by Amy Lane
“They had to get gas,” she said unhappily. My mom looked hopeful.
“That’s great, because the appointment is in about two minutes, and it shouldn’t take long at all.”
“No,” I said, crossing my arms. “No. Nicky and Katy will be here in a minute, and we’ll take off. I’m not going in.”
And then, oh horror—had we not suffered enough?
My mother began to cry.
I didn’t notice it at first, because she didn’t sob, and her face didn’t crumple. No, that would be too dramatic for Ellen Kirkpatrick. She just… shed tears and wiped them off stoically with the back of her hand.
“Cory, please. I… I know you think you’ve got it all nailed down. You’ve always been so… so self-contained, you know? All I ever wanted to be was a mother, and you popped out, and it was like you didn’t need any mothering. What was I supposed to do with a kid who could brush her own hair at four? How was I supposed to protect you when you could talk to strangers and… and order them around by the time you were six? Your third-grade teacher—”
“Ms. Belcher?”
“Yeah. She quit because you kept correcting her, and you were right!”
I grimaced. “I didn’t mean to make her quit!” I had unclear memories of a harried-looking woman with a really vast bosom and fuzzy blonde hair who kept losing kids as they dodged out the door. Well, hell, congratulations to me for winning the pain-in-the-ass award.
“Well she wasn’t that bright anyway,” Mom said, looking a little pathetic. “But that’s not the point.”
“I’m dying for the point,” I said, scowling and remembering that I had been ambushed into submitting my body for care that was potentially detrimental to the unborn nonhuman children in my uterus.
“The point is, our family doesn’t have a great history with pregnancy,” Mom said, uncertainty wobbling her lip and crumpling her chin. “You were not… not my first pregnancy, Cory. I mean, we closed up shop after we had you, because… we just couldn’t keep trying. But my mom, her mom—a bunch of only children, and the babies….” She bit her lip. “Sometimes the birth defects are just too severe. I had to abort two pregnancies because the fetuses… that much damage….”
My stomach roiled. Partly because I was beginning to suspect something, and partly because… oh hell….
“Mom—you couldn’t have told me this before?” I shoved my hands through my hair, and my rubber band went splanging out the back and rebounded. I’m pretty sure it hit Bracken in the ear. “I mean… Jesus. This might have been something to know before… I don’t know, marriage? Sex? Conception? All of the above!”
Mom looked away and bit her lip, a gesture so vulnerable that my heart broke a little. “When do you tell your daughter a thing like that?” she asked, voice breaking. “I just… you didn’t go to the doctor, and you keep telling me that Green will take care of you—”
“He will,” I said gently. “Mom—”
“He’s not a doctor!” she snapped. “He’s not a god! He can’t do everything—”
Oh, but he could. Green, Bracken, and I had flown the day before. It took a tremendous amount of power, yes, but we could fly—could hover and swoop, could scoop up werewolves and defend the crap out of ourselves. I’d seen him heal heinous wounds—some of them mine—with a touch. When his palm slid over my abdomen, I could feel him communing with our children.
Green could do everything, but my mom—my mom couldn’t know that.
Purple
Amy’s Alternative Universe Romance
Little Goddess: Book One
Working graveyards in a gas station seems a small price for Cory to pay to get her degree and get the hell out of her tiny town. She’s terrified of disappearing into the aimless masses of the lost and the young who haunt her neck of the woods. Until the night she actually stops looking at her books and looks up. What awaits her is a world she has only read about—one filled with fantastical creatures that she’s sure she could never be.
And then Adrian walks in, bearing a wealth of pain, an agonizing secret, and a hundred and fifty years with a lover he’s afraid she won’t understand. In one breathless kiss, her entire understanding of her own worth and destiny is turned completely upside down. When her newfound world explodes into violence and Adrian’s lover—and prince—walks into the picture, she’s forced to explore feelings and abilities she’s never dreamed of. The first thing she discovers is that love doesn’t fit into nice neat little boxes. The second thing is that risking your life is nothing compared to facing who you really are—and who you’ll kill to protect.
Little Goddess: Book Two
Volume One
Cory fled the foothills to deal with the pain of losing Adrian, and Green watched her go. Separately, they could easily grieve themselves to death, but when an old enemy of Green’s brings them back together, they can no longer hide from their grief—or their love for each other.
But Cory’s grieving has cut her off from the emotional stability that’s the source of her power, and Green’s worry for her has left them both weak. Cory’s strength comes from love, and she finds that when she’s in the presence of Adrian’s best friend, Bracken, she feels stronger still.
But defeating their enemy is by no means a sure thing. As the attacks against Cory and her lovers keep coming, it becomes clear that their love might not be enough if they can’t heal each other—and themselves—from the wounds that almost killed them all.
Little Goddess: Book Two
Volume Two
Green and Bracken’s beloved survived their enemy’s worst—with help from unexpected vampiric help.
But survival is a long way from recovery, and even further from safety. Green’s people want badly to return to the Sierra Foothills, but they’re not going with their tails between their legs. Before they go home, they have to make sure they’re free from attack—and that they administer a healthy dose of revenge as well.
As Cory negotiates a fragile peace between her new and unexpected lovers, Green negotiates the unexpected power that comes from being a beloved leader of the paranormal population. Together, they might heal their own wounds and lead their people to an unprecedented place at the top of the supernatural food chain—a place that will allow them to return home a better, stronger whole.
Little Goddess: Book Three
Volume One
Humans have the option of separation, divorce, and heartbreak. For Corinne Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick, sorceress and queen of the vampires, the choices are limited to love or death. Now that she is back at Green’s Hill and assuming her duties as leader, her life is, at best, complicated. Bracken and Nicky are competing for her affections, Green is away taking care of his people, and a new supernatural enemy is threatening the sanctity of all she has come to love. Throw in a family reunion gone bad, a supernatural psychiatrist, and a killer physics class, and Cory’s life isn’t just complex, it’s psychotic.
Cory needs to get her act and her identity together, and soon, because the enemy she and her lovers are facing is a nightmare that doesn’t just kill people, it unmakes them. If she doesn’t figure out who she is and what her place is on Green’s Hill, it’s not just her life on the line. She knows from hard experience that the only thing worse than facing death is facing the death of someone she loves.
Loving people is easy—living with them is what takes the real work, and it’s even harder if you’re bound.
Little Goddess: Book Three
Volume Two
Cory’s newly bound family is starting to find its footing, which is a good thing because danger after danger threatens, and Green can’t be there nearly as often as he’s needed. As Cory learns to face the challenges of ruling the hill alone, she’s also juggling a ménage relationship with three lovers—with mixed results.
But with each new challenge, one lesson becomes crystal clear: she can’t be queen without each of the men who look to her, and the people she loves aren’t safe unless she takes
on that queendom with all of the intelligence and courage in her formidable heart.
But sometimes even intelligence, courage, and steadily increasing magic aren’t enough to do the job, and suddenly the role of Cory’s lovers becomes more crucial than ever. Nobody is strong enough to succeed in every task, and Cory finds that the most painful lesson she and her lovers can learn is not just how to deal with failure. Cory needs to learn that one woman is only so powerful, and she needs to choose wisely who sits outside her circle of family, and who is bound eternally in her heart.
Readers love the Little Goddess series by Amy Lane
Vulnerable
“What can I say about Amy’s writing that I haven’t already said? Not much. She’s fantastic, I love everything she writes.”
—Love Bytes
Wounded
“There is much darkness in this book, but there are rays of light as well. I look forward to furthering this series.”
—Prism Book Alliance
“It’s another great read, so full of emotion and drama, magic and mystique.”
—Jeannie Zelos Book Reviews
Bound
“I loved this book. That’s actually all I have to say. I loved it and it left me reeling.”
—Gay Book Reviews
“This was another great installation of The Little Goddess series. It is just as riveting and wonderful as all the other books in the series have been.”
—Inked Rainbow Reads
Rampant
“I think Rampant, Vol 1 is my favourite book in the series.”
—Prism Book Alliance
“With the intensity (and the stakes) jacked to eleven, Rampant, Vol. 2 is a white-knuckled thrill ride of a resolution, leaving the reader with a tantalizing peek into what’s in store in the next book in the series.”
—The Novel Approach
AMY LANE is a mother of two college students, two grade-schoolers, and two small dogs. She is also a compulsive knitter who writes because she can’t silence the voices in her head. She adores fur-babies, knitting socks, and hawt menz, and she dislikes moths, cat boxes, and knuckle-headed macspazzmatrons. She is rarely found cooking, cleaning, or doing domestic chores, but she has been known to knit up an emergency hat/blanket/pair of socks for any occasion whatsoever, or sometimes for no reason at all. Her award-winning writing has three flavors: twisty-purple alternative universe, angsty-orange contemporary, and sunshine-yellow happy. By necessity, she has learned to type like the wind. She’s been married for twenty-plus years to her beloved Mate and still believes in Twu Wuv, with a capital Twu and a capital Wuv, and she doesn’t see any reason at all for that to change.
Website: www.greenshill.com
Blog: www.writerslane.blogspot.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Facebook: www.facebook.com/amy.lane.167
Twitter: @amymaclane
By Amy Lane
The Green’s Hill Novellas
LITTLE GODDESS
Vulnerable
Wounded, Vol. 1
Wounded, Vol. 2
Bound, Vol. 1
Bound, Vol. 2
Rampant, Vol. 1
Rampant, Vol. 2
Quickening, Vol. 1
Published by DSP PUBLICATIONS
www.dsppublications.com
Published by
DSP PUBLICATIONS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
www.dsppublications.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Quickening, Vol. 1
© 2017 Amy Lane.
Cover Art
© 2017 Anne Cain.
[email protected]
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact DSP Publications, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dsppublications.com.
ISBN: 978-1-63533-438-8
Digital ISBN: 978-1-63533-439-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016918940
Published May 2017
v. 1.0
Printed in the United States of America
