Fae Touched Northern Creatures Book Five Kris Austen Radcliffe Contents The Worlds of Get Free Books Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Epilogue Death Kissed Get Free Books The Worlds of About the Author The Worlds of Kris Austen Radcliffe Smart Urban Fantasy: Northern Creatures Monster Born Vampire Cursed Elf Raised Wolf Hunted Fae Touched Death Kissed God Forsaken Magic Scorned (coming soon) Genre-bending Science Fiction about love, family, and dragons: World on Fire Series one Fate Fire Shifter Dragon Games of Fate Flux of Skin Fifth of Blood Bonds Broken & Silent All But Human Men and Beasts The Burning World Dragon’s Fate and Other Stories Series Two Witch of the Midnight Blade Witch of the Midnight Blade Part One Witch of the Midnight Blade Part Two Witch of the Midnight Blade Part Three Witch of the Midnight Blade: The Complete Series Series Three World on Fire Call of the Dragonslayer (coming soon) Hot Contemporary Romance: The Quidell Brothers Thomas’s Muse Daniel’s Fire Robert’s Soul Thomas’s Need Quidell Brothers Box Set Includes: Thomas’s Muse Daniel’s Fire Roberts’s Soul Copyright 2020 Kris Austen Radcliffe All rights reserved. Published by Six Talon Sign Fantasy & Futuristic Romance Edited by Annetta Ribken Copyedited by Juli Lilly “Northern Creatures” artwork created by Christina Rausch Cover to be designed by Covers by Christian Plus a special thanks to my Proofing Crew. Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, programs, services, or locales is entirely coincidental. Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. For requests, please e-mail: [email protected]. First electronic edition, January 2020 Version: 4.15.2021 ISBN: 978-1-939730-73-2 Get Free Books Subscribe to Kris Austen Radcliffe’s Newsletter You will be notified when Kris Austen Radcliffe’s next novel is released, as well as gain access to an occasional free bit of author-produced goodness. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time. Sign up for Kris Austen Radcliffe’s Newsletter Chapter 1 It took a full fifty years beyond my rebirth before I was able to pass as a man. Some changes stemmed from elven magic spurring my body to heal. Some happened on their own as my more living parts grew into my more dead. But mostly the changes happened because I left my father behind. He found a ship after I left him on the Arctic ice, and fed the captain a sad tale of pity and victimhood. Years later, the elves found records. I learned the day before I left to join the Union Army that my father had pinned several murders on me, the son he called vile and monstrous. I never murdered. Nor was I eight feet tall, or as ugly as he described. All were lies he manufactured as a way to strike at me from beyond his grave. Those lies were the reason I used the Civil War to test the limits of my invulnerability—and the limits of my personal misanthropy, all of which culminated in my attempted suicide-by-witch. That moment ended when Rose wrapped her toddler arms around my neck. She didn’t believe my father’s lies, so for her, I set them aside. Yet every morning, I was corpse-cold. The elves tattooed over my scars with their beauty, but underneath, my body continued to hitch and halt. Sally came more for Rose than for me, and I came more for whiskey than for Sally. She said she didn’t mind my cold touch, but she did. Then she left. Benta wanted a wall of misery, and I was happy to oblige. At one hundred fifty years past my father, I made an effort to live. University reminded me that I was more than my cold flesh. Kindness is its own beauty, and for the first time in my life, women found me acceptable. But Annie was a pixie of a woman, fine-boned and tiny, and I am an ogre of a man. We did not fit together. Not physically. She cried. I cried. And our relationship was no more. Savannah, whom I also loved, tolerated my morning corpse-likeness until I refused to use my intimidating bulk to further her family’s automobile dealership fortune. I returned to Alfheim, richer in worldly experience, but poorer of heart. The eighties and nineties allowed for some easing of my loneliness. I could pass as a professional athlete, and as long as I was warm, I did not lack company. I still missed Annie. And Sally. And I occasionally wondered what would have happened if my father had not destroyed the female companion he had promised me. We could have commiserated in our ugliness. But instead of a sister, he built a brother more monstrous than I. What if he’d inflicted his horror on a woman? It’s best that I am now an only child. My father told me that I did not deserve someone to ease my suffering. I did not deserve anyone who might listen and offer a touch. I’d had more than two centuries of the universe demonstrating to me that even though Victor Frankenstein was more of a monster than I, though he had lied and manipulated, he had—that one time—told the truth. Yet some part of me still hoped. Which part, I did not know. The spirits of the men from whom I was molded had long ago entered The Land of the Dead. But something remained. That hope wanted to set aside the self-loathing and the rage. And that hope fell fully, utterly in love. I am not a fool. Falling in love
