BVC Announces Frozen in Amber by Irene Radford
Frozen in Amber
by Irene Radford
She shifts. She runs. She’s being hunted.
By day, Amber Tregannis wears sleek suits and defends high-powered criminals. By night, she’s holding back claws, fangs, and the feral instinct to run under the full moon. She’s a Wer Cougar—reluctant, dangerous, and barely in control.
She lives between two worlds—courtrooms and wilderness—keeping her secret life hidden.
Until one moonlit night, something hunts her.
About the Author: Irene Radford, aka P.R. Frost, aka C.F. Bentley, has been writing stories ever since she figured out what a pencil was for. A member of an endangered species, a native Oregonian who lives in Oregon, she and her husband make their home in Welches, Oregon, where deer, bears, coyotes, hawks, owls, and woodpeckers feed regularly on their back deck.
A museum-trained historian, Phyllis Irene has spent many hours prowling pioneer cemeteries deepening her connections to the past. Raised in a military family, she grew up all over the US and learned early on that books are friends that don’t get left behind with a move. Her interests and reading range from ancient history, to spiritual meditations, to space stations, and a whole lot in between.
My gaze lingered longer than it should. But then I always admired the messengers who ran in and out of the office all day. I just wasn’t as obvious as now. This guy had intrigued me for years.
“Yes?” I centered my focus enough to answer him.
He came to a skidding halt six inches from me. His eyes level with mine. Considering my three inch heels and standing on the first step, that made him no more than five-nine.
Not an ounce of fat on him.
The hair on my nape stood up in alarm. Too close. He’d invaded my personal space, a clear violation of Wer etiquette. But this was Adler with his long leanness that delighted my eyes and sent my heart racing for other reasons.
His aftershave couldn’t mask the sweet layers of blood and bone and hide that shifted. And he had shifted recently. But I couldn’t tell what creature echoed his persona. Not one of the usual Wer folk I encountered on a daily basis.
I closed my eyes and let my imagination add predatory fur and fang to his muscular body. Every image sloughed off. His control must be stronger than mine.
I opened my eyes and our gazes locked. For an instant I saw painful depth, and surface joy in the golden iris. A part of me reached out to him, a kindred spirit.
Then he blinked and the spell was broken.
“Message for you. Sign the tablet.” He thrust a fat packet, long enough for legal sized papers into my hands with a screened device and stylus on top. The second I lifted the pen from the screen he collected them, turned, and ran off again.
“Maybe he’s part rabbit,” I mused, inspecting the envelope for a return address. All I found was an ink stamp in the shape of a wolf’s paw print.
Wer politics. More specifically WerWolf politics.
Nothing I expected from a client or the mortal court, so I tucked it beneath my arm and proceeded up the stairs to the executive elevator the sole visible access to my grandfather’s penthouse office. The fire stairs required a key. Grumpy had one, security had the other.
The elegant glass lift rose up through the central court giving me a clear view of the main lobby below.
The lift drifted to a slow stop with hardly any sound or jerk on the eleventh floor. I pushed open the narrow door onto the sunbathed walkway. Wrought iron grillwork blocked off the central drop to the eighth floor. Each of the four walls held two doors but only one corner office suite.
Two uniformed guards faced me. They might have been twins in height, posture, coloring, and aftershave. I wrinkled my nose at the heavy artificial musk. They wore matching tan uniforms from Big Cat Security, (owned and run by a distant cousin who hired mostly Wer) a private company we used. Regulation guns in hip holsters and tazers in their thigh pockets completed the uniforms.
The scent of fresh lemon oil furniture polish—the real thing, not a cheap petroleum product scented with artificial citrus—filled the open lobby.
Neither the heavy aftershave nor the lemon could mask the scent of Wer. Cougars, my nose told me. Not among my many cousins that made up most of the local clan.
I didn’t know either of them by name, though their lithe strength and honey coloring appealed.
Next time my other demanded intimacy, one of these might satisfy. Unlike some of my kind, I did not mate with humans or other Wer species. Since returning from exile, I rarely mated at all.
I signed my name with a flourish. Right hand guard inspected my signature with a scowl, while left hand guard inspected me for signs that I might hide a lethal weapon. Then Rightie took the packet from the bicycle messenger. The men exchanged a meaningful and silent look at the sign of the paw.
Without my permission Rightie broke the seal and pulled out a thick sheaf of papers.
“Excuse me…”
“Sorry, ma’am. Our orders are to inspect everything entering the suites,” Leftie said. That was new too. Something dire must have alerted Grumpy for him to beef up security to this level.
Leftie ran a palm sized gadget over the pages, keeping his eyes on a tiny lighted screen rather than the printed words. “It’s clear.” He stuffed the papers back into the manila envelope and handed it back to me.
“Whose orders?” I asked, just to make sure someone else hadn’t usurped authority from my grandfather.
“Mr. Treganis.”
“Oh?” Stefan Treganis could look after himself in any physical or mental fight.
“You may go in now, Ma’am. He’s waiting for you. Pacing.”
Pacing was good. He burned off the edge of energy that presaged anger. Sitting and glaring focused his energy on the anger.
I crossed the lobby to the far left corner and knocked on the plain, but heavy wooden door—the one I knew led to his private office, rather than the domain of his law clerk and administrative assistant—if they were in residence. I hadn’t seen either in quite a long time. Any of the ordinary doors could lead to a palace or a janitor’s closet. No lettering or signs. You had to know which door to open.
The gentleman or the cougar, I thought with a half-smile.