Resurrection

By Lisa Childs

Anya has had plenty of firsthand experience with the devastation of war...particularly the scent of blood as she laid her hands on fallen warriors, bringing them back to life. Resurrecting the dead is her gift, the special ability bestowed to every other generation of women in her family–and the reason Anya was taken from home to help her captors in battle. Now, they have brought Anya to a magical new land, intent on claiming it as they had claimed her.

But their arrival is not unexpected, especially to warrior Gray Wolf. The men with pale skin and hair had come before, promising friendship and trade, only to kill his people...including his woman. Now a shaman has warned Gray Wolf of the invaders' return–and about the woman who can make them invincible. His must kill Anya in order to save his people–but once he touches the ethereal beauty, he feels a connection to her more powerful than anything he's ever felt before. Torn between loyalty and passion, Gray Wolf must choose: fulfil his mission to protect his people, or save the one woman who can make him feel alive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781460821701

Lisa Childs

New York Times & USA Today bestselling, award-winning author Lisa Childs has written more than 85 novels. Published in 20 countries, she's also appeared on the Publisher's Weekly, Barnes & Nobles and Nielsen Top 100 bestseller lists. Lisa writes contemporary romance, romantic suspense, paranormal and women's fiction. She's a wife, mom, bonus mom, an avid reader and a less avid runner. Readers can reach her through Facebook or her website www.lisachilds.com

Book preview

Chapter One

Centuries ago…

The rhythmic beat, beat, beat of the drums echoed in Anya’s blood as it pumped hot and heavy through her veins. Sand shifted beneath her knees where she knelt beside the trickling stream. She cupped her hands in the water, splashing it onto her face and throat. But the water didn’t cool her heated skin. Nor did the wind that rustled the branches of trees in the woods looming all around her, nearly blocking out the glow of the crescent moon.

Beat. Beat. Beat.

Her hands trembled, and she clasped them against her throat where her pulse pounded in tandem with the drum. Although she was far from home and in a foreign land, she still recognized the natives’ music for what it was. A war cry.

Would they wait until morning to attack the invaders? Or would they, with their intimate knowledge of the terrain, use darkness as a cover to defend their land? She could not find fault with protecting what was theirs. But how did they know that the strangers had come to conquer? Or did they treat every intruder as a threat?

Beat, beat, beat…

She had no answers to her questions. The only thing she knew for certain was that a battle would be waged. Anya closed her eyes, reliving the devastation of previous wars. The scent of blood, sweet and strong, filled her nostrils. Blood, thick and sticky, clung to her skin as she laid hands on the fallen warriors, bringing them back to life.

Resurrecting the dead.

That was her special ability. Such a gift was bestowed on every other generation of females in her family. Anya’s grandmother could predict the future. Nana had already seen Anya’s fate: the long arduous voyages across oceans, down straits and over lakes, to a faraway land…a land with powers nearly as unique as every other female generation of Anya’s family.

Because it was special, the conquerors had to have this magical land—had to claim it as theirs as they had claimed Anya.

From the shadows in the forest, Gray Wolf studied her. With her hair and skin as pale as the luminescent crescent moon, she appeared more an ethereal woodland creature than a flesh-and-blood woman. She had slipped away from the invaders, past even their watchful guards, as if she were an apparition. Yet the Wise One claimed she was not a spirit.

The shaman had picked the special flowers, and after dividing the poisonous blossom from the stems and leaves, he’d eaten the poison. Not enough to kill him, just enough to invoke the visions that had warned of the invaders…and the woman. She was more powerful than the men with whom she traveled—because she made them invincible.

Yet she was not.

She leaned over again and cupped her palms in the trickling water of the stream. As she lifted her hands, water escaped through her fingers, dripping from her delicately featured face onto the bodice of her gown. The wet material appeared nearly as translucent as her skin, molding to every swell and curve of her body.

He held the