Rory Ni Coileain

Hi! — this is my first time participating in a snippet group, and I thought I’d try a few lines from “Wolf, Becoming,” my first shifter novella, currently in edits at Dreamspinner Press. In this scene, Volyk, a shapeshifter wolf, has just saved Ilya’s life — Ilya is a young, deeply closeted Russian gay man whose older brothers tried to kill him, after discovering the secret he was hiding. After rescuing and healing Ilya, Volyk has shifted to human form, and has just kissed him for the first time.

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All his life, since well before that aching spring morning, Ilya had known he was attracted to boys, and then to men. But it had never been safe for him to discover exactly what that meant. And now… I wish to God I knew. All of it. Because the thought of being clumsy, inexperienced, laughable in this man’s arms was painful enough to bring him to tears.

“Was that wrong?” Volyk’s voice caught. “Kissing you? I know nothing of humans… only my instincts, and the whispers of magick.”

A soft laugh escaped Ilya. Before he could lose his nerve altogether, he returned Volyk’s kiss, as gently as the other man had first kissed him. “I know as little about it as you do. But at least now if one of us is wrong, we both are.”