About Being: Green's Hill Werewolves Book 6, a Torquere Menage Story
by Amy Lane
117 pages / 36000 words
ISBN: 978-1-61040-734-2
Ebook zipped file contains -
html, lit, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, prc, epub
Teague has never asked for anything in his entire life. Until now.
The wedding is over and the real work has begun. Teague was almost killed in
the line of duty, and everyone has felt the consequences. While Jack,
Teague, and Katy grapple with Teague’s injuries and their implications, the
Lady Cory who protects them all is forced to deal with an entirely different
development—one she is almost completely unaware of. But when Teague needs
help protecting his mates, Cory and Bracken jump into action. Literally.
But Cory almost died saving Teague’s life, and now she’s the one who needs
saving. Teague Sullivan has been willing to sacrifice everything in defense
of his queen and his lovers except his pride. Will he be able to live with
the consequences of asking for help?
Review
Sue Brown, author of Mr. Plum, writes: I have followed this series of Amy Lane’s with growing delight. In truth, I am not a big fan of shifter stories, but Jack, Teague and Katy’s story is so much more than that. It isn’t just a meeting of three weres who fall in love and have it away in a wolfishly wicked manner.
As I followed the start of the small family and how they fit into a whole universe of non-humans, I found what I loved was not the wolfy element, although it was beautifully drawn, but the drama of the humans, flawed in all their glory, as they struggled to find their place in this universe.
And so to Being. Amy tells me it’s the end of the series. I stamped my feet. I never want their story to end. This is the story where Katy’s place in their trio becomes clearer, and Jack makes peace with his natural instinct to hug Teague to himself.
Katy’s understanding of her place is poignant at times, but as always with Amy’s work, so loving and beautiful.
For reasons I am not going to mention as I don’t want to spoil the plot, Jack finally grows up when he can’t rely on Teague to lead the pack. Jack and Katy learn to lean on each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Even when they need Teague, they are there for him afterwards.
Certain scenes stand out in my mind. Katy and Jack acknowledging how they feel about each other and Teague. Teague coming to the rescue of his loves. And a certain love-making scene between Jack and Teague.
If you haven’t read the rest of the series, go back and start at the beginning. You won’t be disappointed.
Sample
Jack
Even though Jack had to tackle Katy, his relief when she turned human was
gut-churning and profound.
Teague had been wounded in the heat of battle with a rogue vampire kiss in a
way that had been terrifying. Excruciating. Every fear Jack had ever had for
the three of them. But Katy’s refusal to return to her human form had been
frightening too. Jack… Jack was the weakest member of their little group, in
spite of his size and apparent strength. He was the emotional one, he was
the one who lost his everlovin’ mind in any given situation.
Teague was the leader. Katy was the anchor. Jack was the emotional drama
queen who could fuck up a wet dream if someone didn’t throw a rein over his
shoulders and pull hard, and he’d been the one giving all the orders and
doing all the thinking since the three of them had been shoved on the
medivac helicopter and taken to the hospital where Teague was plastered, and
then… oddly and surrealistically enough, taken here, to a house on a cliff,
overlooking the redwoods and gray blue surf of Monterey.
And for the last twelve hours or so, he’d… he’d sat, here in this spacious,
darkened room, looking out at the ocean below them. He petted Katy, kept her
calm, and listened above the sound of his own heartbeat for Teague’s
breathing, and the occasional grunt as he tried to turn sideways and curl up
in a ball, only to be thwarted by the gazillion layers of plaster and
fiberglass that covered him from the balls of his feet to the top of his
balls and above.
Somewhere above Teague’s breathing, Jack could hear the sea.
Teague didn’t whimper -- not even in his sleep -- although the pain must
have been breath-stopping. He just lay there and twitched, the weight of the
plaster and all of the pulleys and things keeping him from curling into that
ever-present, psychologically necessary self-protective ball. Jack had been
torn between going to lie down with him, bed be-damned, and staying with
Katy. But Teague was unconscious, and Katy was holding onto herself by a
thread, and so he’d made the hard choice and stayed where he was needed
instead of going where he wanted to be.
About an hour before Katy fell asleep (and two hours before she woke up so
spectacularly) the phone rang, and that proved a welcome distraction. It had
been Green.
“Hullo, Jacky. You lot settling in?” Green sounded… tired, Jack thought.
Weary and a little bit ragged.
“He hasn’t woken up yet,” Jack said plaintively, and Green was not so weary
and so ragged that he couldn’t soothe an emotional-wingnut-werewolf’s
frazzled nerves.
“He will. Lambent said the push he gave would have sent a mortal into a coma
for a week. Teague will wake up eventually, when his body’s not working
quite so hard at putting itself together, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jack said with some relief. It was nothing he hadn’t thought of
himself, but… but he was a beta wolf. He had been his whole life, and had
known it from the moment he met Teague Sullivan in a bar and wanted him. He
needed confirmation that it was going to be all right. Good beta wolf,
right?
But then, even Jacky could grow a little beyond being a beta wolf.
“How is Lady Cory?” he asked reverently. The leader he’d resented, for
taking so much of Teague’s time. The woman he’d been jealous of, because so
many men seemed to fall at her feet. The little, smart-mouthed college
student who could barely hold on to her patience most days when Jack was
being his queenie, possessive worst. She’d almost killed herself to save
Teague’s life.
There were not enough ways to show your loyalty after that.
“She’s…” Green sighed. “She scared us. Is still scaring us. Her clambake
wasn’t over by a longshot when you three left. She’s sleeping now, but she’s
got some more grim business to do in a bit.”
Jack sighed. So, here he’d been, freaking out and resentful because he had
to be the head of his werewolf household for half a day, and the kid (she
was younger than he was. Goddamnit! She was nearly three years younger than
he was. She was younger than Katy!) the woman who’d slit her throat on her
enemy’s knife to keep Teague from falling from the sky without even a little
bit of a net, she’d been saving the world during that time. And now she was
going to wake up from a little nap and do it all again.
“Tell her…” He breathed out hard, knowing no words were enough. “Tell her
I’m grateful. Tell her that. Jacky’s grateful.”
For once, Green didn’t ask if Jacky was going to be okay. It would hit Jack
later -- and hit him hard -- that this was as close as Green ever came to
being self-centered, and that what had happened with the little sorceress
beloved by so many had shaken the tall, self-contained, and joyous sidhe to
his sound and wholesome core.
“I’m glad you’re grateful, brother,” is what Green did say. “I’m profoundly
glad that the lot of you will be okay. But don’t get me wrong. What she did
for your mate, she can’t do again. Ever. There’s more here than you know,
Jacky, and her life is much bigger than her life. Teague won’t let her do it
again. He’ll likely be hard pressed to forgive her for it now, ye ken?”
“I’m sorry?” Jack didn’t understand the expression.
Green sighed. His accent had slipped. It did that sometimes, took a little
memory surf around England, depending on the mood he was in. When he spoke
of Adrian, it was damned near cockney. Jack had once heard him speak of the
old ruling structure, and it had been pure aristocrat.
“Do you understand in your bones, Jacky boy,” Green said softly. “Do you
feel with all your breath that what she did was wrong?”
Jack tried hard to remember. It had all been so confused. He and Katy had
been in the fringes of the battle, picking off vampires and shapeshifters
who had entered ground zero for their fight. And then Cory had screamed
“Teague, get him!” and something huge pursuing Jack had disintegrated --
with a little help from several silver rounds in Teague’s shotgun.