TARNISHED

Werewolf Andrew Dare and his mate, Silver, face new challenges in this sequel to Silver (2012).

Previously, former pack enforcer Dare was badly injured tracking and killing the fiendish creature that had tortured his mate, Silver, by injecting her with silver. As a result, Silver’s wolf self is dead and her human body crippled. Though not fully healed, Dare faces new challenges: from vengeful Sacramento, whose psychotic rapist son Dare executed; and from Rory, Dare’s former alpha, for leadership of the Roanoke pack. This time, weak, treacherous Rory has formed an alliance with the Spanish pack of Dare’s dead wife. Worse, the Spaniards have kept Dare’s daughter incommunicado and fed her vicious lies about what really happened. Silver, however, in overcoming her physical handicaps and psychological trauma, has gained an alpha’s ability to face down physically fit and stronger males through sheer force of personality. Dare’s lone ally, John, once again alpha of Seattle, has a problem too. His mate, Susan, is human, and humans traditionally are excluded from Were business and relationships. Silver decides to tell Susan what she needs to know, since John won’t, and let Susan make her own decisions about her standing among the Were. Once again, the plotting’s mostly on a psychological level, and what holds the reader’s interest are the interactions between individuals and among packs and how Held guides the conflict away from masculine snarling and growling toward less obvious but equally effective feminine dominance—wolves in formal dress, if you like.

Series fans will—well, they’ll wolf it down.