NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

BORN OF FIRE

Cover photograph © Shirley Green

For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

ISBN: 978-0-312-94231-1

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / November 2009

St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For all the ebook authors out there, past, present
and future. Let’s hear it for fighting the good fight.
To Bonnee and Silke for giving me a chance
when no one else would.
To everyone out there who is and was a fan
of the futuristic genre
and to the writers who originally built it.
And as always, to my family, friends, and fans
for always being there when I need you. You guys rock!

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The title of this book was chosen not just because it described the hero and heroine and their backgrounds, but because this story was the phoenix of my career.

In the early 1990s, I sold six books in one year and then for four years, I couldn’t give away Alpo to a dog kennel. Even though I’d made bestseller lists and won awards, my writing career tanked.

Part of the reason was that the paranormal/futuristic market of the early 1990s dried up, and we early pioneers lost our contracts and were left to find new paths.

Even though I tried numerous other genres and finished several books, no publisher would take them. In fact, it was while chasing that dream that I wrote what is called the ultimate “marketable” book that had all the elements of the hottest trends of the mid-1990s in it. There was no reason for it not to sell.

That book garnered me the worst rejection of my career. The infamous: “No one at this publishing house will ever be interested in developing this author. Do not submit her work to us again.” Yes, it was a kick in the teeth, but to this day I am grateful to that editor because she forever changed my course as an author, and
I know I wouldn’t have the career that I have today had she not written those words to my agent.

And we definitely wouldn’t have this book.

It was that rejection that made me decide that I didn’t want to succeed by trying to play by other people’s “rules.” Being the good Southern Celt that I am, I lifted my chin and said out loud, “If I’m going to fail, then it will be on my terms, while writing the books I want to write and it will be by listening to no one but my characters.”

That very afternoon, I sat down and started writing
Born of Fire
. I knew it would never sell. No one would touch a futuristic, and the paranormals were quickly going extinct. But I didn’t care.

Syn and Shahara were burning inside me, and this was the only story I could tell. I wrote it, never expecting it to see the light of day.

Ironically, it ended up being the very first ebook that a New York published author sold. Dreams-Unlimited was one of the original ebook publishers who didn’t last long enough to see the ebook market really take off. We sold next to no copies of this book, yet I will always be grateful to Silke and Bonnee for their enthusiasm for this book and these characters. You guys were great.

And for those who have read
Born of Night
, you may notice that the time line is a bit off in this book. That was a conscious decision on my part.

Originally,
Born of Night
was published by another house, and my agent at the time told me to make sure we took out anything that made these two books appear related to keep me out of trouble with the original house. So as I rewrote
Born of Fire
for Dreams-Unlimited, I purposely deviated from
Born of Night
’s history and
time line. In the original
Born of Fire
, Nykyrian was renamed Alexei and was an aristocrat who’d eloped.

While putting the two stories back together as a real series, I realized that the overlapping storylines still worked, but that they wouldn’t mesh 100%, and for that I beg your understanding as a reader. Matching up the time lines would have interfered and broken up the action sequences in both books, as well as some of their motivations. In order to be true to the characters and their story, I decided to let the time line stand.

I hope you enjoy this latest foray into the Ichidian Universe.

Hugs, always.

PROLOGUE

“They’re going to kill me, Shay. I need your help.”

Haunted, Shahara Dagan replayed her sister’s desperate voice mail message over and over again as she sat alone at her kitchen counter.

She’d stupidly thought it’d been a joke. What with Tessa’s flair for exaggeration and her melodrama, as well as the number of times she’d cried her death was imminent over nothing more than a hangnail, how was she supposed to know that this time the cry for help had been real?

Shahara wanted to scream, to curse, to tear her house apart—to do anything other than wait for the loaners who would return and finish off her sister.

Dammit, Tess, at least go to loaners I can make suffer when they hurt you.

But no. Her sister had gone to “legitimate,” government-backed loaners who could take whatever steps they needed to to collect their funds.

Even kill the debtor as an example to others.

She growled in frustration. How many more times would Tessa borrow money from scum to invest in stupid schemes or just throw away on gambling? And how
many more times would Tessa run to her when the balance came due?

Like she could just snap her fingers and get it.

But then she’d trained her sister from an early age that she would always make everything okay. Whatever Tessa asked, she gave.

No questions asked.

Shahara hung her head in her hands. Never once in the past had Tessa been hurt. And she cursed herself that she hadn’t been quicker this time. She’d gathered as much as she could as fast as she could, but it hadn’t been enough.

There never seemed to be enough.

She sighed in disgust.

Why hadn’t Tessa come to her sooner? Maybe then she could have sold something to pay off her sister’s latest debt.

She gave a bitter laugh as she looked around the threadbare furniture she’d recovered from landfills and her rundown, one-room, economy condo. Sell what? Thanks to her siblings, she didn’t own anything of real value. Not even her rusty, dilapidated fighter would bring enough money from an auction to pay half of what Tessa owed.

“I swear, Tess, one day
I’m
going to kill you.”

If only their father hadn’t been such a dreamer, maybe then he could have left them something more than a mountain of debts that she still, fifteen years later, hadn’t paid the full balance on.

If only Tessa hadn’t inherited their father’s useless idealism.

If only—

The landlink buzzed.

Shahara stared at it, her throat tightening to the
point she couldn’t breathe. It had to be the doctor. She’d been waiting half the night for this call and now she was too terrified to answer.

Please don’t let Tessa be dead
. . .

She should never have left the hospital, but after waiting alone for three hours, she couldn’t stand it any longer. Too many memories of her mother’s final days had tormented her. Closing her eyes, she tried to blot out the images of whispered conversations from dispassionate health-care workers. The smell of antiseptics. Their collective curled lips as they looked down on her family for not having enough money to pay for treatments.

Most of all the sight of the doctor covering her mother’s lifeless body with a sheet. His emotionless tone still rang in her ears. “Too bad you didn’t bring her in sooner. We might have saved her if we’d had more time.”

And more money.

Her father hadn’t been able to afford a lengthy hospital stay or even the medications her mother had needed. Poverty had crippled her mother, then killed her. Too many members of her family had died and she couldn’t stand to lose Tessa, too.

I’ll do anything to get the money. Please, just let her live.

With a shaking hand, she opened the channel. The screen brightened to show her the doctor staring at her with dark, unsympathetic eyes. Shahara’s stomach twisted into a cold lump of fear and, for a moment, she thought she’d be sick as she waited for news she didn’t want to hear.

“Seax Dagan,” he said, addressing her with her professional title, “your sister is out of surgery and in
recovery. She’ll be fine . . . in time, but the voucher she used for the hospital cost was returned with a denial. I’m afraid without proper medical attention, your sister won’t last for more than a few hours.”

Shahara closed her eyes, relief washing over her.

Tessa would make it.

“Fria Dagan, did you hear me?” he asked, reverting to the ordinary form of address for a woman—and a term letting her know that he thought she wasn’t worthy of the title seax. After all, a seax worth her salt wouldn’t be impoverished.

If only the bastard knew the truth. It wasn’t her lack of skills that kept her poor, it was her family obligations, and unlike others of her ilk, she would never abandon her family.

Even if they were stupid when it came to money . . .

“We’re going to have to turn her out unless we can get a valid voucher.”

BOOK: Born of Fire

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