{"id":1540,"date":"2018-12-21T12:12:56","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T17:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?p=1540"},"modified":"2018-12-21T12:18:24","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T17:18:24","slug":"fox-blood-chapter-1-scene-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?p=1540","title":{"rendered":"Fox Blood, Chapter 1 Scene 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fox<\/a>Are you ready for a sneak preview of Fox Blood? This final book in the Moon Marked series is now available on all retailers.<\/a> Or you can try out the beginning below:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is called the walk of shame,\u201d Kira suggested, her voice cutting through the foggy evening air like a sword through warm butter. I swiveled in unconscious reaction, peering through almost-raindrops hovering around us on every side.<\/p>\n

Between the fog and the night, I couldn\u2019t see anything, unfortunately. Which didn\u2019t mean we were alone…just that visibility was painfully low. Unfriendly werewolves could be hovering just out of scent range, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce upon us. Good thing I wasn\u2019t as oblivious as my pampered younger sister to the danger we were currently walking through.<\/p>\n

So\u2014\u201cShh,\u201d I huffed out, hoisting a trio of cardboard containers a little higher in my arms while hoping the suddenly overwhelming aroma of stale beer wasn\u2019t emanating from one of them. Perhaps I should have sprung for new boxes rather than begging for used ones behind the neighborhood liquor store….<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it is, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Kira demanded, turning around to walk backwards down the gravel road leading up to our secluded cottage. \u201cI mean, if we weren\u2019t ashamed, we would\u2019ve taken Gunner up on his offer to rent a moving truck. We would have come when it was daylight out. And we wouldn\u2019t have parked twenty miles away so nobody would hear Old Red squeak her way up the drive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOld Red isn\u2019t so bad,\u201d I rebutted, defending the new-to-me car. I\u2019d never wanted a vehicle until I began living over a hundred miles away from a boyfriend who only visited in the company of needy pack mates. Skype had kept us in contact, but I had needs that weren\u2019t being met via video chat.<\/p>\n

Gunner had offered to throw money at the problem, but I wasn\u2019t ready for that level of entanglement just yet. So I\u2019d found a new job, had saved my pennies, and had bought a twenty-year-old, off-brand vehicle the previous week.<\/p>\n

Old Red made it feasible to move into a secluded, rural village without feeling like I was trapping myself and Kira next door to a bunch of werewolves. The car gave me an easy out if we needed to flee and allowed me to spend time with Gunner without having to become monetarily indebted to him. Now, however, I was having second thoughts about the cleverness of my ploy.<\/p>\n

Because my skin prickled with warning of hidden werewolves in the vicinity. Turning in a tight circle, I barely managed to keep Kira\u2019s box of stage-magic paraphernalia from teetering off the top of the stack while I peered around the barrier. I knew<\/i> they were out there. This was Atwood clan central after all. Even at the crack of dawn, there should have been patrollers out guarding the boundaries and early risers jogging down tree-lined paths.<\/p>\n

Instead, the territory appeared empty even though it smelled far too strongly of wolf…plus impatient little sister. \u201cAnd we didn\u2019t park twenty miles away,\u201d I continued, trying to get Kira off topic before I was forced to tell her what a walk of shame really was. \u201cWe parked a quarter of a mile away so Old Red\u2019s brakes wouldn\u2019t wake up the neighbors. It\u2019s the considerate thing to do. You need to learn to be polite now that we\u2019re denning with\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever,\u201d Kira cut me off, darting away to dance up cobblestone steps toward our cottage. The first dead leaves of autumn lay on the stones between us, and in daylight I suspected they would have glowed beautifully orange or red.<\/p>\n

In the evening fog, however, the discarded plant matter merely appeared gray, slippery, and dangerous…like everything else about this place.<\/p>\n

\u201cKira, wait.\u201d I wasn\u2019t in fox form, so I couldn\u2019t be certain. But I got the distinct impression someone had marked his territory on the bottom step in the form of very lupine-smelling pee. Gunner had promised the pack was ready to welcome us into their midst, but urine wasn\u2019t generally considered a sign of open-armed acceptance. More worrisome, however, was the fact that the liquid had been deposited so recently that it still puddled atop the cobblestones in my path….<\/p>\n

\u201cKira.<\/i>\u201d This time I snapped out her name as close as I could come to a werewolf compulsion. But, of course, we weren\u2019t wolves and my sister saw no reason to obey me.<\/p>\n

Instead, she turned the knob of our new domicile without even glancing backwards. Pushed the door open into darkness…and walked straight through an overwhelming cascade of strangely sulfurous eau de wolf.<\/p>\n

Dive straight into the full book on the retailer of your choice<\/a> or click here to continue reading online for free<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are you ready for a sneak preview of Fox Blood? This final book in the Moon Marked series is now available on all retailers. Or you can try out the beginning below: \u201cI think this is called the walk of shame,\u201d Kira suggested, her voice cutting through the foggy evening air like a sword through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3,142],"tags":[14,7,27,23,8],"class_list":["post-1540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts-aimee-easterling","category-aimee-easterling-news","category-series-moon-marked","tag-paranormal-books","tag-shifter-books","tag-urban-fantasy-books","tag-urban-paranormal-romantic-fantasy","tag-werewolf-books","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1540"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1547,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions\/1547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}