The Huntress vs Huntsman Book Bundle

Master of the Hunt:

In a land of three warring kingdoms, a centaur huntsman and a warrior priestess might be the only hope for peace. If the two enemies don’t kill each other first, they might even find love.

Seira of Blackstone has fought in many border skirmishes against the centaurs of the lowlands, but when she comes upon a massacre, it’s soon apparent the centaur and human dead weren’t fighting each other. They were fighting together against a third, unknown foe.

Toryn, a centaur huntsman, is following the trail of a group of soul-mages when he encounters Seira, the most exquisite female he’s ever beheld. She’s majestic, battle-hardened, strong-willed, and her sharp tongue fires his blood more than any other female he’s ever met.

While Seira’s natural instinct is to kill the horseman, she’s also swift to see they have a better chance of success if they work together. But there is more danger than just an unknown enemy. As they come to depend on each other, Seira secretly admits she has growing feelings for her centaur partner.

That’s a problem. As a warrior-priestess of the Moon Goddess, Seira has sworn vows of obedience, loyalty, and chastity in exchange for her magic. As such, her body, heart, and soul can never be shared with another. Not even a noble centaur with equal parts desire and tender longing in his eyes.

But centaurs are renowned for their stubborn natures, and Toryn plans to claim Seira’s heart even if he risks having the warrior-priestess bury one of her blades in his chest for his troubles.

Night Huntress:

Sacrifice is no stranger to Seira of Blackstone. Yet her greatest sacrifice may require her to surrender the centaur she loves.

When Seira learns that a faction within the centaur royal court seeks to usurp the throne, she can’t allow Toryn to face the danger alone. Soon she finds herself journeying into the heart of centaur territory. Once there, she faces threats unlike any she’s encountered before, but as a warrior-priestess of the Moon goddess, she’s game to face any challenge.

Though when one of those challenges turns out to be a beautiful rival looking to steal Seira’s beloved huntsman’s affections, she discovers she is ill-prepared for this battle. And with Toryn’s older brother assassinated, the centaur huntsman’s aging father knows his prodigal son may be next and needs to make a powerful alliance with a noble family.

With that in mind, the king orders Toryn to marry one of the Night Huntresses—the unmated heirs of the most powerful noble houses. The only woman Toryn wants is his fierce warrior-priestess, but denying the king isn’t an option. While the centaur huntsman desperately searches for a way to appease his father, safeguard the throne, and win the hand of his warrior-priestess, the assassins are moving ever nearer.

But Seira has her own plans. And woe to any assassin or rival foolish enough to attempt to steal Crown Prince Toryn from the Night Huntress of Blackstone.

Dragon Archer:

When a fierce huntress adept with a longbow meets a fire-breathing dragon, enough sparks fly to start an inferno.

Warrior-Priestess Rhavana of High Rock owes her freedom to Seira of Blackstone and Crown Prince Toryn of the centaurs, so when duty requires them to journey into the homeland of the dragons in order to discover how deep the soul-mage conspiracy runs, Rhavana joins them.

Trouble meets them at the border in the form of a big red dragon calling himself Kolaith.

He demands one of the warrior-priestesses stay behind and aid him in tracking and reclaiming his sister’s soul from the soul-mages. Otherwise, he’ll chase them all out of dragon territory before they can carry out their mission.

Rhavana suggests a centaur for their superb tracking skills, but Kolaith won’t be swayed. He wants a warrior-priestess.
Sensing how stubborn the dragon is and knowing they don’t have time to do a lengthy political dance with a dragon, Rhavana volunteers to stay behind and help track the soul-mages even though she knows the dragon is omitting something.
It isn’t until the rest of the party moves deeper into dragon territory, leaving Rhavana with the dragon, that she discovers what else Kolaith didn’t say.

It’s not just his sister’s soul he wants to save—it’s her clutch of soon-to-hatch eggs. The big red dragon is determined to reclaim the eggs and raise them himself. But the dragonets will need a mother’s magic and love, and Kolaith has decided Rhavana will make a perfect mate for him and mother to the little ones.

Rhavana likes her newly restored freedom too much to simply capitulate and become a mate or a mother at the snap of some big scaly lizard’s fingers. That he shapeshifts into a man won’t influence her resolve at all. Not at all. And once they’ve hunted down and destroyed the soul-mages, rescued the clutch of eggs, and freed the soul of Kolaith’s sister, Rhavana plans to return to her own land.

But unbeknownst to Rhavana, Kolaith is in love, and a dragon in love is a very dangerous thing.

Soul Mage:

A stoic warrior-maiden and a villainous priest-king make the most unlikely alliance in the history of the five kingdoms.

When a rescue attempt to save a clutch of dragon eggs from the soul mages goes terribly wrong, Warrior-Priestess Verdria of High Rock finds herself on the wrong side of a portal, deep in enemy territory.

She soon learns she’s in the heart of the soul mage’s empire and when Honryn, the future priest-king of the mages, takes a liking to Verdria and saves her life, she’s pretty sure she’s facing down a ‘fate worse than death’ scenario.

Just when she thinks things can’t get any worse, Priest-King Honryn introduces her to the Royal Court of the Soul Mages, the most morally corrupt and bloodthirsty court in existence.

Life is cheap.

Souls are currency.

And Verdria has caught the fancy of the young priest-king, and while he doesn’t want to steal her soul, he’s set on winning her heart.

And she’s equally set on having his heart, after she’s carved it out of his chest.

But when she discovers Honryn’s most monstrous secret, a secret he’s even hiding from his fellow soul mages, she’s moved to pity and offers to aid him.

The river flowed high and fast from recent rains. At last, the sun was out, the day warm and promising to help dry the saturated ground. It had been a wet fall, which made hiding her tracks and the location of her camps more difficult than usual.
Of course, the same conditions had been making it just as difficult for her rival across the river. She grinned suddenly, a rare spark of mirth threading its way through her.
Finding the location of his new camp today had almost made all the rain worthwhile.
Tomorrow, when he headed out for his daily patrol, she’d sneak back across the river and steal something else from his camp. The last time she’d found it two moon cycles ago, she’d stolen his bloody big bow.
It was so large and required such strength, it took everything she had to draw it. But she soothed her pride knowing that she could even without a centaur’s size or musculature.
Gazing back across the river, she decided this time she’d steal something more useful than a bloody big bow. She’d always admired his battle-ax. It had a deadly kind of grace to it, and she’d seen him use it enough times—sometimes even against her—that she knew he was proficient with the weapon and would miss it greatly.
Besides, she’d always been curious about the designs she’d seen at a distance. The few times she’d seen it up close, the etchings were nothing more than a blur as she deflected a blow.
Another grin was just spreading across her lips when the sound of an arrow parting the air currents reached her ears. The shaft hissed past her nose a moment before it embedded itself in a tree trunk to her left.
If her pace had been just a bit quicker, she would have stepped right into the line of the arrow’s trajectory. Her gaze locked on the quivering shaft. She recognized it—one she’d made herself only this morning.
Eyes narrowing, she turned and fearlessly glared across the river. Her rival was an excellent shot. If he’d wanted her dead, she’d be dead now.
But even though they were enemies from two sides of a very old conflict, she didn’t fear he’d kill her. After all, he’d made it clear by his actions over the years that his life would be much too dull without her.
Reaching blindly, she curled her fingers around the gently quivering arrow, then she snatched it out of the tree and inserted it in her quiver in one smooth, unhurried move.
That she was putting one of her own arrows in her quiver could only mean the industrious centaur had already found her new campsite and had stolen back his favorite bow.
She scanned the opposite bank for him, but he wasn’t yet ready to show himself. Wise. She might use the same arrow to put a hole in his pristine palomino hide. Not that she really wanted to harm him. But sometimes he just needed a little warning to put his arrogance in its place.
She’d been sure she’d managed to hide her comings and goings even with the rains. Goddess above! Hadn’t she spent more time in the trees than she had on the ground?
And for what?
To have her camp invaded by that horse’s ass from across the river?
She grunted her displeasure.
It wasn’t the first or even the hundredth time that there had been such an altercation. There had been many such run-ins in the past.
It had started seven years ago when the old centaur huntsman had not returned to take up his post after a long winter. His replacement was the young palomino. And shortly after sizing each other up, she and the new centaur had both decided the other was a prime specimen of the opposite sex, worthy of starting the next generation.
Her reasoning back then wasn’t utterly foolish. The centaur huntsman from across the river was a virile looking specimen. And even seven years ago the matrons of Seira’s home fortress of Blackstone had been hinting that it would soon be time for her to surrender her territory and the duty of guarding this section of the border to another, younger woman and begin the journey of motherhood.
But that required a male.
And males had been in short supply since the time of Seira’s great, great, great grandmother when the soul-mages had created and released a plague upon the five kingdoms. In a span of seasons, that plague had decimated the male population of Seira’s people. The centaurs were not unscathed either, having lost many of their females.
To the best of her knowledge, no kingdom was spared by the plague. The losses were terrible.
But the priestesses of the mountains were not willing to allow the soul-mages the opportunity to enjoy their victory. Seira’s ancestors went to the other races and forged alliances where before there had been only rivalry and distrust. Then with the help of the newly allied kingdoms, they defeated the soul-mages.
Unfortunately, the population imbalance created by the mage’s plague wasn’t so easily defeated.
Yet the matrons of that era had discovered their new centaur allies were capable of shapeshifting into human-looking forms. After peace was restored, the matrons soon set out to discover if a centaur was capable of siring a child on a human woman.
They were. So too were a few of the other races. But the centaurs were the next closest kingdom.
In the first year after the soul-mage plague, the new alliances looked like they might survive and benefit all five kingdoms, but old rivalries soon stressed the treaties, and when sufficient numbers of the opposite sex couldn’t be gained by diplomatic means, the most desperate among the various kingdoms turned to less honorable ways.
Widescale raiding exploded along the borders, and soon larger, bloodier wars threatened to break out. Yet the memory of the plague, and how the soul-mages rose to power while the other kingdoms fought amongst themselves, was still fresh in the minds of the victims.
Knowing war would destroy them, the centaurs and the priestesses of the mountains both withdrew deeper into their own lands and eyed each other balefully from afar.
After that, there was no more war, but there wasn’t true peace either. Both sides knew they needed members of the opposite gender to continue to procreate, or both species would fade and vanish.
But neither species was willing to become subservient to the other. And the newborn trust that had been gained during the short war with the soul-mages failed to bridge the divide between Seira’s ancestors and the centaurs of the lowlands.
Peace and diplomacy ultimately failed a second time, and all five kingdoms prayed to their gods for guidance.
And the gods answered.
It seemed there was one way to stave off extinction.
Bloodless raids.
As strange as it might seem, ritual raids soon became a way of life. Once a year, at the end of the warm season, parties of hunters would venture into enemy territory and attempt to capture prime specimens in their peak breeding years.
Thus, the season of ritualized raiding began, honed over the next two hundred and fifty years as the priestesses learned more about their opponents’ way of life.
And seven years ago, Seira had embarked on her first unofficial raid. It had been a disaster from the moment she engaged the palomino centaur in battle.
The ensuing three-day skirmish had nearly given them both heart failure as they tried to overcome and capture their opponent, but they were perfectly matched, two opposing forces, neither willing to surrender or admit defeat. In the end, it turned out to be impossible to take the other alive.
And neither of them had wanted to kill their opponent.
Stalemated, they concluded they were too evenly matched to capture the other without the aid of a hunting party.
And needing someone else to help take down the arrogant centaur lacked the appeal of capturing him all by herself.
“Now who’s arrogant?” she asked herself with a little chuckle.
From that day, mutual admiration had grown for the other’s tracking and battle skills. Though they were still enemies.
Seira grudgingly admitted the few glimpses she got of the centaur across the river made her daily patrols more interesting. And over the years, catching glimpses of him, or better yet, finding where he’d set up camp, had become a game.
The most recent version of the ‘game’ was likely the reason she’d just had to pull one of her own arrows out of a tree.
As things do, their game had escalated over the years. At first, it was merely things like sneaking into the other’s camp and stealing their evening meal. Soon a simple meal turned into filching arrows and daggers and bows.
Just then, movement on the opposite shore snapped her out of her thoughts. She homed in on that slight flash of color. A moment later, her centaur rival pranced out of the trees and into the shallows.

***

She could see his grin from across the river. Presently, he wasn’t doing anything more dangerous than enthusiastically waving a large bow above his head as he shouted something at her. Likely an insult, but the roar of the rapids in this section of the river drowned out his words. She could guess them well enough anyway.
When he was done saying his piece, he saluted her.
Her eyes narrowed upon the length of cloth tied around one of his biceps.
“That looks suspiciously like one of my breast bands,” she growled. Her grimace in place, she saluted him in return, flicking her fingers insultingly back at him. “And next time I find your camp, I’m going to steal that bloody damned favorite ax of yours and geld you with it!”
She stormed back to her camp without attempting to hide her trail. There was no point now, anyway. He already knew her camp’s location.
Five strides into her well laid out camp, and she knew he’d been busy. There was one deer already dressed, waiting for her. What looked like a second deer’s worth of meat hung from her smoking racks.
“Cocky bastard. Probably hunted in my territory, too.”
This was just another of their games that had developed over the last two years. She was as guilty as him of crossing the border and hunting in enemy territory, only to later leave her kill in his camp as an insult, saying in a wordless manner that she didn’t want to see him return to his herd empty-handed.
After all, it would be a great shame if some of his herd mates starved before spring, thus reducing the pool her people would have to pick from at the end of the next warm season.
However, it was much less fun when he was the one to have found her camp and messed with her things. From past experiences, she knew she’d now be missing some items. She might not even know what they were right away, not missing them until she needed them.
With a huff, she decided she needed a better way to hide her camp from the relentless centaur huntsman.
One thing was certain—and it hurt her pride to admit it—the centaur was the better tracker.
Grumbling, she stomped toward her tent. After tossing aside the flap, she immediately spotted all her clothing and personal items pulled from their bags and scattered around the floor.
“Bold bastard!” A quick inventory showed that one of her breast bands was missing. A bit more hunting revealed one of her loincloths gone as well.
“That perverted horse’s ass. I really am going to steal his damned ax next time.”
With jerking motions, she hastily shoved her items back in their proper bags. She was just tying one shut when her gaze landed on the rolled blanket that acted as her pillow.
Two cloth-wrapped bundles rested on it. With a huff, she tossed aside her pack and crawled across her sleeping pallet. She unwrapped the first bundle, which turned out to be one of her stolen breast bands from the last time he’d found her camp a couple months back.
His rich, male scent tickled her nose, and she resisted the urge to bring it up to her face for a better whiff of the divine scent. She didn’t know what it was about centaurs, but whatever pheromone the beasts gave off was nearly addictive.
She continued to unwrap his gift. A wooden carving fell into her hand. It was the figure of a broad-shouldered centaur. Perhaps it was even supposed to be a likeness of her rival?
She studied it with a critical eye.
No.
This beast was heavier set with a more robust frame.
The centaur from across the river was slimmer in build. Still muscular but with a trim and sleek form that better suited a swift huntsman.
Her centaur could no doubt run circles around a beast built like this sculpture.
Her centaur?
Oh, Great Moon Goddess! What mischievous demon had planted that thought in her head?
Giving herself a shake, she pushed aside the disturbing thought and brought the statue closer to her face to study its excellent craftmanship in the dim light inside the tent. She admired the human upper body. It really was very lifelike. She stroked a finger along one high cheekbone and then across the broad brow before continuing down the opposite cheek, following the slope to a strong, square jaw.
The carving’s chest was just as muscled as a real centaur. Grinning, she flicked a thumb across the flat male nipples, marveling at the minute details.
Turning the sculpture in her hands, she began to study the horse-like body.
Wait? There was something…
Turning her hand, she tilted the sculpture until the belly was backlit by the open tent flap.
A startled laugh escaped her before she could prevent it. Not stopping to think, she moved her thumb to stroke down the length of the wooden centaur’s engorged cock.
Her lips twisting into a grimace, she found herself wondering if centaurs were equally as well-endowed in their human forms.
“Stop that,” she scolded herself. “That’s exactly what he wants you to be thinking about. Randy beast.”
She set aside the statue and looked down at the other cloth-wrapped bundle. After hesitating a moment, she reached forward and swiftly unwrapped a second statue. This one was female and human.
Grunting, she turned it over. The workmanship was just as stunning as the first piece. She eyed the female sculpture with suspicion. If the figure didn’t have such wide hips and large breasts, Seira might have thought this statue was depicting her, and that the erotic centaur sculpture was supposed to be her rival from across the river.
“Well. He can just rethink that.” She snatched up both figurines and marched from her tent. “Besides, I can always use more kindling.”
When she reached her small cooking fire, she noticed it had been built up some time ago and was now nearly ready to begin cooking. She quickly spotted meat already prepared and threaded onto small, bark stripped twigs, just waiting to be cooked.
“Centaur, you’re mistaken if you think I can’t provide for myself.”
Her gaze was just traveling across her camp in the direction of the river to bestow a death-glower in his direction when something white fluttered in the breeze and caught her attention.
A small scrap of parchment sat on a flat rock next to the fire, one corner weighed down by a round river rock.
She circled the fire and then dislodged the rock. Unfolding the valuable bit of paper, she scanned the writing. She’d expected some hard to read scrawl but was surprised.
The male’s writing was legible, almost pretty actually. More surprising, the message was written in her own language. At first, she was strangely pleased he’d gone to the trouble of learning her language. Then it occurred to her that the only way he would know her language at all was if he’d forced one of her captive mountain sisters to teach him.
She grimaced but forced herself to calmly read the contents of the note. After all, it could provide valuable insight into this male’s mind. While they’d seen each other many times over the years and hurtled numerous insults back and forth, this was the first time he’d written her a note.

Beautiful warrior,

I know you have no reason to trust me beyond the few dealings we have had with each other, but I feel it is only honorable to warn you that one of my peoples’ raiding parties is due to journey through my assigned territory tomorrow.

Shield your camp well and hide any of your footpaths. I have already covered the ones I found.

May the Lord of the Forests and the Lady of the Prairies shelter and protect you.

Your companion and rival,
Toryn of the wildland prairie.


Seira read the note a second time and still found herself surprised by the words.
He was warning her. Why?
That came as a surprise. But the more she thought about it, the more she came to understand what might be his driving reason for warning her.
He didn’t want her caught by other males.
Not that she would ever allow a male to gain the upper hand long enough to catch her.
But that didn’t mean her rival might not still have designs on her as his own mate.
The thought didn’t concern her long. She snorted in humor. If he ever attempted to make any amorous attentions known, she’d put him in his place.
But that didn’t mean his words of warning weren’t valid and shouldn’t be heeded.
And even if they were lies, she would still heed them. It was better to be prepared for an attack that would never come than to be caught unawares.
It certainly wouldn’t do her any harm to hide anything that might lead a hunting party to her camp. Then she’d keep an eye out to see if Toryn betrayed her by leading the other centaurs to her location.
Her eyes settled on the wooden figurines again.
Now that she knew they were depictions of his two deities, they seemed not quite as vulgar or suggestive as she’d first assumed. Her gaze slid to the centaur carving, and her lips twisted into a grin as she gazed at its erect not-so-little phallus.
She changed her mind. It was still vulgar in nature, but her studies had told her enough about her enemies to know their father god—the Lord of the Forest—was often portrayed as strong and virile, with one of his powers being the ability to bless and make barren wombs fertile once more.
The Lady of the Prairies shared a similar nature, which would explain the carving’s thick hips and heavy breasts.
After reading Toryn’s note, she was sure her centaur rival really was trying to invoke his gods’ protection on her behalf.
It would have been sweet if he hadn’t also been one of her enemies, and a long-standing thorn in her side. Perhaps it was time to visit him to see if he’d been truthful about what he’d said.
Besides, it would be beneficial to know the whereabouts of the centaur hunting party, so the one led by her younger sisters due to arrive shortly didn’t accidentally run into the enemy hunt.
Grinning, Seira decided even if there hadn’t been two different hunting parties in play, it was still past time she paid her rival another visit. She’d been admiring that ax of his for quite some time.