowly crumbles after they're caught in a deadly and cunning Mage trap and she glimpses a surprising depth in her far-too-seductive partner. Their survival demands unconditional trust--and their salvation surrender to a wild, untamed love.

Question for you: Who’s your favorite character (in a book, movie, or television show) with a tortured past? Comment for a chance to win a signed copy of Desire Untamed, the first book in my Feral Warriors series.