The celebration begins as she makes her way through the crowd. The various schools throughout the Sanctuary have prepared a series of plays to entertain the crowd until after dark. Christine and Tabitha have organized food tables and, with the help of volunteers, hand out heaping platefuls of food. While we celebrate the election of our new mayor, the mountain people arrive to join the festivities. Skye and I make our way over to Alfie, Juniper, Pike and Linsey, Pike’s new wife.
“We brought gifts for our favourite new mayor,” Alfie says, kissing Skye’s cheek and handing her a large bouquet of bright flowers.
We party until well into the evening then everyone settles down on the grass while Dorian Milkstone, our oldest resident at 100 years, makes his way onto the stage where an old film reel has been set up. Opposite the stage is a massive screen. Both items are borrowed from the old theatre where Hannah and Silas were killed.
I never told Skye the story of their deaths. I allowed her to think that they left the city to find a different way to live. Once in a while, guilt has her bringing them up, has her wondering about their fates.
I can’t bring myself to regret any of my actions. Not a single one. They all brought me to this point in my life.
I lay on the blanket Skye has laid out and pillow my head on her lap. My daughters snuggle against each side, twining their arms with mine.
Together, we watch what is hopefully the first of many films to come. A movie called Beauty and the Beast.
THE END
Dear reader
Thank you so much for reading my Sanctuary Series! The Sanctuary world has by far been the most fun world I have created in my career as an author. I love imagining beautiful and harsh landscapes, and the struggles that survivors would face.
I know after reading Skye’s Sanctuary that many of you will want Dr. Sheela Summers and Malachi’s story. If and when I write their story, I anticipate it will be a duet, similar to Skye and Wolfe’s books. Unfortunately, I don’t have a release date for these books. As much as I want to continue with the Sanctuary Series, I have run into a few issues that need to be worked through before I can continue with this world.
My Sanctuary fans have been incredible when it comes to patience and kindness. I truly appreciate your willingness to wait as I build this complicated world. I hope to have more books for you in the future.
Thank you for your understanding. For updates on my work, please visit my website: authornikitaslater.ca.
Sincerely,
Nikita
Sanctuary Series
Have you read the original Sanctuary trilogy?
Go back now and enjoy Taran and Diogo’s story in Sanctuary’s Warlord, Sanctuary on Fire, and The Last Sanctuary.
Have you read Nikita’s bestselling dark mafia romance novels?
Turn the page to read a couple of excerpts from Nikita’s most popular novels!
Excerpt: Scarred Queen
Ignacio Hernandez had never before brought a woman to a meet. Then, they’d never met at a club before. The entire scene was unprecedented. Reyes didn’t do unprecedented, but he was willing to make an exception because he was curious. He could sever the Miami connection if he had to. It would cause some shockwaves, but it wasn’t out of the question. Ignacio was beginning to annoy him anyway. His poor decisions were beginning to affect the Bolivian. Such as bringing a woman like her to a meet with a man like him. Something that was meant to show off Ignacio’s power and wealth would become a big mistake.
His gaze flickered over the woman, calmly drinking her champagne and orange juice as though she weren’t sitting at a table with four of the most dangerous men on the continental East coast. Two kingpins and their right hands. Only Reyes didn’t think she was as calm as she appeared. Her wrist trembled slightly, giving her away. She had enough presence to make sure that tiny shake ceased by the time it got to her slim fingers where they clenched the crystal of her glass. It wasn’t the fingers or her ability to remain coolly poised while the men around her talked business that captured his curiosity. It was the mark on the back of her delicate hand, permanent slash lines, viciously marring her porcelain skin.
Anger burned deep in his gut, surprising him. Reyes rarely felt anything. Ever. Certainly not for a woman. This was how he made effective decisions. How he moved trade across borders with ease and cool logic. Emotion had been removed from him. First by a ruthless father, then by a vicious military stint in his home country and finally by an unrelenting, merciless prison sentence that had systematically broken him before he had, in turn, broken down the prison itself and owned it from the inside out. By the time he was released it was into a world of his own making; a world shaped by him on the inside and ruled by him on the outside.
Yet the sight of this cool, blond beauty, so broken yet utterly resilient was doing something to him, forcing him to feel. He shifted in his seat, sliding his arm across the back of the leather, his eyes never leaving her while he listened to the other men speak. Negotiate terms. He didn’t need to add his voice. Alejandro, his right hand, knew the terms. Knew not to fuck up while in pursuit of new deals for the boss.
Reyes wanted her. The electrifying anger he felt when his eyes caressed that mark assured him he would take the woman and make her his. Not because it infuriated him that she had been abused. No, he was not a good enough man to care about that. He was under no illusions he would treat her any better than Ignacio. Hell, he’d probably treat her much worse. Because Ignacio undoubtedly set her up like a trophy in his great mausoleum of a house and then ignored the unapproachable beauty.
Reyes had no intention of ignoring her. He was going to take her and fuck every inch of her, just the way he wanted. Hard, brutal, mean. Exactly how he was. Exactly how this world had shaped him. Because he could. She was about to become spoils of war.
No, he wasn’t angry about the mark on her hand at all. He was pissed that the mark was twisted into the shape of an “H” and not an “R.” He wanted her to belong to him, to the King. When he got his hands on the woman, that would be the first thing he changed.
Finally, after nearly an hour of sitting in the booth together, his eyes rarely leaving her face, she lifted hers to meet his uncompromising gaze. And for the first time in his life, he felt his heart stop in his chest. He was unprepared for the impact. Her eyes – one startling green and the other amber brown – were vivid, stunning and unrelenting. Though her expression didn’t flicker once from the blank mask of icy beauty, he saw the burning disdain, the heated fury buried deep within those fiery orbs for the men that surrounded her. She despised all of them.
His lip lifted in an answering sneer. She refused to drop her eyes from his challenge, despite her husband sitting at the same table. He wanted nothing more, in that moment, than to take this scarred Queen from her throne and tame her. He vowed, then and there, that he would eventually have her.
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Excerpt: Sinner’s Empire
Jozef marked the woman for pickup, pointing to where she stood. Alone, vulnerable, and fragile against a backdrop of ruined concrete and military tents.
Havel’s eyes followed. Once he caught sight of her, a frown wrinkled his thick brows. He wasn’t comfortable with what they were about to do. It bothered him. Though it shouldn’t. He’d snatched plenty of people in his time, cut them up too, and shot some of them. Why this one woman should bother him was beyond Jozef.
“You sure?” Havel asked quietly, his eyes following her as she finished her break, stood up and stretched, arching her back and tipping her head from side to side, loosening tight muscles. Then she reentered the tent building she’d exited ten minutes before.
Jozef grunted an affirmative.
He wanted to follow her, to watch her while she worked. Those elegant fingers touching her patients, healing them. She was a goddess. Striking and beautiful in a sea of ugly. Amidst the ruins of what used to be a permanent hospital, now a bombed-out shell, she was a thing of tru
e beauty. Since the area was still considered central to the war efforts, the military had decided they would rebuild a makeshift hospital on top of the old one. She was foreign; she didn’t belong in Ukraine. She was providing medical assistance to those caught up in the war. It was almost a shame to mark her.
She was the best he could find. Unlikely to have family or friends in the area, no one to miss her. She would disappear as quietly as she arrived. Others would assume she went home, back to wherever she came from. Her family back home would believe she’d been killed here. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it would work for as long as they needed her.
Jozef would force her to help them, to heal the man who had information about his uncle’s abduction. Jozef’s uncle, Krystoff Koba, head of the Czech Koba crime family, had been taken from his vehicle in downtown Kiev by armed mobsters while visiting a family friend. The kidnappers were demanding a token ransom, but Jozef suspected deeper motives. His uncle ran a vast and complex crime syndicate; he was king of his empire. A hard man to deal with for everyone except his close family members. Once out of favour, always out of favour, and the man who took Krystoff had fallen from favour years ago. The war in Ukraine further complicated an already strained relationship.
Revenge was not the motive or Krystoff would’ve been killed in the street in a brutal and bloody statement of might. No, the person responsible for Krystoff’s abduction wanted something else, something valuable. Jozef needed to know the motive, needed to play the game carefully. He didn’t need the kidnapper getting jumpy and murdering his uncle. He also didn’t want the other Vory finding out. Jozef needed to get his uncle back and figure out what the fuck was going on, especially since the only person who could gain from Krystoff’s death was Jozef, and Jozef sure as fuck hadn’t taken the old man.
While Jozef and his team made plans to infiltrate their enemy’s territory, Jozef’s brutally intelligent aunt, Krystoff’s wife, was distracting the kidnappers with promises of wealth and trade deals. Dasha would dangle them on the line until Jozef was ready to make his move. With any other woman, Jozef might worry about her giving away the game. But not Aunt Dasha. She would hold on to her icy poise even as the rival family mailed pieces of her husband’s body to her.
So far, they had only mailed a finger, the small one, cut at the knuckle. It was a clean cut and had obviously bled, indicating Krystoff was alive when the finger was removed. After a brief discussion with his aunt, Jozef had made his way into Ukraine, close to the front lines of the war on the Russian border. He hunted until he found the weasel who’d sent the package to Aunt Dasha; a shopkeeper by the name of Gustav, who had a good side hustle mailing objects of a sensitive nature.
Unfortunately, Gustav had collapsed under interrogation before giving up any information he might have had on the person who hired him to send the finger. Now the man was in a basement, in an abandoned village outside the city of Luhansk. Terek was with him, making sure he wouldn’t slip away while Jozef and Havel picked up a doctor. The man was refusing to speak. If he died, they would lose their only lead to finding Krystoff.
Jozef stared at the door she went through. He needed a doctor. A woman would be easier to capture. No family on that continent, easier to get rid of when they were done with her. She was the one Jozef wanted.
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Also by Nikita Slater
If you enjoyed this book, check out some other works by #1 International Bestselling Author, Nikita Slater. More titles are always in progress, so check back often to see what's new!
Sinner’s Empire
Book 1 - Sin of Silence
Book 2 - A Silent Reckoning
Book 3 - Goodnight, Sinners - Coming Soon!
The Queens Series
Book One – Scarred Queen
Book Two - Queen’s Move
Book Three - Born a Queen
Book Four - The Red Queen (Coming 2021)
Alejandro’s Prey (a novella)
The Queens 4 Book Box Set
Fire & Vice Series
Book One – Prisoner of Fortune
Book Two – Fight or Flight
Book Three – King’s Command
Book Four – Savage Vendetta
Savage Boss (a novella)
Book Five – Fear in Her Eyes
Book Six – Bound by Blood
Book Seven – In His Sights
Book Eight - Burning Beauty
Book Nine - Chasing Ecstasy (Coming soon!)
Fire & Vice 6 Book Box Set
The Driven Hearts Series
Book One - Driven by Desire
Book Two - Thieving Hearts
Book Three - Capturing Victory
Novella - The Princess and Her Mercenary
Driven Hearts 4 Book Box Set
The Sanctuary Series
Book One - Sanctuary’s Warlord
Book Two - Sanctuary on Fire
Book Three - The Last Sanctuary
Book Four - The Road to Wolfe
Book Five - Skye’s Sanctuary
The Sanctuary Series 3 Book Box Set
Loving The Bad Boy Series
Loving Vincent
Loving Jared
Loving Rico (Coming Soon!)
Standalone books
The Assassin’s Wife
Because You're Mine
Mine to Keep (a novella)
Luna & Andres
Kiss of the Cartel
Stalked
After Dark
In collaboration with Jasmin Quinn
Collared: A Dark Captive Romance
Safeword: A Dark Romance
Chained: A Mafia Marriage Romance
Good Girl: A Captive BDSM Romance
Hostile Takeover: An Enemies to Lovers Romance
The After Dark Box Set
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and the latest updates!
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About the Author
Nikita Slater is the International Bestselling dark romance author of the Fire & Vice series, Angels & Assassins series, The Queens series and several standalone novels. Her favourite genre is mafia romance, the bloodier the better, though she loves to write about every subject under the sun. She lives on the beautiful Canadian prairies with her son and crazy awesome dog. She has an unholy affinity for books (especially erotic romance), wine, pets and anything chocolate. Despite some of the darker themes in her books (which are pure fun and fantasy), Nikita is a staunch feminist and advocate of equal rights for all races, genders and non-gender specific persons. When she isn't writing, dreaming about writing or talking about writing, she helps others discover a love of reading and writing through literacy and social work.
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