One night, Callum is driven into the woods by instinct, an instinct to protect… what, he does not know. Until he, in the form of wolf, meets a young, human child who he is instantly drawn to in a fierce way he doesn’t quite understand.

But in the end, she protects him. Then he finds this human child is his destined mate.

Sonia Arlington has lived a lonely life. She has certain abilities that make her strange and she has a rare disease that, if untreated, could kill her. Her mother and father are assassinated but before, her father makes her vow that she will never let others discover her abilities. This forces Sonia to stay distant from others, no family, no close friends and always guarding against exposure.

Then the intelligence leaks that Sonia is Callum’s human mate. He is now King of the Werewolves and therefore she becomes targeted by the wolves who have aligned with other immortals to enslave the human race. Callum has war on his hands and is forced to claim his mate and quickly integrate Sonia into a world that is strange and frightening to her.

As Sonia attempts to adjust, not entirely successfully, Callum attempts to cope with the knowledge that his mate is mortal. He will have her beauty and gentleness only the length of a mortal life and as werewolves only have one mate their entire lives, their union for him is unbearably bitter as well as unbelievably sweet.

Then he finds that due to her illness, her human life will be even shorter and he is forced to endure the increased bitter while doing everything he can to make Sonia’s short life incredibly sweet.

“Every day, I would wake up and think you were perfect and every night I’d go to sleep thinking, somehow, during the day, you got even more perfect. If I could have wished what I thought was my perfect mate on the wind and had her come back to me in a storm, I could never have come up with anything as exquisite as you.”

There is something very comforting about picking up a Kristen Ashley book. You know you will love it even before you start, you know she will rock your world and ruin all men for you with her delicious alpha male characters, and you know that once you dive into the story you will never want it to end. Once again, KA delivers.

In this second book of The Three series, the second Prophesy is fulfilled, where the King of Werewolves, Callum, finds his lifemate, Sonia, bringing this fantastical world one step closer to an eternity of peace between species.

Sonia is a mortal with supernatural gifts. She first meets Callum as a child while in his wolf form and they are immediately and inexplicably drawn to one another. Callum then becomes aware of their destiny together but Sonia does not. They live apart for thirty-one years, Callum patiently waiting for his mate to become a woman and to finally make her his Queen, while Sonia dreams of Callum every night, both as man as well as wolf, her vivid dreams soothing her loneliness, completely unaware that her dream man actually exists. When they meet again, they are thrown together by unexpected events, forced to rush what Callum always planned of making a slow re-acquaintance between them. Their attraction is sizzling, their connection unquestionable, but they are given very little time to actually develop gradual feelings for each other.

“You’re my mate, Sonia, my queen. … You were destined for me before you were even conceived. I’ve been waiting for you for longer than you can imagine.”

Callum has no doubts about Sonia’s role in his life, his attachment to her is stronger as he has known of her all her life and has had time to prepare for their future together. Sonia, on the other hand, is unable to fight her body’s response to Callum and her dreams of him only serve to confuse her even further, but she resists the attraction. Her misplaced conviction that he is taking her as his mate only out of obligation to his people and not genuine affection for her serve only to make her even more determined to guard her heart around him. Sonia struggles to accept his ways, his dominant and possessive nature, but most of all, she struggles to hand control of her life to him.

“Callum didn’t date. He didn’t court. He seized.”

What follows is an unconventional courtship between two individuals with very different ideas of romance, and a not-so-subtle battle of wills. Callum and Sonia might have been brought together by supernatural forces and pre-destined events, but their journey to become true lifemates is a bumpy and slow one. Their story is one of acceptance of their destiny and the pull between them, as well as of the unstoppable growing feelings for each other. They complete one another, in more ways than one, Sonia taming the beast in him by calming and soothing him, while Callum offering her the sense of belonging that she never hoped of finding again.

“I dreamed of you,” she whispered and watched as his body grew visibly taut. “Since I was a teenager, I dreamed of you.”
He said softly, “You know me.”
“In my dreams, you’ve been coming to me for twenty years.”
“You know me,” he repeated.
Sonia nodded a jerky, frightened nod.
“Do you understand you’re mine?” he asked.
She swallowed. Then she nodded again…
“Come to your wolf, baby doll.”

Throughout it all, we get an exciting and well developed storyline driving the series forward and keeping us at the edge of our seats, desperately wanting more. There is no way of describing the chemistry that Kirsten Ashley creates between her characters and actually do it justice. There is never any doubt in our minds that they not only belong to each other, but that Ms Ashley is going to take care of the hopeless romantic in us and give us an unforgettable love story. Her writing is original, flawless and utterly addictive. I always step away from a KA book with a ridiculous grin on my face – this time I also had an unexplainable need to be called “baby doll”!

“You love me?”
“With everything I am, baby doll, and everything I’m meant to be.”

Other books in the series or related posts:

Leah Buchanan’s family has been in service to vampires for five centuries. Even so, Leah wants nothing to do with her family’s legacy but when she’s summoned to her Selection by the Vampire Dominion, under familial pressure, she has no choice but to go.

Lucien has been living under the strict edicts of the Vampire Dominion for centuries but he’s tired of these ancient laws stripping away everything that is the essence of the vampire.

So he’s taking it back.

And this is because Lucien has also been watching and waiting for decades for Leah to become available for a Selection and he will not be limited with what he can do with her. He will have her, all of her.

Therefore, Lucien is going to tame Leah, even if he gets hunted and killed for doing it.

What neither Leah nor Lucien expects is the strong bond that will form between them, connecting them on unprecedented levels for mortals or immortals. And what will grow between them means they will challenge their ways of life and their union will begin the Prophesies which makes them one of three couples who will save humanity… or die in the effort.

I have four words for you – Kristen Ashley does vampires. All the usual suspects that you would expect in a KA book are there – sexy alpha males, strong and outspoken heroines, sizzling chemistry, great secondary characters, interesting plot – but this time we are in a world of supernatural creatures.

In this world, the existence of immortal beings is veiled in secrecy except to a select group of mortals. These mortals include concubines, women who live to serve vampires by feeding them. Each concubine is selected by a vampire during a Selection and the length of her service depends on the vampire’s wishes.

Lucien is his species’ über-alpha male whose status among his kind is legendary. Leah comes from a long line of proud concubines but she is a reluctant concubine. She has never wanted to serve the vampire species that way and she has so far avoided participating in a Selection. This time, however, she has no choice because she has been summoned. Leah is unaware of the fact that Lucien had selected and “marked” her as his future concubine twenty years ago and has waited for her all this time. What she also does not realise is that concubine agreements only allow feeding, no other physical intimacy between vampires and their concubines. Lucien changes that contract, making Leah believe that “servicing” a vampire implies sharing his bed as well.

This is in essence a Taming of the Shrew type of story – the heroine is under obligation to fulfil a family legacy but she is everything but a willing participant. The hero gets a kick from taming the heroine, he appears to want her compliant and obedient. Initially, this was a major obstacle for me in this book but I also do get that the world that Ms Ashley has weaved for us is a world where immortals and mortals are not equals and where those servicing vampires are considered just that – servants. They are expected to be respectful and never insolent, but I found that hard to swallow when we are given a female character like Leah whose strong personality and independent streak make her a believable match for someone like Lucien. Leah’s desire to assert herself as an equal in her relationship with Lucien made me love her even more as a heroine and made me cringe at Lucien’s do-what-I-say-and-don’t-ask-questions type of behaviour in the first half of the book.

It soon becomes clear, however, that their perceptions of taming are quite different. Leah fights it because she equates it to giving herself to him, trusting him with all that is truly her and believes that Lucien needs to gain her trust before she lowers her defences with him.

“The mass of bad traits, stubbornness, impatience and sometimes fumbling idiocy and all the good traits too, my loyalty, sense of humour and compassion. I wouldn’t hold onto me anymore. I would be giving it to him and I didn’t trust him to take care of it.”

For Lucien, on the other hand, it is an issue of being accepted for what he is rather than breaking Leah’s indomitable spirit or changing her.

“He wanted her trust, her acceptance of his power, his dominance, not to wield it against her, but to use it to keep her safe, protected, nurtured, thriving.”

He loves her strength and he wants her to stay exactly as she is, but also freely acknowledging him in her life, forever. “Until the sun falls from the sky.”

“I’ve been waiting to have you since I knew you existed. But I’ve been waiting for someone like you for five f*cking centuries.”

I believe what he really wanted from her is submission – he wanted her to accept him as a mate willingly rather than pretend to be the perfect concubine. He preferred her stubbornness to her untruthful compliance, and in a world that either sees his as an unreachable hero or makes him hide the essence of who he is, he desperately wanted to let someone into his life who would accept him and allow him to be himself around them. He wanted to look after Leah, to be her protector and for her to be his life. In every way. When Leah finally accepts him with her heart, their bond grows and changes everything.

This book might have fangs but it is ultimately just a story of two people learning to trust and accept one another. Their dynamic was slightly warped due to the paranormal nature of the world they live in and the embedded imbalance between mortals and immortals, but even against that backdrop, they are just a couple learning to communicate with each other. Most of the conflict that gets created between them emerges out of misunderstandings and truths withheld. Once they start trusting each other with their secrets and feelings, their relationship blossoms.

The storyline around Leah and Lucien’s romance is perhaps not as strong as I would have liked it to be, a few things get resolved with minimal conflict making it all appear somewhat rushed given the seriousness of those issues, but it is still strong enough to set the scene for quite an original and very imaginative trilogy. I really liked this book and have great hopes for the rest of the series.

Did I mention that KA does vampires?

Other books in the series or related posts: