Shifter’s
Storm
Ice Age
Shifters, #5
by Carol
Van Natta
Date of Publication: December 12th 2019
Publisher: Chavanch Press
Cover Artist: Amanda Kelsey,
Razzle Dazzle Design
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Tagline: In a dying fairy fantasy land, can two shifters tell if the magic between them is real?
BLURB
In a dying fairy fantasyland, can two shifters tell if the magic between them is real?
While volunteering for hurricane cleanup, sheriff’s deputy and leopard shifter Chantal Hammond stumbles across two escapees from a fairy fantasyland. Unfortunately, when she tries to help, she ends up trapped. She quickly discovers she's lost in a mini-world of trouble, and more captives need rescuing.
Prehistoric sloth shifter Dauro de Mar and his friends have cruelly been imprisoned in their animal forms for years. His plan to lead the escape is mostly wishful thinking until an intoxicating and magical leopard shifter arrives still in her human form. She's their game changer.
It's going to take Chantal's and Dauro's combined skills, magic, and courage to evade evil hunters and greedy fairies, and get everyone out of this mess. Especially since the fairy fantasyland is disintegrating. Can they fight off danger—and their sizzling attraction—long enough to win their freedom? Or will they be destroyed by the mother of all storms when this magical land dies?
Find out today in Shifter's Storm, another sizzling hot Ice Age Shifters® paranormal romance from USA TODAY bestselling author Carol Van Natta.
Shifter's Storm is a complete story with a happily-ever-after and no cliffhanger, and can be enjoyed without having read the rest of the series.
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Excerpt:
Dauro ya
Ketumino da’Nok de Mar lumbered up onto the bank of the impossible river and
snorted forcefully to open his nose and ear flaps. The pretend sun was more
than halfway toward the far horizon. He shook up and down to help his fur shed
water.
The world shook.
Even the distant orchard trees to his left swayed.
What?
Dauro’s giant
aquatic sloth form was massive, but not that massive. Certainly not massive
enough to shake an entire magical fairy demesne.
The world shook
again, longer this time. Water sloshed onto the river’s banks, lapping at his
back paws.
When Nessireth,
the ancient fairy who created the demesne to house her collection of aquatic
exotics like him, went on a rampage, the wind blew heat and the central castle
trembled. But she’d died and turned to fairy dust two months ago.
A memory
surfaced of feeling something similar a couple of hundred years ago, soon after
Nessireth moved the demesne from the high, cold place to a warm island
location. The demesne’s anchor had been tugged by a violent real-world storm
she’d called a hurricane. After a second one a few years later, she’d used her
then-abundant magic to add more anchors. That cured it.
Dauro also
remembered a recent comment from Kelvin, the young pygmy hippopotamus shifter
who had been Nessireth’s final acquisition. Humans were now living everywhere,
and they’d been burning forests and fossils. Scientists said it changed the
climate and predicted more hurricanes.
Dauro believed
it. Heat and magic were similar—increased energy in a stable spell guaranteed
unstable results.
More shaking.
The river water surged in a wave, wetting his front paws.
Fairy demesne
magic made the circular river constantly flowing to provide habitat and feeding
grounds for him and the other aquatic shifters and creatures. It hadn’t ever
changed… until today.
That brought
home to him that he and others needed to get serious about escaping. Nessireth
had bragged about spending millennia to construct her demesne, but it was
decaying daily without her active magic to maintain it. The false moon wasn’t
as round as it used to be, and had a noticeable pink tint. Just last week, the
constant breeze had taken to gusting chaotically.
None of the
captives knew what would happen if the demesne collapsed with them still
inside. Dauro was certain it wouldn’t be good.
His giant sloth
liked solitary peace and quiet, but his suppressed human side knew he needed to
check on the rest of his friends. Nessireth’s death had given him more freedom
than the others. And his limited telepathic skills as a sloth meant he had to
visit them himself. Nessireth had forced each of them to remain their animal
form, and the demesne would keep them that way forever… as long as the magic
held.
As the oldest of
Nessireth’s acquisitions, he’d become the sinchi, the temporary champion of the
collection. In his opinion, formidable size, war experience, and a talent for
magic while in animal form didn’t make him a leader, but he was the best they
had.
Before his
energy-saving sloth succumbed to the lure of a nap, he plunged back into the
water. Digging his strong, clawed toes into the silty bank, he let the water
flow over him for a minute while he thought. Downstream was the long way around
the river, but wouldn’t tire him out as fast. So far, the magical
protein-enriched sea grasses he depended on for food still grew overnight, but
for how long?
He shoved off
and let the current help him swim toward his friend Sunscar’s territory. The
closer he got, the more the magic in the water felt as agitated as the river
itself.
And no wonder,
because the lake’s wall was breached. Instead of an orderly river running next
to a placid pool, the whole area was now a flooded swamp. The demesne’s castle
was already repairing the wall, but the water had no natural way to drain back
into the lake.
Even worse, the
damage had activated the water-based defensive spells, which were fighting with
the castle’s defenses. Grab-weed tried to strangle the broken pieces of the
wall, as if they were attackers. Two of the animated castle statues tore at the
weeds so the wall could heal.
Author Info
Carol Van Natta is a USA TODAY bestselling and award-winning science fiction and fantasy author. Series include the Central Galactic Concordance space opera series that starts with Overload Flux and Minder Rising, and the Ice Age Shifters paranormal romance series that starts with Shifter Mate Magic and Shift of Destiny. She shares her Fort Collins, CO home with a resident mad scientist and just the right number of equally mad cats.
Sign up for Carol Van Natta’s author newsletter: https://bit.ly/CVN--news
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carol.vannatta/
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