Wolf's Cross »

S. A. Swann grew up and still lives in the Northeastern Ohio area, along with three cats, two dogs, a pair of goats, a horse, and one overworked spouse.

S. A. Swann continues to reinvent the werewolf myth in this fantastic new novel set in the medieval world of the celebrated Wolfbreed. Like its predecessor, Wolf’s Cross is unafraid to cross boundaries and break taboos to tell an unforgettable story of romance and adventure that will forever change how you think about werewolves.
 
Maria lives a simple life in a small Polish village, working for the lord of the nearby fortress. Motherless since birth, Maria has been raised by her father and stepmother. Around her neck she wears—as she has always worn—a silver crucifix, to protect her from the devil. Or so her father tells her.

But when a contingent of badly mauled Teutonic knights, including a handsome and gravely wounded young man named Josef, ask for succor at the fortress, Maria’s quiet and comfortable world shatters. For the knights are Wolfjägers, an order dedicated to the extermination of werewolves, and Maria, unknowingly, is one of the creatures they hunt. Only the crucifix about her neck prevents her body from changing into a lethal killing machine.

When Maria meets Darien, a wolfbreed bent on exacting a terrible revenge on humans, she will learn the truth about herself, and find her loyalties—and her heart—torn in two.

Publishers Weekly

Swann's considerable writing skill isn't matched by originality in this historical supernatural romance, the sequel to 2009's Wolfbreed. The opening scenes are gripping enough, as Brother Josef, a probationer in a "convent of warrior monks" in 14th-century Prussia, encounters evidence of a massacre carried out by a werewolf. When the beast attacks his group, Josef manages to strike the creature in the eye with a silver crossbow bolt and to survive his serious injuries. As he's tended by Maria, an attractive servant, he develops strong feelings for her, but Maria is drawn to Darien, a hunky stranger with a scar on one of his eyes. As those two grow closer, Darien reveals that Maria herself is a wolfbreed, setting up a predictable love triangle and the usual struggles between human loyalty and animal nature. This is nothing new for fans of paranormal romance, horror, or historical fantasy. (Aug.)