Description

America under martial law. Cities sit bombed-out and abandoned while Breed Hunters and the changeling Rebellion hunt each other through the wreckage, and every shut-down Rebellion website springs back up somewhere else. Rick leads his band of shifters, Mason, Dorian, Sasha and the rest, across this map, answering distress calls from breeds that can’t fight, like the weregeese fleeing for their lives in Colorado.

Threaded through the war is a smaller, uglier crisis. Ian Campbell, brother of Rick’s mate Dorian, is a fang addict, hooked on vampire bite and trapped in a BDSM club owned by Kraven, master vampire of Hamilton. When Newman, the vampire feeding his habit, moves to hand him to the coven to be drained, Ian runs. Mason, himself on the run after being accused of bombing his own college, is the one sent to bring him in, and Ian fights the rescue the whole way. The cruelest twist lands on Rick: the alpha suspects the man they just saved of being a mole, and he has to say so to Ian’s brother.

This is the middle of a strict seven-book arc, and the publisher’s own note says the series must be read in order, so it’s a commitment, not a sampler. Hagen’s question here is the addict’s question wrapped in wartime: when the man you’re running from is the only one who can pull you back, is being saved something you can be forced into?