A Blood Shadow Novel
Fathoms Deep
A Paranormal Romance Set on The Island of Santorini
Obscured by mythology and buried by aristocracy, an ancient secret festers...
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"You're mine, Roman ... you should know I'm a bitch from hell, when I'm fighting for what's mine."
When mythology and Romance collide
A Run From The Law.
A Burgeoning Love.
The Family Reunion From Hell.
Amid the white-washed houses that decorate the beautiful island of Santorini, Greece, lies an ancient secret that will pull Laura and Roman fathoms deep into an atrocity obscured by mythology, and buried by aristocracy...
Laura is half-werewolf and half-siren, made 'siren' accidentally by the human male who saved her life five years ago with his breath of life – his siren breath.
Roman Dalton is human, and the only known male to carry the siren gene. Although he cannot fully form into his aquatic counterpart, he suffers the torturous effects of his compromised DNA every full moon when the tides are high - effects which have been steadily growing worse.
Posing as man and wife and battling their own villainous shadows from a past best left drowned, the reluctant couple find themselves in Santorini, about to embark on a deadly mission to uncover more about the elusive siren in the hopes of finding a cure.
For Roman was never meant to carry the siren gene, and certainly never meant to pass it on to a she-wolf.
Their answers might dwell among the vegetation of the monastic Mount Athos...
But there are people – very important people – who would rather some secrets remain hidden forever.
If Laura and Roman make it to Mount Athos, they may never make it back out.
"Why is this bitch so hard to kill? I wasn’t going to get my hands dirty, but she keeps not dying..."
— Chapter Seventeen, Fathoms Deep
If You Love These Themes
This Book Was Written For You
"It was the caress of his thumb where he held her, though, that did it. It was the tiniest movement, but she felt it and understood its message, layered with a dizzying hint of possessiveness that told her he was … hers?"
Pretend marriage
It's necessary for their escape. Never mind they've spent five years denying their attraction for each other.
Fated Mates / Soul Bond
He accidentally bonded with her, but it might end up being what they both need.
Redemption Arc
They're both trying to turn a corner from their villainous pasts to become better people.
ancient mythology
...that is still playing out.
They both fall hard
And it's been five years in the making.
Burning Passion
Repressed feelings become longing; become yearning; become impossible to ignore.
He's secretly dominant
But represses and denies it because of his ugly upbringing.
She craves domination
But hides it because of her past.
Touch her / him and Die
They're both as protective as each other.
Meet The Characters
HE SAVED HER LIFE FIVE YEARS AGO AND ACCIDENTALLY BONDED THEM
Repulsion raked him. So did need. Need like he’d ever known to wrap his arms around her and never let go; to let the ocean wrap them both up in its fathoms-deep embrace. — Fathoms Deep
Roman Dalton
Brother of the brutal enemy who held Laura captive and forced her to kill her brother.
Sensitive, empathic, and clairvoyant as a child, Roman was the black sheep of his cruel and abusive family, but he learnt how to survive them, often by doing questionable things. His long-time sanshou mentor, Hai, has kept him disciplined and on the straight-and-narrow, acting more as a father to him than his own father ever did.
Turned half-siren at the age of five, he's suffered all his life from his inability to fully transform, and constantly bullied by his father and brother — the only ones who can keep him safe every full moon — he had all but given up escaping the trappings of his family. Until one she-wolf bested them all and managed to do what he never could.
The thought of losing her seared him in ways he couldn’t explain; she’d been a fucking light. She’d escaped – from the Tridents, from Bab… She’d achieved what he’d never been able to: she’d escaped his family.
Laura Dalton
She-wolf from the Surrey pack. Previously known as Selena, and then Jennifer.
A bitch to all who knew her from the age of fifteen, Laura's defensive and emotionally aggressive nature made her no friends ... but hid a deep pain that came from surviving a rape during her first mating pains. For female werewolves the situation only worsened year-by-year as wolves teetered on extinction. Not wanting to suffer more, or die young, she fought everyone and everything she saw as a threat.
After a series of poor decisions, she was abducted by The Trident and forced into a mating to breed their species. But they sorely underestimated her will to survive. She outsmarted them all, killed her 'mate', and ran, even if freedom meant her death.
“You didn’t drag me, remember? You gave me the chance to go back to my pack. I chose to come.”
“And you’ve been attacked or targeted three times since we got here.”
“As if that’s any worse than anything I’ve been through. So fucking what. Let’s just meet them head-on.”
This book is not a standalone! Sorry, you will love the story much more if you read these books first for backstory and character growth.
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⚠️ This series contains MANY triggers. If triggers in general upset you, it may be best to give this series and book a miss.
Exclusive Excerpt
How the book begins
Chapter One
You’re green.”
“I’m fine.”
“You look green.”
Laura scowled. “Well, excuse me if being 40,000 feet in the air turns my stomach just a little. It’s not a natural place to be.”
“We landed an hour ago.”
“And my head is still floating somewhere in the lower stratosphere,” she bit out.
Roman chuckled.
She glared at him, but kept pace, not willing to get swept away by the sea of people either side of them as they made their way to Arrivals with their luggage in tow. This was the most amount of people she’d ever been amongst, the mid-October flurry to capture the last bit of sun the Greek Islands offered, ensuring the busyness of the airport in Santorini – or ‘Thera’, as the Greeks knew it. It was a heady experience to say the least, as if all these strangers’ thoughts and feelings bustled alongside her with their physical bodies, and she had no idea if her attunement to that was because of her habitual introversion to life, or if it was accentuated by the siren in her.
Or maybe she was just feeling sensitive. Only three days ago, she’d lain bruised and battered, praying for death, after one of the most violent attacks of her life, only to live – which she was thankful for – after being anchored to the bottom of the ocean as she experienced her first metamorphosis into a siren; not that she could remember it. A full-bodied siren according to Roman, her wolf having agreeably taken a back seat to allow the sea-creature her debut performance.
Both the siren and wolf inside her had seen to her physical healing, and with some surprise, she noted that emotionally, she felt far more calm and nourished than she ever had in the thirty years of her existence; all three of her personas – the siren, the wolf, and the element that made her human – also taking to her new name of ‘Laura’ as easily as they had taken to her transformation into an elusive mer-being no one believed existed – not even werewolves.
‘Jennifer’ – her first alias after having escaped her captivity at the hands of The Trident – had never suited her, and ‘Selena’, her birth name, felt more and more like a stranger every day – a distant memory, even. Mostly an unpleasant one.
‘Laura’, however, brought out something serene in her, although she couldn’t pinpoint why. She liked the name so much she felt almost territorial over it; or her wolf did. Yes – her wolf liked Laura, too.
She risked a glance at her accidental ‘husband’, refusing to admit to herself his presence had something to do with her near-miraculous sense of ease and self-harmony, never mind that his presence had unwittingly eased her for half a decade. Unwittingly on his behalf, anyway. She had been far too quick to seek out refuge in his anonymously written guidance when it was all she’d really had. She’d clung to the notes he had left her during her times of need, without knowing their source or the history that had created them – that had created him. By all accounts, he should be her arch-enemy...
The story continues in the full novel…
🔥 Note: contains hot, passionate scenes that will make your toes curl.
Dianna Hardy
NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR
Beautiful and Brutal Fiction for Adults
"This book falls more into the beautiful category as far as I'm concerned. Laura has paid her dues and she deserves some beauty. I was surprised, in a way, these two characters wanted to go down the romance route after everything they'd been through, but it all made sense by the end of the book.
There are a couple of interesting plot twists within these pages even I didn't see coming, which sent me into near panic wondering how I was going to manage them ... until the ending appeared, and then I knew.
Out of all the books I've written, this one is probably the most romance. There's something about Roman and Laura that just screams it. Perhaps it's because they both have a dreamy quality they've always had to repress. Within each other, they find the expression of their hidden selves. I hope you enjoy Fathoms Deep.
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five-star reviews
Release Day: 30th April
The perfect book to read under the covers.
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does History ever let go?
The past waits for the present to yield to it...
"We've both got blood on our hands. We're not the heroes who saved the world, we're the villains who survived it."
Available at most major online eBook and paperback retailers.
"She'd walked through hell thrice over without faltering, but this time, everything felt different, and she all at once realised what it was: she didn't want to go back. She'd been holding her breath, waiting for the worst to happen, and she didn't want to go back to how anything had been in her past."