Volyk learns very young that he has to hide what he is—oboroten’, shape-shifter—after his father is killed and skinned by a hunter, and the pack that takes in his pregnant mother is hostile to his kind. When Volyk is ordered to fight the pack’s beta to prove his fitness, but instead obeys his hormones and tries to mount him, he’s declared an abomination and forced to flee.
Ilya, too, hides a secret. Being young and gay in modern Russia is dangerous, and he knows it. But the truth eventually gets out, and his brothers lure him into the forest to kill him. They’re stopped by Volyk, who hides the mortally wounded Ilya in his den. The only way to heal the human is to turn him into an oboroten’.
Unfortunately, Ilya’s gentle nature is ill suited to the life of a wolf. But when Volyk’s old pack returns, seeking to take away Volyk’s magickal den, Ilya will have to embrace – truly become – the wolf Volyk made him, to save both his mate’s life and his own.
~ Ilya ~
What’s your job like?
Before I met Volyk, I guess you could say I was a perpetual student. Trying to put off the day when I’d be expected to find a place in my father’s business empire.
Would you rather be respected or feared? Why?
I’d settle for just being left alone… but I don’t think I have it in me to be fearsome. Surely there are ways to earn respect, other than making people afraid of you. Though I’ll admit, as I was growing up, fear was the most common shortcut to respect.
What’s your favorite book?
Wolfhound of the Grey Hound Clan, by Maria Semenova. There’s something about the blond boy who rises above adversity to become a mighty warrior… although I suppose being a wolfhound now would be a little, well, problematic!
If you could go anywhere, all expenses paid, where would you go?
You’ll laugh… but I’ve always wanted to see Niagara Falls. Maybe go on the boat that goes behind the falls. Something about all that power…
Tell us a bit about yourself.
If you’ve read any Russian folk tales, you know that the third son of the king or the rich merchant is a pretty dull fellow. *laughing* I’ve always been much quieter than my brothers, certainly quieter than my father! A dreamer, a loner… I enjoyed literature in school, but also maths, I was good at physics and chemistry. Though I think I liked chemistry mostly for my lab partner, Kirill…
And the angel said unto them, be not afraid…
Ilya was not afraid. Enraptured, yes. Entranced. But not afraid. He had been ready for death when he closed his eyes in the wolf’s embrace. Instead, he was whole, and awake, and in the arms of a man more handsome than any angel. Volyk’s long thick hair was the brown and gray of the wolf’s pelt, his cheekbones angular, his lips full. And his eyes were the same beautiful fiery amber as the wolf’s.
Maybe he had only dreamed the wolf. Or maybe he was still dreaming. Surely he had done nothing in his life to earn the gift this moment would be if it were real.
Rory Ni Coileain majored in creative writing, back when Respectable Colleges didn’t offer such a major. She had to design it herself, at a university which boasted one professor willing to teach creative writing: a British surrealist who went nuts over students writing dancing bananas in the snow, but did not take well to high fantasy. Graduating Phi Beta Kappa at the age of nineteen, she sent off her first short story to an anthology that was being assembled by an author she idolized, and received one of those rejection letters that puts therapists’ kids through college. For the next thirty years or so she found other things to do, such as going to law school, ballet dancing (at more or less the same time), volunteering as a lawyer with Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and nightclub singing, until her stories started whispering to her. Currently, she’s a lawyer and a legal editor; the proud mother of a budding filmmaker; and is busily wedding her love of myth and legend to her passion for m/m romance. She is a three-time Rainbow Award finalist.
2 comments:
Good luck with your new book it sounds wonderful.
Rory ~ Congrats on the new book and good luck on the book tour!!
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