Esher (Guardians of Hades Paranormal Romance Series Book 3) by Felicity Heaton – Book Tour and Giveaway!

Prince of the Underworld and Lord of Water, Esher was banished from his home by his father, Hades, two centuries ago and given a new duty and purpose—to keep our world and his from colliding in a calamity foreseen by the Moirai.

Together with his six brothers, he fights to defend the gates to the Underworld from daemons bent on breaching them and gaining entrance to that forbidden land, striving to protect his home from their dark influence. Tormented by his past, Esher burns with hatred towards mortals and bears a grudge against Hades for forcing him into their world, condemning him to a life of battling to keep a fragile hold on his darker side—a side that wants to kill every human in the name of revenge.

Until he finds himself stepping in to save a female—a beautiful mortal filled with light and laughter who draws him to her as fiercely as the pull of the moon, stirring conflict in his heart and rousing dangerous needs long forgotten.

Aiko knows from the moment she sets eyes on the black-haired warrior that he is no ordinary man, just as she’s no ordinary woman. Blessed with a gift, she can see through his stormy façade to the powerful god beneath, and the pain and darkness that beats inside him—pain she grows determined to heal as she falls deeper under his spell and into his world.

When the daemon bent on turning Esher against his brothers makes her move, will Esher find the strength to overcome his past and fulfil his duty, or will the lure of revenge allow the darkness in his heart to seize control, transforming him into a god intent on destroying the world?
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This giveaway is international and open to everyone, and ends at midnight on April 8th.

Keep reading for an excerpt & MORE!
EXCERPT
Why couldn’t he just tell his brother what had happened?

He was closest to Daimon, and they had shared everything in the past, leaving nothing unsaid between them. So why did he want to keep the female a secret?

Esher looked back in the direction of the mansion and sighed as the breeze blew the longer lengths of his black hair back from his face. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with him, and he had no reason to keep secrets from Daimon. If he kept on like this, he would only cause his brother more worry, and he didn’t want that. The next time Daimon asked him, he would tell him.

The female was nothing to him anyway, just another human in a world filled with them. He couldn’t trust her. She was dangerous. A wretch.

If she knew what he was, she would react in the way humans always did, their fear of whatever was stronger than they were driving them to attack and kill it.

She would.

He looked down at the swarm of humans below him as they crossed the juncture between the four roads, hurrying from the station to his right or towards it.

If they knew what he was, they wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t even try to. They would hurt him.

They would harm his family.

The black urge to hurt them first rose inside him, but he pulled the earbuds from his shirt pocket, stuffed them into his ears, and flicked through the classical music on his iPod until he found a soothing piece.

As soon as the piano and strings filled his ears, the volume loud enough to shut out the incessant noise of the mortal world, the tension drained from him and his shoulders relaxed.

Evening light, beautiful and rich amber, washed over the side of the high building in front of him on the other side of the crossing, turning the huge television screen mounted on it dull, and caught on the towering ones to his right. He stood at the edge of the roof of the bridge, soaking up the music, letting it calm him as he watched the mortals, and debated heading down.

He was testing himself again, just as he had been that night when he had stood in this same spot. That night, the moon had been full, pulling at him and weakening his resistance to the darker side of himself. That night, Valen had brought a mortal female, the assassin Eva, to the mansion, wanting to protect her from their uncle and their enemies.

That night, his guard had dropped, and the wraith had attacked him, plunging a tainted blade into his side.

And that night, a mortal had saved his soul.

Megan.

Ares’s female had the power to heal, but it was a power that drained her when she used it on a god like him and his brothers, pushing her close to death.

She had risked it to save him.

Fuck, he still didn’t know how to process that.

It haunted him.

He owed his life to a mortal.

Daimon wanted him to talk about it, and so did his other brothers, but he needed time.

Space.

Esher looked down at the mortals, the warm spring breeze toying with his long coat, making it flap around his boots. To think he owed one of them his life.

His left hand covered the sleeve of his black coat over the bandage on his right forearm as a feeling went through him, a need that had haunted him from the moment he had stepped away from that small clinic in the northern suburb of Tokyo.

An urge to return there.

He crushed it.

She meant nothing, was nothing. He was just confused, conflicted by what Megan had done for him, that was the only reason he had lowered his guard around another of her kind.

Esher closed his eyes and focused on the music, shutting the world around him out. He would go to Lion, one of his favourite cafés in Tokyo, and one that was a sanctuary for him. He would sit there as he always did, in a quiet corner, listening to the classical music they played and finding peace in that place his brothers had agreed was his, one where Daimon rarely dared to bother him and one where he could think.

A strange tingling swept through him.

Not a daemon. Their presence made his gut swirl with a sickening sensation and it was still light out. They would be in hiding for another few hours yet.

This was different.

He tilted his head to his right and opened his eyes, locking them on the source of it.

She shifted foot to foot far below him, her back to the statue of Hachiko, a faithful dog, where people often met, facing the exit of the train station. Her obsidian long hair had been twirled into twin buns at the back of her head, and a pink and black chequered bag bumped the front of her thighs as she anxiously swayed side to side, trying to see through the crowd.

There was a pause, and then she lifted her arm as she tiptoed. Waving to someone.

Esher almost growled as he sought the human she was signalling, but it died on his lips as he spotted a female waving back at her. The reaction had him taking a step back, that confusion rising again as he struggled to understand why the thought of her potentially meeting a male had pushed him close to stepping down and dealing with them before they could reach her.

Her friend eased through the crowd, and when they embraced, his mortal’s violet fluffy jumper rode up to flash a strip of pale toned skin.

He growled now, and eyed all the males in the vicinity, ensuring none of them had noticed.

Satisfied that they hadn’t, he looked back at her, and frowned.

She was gone.

Dammit.

Esher stepped before he had even considered doing it, appearing near the trees that encased the statue on one side, his eyes scouring the busy square for her.

He found her near the crossing, speaking with two females now, both of them with hair that barely reached their jaws and dark make-up around their eyes and a smear of red on their lips. They smiled and laughed, but all he felt was disgust and a need to wipe them from the face of the Earth.

His female however…

She was as cute as he recalled, although today she wore more conservative clothing of black jeans and thick-soled purple shoes with her violet jumper, and her bag was plain in comparison to the satin coffin-shaped one that had the winged cat toy dangling from the zipper.

Cute?

He stilled right down to his breathing as that word came back to slap him.

No, she wasn’t cute.

She was…

The darker part of himself volunteered the word vile.

Beautiful.

Beautiful despite the fact she wore only light make-up, or possibly even none. Beautiful despite the fact she was human.

As beautiful and as full of life a butterfly as she moved with her comrades, flitting in front of them one moment with a smile on her face, and beside them in the next, her mouth parted on a laugh that filled her whole face with joy.

Esher trailed after her, ignoring the feeble humans as he pushed through the crowd, struggling to keep up with her and keep his distance at the same time.

Fuck, he felt like a damned stalker as he followed her down the narrow cobbled pedestrian street that branched off at a diagonal to the left of his favourite Starbucks, unable to take his eyes off her even when he knew he should walk away right now and forget about her.

He couldn’t.

He swore she laughed every time she spoke, and every time her friends said something, oblivious to the way she drew the attention of the people around her, the males in particular. Esher made a mental note to kill them later, once he had drunk his fill of the fascinating little human.

He had never noticed that humans could be like her, buzzing with goodness.

Kindness.

He rebelled against that word, his mind hurling a thousand images that contradicted it and reminded him that humans were incapable of kindness. They were vicious, untrustworthy. Dangerous.

They would kill him if he revealed what he was to them.

Just as their ancestors had tried.

He slowed to a halt, his gaze still following her as his body locked up tight, the pain thrumming in his heart bleeding over into his muscles and making them clamp down on his bones as a need to lash out grew inside him.

He couldn’t trust her.

She was weak, but a threat.

Dangerous to him.

But for the first time, he felt as if the danger he was in wasn’t physical.

It was emotional.

She was weak, but gods, she could crush him.

He was aware of that as he watched her twirl and smile, her eyes bright with her laughter, and he felt a pull towards her, one that rivalled that of the moon.

He couldn’t trust her.

She was mortal, and all mortals wanted to do was hurt him. If he trusted her, in time she would prove herself just like the others. She would wound him, try to break him, and gods, she might just succeed where others had failed and end up destroying him.

The crowd closed in around him, and his muscles cranked tighter, his heart pounding faster as his tension rose, the need to lash out growing fiercer with each passing second, until he teetered on the brink of showing her and all the other mortals that they were in the presence of something not of their world.

A god.

Paint the streets crimson.

Tear the world down.

Kill them all.

Before they can kill me.

Esher staggered back a step, shoving away from that voice that rose from the pit inside him, refusing to succumb to it, because if he lost control, if he allowed the other side of himself to emerge, he would hurt her too.

He wouldn’t care that he knew her, or that she was gentle and for all he knew, would probably never hurt him. He would kill her just as easily as he killed the others.

He broke away from her and started walking, his pace increasing as he shoved through the crowd and struggled to focus on his destination, one far from her.

In the split-second between locking in a destination and teleporting, her eyes landed on him.

He felt it as a hot caress, one that had his blood boiling with need that demanded he stay and sate it.

A need that shook him.

It wasn’t born of a desire to destroy or to shed blood.

It was born of a desire to touch, to risk everything in order to feel something.

A feeling that crystallised inside him as he landed on a rooftop a short distance from the café and made everything he had been going through the past few days make a dreadful sort of sense.

He needed her.

But he couldn’t have her.

Because he couldn’t trust himself. He was dangerous. A beast.

A monster who would crush such a delicate butterfly.

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BOOKS IN THE SERIES

Book 4: Marek – Coming in 2018
ABOUT FELICITY


Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you're a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.

If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.

If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:


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