Daring Fate by Megan Erickson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
*~~*ARC kindly provided by the author to me in exchange for an honest review *~~*
We all have tragic backstories in today’s world.
I wake up chained to the wall of a dark cell aware of two things: I failed my sister, and I smell my enemy.
When I’m taken to meet Dare, the alpha of the Silver Tip pack, I’m sure I’m about to lose my throat. The last thing I expect is for the Alpha to recognize me as his fated mate. No way is he going to let me go now, and I still have to find a way to rescue my sister.
As I plot my escape to save her, I find that if I leave, Dare could be killed by power-hungry members of his pack. And now he’s more to me than my fated mate—my heart is involved. With time ticking by on my sister’s life, I have to make a choice I never thought I’d face—my sister’s life or my mate’s? That’s if I can survive the undead shifters intent on killing me first…
Megan Erickson is capturing the reader’s attention with a shifter series, a debut for her. Shifter stories can be good or they can be an old hat. Megan’s shifter series Silver Tip Pack is the first and such a blast! You are right from the start into the story, you are hooked and mesmerized by Reese and Dare. :3
You get the insight of the world right from the start; Reese introduces himself and his species with these words:
I was a werewolf, which meant I had two forms – human and four-legged wolf. Weres had three forms – human, four-legged wolf, and Were. Their Ware form was like a giant wolf/human hibrid.
Try actually to visualize this. It is really intriguing but also scary how huge those Weres are, how strong and lethal. You feel connections to other shifter series where wolves appear, but this is like a fresh wind, with the typical cool and easy writing style by Megan Erickson and with unique characterization and descriptions.
We also get the information about the Noweres, the undead Weres:
But those dead Weres? They became… undead. Stuck in threir Were form, they roamed the earth in pacls, feeding from or infecting any living thing they could.
So, you read right: zombie wolves!!! Either you are NOW captured or you’re out. XD I was the first. XD Becaue: how cool is this?! 😀
Though Reese isn’t a small guy and he is full adult, see this description:
Despite my injuries, I wasn’t a novus, and at six-five in my human form, I had a good couple of inches on my brother, as well as about fifty pounds.
he and you as a reader are impressed by Dare:
My gaze rose. And rose. And rose. Up past thights size of my torso, a bare stomach rippling with muscle beneath tanned skin, twitching pecs glistering with sweat, over shoulders that could bench press three of me, and finally up to meet the green-eyed gaze of Dare. Alpha of the Silver Tip
My inner voice screamed hallelujah; a sexy, swoon worthy main character, rippled and obviously an eye candy? This was my book, so so my book. 😀 And he is a leader; and what an Alpha he is. :3
The best thing was when both men were affected by fate:
He was my True Mate. I’d finally escaped my former prison, and now I’d was stuck in another one. My life as I knew it was fucking over.
What I really liked about Megan’s style is here casual type of writing. The POV is a dual one, so it switches between Dare and Reese, always in 1st person.
It is a light fantasy story with all the supernatural elements (shifting, bonding etc) but it doesn’t feel so. It is witty and charming, the character sometimes pain in the ass but also loveable. Not even Reese and Dare are captivating, minor character like Dare’s brother Bay or the other from the Silver Pack, G – the silent, huge colloss of a man, steady in his stance and loyalty – or Vaugh, the guy with always a smirk on the face and a witty tongue. 🙂 Or Reese’s brother Jude. 🙂 Really helpful is also the glossary at the end of the book. :3
Very likable were also the thrilling plot itself, the constant pressure rising, the innerpolitical issues. Not that it was boring or too much, it was a good balance between the parts.
The erotic scenes blew me away, hot as hell. Really hot. But also full of emotion, without being sappy. And always spiced with the natural way of writing. Fluid language, with things left out to the reader’s imagination.
With beautiful descriptions of the landscape, vivid settings, always in comparison to the other places in the books you have an early insight of the whole world, it shows right before your eyes. It is also specified, with exact namings of the way of living. Really impressive.
Within the lovely characterisation and naming of the surroundings the shifted wolves are really beautiful too. Different kind of types, Dare’s wolf a black one with glossy fur, tipped with silver stripes – reason for the pack’s name. Reese on the other hand is named after his pack – Whitethroat – with being a grey wolf with a white throat.
And if you ask: what about humans? Actually this fact is really interesting and is revealed later in the book. I won’t tell exactly because otherwise I would spoiler you. 🙂
I really loved the tenor in the whole book, besides the sexy action and bonding between Reese and Dare.
But this is a pack where we can live and hope and not live in constant terror.
These words captured me and it was so heart warming. :3
This book is really good, I actually love it. It is a great opening of a series I can’t wait to read more. The characters have their own way of thinking and behaviour, it will be a delight to see more of them, to see other sides of them, but also to have reapperances of former charcters. :3
It is a great universe which is enrolled in this one volume, I can imagine this will be really awesome in the next books – more than it is even right now. ❤
Next book is – as Megan already said – about Bay. 🙂
5 out of 5 stars
Have a look at the great cover ❤
Title: Daring Fate
Series: Silver Tip Pack # 1
Author: Megan Erickson
Genre: M/M Romance
Release Date: November 14, 2016
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Excerpt # 1 (note: NSFW!)
Dare’s eyes flashed. His fingernails were still curved into claws, his canines descended, and a dusting of fur still covered his shoulders. He looked wild and a little feral. “Shift.” His voice was garbled, and I backed up a step, dipping my head as I whined.
He took a heaving breath and the fur on his shoulders disappeared. His eyes closed and when they opened, they were nearly black. “Shift,” he ordered again.
My body obeyed.
Never in my life had anyone been able to command me to shift, but Dare could. His command was a swell of power that I couldn’t deny. My bones cracked as I shifted back to human form, then I collapsed onto my stomach and panted as I tested my limbs. My ribs weren’t even tender.
Fuck yeah, shifter power.
I rose to my feet, shaking out my arms as I lifted my head to meet Dare’s gaze.
His teeth were bared, eyes cycling between green and black like a two-toned tornado.
He moved so fast, I didn’t even see his arm, didn’t realize he was in motion until a hand wrapped around my neck and claws dug into my throat. He hauled me against him, and with my feet not touching the floor, the only thing I could do was clutch his shoulders and wrap my legs around his waist.
“Mine,” he growled against my lips.
Not gonna lie, I was fucking terrified. Dare was only half there, his Were pulsing inside his skin. I didn’t know his Were, and I hoped to hell Dare had enough power to stay human.
I shifted my hands to grip his face, my fingers digging into his scalp as I rutted against him. The mating instinct overtook all my other thoughts. So, despite my terror, I was hard as hell. “Yours,” I muttered back.
That seemed to appease the Were, because Dare’s eyes stopped flickering, finally resting on green.
His chest rumbled, and he pressed our lips together—hard, punishing, furious—before delving his tongue inside.
The kiss was possessive and all-consuming. While I’d fucked around plenty, I’d never been kissed in my life, so I didn’t know how to deal with it. My head was spinning, my body on fire, ass clenching in anticipation for being taken. I wanted it. God help me, but I wanted him to pin me down and fuck me until I broke.
I wanted to be owned.
So I kissed him back, pushing against his tongue with mine, gnashing his lips with my teeth, which only seemed to spur him on harder.
The room tilted, and then Dare was looming over me, my back against the mattress as he gripped our cocks in one hand and began to pump. My cock was leaking pre-come, coating my stomach and mixing with Dare’s pre-release.
His shoulders bunched as he held himself above me, his attention on stroking us. His gaze lifted to mine, and when our eyes met, I was thankful they were green. He peeled his lips back, revealing his sharp teeth. “I love the smell of you, but it’s wrong. It’s all wrong.”
Great. I prepared to have my throat ripped out for mistaken mate identity. “What?”
“You don’t smell like me yet.” He ran his nose up the column of my neck and then nipped my ear. “I can’t be around you anymore without imprinting my smell on you.”
“Make me smell like you, then.” I reached down to grip his balls. “I’m all healed now. Take me.”
In the far recesses of my brain, I knew this meant the life I had planned for my brother and sister would change. But I couldn’t help it, not while Dare’s scent was in my nostrils, while his power was surrounding me, and as his hand left my cock to swirl through the wetness on my stomach.
I was going to be mated. To a Were. And there was no going back.
Excerpt # 2 (note: action and violance!)
Footsteps sounded above and, despite Reese’s posture, I went right to him, shielding him with my body. He huffed against my chest, then settled his hands tentatively on my hips.
Noweres smelled like rotting corpses left out in the sun for five days. Even protected by the small ledge above us, the stench surrounded us, and I had to bury my nose in the crook of my arm. All around me, my pack members gasped for breath and blinked through watery eyes while trembling at the sounds of the chatter above us, the roars and growls, all which swirled to deafening levels. I couldn’t hear myself think, couldn’t do anything but press closer to Reese, whose entire body was shaking. He clung to me tighter, pressing his forehead against my chest.
By the sounds of it, the Nowere pack was large, maybe fifty to seventy-five strong, and we’d be no match for them, even if all of us shifted. My little wolf would be overpowered in a second, no matter how much I tried to protect him.
The Nowere brain had one function and that was to detect living things and consume them or turn them. They had a keen sense of smell and poor eyesight. Their frustrated grunts and stomps above, which rained dirt and stones down on our heads, told me they smelled us.
Noweres were dumb, but I wouldn’t put it past them to somehow slip off the cliff and land right on our little ledge. I wasn’t sure how long we were there, huddled together as the Noweres stomped above us. But eventually the chatter began to retreat and the footsteps lessened. I was breathing easier when a fist-sized rock crashed to the ledge floor, then four-foot claws curled over the edge of the cliff right near my head.
I held up my hand to signal silence, never taking my eyes off those claws. The panic was welling up inside me, for Reese, for my pack. For myself. I stuffed it down, calling on every bit of alpha I had in me.
A gust of air blew a cloud of dirt in front of the ledge, a Nowere exhale, which brought with it another cloud of stench, then the chattering started. I glanced at my pack, who were staring at the claws and at me, like do something.
The air heated from the Nowere body and our breaths. Fear swirled in the air like a dust cloud, and I hoped like hell it didn’t tip into panic.
The foot claws uncurled and disappeared. I held my breath for one second, two, and then in a shower of dust and rotting fur, a Nowere crashed to the cliff in front of us.
I shoved Reese back into the cave and shifted immediately to my Were form as the Nowere flailed, trying to gain its balance as it scrambled for purchase on the edge. Its teeth chattered in time with my racing heart as my bones morphed. Just as it regained its footing, I finished my shift.
The Nowere threw his head back on a roar, and we met on the ledge in a clash of claws.
Author bio – Megan Erickson
Megan Erickson is a USA Today bestselling author of romance that sizzles. Her books have a touch of nerd, a dash of humor, and always have a happily ever after. A former journalist, she switched to fiction when she decided she likes writing her own endings better.
She lives in Pennsylvania with her very own nerdy husband and two kids. Although rather fun-sized, she’s been told she has a full-sized personality. When Megan isn’t writing, she’s either lounging with her two cats named after John Hughes characters or… thinking about writing.
Author links / get in contact
Website
Facebook
FB Group Meg’s Mob
Twitter
Goodreads
Amazon author page
Other series by her:
In Focus series; M/M, gay romance
Trust the Focus
Focus on Me
Out of Frame
Overexposed
Bowler University series; M/F
Make it Count
Make it Right
Make it Last
Mechanics of Love series; M/F
Dirty Thoughts
Dirty Talk
Dirty Deeds
Gamers series; M/F
Changing His Game
Playing for Her Heart
Tied to Trouble
Leveling the Field
Cyberlove series (co-written with Santino Hassell); M/M, gay romance
Strong Signal
Fast Connection
Cyberlove # 3 – (officially) untitled yet
Mikku-chan 
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