Pitch:

Hiding in a coastal English town, Nicole is safe from The Wake, the organization that owns her kind—as long as she suppresses her predatory powers as an Empyreal.

But when The Wake sends one of its best to hunt a vicious creature, he threatens Nicole’s secret.

Soon, keeping control of her heart becomes more dangerous than her nature—because if the hunter discovers what she is, he’ll hunt her too.

SERPENT AND DOVE meets A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES

Excerpt:

Paintings of Varians glinted in the dark of Nicole’s presentation, their curling, nautilus shell horns and dusky copper wings changing with each slide. Every press of her glowing keyboard revealed another piece in Mr. Westmoore’s infamous art collection.

But this one made her more conscious of the warm, slumbering power inside her.

Made her so glad it was still silent.

“Can anyone tell me who’s represented here?” she asked.

Her classmates stared over her shoulder, their faces basked in Venetian red. She’d waited five years for a chance to get inside Westmoore’s coastal manor. But the promise of seeing his paintings up close and figuring out their secrets still set a low thrill inside her.

Michael raised his hand.

Heat rushed to her face. It’s just the projector’s light. Not his burnished gold hair. His dimpled grin. His ex-girlfriend Patricia’s glare.

“Hercules?”

She smiled. Wrong. “Right.”

While Michael knew Hercules as the demi-god warrior, Nicole knew him as Alcaeus the Empyreal. Rare and powerful, Empyreals were instinctual killers that transformed into the predator of any dangerous Varian they encountered. It was how ‘Hercules’ completed all his labors. He hadn’t been sent by the gods as punishment, he’d been sent by the organization that owned and controlled all Empyreals: The Wake.

The one thing her family had to avoid at all costs.