Emily Carrington

When Rose has to find a place to volunteer to satisfy an academy requirement, she never dreams she’d find a fellow werewolf running a soup kitchen that also features live music. Rose is a violinist and drummer trained in the Irish tradition and she longs to use her skills. It doesn’t hurt that the first picture she sees of Ama makes her go weak at the knees.<br><br>Ama, the werewolf who runs the soup kitchen, is suppressed and ruled by her parents. Due to several childhood struggles, she is seen by her family as weak. She tries to overcome this by running her own charity and helping people she considers less fortunate.<br><br>Their attraction is strong and instantaneous but is complicated when the two discover vampires are feeding from their customers. Rose wants to see vampires as a discriminated species; Ama views them as parasites. Neither assumption is quite accurate. Can Rose and Ama look past their differences and work together? Can they band together to protect not only the people they care about, but one another?

Love and the Living Tree

Rose played for Ama again, drums this time. She played the Aburukuwa with its curved sticks. It sounded like a bird. Hence, she’d been told by someone who spoke one of the languages of Ghana, its name. She started with the patterns she associated with her Irish heritage. Then she switched to those which had been taught to her as “Arab” motifs. She didn’t know enough about most of the Middle East to know if these were truly rhythms used in Arabic cultures, but she did know they were beautiful.


Ama seemed distracted, however, and after Rose switched back to Irish beats interspersed with things from her favorite Celtic-not-quite-Irish band, she asked, “What’s wrong?” She kept playing, hoping to convince Ama she wasn’t as hurt as she felt. She had a feeling the other’s empathic ability could pick up on exactly how the inattention was bothering her.


Chapter 6