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Elena is a Chosen--that is, she's a descendant of one of the original Direkind created by Merlin rather than one who was merely bitten and turned. The Chosen are exclusionary and patriarchal, and Elena's father has decreed that she must marry another Chosen, the sadistic Stephen.

In order to save herself and change things for the rest of the Chosen females, Elena turns to relatively new Direkind Lucas, a cop in a nearby town, for help.

For a novella, this story has quite a lot going on. The werewolf politics are clear, and both Elena and Lucas are easily identifiable characters. It's less easy to believe the declaration of love at the end, but given the novella length, and the fact that they have similar and complementary personalities, and are in tune enough with each other to spirit link, I'll buy it.

Cait is hiking the Appalachian trail with a group of friends. An injury causes two of them to turn back, and she's left with Josh, whose interest in her wanes when she declines to share his bed.

Still, he's better than nothing, she thinks, except that when she's chased by the menacing Ursus and gets lost, he doesn't come for her, and she's left at the mercy of Rhys, a man they met the night before at a hiking shelter, and who seemed to be friends with Ursus.

Rhys is more than he seems, and, without giving away the surprises, the story involves the conflicts between duty and desire, and love and self. A true fairy tale.

Burke is a bit of a rarity among werewolves, in that he's a loner. Serena is a vampire who wants to get revenge on the vampire who killed her best friend. But before she can do that, she finds herself stuck in a deep pit on a beach.

Burke comes to help her out, but it's daylight, so she refuses his help, whereupon he jumps down into the pit with her, freaks out (werewolves are notoriously claustrophic), changes (the full moon just rose), and claws his way out.

The next day he comes back to find what he assumes will be her body, and discovers a very annoyed, but very not-dead Serena.

These two are a little darker than MJD's usual couples, but there's still a lot of humor, and they're definitely a couple that's made for each other.

Continuing in the tradition of the first book, this story is even more "LKH-lite." For a short story, there are interminable descriptions of Mona Lisa clothing her reluctant his-em in tight pants, and yet more characters who fall madly in love with Mona Lisa, including of course the warrior she heals, the hellhound, and its mistress.

There's never any question of whether she can heal the warrior--all it takes is her magical orgasm.

I'm not going to list all the parallels between this series and LKH's two series. Suffice it to say that the parallels continue, and that if you like LKH's more recent books, you'll like this one, and if you don't, you won't.