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Mated by Kallysten
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Mated
by
Kallysten
International Bestselling Author
@Kallysten
“When the Ileos
clan invites shifter clans from the Firelands to watch their new leader take
power, Maikel Argonis doesn’t have much choice but to attend. As second in line
to the throne, his lack of interest for this kind of social function is not reason
enough to stay home. His father, the king of the Firelands, rules over his sons
with as firm a hand as he rules a realm where power-hungry shifters don’t
hesitate to start wars.
The chore, however,
takes an unexpected turn for Maikel when he meets Celly Ileos. Second-born like
he is, quick-witted and rebellious, she captures both Maikel’s interest and his
dragon’s—even though she’s a phoenix.
Celly doesn’t mind
seeing her older brother take power like he was always destined to. However,
she does mind that he’s already trying to use her as a pawn in his power games,
intending to strengthen their clan through her marriage to one of his allies.
Her heart is her own, and she wants to choose her own mate.
But if that mate
happens to be a dragon prince, will she be strong enough to endure the fire of
disapproval raging from his family and her own?“
She joined him and they stood together close to the edge, with nothing in front of them but thin air all the way down to a five hundred feet drop. It was a place and a view of which she’d never tire, and she often came here early in the morning to watch the sun soar above the horizon—and soar with it. Today, however, she found herself watching Maikel rather than the play of colors lighting up distant clouds.
“What a wonderful place,” he murmured, his gaze sweeping the valley stretched down below them. “Perfect to take flight from, isn’t it?”
He turned to her as he finished and something must have showed on her face because he quickly added, “Which is what you came here to do, I’m guessing.”
She inclined her head.
“Nothing better to clear my head than to jump and let myself fall a couple hundred feet before I let myself shift.”
Maikel whistled softly.
“I didn’t realize phoenixes enjoy this kind of thing.”
She raised an eyebrow at him.
“What kind of thing is that?”
“Dangerous things. Like jumping from a cliff.”
“And here I thought dragons were supposed to be impulsive creatures,” she teased. “Are you telling me you’re afraid of what I was doing when I wasn’t even ten years old?”
Something shifted in his eyes, their dark auburn turning to gold for a split second, then to flames as brightly red as blood.
“I didn’t say I was afraid,” he pointed out in a mild voice as he shrugged out of his jacket and dropped it to the ground.
Next thing she knew, his shirt was already halfway unbuttoned and opening on a surprisingly tan and muscled chest.
“What—what are you doing?” she stammered, forcing her eyes back up to his. Her cheeks were burning up all of a sudden.
“Undressing,” he answered plainly. “So I don’t ruin my clothes when I shift and have to ride back to the fortress in the nude.”
That image probably shouldn’t have been so appealing.
“But…”
Whatever protest she wanted to offer disappeared when he shrugged his shoulders and his shirt slid off, exposing the smooth expanse of his chest and gently rippled abs that made her fingers curl with the desire to touch them. Apparently, he was still doing ‘grunt work’ in his vineyard—another intriguing image. He started reaching for the fastenings of his pants and she hurriedly turned her back to him.
“This doesn’t strike me as very appropriate,” she said, her words ending on a mortifying little squeak.
The whisper of a zipper being pulled down seemed to fill the space between them.
“Are you telling me you didn’t come here to shift? Because if that’s what you’re saying, we don’t believe you.”
His word choice confirmed what she had started to suspect: his dragon was close, very close to the surface. She’d always heard that dragons were impulsive and quick to act when they felt threatened or insulted… it certainly appeared to be true.
And if you’re saying part of you didn’t hope it’d end up this way, her phoenix supplied with a little laugh, I’m the one who won’t believe you. Why are you so flustered, girl?
He’s undressing! Right beside me!
The rustling sounds behind her were all she could hear.
No, I think he’s naked by now. Don’t be such a prude, it’s not like you’ve never seen a man in the nude, whether it was a shifter before or after his shift, or a plain-blood human ready to get naughty with you. But maybe you’d prefer the latter?
Will you shut up already? You’re supposed to be on my side!
Not your side, darling. Ours.
It wasn’t often that Celly’s phoenix exerted her will to control their shared body when they were in human form, and when she did it always took Celly by surprise to the point that she couldn’t stop her. The phoenix did that now, making her turn around even as running steps announced what Maikel was doing.
Celly didn’t have time to see much more than a naked blur before he was leaping right over the cliff with a yell that sounded like pure exhilaration.
She’d been here with a dozen different people over the years, and she’d come on her own on countless mornings. Whether someone jumped for the first time or the hundredth, even knowing that their phoenix was ready to take over long before they crashed, the instinctive fear never completely went away—but that was half the fun. Maikel seemed completely fearless.
Without thinking, Celly stepped closer to the edge, where she’d be able to watch him go down. His body was spread out, arms and legs extended on either side of him as he faced down.
Nice ass, her phoenix supplied, and Celly smiled.
The next second, her mouth fell open and she gaped. She’d watched dozens of phoenixes shift, and she knew intimately what it felt like to do so, both when standing on firm ground or when tumbling in the air, an illusion of flight without wings. Phoenixes were long and lithe, with powerful wings and five oversized feathers for a tail. A shifter taking their phoenix form had always looked to her like golden fire rippling through a human body and exploding outward into new, feathery limbs, a process as elegant as it was quick.
She’d seen dragons fly before, but she’d never seen one shift. She’d imagined it would look the same, just with a different shape, and in a way it was. At the same time, though, it felt entirely different. Maybe because dragons were almost twice as massive as phoenixes, or maybe because she wasn’t as familiar with their shape, the shifting seemed to happen in slow motion.
Maikel’s skin, already so far down below, darkened gradually until wings shot out of his back fully formed, while the rest of his body was still human. They spread out and hid part of him even as the shifting continued, limbs, body and head morphing into the imposing yet still elegant lines of a dragon. There was a moment when his wings folded and he tilted forward, head first into the dive. Celly couldn’t suppress a gasp, suddenly sure that something must have gone wrong.
She gasped again, this time in awe, as his wings extended and he veered in a fluid movement, following one of the strong winds that played along the cliff to stop his descent and glide back upward.
It had taken him long seconds to fall halfway down the cliff, but in the blink of an eye he was back at her level. She could have sworn one of his blood-red eyes winked at her before he dived back into the valley with a roar that would have been frightening had it not sounded like sheer delight.
He’d been so close she could almost have touched him if she’d only extended her hand, and while she hadn’t she could imagine the texture of his hide under her tingling fingertips. Leathery but smooth, warm from the heat of his blood, slick… It had seemed black when he’d first shifted, but from up close his coloring was more charcoal that pure black, with splatters of white and gray dots like freckles on his wings, his back, his underside.
He twirled and dropped down into the valley, occasionally beating his large wings once or twice but for the most part following the wind currents, before coming back to where she stood. He hovered there, close enough that the horses a few paces behind her, as accustomed as they were to being around winged beasts larger than they were, neighed unhappily and struck the ground with their hooves.
If that’s not an invitation to join him, her phoenix said, I’ll eat my own tail. What are you waiting for?
Hello and thank you so much for having me for a little chat
today! Here’s hoping I don’t start rambling too much… I’m wrangling my toddler
as I do this interview and she can be a handful!
How long have you been a writer and how did you come to
writing?
The reason I became a writer – that is, wrote an entire
story and shared it with readers – was because of boredom. Not too glamorous, I
know! I wrote my first novella in middle school. We had ‘study’ classes in
which we were supposed to just sit quietly and work on homework or study, but I
always finished my work early and would get bored out of my mind. One day I
brought a new notebook to school and started inventing a story… and another,
and another after that. When I moved to the United States in 2001, everything
felt so strange and new, I stopped writing for a while. When I started again
about a year later, it was, for the first time, in English. The change was
brutal and the learning curve pretty stiff… but after a few years, I started putting
‘writer’ on the occupation line when doing my taxes and it felt pretty special.
How did you come up with the storyline for Mated?
I was just finishing a different story which is set in the Fated & Forbidden series,
a universe shared by 11 authors, and my mind was drifting over the ‘forbidden’
aspect of love, and how long writers have played with that storyline. Romeo and
Juliet were hardly the first! Also I’d been wanting to write a shifter story
for a while and couldn’t decide between phoenix and dragon. The two thoughts
combined… forbidden love between dragon and phoenix shifters… now I just had to
figure out who my characters were!
How did you figure it out? Do the characters ‘live’ with you
as you write?
Absolutely. When I get the idea for a story and start
thinking of the characters, they take a life of their own and play out the
story in my mind, the same scene repeated a dozen times until each word or
action is just right. Writing is the only way to get them to quiet down and
move on… to the next scene!
What inspires you to write?
Just about anything, really. I never know where my muse will
look next to plot a new story. Let me think…
One of my vampire BDSM series (Carte
Blanche and its sequels) was inspired by a real-life Domme whom I knew
online and got to chat with face to face once. I was very proud that she gave
the story her seal of approval.
My Ward of the Vampire serial came
from a chat I had with a friend. She was bemoaning the ‘billionaire boyfriend’
trend and saying she had no interest in writing such a story but wished she
could so she could get on the bandwagon. I told her to just write her thing and
find her readers that way, and joked that I’d never write for that trend
either. My muse took that as a challenge and within a few months I had 140,000
words of it…
My On The Edge series came from one
throwaway line in another book. I’d mentioned this vampire friendly club, its
human owner and his vampire lovers, and suddenly I had to tell their story…
I have a YA shifter story with my other pen name (Beneath the Twin Moons of Haldae) that
came from an article I read about a newly discovered tribe in the Amazon who’d
never been in contact with ‘civilization’ before. The moment I finished the
article I had the whole plot in my mind.
What is the hardest part of creating a book?
For me, it’s definitely the promoting part. Ask me to write
or rewrite and I’ll be happily typing away all day – and night – long. Ask me
to toot my own horn and tell people why my stories are worth reading, and I
freeze. Not that I don’t think they are worth reading; I just wasn’t raised
into thinking my own accomplishments are something I ought to talk about. Just
doing this interview is a painful process… but don’t worry, I’ll survive!
What are 3 of your favorite quotes from Mated?
Argh! You’re asking me to pick my favorite child! (If, you
know, I had more than one!)
All right, let me try…
Should I? she whispered in her own mind. If it comes out
that I’ve been flying with a dragon…
What’s the worst that could happen? Your mother will be
disappointed? Your brother will try to marry you off to the first phoenix who
so much as expresses an interest in you? Nothing new, then.
***
Yes, I suppose she is rather pretty, for a human.
***
And you don’t mind that he is a dragon?
He can’t help what he is, her phoenix said. Why should I
blame him for what is not his fault?
What would your friends say is your best quality?
Probably that I’m loyal. When I make a friend, it’s for
life. I’m still in touch with my very first real friend, Dje, whom I met when
we were 6 and who lives in France.
Are reader reviews important to you? Why?
Yes and no. Yes because it’s always interesting to see what readers
enjoyed (or didn’t like…) in a story – and because, for better or for worse,
reviews are an important part of promotion. No because when I read a review I
always want to engage the reader in a dialogue about it, see what they thought
about this other bit or that other thing, but I’ve always been told it’s a big
no-no.
What do you do when you don’t write? Like in “Real Life”
You mean other than wrangling Baby, taking her to the
museum, the zoo, the parc, the pool, and indoor and outdoor playgrounds?
*grins* Well I do enjoy quilting a lot. I make a lot of lap-sized quilts
because they’re fairly quick to make on my little machine. I even gave one in a
reader giveaway last year… I might have to do it again this year!
Tell us about your other books?
Another ‘pick your favorite child’ question! My backlist is
growing so long, I’ve even lost count of how many books I actually have for
sale. Most of what I’ve written to date was about vampires and/or magic. My
last two releases were about magic – Blood
Moon, in the Fated & Forbidden series I mentioned earlier, is about two
power-wielding lovers who reunite after centuries of estrangement. Love & Magic is a box set of 3
short stories that are male/male relationships revolving around magic. The
release before that was Switching
Sides, a BDSM vampire short that’s a sequel to the Domme novel I told you
about earlier.
M/F, M/M, ménages; sweet stories, sexy ones, kinky ones;
short stories, novellas, novels, long novels; standalone, series… You name it,
I’ve probably written it!
If you read through this entire thing… thank you! Have a
gold star… oh wait, Baby took all my gold stars! How about a freebie instead? I
find the best way to introduce myself to readers is to offer them something to read.
I have several freebies on the major ebook stores, and extra ones available
through my newsletter. Feel free to come
and say hi!
