Born of Fire

Born of Fire by Sherrilyn Kenyon




For all the ebook authors out there, past, present and future. Let’s hear it for fighting the good fight.


To Bonnee and Silke for giving me a chance when no one else would.


To everyone out there who is and was a fan of the futuristic genre

and to the writers who originally built it.


And as always, to my family, friends, and fans for always being there when I need you. You guys rock!





AUTHOR’S NOTE

The title of this book was chosen not just because it described the hero and heroine and their backgrounds, but because this story was the phoenix of my career.

In the early 1990’s, I sold six books in one year and then for four years, I couldn’t give away Alpo to a dog kennel. Even though I’d made bestseller lists and won awards, my writing career tanked.

Part of the reason was that the paranormal/futuristic market of the early 1990’s dried up, and we early pioneers lost our contracts and were left to find new paths.

Even though I tried numerous other genres and finished several books, no publisher would take them. In fact, it was while chasing that dream that I wrote what is called the ultimate “marketable” book that had all the elements of the hottest trends of the mid-1990’s in it. There was no reason for it not to sell.

That book garnered me the worst rejection of my career. The infamous: “No one at this publishing house will ever be interested in developing this author. Do not submit her work to us again.” Yes, it was a kick in the teeth, but to this day I am grateful to that editor because she forever changed my course as an author and I know I wouldn’t have the career that I have today had she not written those words to my agent.

And we definitely wouldn’t have this book.

It was that rejection that made me decide that I didn’t want to succeed by trying to play by other people’s “rules.” Being the good Southern Celt that I am, I lifted my chin and said out loud, “If I’m going to fail, then it will be on my terms, while writing the books I want to write and it will be by listening to no one but my characters.”

That very afternoon, I sat down and started writing Born of Fire. I knew it would never sell. No one would touch a futuristic, and the paranormals were quickly going extinct. But I didn’t care.

Syn and Shahara were burning inside me and this was the only story I could tell. I wrote it, never expecting it to see the light of day.

Ironically, it ended up being the very first ebook that a New York published author sold. Dreams-Unlimited was one of the original ebook publishers who didn’t last long enough to see the ebook market really take off. We sold next to no copies of this book, yet I will always be grateful to Silke and Bonnee for their enthusiasm for this book and these characters. You guys were great.

And for those who have read Born of Night, you may notice that the time line is bit off in this book. That was a conscious decision on my part.

Originally, Born of Night was published by another house, and my agent at the time told me to make sure we took out anything that made these two books appear related to keep me out of trouble with the original house. So as I rewrote Born of Fire for Dreams-Unlimited, I purposely deviated from Born of Night’s history and time line. In the original Born of Fire, Nykyrian was renamed Alexei and was an aristocrat who’d eloped.

While putting the two stories back together as a real series, I realized that the overlapping storylines still worked, but that they wouldn’t mesh 100%, and for that I beg your understanding as a reader. Matching up the time lines would have interfered and broken up the action sequences in both books, as well as some of their motivations. In order to be true to the characters and their story, I decided to let the time line stand.

I hope you enjoy this latest foray into the Ichidian Universe.





PROLOGUE


“They’re going to kill me, Shay. I need your help.” Haunted, Shahara Dagan replayed her sister’s desperate voice mail message over and over again as she sat alone at her kitchen counter.

She’d stupidly thought it’d been a joke. What with Tessa’s flair for exaggeration and her melodrama, as well as the number of times she’d cried her death was eminent over nothing more than a hangnail, how was she supposed to know that this time the cry for help had been real?

Shahara wanted to scream, to curse, to tear her house apart—to do anything other than wait for the loaners who would return and finish off her sister.

Dammit, Tess, at least go to loaners I can make suffer when they hurt you.

But no. Her sister had gone to “legitimate,” government-backed loaners who could take whatever steps they needed to, to collect their funds.