Not Quite Teaser Tuesday: Fortunes of War

 I've been on a bit of a creative tear all week working on Fortunes of War. I anticipated getting back into the Drakes slowly while I worked on Nothing More edits...but instead it's been full speed ahead. No sense wasting inspiration when it strikes that hot. At this rate, it's going to drop quickly on the heels of Nothing More, and it's going to be a fun one!

Here's what I should have posted for Teaser Tuesday, had I not been locked in The Zone.

Oliver encounters familiar (wolf) faces in the Between while dreaming:

**

Oliver said, “Do I know you?”

Two heads snapped his direction. One raised high, the other tucked low, uncertain…submissive. Both of them had blue eyes. Not that awful, burning lilac shade of the emperor, but a true, freshwater blue, reminiscent of cold, Northern skies.

The same shade, in fact, as Erik’s eyes.

Recognition dawned with a spark of excitement. “Leif?” Oliver asked. “Is that you? And that would mean…” His gaze slid to the second wolf, looking up at him, hackles half-raised, shoulders tucked like he meant to bolt. “Ragnar, then,” Oliver said on a sigh. “Yes?”

The first wolf blurred, rippled; there was a sound like rent cloth, a surge of light, and Leif stood in the wolf’s place, thinly dressed in a sleeveless leather tunic with furred collar, his hair tangled, his mouth red and wet with blood.

Oliver grinned…and then froze. His breath caught. It was Leif, yes, recognizably so, with his mother’s blue eyes, and his strong, clean-lined face, his golden spill of hair.

But he looked bigger. The gold bands around his biceps looked stuck there, so dense and thick had the muscle in his upper arms become. His shoulders seemed broader, his trousers more closely fitted over his thighs.

And there was blood on his mouth. Human blood.

Oliver swallowed with difficulty and glanced toward Ragnar, who’d gone to sit – whining faintly – at Leif’s feet, still in his wolf shape.

“He can’t shift here,” Leif said, and his voice was deeper and rougher than Oliver remembered. “He’s stuck as a man in our world, and here, apparently, he can only be a wolf.”

Interesting, but not now. Oliver looked back to Leif and said, “‘Here’? You know where we are?”

Leif frowned and shook his head. “I only know it’s not a dream.” He turned and glanced off across the waving sea of grass, toward a distant shadow along the horizon. “There’s a forest there.” He jerked his chin toward it. “That’s where we are, usually. There’s other drakes there. Black ones. And a woman with dark hair.” His voice took on a strange resonance when he said woman.

“Amelia,” Oliver breathed, and earned a sharp look. “It must be my cousin, Tessa’s sister: Amelia.”

Leif’s frown deepened. “Or a sorceress. A Sel mage, like the one who was about to snog you.” He bared his teeth in a show of disgust, and at his feet, Ragnar started panting, tongue lolling from his bloodied jaws in a manner that looked distinctly like a wolfish laugh.

“I wasn’t – I didn’t–” Oliver spluttered, before he recalled that he was the elder and gathered him composure. He shot Ragnar a dirty look – blue eyes slitted in delight, fangs glinting in the sun – and said, “That was no mere Selesee mage. That was the emperor himself. Romanus Tyrsbane.”

Leif’s brows jumped. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. He put some sort of enchantment on Percy, and it worked on me, too, I suppose.” He shook his head, skin clammy with memory of that treacle-slow, unreal moment when he’d been caught in the man’s gaze. “How did you know to find me?”

“We could smell you.”

“Ah. That was lucky.”