The Second Mountain

They were fated mates. When they met, it should have been happily ever after. But it wasn’t. For her, he was her previously unattainable celebrity crush. Someone she wanted to impress and be worthy of… even if it meant sacrificing parts of who she was. For him, she was his second mate. Someone he had never noticed before, but someone he definitely noticed now. He wanted to get things right with her, and he was eager to start their lives together. Unfortunately, all of their plans are forced to change when his first mate makes an unexpected re-entry into his life. She is forced to become his secret second, and they are both forced to deal with baggage they didn’t even realize that they carry. Then he hurts her in ways that she never saw coming. The end for this couple is inevitable. The real question is this: after life tears them apart, will it bring them back together, or will it push them into the arms of others?

Two species and a viscious prophecy meant to tear apart everyone and everything in its path. Two halfs of a whole joined against all odds, but do they have what it takes to make the heart shattering sacrifices needed in order to save all they care about. Will love and heart reign over logic and mind? Can they even survive the horror that is the prophecy of the second moon, hanging above their heads like the sharpest of swords waiting to strike? ”I love you Shay” he whispered painfully and with that his eyes gazed upon their last star in that night’s sky.

The last thing Valentina Serra sees before she dies is the crack in the ceiling above her bed. She is 45 years old. She is not unhappy. That, she realizes in the last seconds of her first life, is the most devastating thing she could say about it. She opens her eyes in a university lecture hall in Barcelona. She is 20 years old. Her notebook is open, her pen is in her hand, and she can feel — with the precision of someone who has lived an entire life — exactly how much she is about to waste if she does nothing. She does something. Armed with 25 years of memory, Valentina sets out to close every loop she left open: the military commission she dismissed, the marketing career she let others architect for her, the relationship she stayed in long past its expiry date, and the mother she visited but never truly knew. One by one, she reaches for the life she talked herself out of the first time around. But the two people closest to her — the friends who have always been there, always supportive, always first to suggest the safer, smaller option — are watching. And when Valentina begins exceeding the quiet ceiling that they built for her, Isabel and David begin to coordinate. Then there is Ethan Cole. Washington D.C. Investment sector. Five years younger, which bothered her the first time. He will walk into her life again in Barcelona, and this time Valentina already knows what the long dinner and the careful conversation and the late-night walk along the Passeig de Gràcia will mean — if she doesn't talk herself out of it. She is not going to talk herself out of it.

Barry Ocason, extreme sportsman and outdoor travel writer, receives a magazine in his mailbox and opens to an ad for an adventure in the Bavarian Alps. Initially dismissing the invitation, which seems to have been meant specifically for him, he soon finds himself involved in a larger plot and seeking answers to why an individual known only as the elephant man is terrorizing his family. Barry and his daughter Kristen, who survived a twin sister taken from the family at a young age, travel from Juneau, Alaska to the sinister Spider Festival in Rio Tago, Brazil, before he ultimately answers the call to Bavaria, where the puzzle begins to come together. Amid tribulation, death, madness, and institutionalization, a document emerges describing a scientist’s bloody bid to breed a theoretical “third twin,” which is believed to have the potential, through its connection with its siblings, to bridge the gulf between life and afterlife. The godlike creature that soon emerges turns out to be Barry’s own offspring, and she has dark plans for the world of her conception that neither her father nor any other mortal can stop. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

A fierce storm erupts on a mountain peak at 25,561 feet, trapping me in the mountain camp under heavy snow. My husband, the leader of the mountain excursion squad, ignores my desperate pleas and hands the last oxygen tank to his beloved true love. "You're a professional climber—you won't die from missing a few breaths," he snaps. "Olivia has always been frail. Without oxygen, she's done for!" I watch as the two of them lean on each other, making their way down the cliffside, and I fall into complete despair. He's already forgotten that my body hasn't been able to survive without oxygen at high altitudes since saving him two years ago.

THE ALPHA’S DEBT BOOK 2 "You think a broken Omega can be broken twice, Alpha?" I spit the words directly into Andrew Wolfe's face, the metallic tang of my own blood still sharp on my tongue. I survived the absolute devastation of the Redstone Correctional Facility with my spine intact, dragging my battered wolf out of the ashes of my ruined pack. I thought I had paid my dues to the universe. But returning to the Wolfe Crest Estate means facing the beast who signed my downfall—the cold, ruthless Alpha King who built his absolute empire on a throne of lethal lies. Andrew thinks his dominating cedar scent can force my knees to buckle, that his massive, scarred hands can rewrite the history of how his mother and the treacherous Hawthorne family hunted my womb for their own dark rituals. They wanted to drain my pup’s pure lineage markers to save their own dying heirs. They thought a male omega from a shattered bloodline would just lie passively on the stone table and weep. They were dead wrong. Every growl out of Andrew's mouth screams possessiveness, his aggressive, dark amber eyes tracking the slight curve of my belly where our pup rests. He claims he never doubted my fidelity, that he crushed the silver extraction needles with his own bare claws to protect our bond. But I can still smell the deceit lingering in the shadows of the Wolfe Industries Tower. With the loyal Julian Park offering me a clean escape into safe territory, I have to decide if I will let Andrew's feral, seductive touch drag me back into his nest—or if my wolf will tear this entire territory apart to keep my child free.