Title:  King of the Asheville Coven
Series:  Harper’s Mountains connected
Author:  T. S. Joyce
Published:  July 11, 2016
My Rating:  5 stars
Source:  Kindle Unlimited
Cover Description:

Aric Teague is the king of the local coven, and trying to do a better job than the last leader. Add to that a new job at the Winterset Fire Department, and the last thing he needs is to complicate his life further. But when he lays eyes on a fiercely beautiful Sadey, all bets are off the table. She’s an unregistered shifter, and his coven is bound to be furious, but he wants to know more about the sassy beauty with all the secrets.

Sadey Lowen is a rare shifter in hiding. All she wants is to keep her life simple, but an accident puts her right in the path of a handsome firefighter with terrifying eyes and fangs to match. Every instinct is screaming for her to run, but the King of the Asheville Coven is slowly working his way into her mind, and her heart.

 Sexy shifters and their feisty mates who aren’t shy about loving each other – so, this is an adult, 18+ reader tale.

In Aric’s mind being the king wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  Yeah, he was the king of the coven by default of being the consort of the former totally bat crap crazy Queen who’d made him and then toyed with him for far too long.  Her death was actually a relief, except there was that coven expected required revenge on the killers of the queen.  Yeah, so they tried that and it didn’t turn out so well.  Harper had retaliated and with a few burns that would be a constant reminder they came to a mutual agreement – the coven would leave town never to return.  So, here he was working for the Winterset Fire Department with just about every other member of the crew openly mistrusting and hating him… after all, he was a vampire.

One accident will forever change two people’s lives – if for the better is yet to be determined.  Sadey was dying, Aric could smell the woman’s blood, could feel the life force leaving her body – but the vehicle was in a dangerous position and if he didn’t do something fast they’d all be in more danger than they could handle.  He made the decision to use his power and wretched her free of the wreck with only moments to spare.  As he held her in his arms he smelled… more than human, he smelled fur.  Great a shifter – but one whose eyes begged him to say nothing as she was taken away to the local hospital.  He didn’t understand this compelling need to follow her, to watch over her.  That she was in more trouble than this accident was becoming apparent, but why should he care one way or the other.

Sadey was an unregistered shifter and she had to get out of this hospital before the humans discovered that fact… or she was traced by the man she was running from  Sadey was a rare cat shifter, so rare that there were only a handful of them (or so she’d been told).  Those of her kind had formed a small group, with one mean, outrageous Alpha ruling over their every move.  She’d escaped, but she knew he would track her down.  She could leave no trace of what she was on record – she had to get out of here.  So when her rescuer stood in the doorway she wasn’t really surprised to find that the staff saw things exactly her (or his) way and released her.

King of the Asheville Coven is such a fun, sexy, very short read.  While Aric seemed a reluctant villain in the early Harper’s Mountains stories, there still was no doubt that he was a powerful vampire.  It was nice to see this spin-off story that gave him more of a voice – and hopefully more of the coven’s stories in a related series (fingers crossed).  Aric and Sadey were a perfect match – okay one was a vampire and the other a sifter… day / night.  But it worked so well that I never doubted their relationship for a moment.  I sincerely hope that the positive response to King of the Asheville Coven will result in Ms Joyce giving us the pleasure of a series about these vampires – I’d love to know more of them.

Available for the Kindle