All First Chapter Samples

“I thought he’d lost a sex toy, not a person!” Carrick’s voice kept getting louder, and even though I wasn’t the target of his frustration, he still made me nervous.

“You shouldn’t make assumptions about things like that.” Lorne shrugged and didn’t seem to realize how close he was to getting zapped by his mate.

Or worse.

Caged.

To me, Carrick looked like he was plotting murder or a wicked scene, and either way, I wanted to out of the line of fire.

Mages were kind of nuts when they got this irrationally pissed off and the crazy mage didn’t love me, so I wasn’t going to take any unreasonable chances.

“Lorne, what exactly did you tell Carrick?” Daddy Monroe was being especially Daddy with his tone, but he also stepped between the two men, so he was smart too. “I’m not sure the…the lost your shit spell was meant for people.”

I was promised little green men, not octopus people with a name that had so many random letters in it the news people were having conniptions trying to pronounce it right. And the debates over the right way to use it in a sentence were even worse. Was it supposed to be said like “They were from Greece” or “They were Greek?”

The debate from the science guys on one of the morning talk shows got so vicious, they’d actually had to cut to an early commercial break when one scientist slugged the other. Daytime television had never been more insane.

But as annoying as it all was, I was just grateful that politics wasn’t the biggest issue anymore. When the aliens who’d invaded weren’t little green men but multi-tentacled things that asked for asylum and wanted to pay taxes, everything else took a back seat.

Especially when they’d settled in New York and tried to use the sewer system as a secondary subway. That had been an epic mess that had dominated the top news feeds for weeks until regulations could be put in place. It’d been nuts.

And as a plumber, I’d know.

I’d made more in the first six months of their “invasion” than I had in the previous three years combined. Every housewife in America wanted a screen or mesh installed in their shower and a lock on the toilet.

This was the weirdest munch ever.

Somehow it’d ended up being all straight people besides me and possibly one other exception…an interesting one.

“Your innocent attire and the way your body reacts to youthful educational stimuli suggests you would be classified as a little.” His voice was almost mesmerizing and it took me a second to realize I had no idea what the tall alien had said.

Huh? Innocent attire?

His sentence or question, or fuck, string of words had me looking down at what I was wearing because at that moment I had no idea what I’d put on.

Okay, I was starting to see what he meant.

“I honestly have no idea what to say. Your mind wasn’t focused on what it was supposed to be, that’s obvious. What were you thinking?” He could have gotten hurt. Not just killed the lawn mower, but himself as well.

Bryan looked down at the kitchen floor and mumbled something about being distracted and very sorry. He certainly looked remorseful, but there were other emotions mixed in.

“Do you even know what you ran over?” It had been like shrapnel going everywhere. Someone could have gotten seriously hurt.

He shrugged. “A lawn gnome, I think?” That seemed to be his best guess and it made sense. But how in the hell did he miss a lawn gnome? Maybe his mother was right, and he shouldn’t be given anything that might be in the realm of heavy machinery. That should probably include any kind of machinery really, considering he wasn’t allowed to use the toaster.

“You’ve mowed the lawn before, right?” Was this one of those things that he wasn’t allowed to do—like use the toaster?

“Are you sure we aren’t already in an alternate reality? Another planet? One of those Marvel multiverse things?” The locals were all so strange. “There are clowns everywhere.”

“I don’t know.” Frowning, Wren shrugged. “Um, they’re all kind of weird, but I’m pretty sure we haven’t gone through a portal.”

Since we were in the crazy town to figure out what was happening with the portal, I hoped we hadn’t gone through it accidentally.

Oh dear.

Oh dear.

Oh dear.

Look crazy or save a life?

What was I thinking?

Possibly save a life and definitely look crazy.