not that cougar, the other one (snippet time!)

Did you know that the American mountain lions are listed in dictionaries under more names than any other animal in the world? Writer Claude T. Barnes listed 18 native South American, 25 native North American, and 40 English names for the same animal. Depending on the region and native language, common names for the American lion include: mountain lion, cougar, panther, puma, painter, el leon, and catamount.

In Her Mountain Lion Mate, we meet Creole "Cree" James, the only natural born shifter so far (hehe) in the series. I tried to make a title using the word cougar, but in American slang, cougar has a whole different meaning. 

Enjoy this snippet.Her Mountain Lion Mate is with my editors and should be out in a few weeks. In the meantime, don't forget to check out my other books in the series (or any of my series, for that matter!)

xoxo

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Cree felt his hands shake as he prepped a keg for his usual Monday night crowd. Had it finally happened? Had he gone insane? He made a mental note to tell Quinn. An angry mountain lion shifter gone mad could cause untold destruction.

He didn’t want to wait for the government to put him down. If he needed to be killed, Cree wanted Quinn to do it.

Shaking his head, Cree went back to doing the bar back work he relished. He wasn’t as good with people as his bartender Jason was. After prepping the bar, Cree hid in his office the rest of the night, paying bills or searching endlessly for information on Roger Elliot.

As he hauled a case a local microbrew up from the cellar, the tantalizing-but- barely-familiar - scent wafted across the room. Creole shook his head, denial sharp and strong pulsing within him. He knew that scent, but she was dead. He shook his head trying to snap some sanity into his mind.

Cree’s eyes scanned the bar. Nothing moved except the sluggish whir of the ceiling fan. But he knew that sometimes prey hid in plain sight. He was no mindless animal ready to pounce. Instead, he was an experienced warrior.

Tamara was dead. Crushed in a car crash on her birthday, two weeks before Creole was released from the shifter prison he’d been transferred to. As he exited the facility on his 18^th birthday, his mother and his handler were there. Greeting him with the news that destroyed him.

Fresh pain pulsed through him in time with his heartbeat. He stacked the beer and rubbed the area across his heart. Would this wound be his constant reminder? His relationship with Tamara began while they were children. But their bond went deeper than childhood. It had its roots in fear, protection, and eventually death.

“Soon,” he promised her ghost. “One day, we’ll be united again.” A calmness settled over him at the idea of Quinn finally putting him out of his misery. If he had to live with this heartbreak every hour of every day for the rest of his life, he’d rather be dead, anyway.