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Excerpt:

Chapter 1

Katalina Winter’s favorite night of the week was Sunday.

“Turn up the heat, Dad.”

“Sure Kat.” His hand fumbled for the knob, never taking his eyes of the road.

Katalina snuggled deeper into her white wool coat. Winters in Michigan where brutal, but Katalina had always loved the winter. There was just something about a crisp winter morning; frost and snow covering every surface, turning the landscape to a glittering wilderness. She always thought winters had a peaceful silence to them.

“So how’s it feel to be eighteen, darling?” Katalina’s mom asked.

“I still have no idea what to do when I leave school,” she admitted.

It bothered Katalina, no matter how many times she told herself, she still had time. It seemed to her, everyone knew where they were heading, what job they wanted, which university to go to, but Katalina still couldn’t picture herself in the future. Couldn’t imagine where she’d be, who she’d be.“Don’t fret, Kat. You’ll figure it out.” Her mom smiled, turning back around.

Her dad met her eyes in the rear-view mirror. “It’s all downhill from here, Kat, wrinkles and grey hairs!” He laughed.

“Duncan, don’t be mean!” They both laughed.

“Ha, ha, guys.” Katalina smiled at her silly parents. She knew she was lucky they’d decided to keep her; they’d found her before her first birthday. She’d always wondered whether she’d been left on Mr. and Mrs. Winter’s doorstep as some kind of joke; with eyes of blue-silver, they looked as if carved of ice themselves. Her hair was so light blonde, it was white in the sunlight and with pale skin to match, Katalina was the embodiment of winter.

She’d met the blunt end of many jokes, but after a while, she’d come to embrace her difference. She loved her parents fiercely, and had no desire to know her biological parents. As far as Katalina was concerned, they’d done her a favor, dumping her on her parents’ doorstep. It had been the dead of winter and she’d been left with only a piece of paper pinned to her blanket; a single line saying ‘Her name is Katalina.’

Laughing as her father told more jokes, Katalina looked out the window at the passing trees; she saw a flash of something between them. Leaning forward to rub her gloved hand over the glass, she tried to get a better view.

Wolves?

If only she’d not said a word, she may have gone onto love every Sunday night for the rest of her life…

“Dad…there…there’s a wolf,” she muttered, pressing her face closer to the cold glass.

“What?” her mother answered. “Impossible. I don’t think we’d get them this close to the town.”

“Honestly, look, it’s following the car.”

Her mother sucked in a breath as her father indicated to turn into their drive. “Duncan, look, it is!”

Katalina glanced at her father as he turned his head to look and that’s when it happened. When her life changed forever, irrevocably broken…

Wolves ran out onto the road, shades of black to grey. There were so many that all Katalina could see was a wall of fur. They didn’t move, nor did they attempt to get out the way. They looked on at the vehicle, the glint in their eyes, promising death…

“Dad, watch out!” she screamed.

“Shit!” he shouted, slamming his foot on the break.

The car skidded… Her mother screamed… Time slowed. As the car flipped, Katalina’s body was weightless for one glorious second; she felt nothing, feared nothing, and then time hit fast forward.

Her body tossed like a weightless doll, flipped and smashed, while all around her she was bombarded with noise; smashing glass, groaning metal, terrified screams.

Then there was silence; an endless eerie silence that signaled things were very wrong...

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About the author:

I've being reading books for as long as I can remember but I never thought about writing until I read Nalini Singh - Slave to sensation which is the first book in her psy-changling series.

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