Meet Dylan MacLeod

So, as I mentioned in the last post, the release of my July book, Dark Embers, is just around the corner. It's my first as Tessa Adams and I'm sooooo excited. So I thought I'd give you a few posts to whet your appetite. Today, I thought I'd give you a quick intro to Dylan-- King of the Dragonstar clan and dragon shifter extraordinaire. He's tall, dark and sexy and charged with saving his clan from certain destruction at the hands of a deadly new virus ...

Excerpt:

Dylan tossed back two fingers of the eighteen-year old Sazerac Rye Marta had gotten him for his birthday, downing it like it was water and barely noticing the burn as it whipped down his throat in a cacophony of flavors. He stared at the tall, skinny bottle and tried not to think of how much he wanted another drink.
As the image of his sister’s funeral pyre rose up in his mind—red-hot and glowing and so very, very final-- he gave up the fight and poured another three fingers.
“Uncle Dylan?” He turned to find Lana staring at him with tear-filled purple eyes so much like her mother’s that it made his brain bleed just to look at her. When her lower lip trembled just a little—as if her ability to hold things together was disintegrating rapidly—he did the only think he knew to do. He opened his arms. She flew into them, sobbing.

Heart hurting, desperation and guilt violent beasts churning within him, he held his niece while she cried and tried to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do now. His sister was dead, his second-in-command shattered. And his niece, the person next in line for the throne, was crying inconsolably. He had no idea how to make things better, especially since Marta’s death had left a hole the size of his fist where his heart had been.

He hated the uncertainty, the confusion, the fear that he wasn’t cut out to be king. Unlike his father, who had been born to wear the crown, Dylan couldn’t help struggling under its weight. His father had never hesitated. He’d never been uncertain— lately, Dylan had a hard time being anything but.

Once, Dylan had been like his father, certain that his way was the right one. But that was before he’d watched his brother’s murder, before he’d seen his parents die of broken hearts. No, those times were long gone and as his world fell apart around him again, he wanted nothing more than to scream for a little help.

A life preserver.

Something, anything, to stop the nightmare—or at least put it on hold for a little while.
But real life didn’t work that way. His entire clan was looking to him for guidance and he couldn’t let them know that he was suddenly as unsure as they were.

He cradled his niece for a long time, rocking her and murmuring soothing noises that needed no translation. She cried for what seemed like forever as his fragmented heart broke just a little more in empathy for her. When Lana’s sobs finally gave way to little mewls, he thought he’d be relieved. But the sound strained his already aching conscience to the breaking point.
“Come on, baby.” He lifted her into his arms, and though she was nearly fifty--almost a full-grown dragon—she curled into him like the little girl she used to be.

“Where’s Gabe?” he demanded of Logan, one of his sentries, as he carried his exhausted niece through the labyrinth of passageways that made up so much of the cave he called home. It was beautiful, like so many of New Mexico’s underground caverns--filled with truly exquisite rock formations and speleothems that never failed to take his breath away, even after all these years.
But today he wasn’t thinking of the cave—or the magnificent, natural art inside of it —as he strode toward the guest room he knew Lana liked best. Today, he was trying to figure out how to stop this damn disease, so that no one else had to suffer like his niece and her father were suffering.

So, what do you think? I love a dark, handsome, tortured hero and had so much fun writing Dylan that it probably should have been illegal ;)