A Shadow in the Light by Keary Taylor 💕 Book Blitz & Gift Card Giveaway 💕 (Paranormal Romance)

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“You went and fell in love with an ultralight? That’s like a spider falling in love with a butterfly. They’re both arachnids, but the entire universe knows they don’t belong together.”

I needed an out. I needed to be someone who wasn’t trapped in Las Vegas. I went to that club looking for nothing and everything, and there he was. Jaxon’s hands on my hips were just what I was looking for, and for just one night, it was easy to be someone I wasn’t.

Then our signals went haywire. We’ve been looking for the gatekeeper for a long, long time so we can go home, and a new possibility just came up. It was my job to bring them in.

Only it was him. Jaxon Gray. Turns out, he comes from one of the most dangerous crime families in Sin City. But I’m not the only one after him. There are others who want him just as bad, and they’ll kill me to get to him.

Now we’re on the run together. He should be scared. He’s seen me shift, and it’s not sparkly or pretty. But he doesn’t cower when he sees the other side of me—my shadows, my claws, my fangs. With a curious gleam in his eyes, he asks to know more.

This is dangerous. He’s about to manifest. And as soon as he does, his biggest impulse will be to kill me. But it’s too late for my heart, I can’t walk away. So, the million-dollar question is: will what’s happened between us be enough for him to overcome his instincts?

The room smells slightly of smoke and everything is dated by about fifteen years, but it looks clean enough to not give me an STD.

All the pain and exhaustion I’ve been ignoring in the past forty-five minutes hits me the second I walk in the door.

I walk straight to the mirror, flipping on the flickering florescent light.

It’s worse than I thought.

Bruises are blooming along the left side of my face. There’s a nice cut running down my right cheek.

I peel my t-shirt off, and immediately my eyes go to the dark black marks, the perfect shape of fingers dug into my skin.

“Holy…”

In the mirror, my gaze shifts over my shoulder to Jaxon. He stares at my bruised and injured body, particularly those finger marks.

“Pretty sure you look worse,” I say, noting the cut above his eye that’s bleeding again.

He takes several steps forward, coming into the light. He grabs a towel from the rack, pressing it to the cut. But he never takes his eyes off me.

“I swear,” I say. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to eat you either. I just need something from you, and then you’ll be free to go.”

“Are you stalking me?” Jaxon asks. Even though we’re standing side by side, he looks at me in the mirror. “Because that night…”

“I didn’t know that night,” I said, looking sharply up at him in the mirror. “Us meeting that night was purely coincidence. There was nothing ulterior going on that night, I swear.”

He’s quiet for a second, and as I look into his eyes in the mirror, I realize how desperately I want him to believe me.

I shouldn’t want that.

“You’re hurt,” he says simply.

I look back at my own reflection. I look like crap. “I’ve been through worse. I’ll survive. You need stitches though.”

He leans forward, looking at the cut closer in the mirror. The gash going down his face, from his temple, down the side of his eye, down to his cheek bone, is starting to bleed badly again.

I grab the sewing kit.

“You done this before?” he asks, eyeing me warily.

I set the kit on the countertop and grab his arms, positioning him under the light. I take a towel, get it wet, and set to cleaning the wound.

“More than a couple of times,” I say, not meeting his eyes as I work.

“You military?” he asks. I can feel his eyes fixed on me.

“No,” I answer simply.

“Military experiment?” he asks, and his tone is dead serious. I guess I can’t blame him for that.

“No,” I say, my tone getting a little sharper as I set the towel down and thread a needle.

“Alien,” he says simply, like it’s the last possible explanation.

“I’m not an alien,” I say, my tone bordering on offended. “You’re never, ever going to guess what I am. So how about you just stop?”

“Then how about you just explain it?” Jaxon says with a growl. He hisses as I dig the needle through his flesh for the first stitch. “Because I thought you were just a really amazing woman I had a really amazing night with. But it turns out you’re something a whole lot more interesting.”

His choice of words snaps my eyes to his.

My life has been an endless march of survival and roadblocks. The gate closed, and we were trapped in the DarkVerse. We eventually made peace with the darklings, but for over a century, gatekeepers came and went, and still, we could not return home. Then I was taken against my will, and tortured for decades.

When I escape, all that is on my mind is vengeance and the drive to finally accomplish what I set out to do: open the gate.

But I wasn’t prepared for her. We plucked Jade out of a nightmare of a life. How she is even sane is a wonder to me, but the second she manifests, she is proving to be one of the best of her kind.

shouldn’t keep watching her. My eyes shouldn’t linger. But I can’t stop. I’m astounded by this woman and everything she has overcome. And by her stolen glances, the way she doesn’t turn away from my scars of war and torture, I don’t think I’m alone in this.

She is a darkling, and I am an ultralight. We couldn’t be more different. We’re natural enemies.

But Jade has changed everything, and I’m not so sure going back to the LightVerse is where I belong anymore.

💕 To be released June 8 💕

Keary Taylor is the USA TODAY bestselling author of over twenty novels. She grew up along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where she started creating imaginary worlds and daring characters who always fell in love. She now splits her time between a tiny island in the Pacific Northwest and Utah, with her husband and their two children. She continues to have an overactive imagination that frequently keeps her up at night.