Hey guys…got a release date for Belonging.  No cover yet, though…I’ll post that when I get it.

The ebook will release 2.25 from Ellora’s Cave.  This is a Hunter novella, featuring a couple of new characters with visits from a couple of older ones.

~*~

Not right now.

We can’t do this, Cori.

He should have.

Fuck his cousin, fuck whatever polite etiquette would have dictated. Three weeks after he’d dropped Cori off in front of her house, he was standing in a cemetery. The cold wind blasted him in the face as he stood over the empty grave and stared at the headstone. If he’d listened to instinct instead of common sense, he would have kept Cori’s hot, sweet little body tucked under his all damned night and whatever tragedy that happened in the wee hours early the following morning wouldn’t have happened.

She would have been safe.

She would have been with him.

Instead, he’d done the ‘right’ thing and driven her home. The resulting investigation concluded that she’d gotten into an argument with her mother.

The night nurse had confirmed an argument and Cori had left. She’d gone to the hospital, although nobody would ever know the reasons. Owen had met her in the parking lot. But there was an attack, one that left Owen unconscious and in the hospital for a week, recovering from blood loss.

Somebody had slashed his throat and if it hadn’t been for some hospital staff that happened to be leaving the hospital for an early run to McDonald’s, his cousin would have bled to death in the parking garage.

Cori was nowhere to be found.

None of the security monitors had proven to be worth a damn thing—there had been a dark van between the closest monitor and the place where the attack had taken place. All that was found of Cori was her coat, and a copious amount of blood. Too much blood. Her body had yet to be found and although the case was still open, they all knew the truth.

She was dead. Nobody could lose that much blood and live.

Who had killed her, why, they were questions that would never be answered.
Red-eyed and grim-faced, Levi stared at the tombstone and listened while a preacher recited off an endless spiel of words—words that they were supposed to take comfort in, but he was having a hard time finding any sort of comfort.

He kept thinking he was going to wake up. It was all a dream, a bad dream brought on by a guilty conscious. He’d wake up and find out that Cori was alive, she was engaged to Owen, she was happy—

“—amen.”

Dazed, Levi looked up as the preacher closed his Bible. Roses were tossed into the grave to land on top of an empty casket. Empty.

~*~