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Elijah by Jacquelyn Frank
Series: The Nightwalkers #3
Publication date: December 18th, 2007
Pages: 360
Synopsis (according to Goodreads):
They are called the Demons, one of the elusive Nightwalker races living in shadow and struggling for survival against their human enemies. Their proudest warrior is Elijah, a man who bends for nothing and no one... until one woman brings him to his knees...
Some Feelings You Just Can't Fight
He is known as the Warrior Captain--a master of every weapon, a fierce soldier sworn to protect his kind. Powerful, relentless, merciless, Elijah has always won every battle he's ever taken on--until now. Ambushed by necromancers, he is left for dead only to be discovered by the woman who could very well deliver the final blow... Siena, the Lycanthrope Queen.
With three centuries of warring, little more than a decade of uneasy peace has existed between the Lycanthropes and Elijah's people. Now, after a lifetime of suspicion, the warrior in Elijah is consumed with a different battle--winning Siena's heart by giving her pleasure beyond all boundaries. What starts as attraction and arousal soon burns into a passion with consequences that will echo through the ages for both their people. And as would-be enemies become inseparable lovers, another threat approaches, one with the power to destroy them all...
Surrender to the night.
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Review:
As I delve deeper into the Nightwalker series I find myself further engrossed with the characters of the books. As I meet Jacob then Gideon and now Elijah I start to see that there is more to them than the passing glances you get in the books that are not centered around them and their mate. Elijah in the first two books was seen as an advanced fighter who uses humor to keep the bloodied tasks he has to deal with on a daily basis from driving him insane. A sardonic smile and a shrug of the shoulder is all you see by way of emotions from the Warrior Captain in Jacob and then Gideon. I was anxious to learn more about this mystery of a man and the woman he will become entangled with.
As his tale begins, Elijah is hot on the heels of the demon traitors and their army of necromancers, Transformed Demons, and hunters. He comes face-to-face with her foes and finds himself in deep trouble. He had not counted on encountering so many of his enemies on his own. He was ill prepared which is not his way. While cursing his stupidity he slowly starts to bleed his life away. That is until he hears the cry of a mountain lion that he mistakes for his soul crying out in rage at his misgivings.
Siena just happened upon Elijah in his predicament at the right moment. She knows that she must save him or risk a troublesome situation when having to explain why the Warrior Captain of the Demons lay dead in her Lycanthrope territory. Once she has spurred Elijah's attackers away from his prone body, she carries him to safety where she proceeds to nurse him back to health as best she can. It is there, beside this enigma of a man who brought the end of her hateful father's reign and the beginning of her own reign of hope that Siena starts to wonder why she feels so drawn to him. For all intents and purposes, she should hate the man laying in his sickbed, but instead, she feels a stirring that she had never felt before.
Elijah and Siena are not supposed to be together or even feel attracted to one another. They are Demon and Lycanthrope. A union of such varying races has never been seen before and it is a coupling that will not be accepted easily. Siena must reconcile her feelings for the warrior and what that means for her people as a whole. Can a Lycanthrope Queen take a Demon Warrior as King to her people? Can either of them forfeit their independence to come together as one?
I found this book, of the three I have read, to be the most frustrating. I can understand Siena's hesitation to disrupt her count and her reign by being with Elijah. But what I can understand is why instead of trying to find a happy medium that works in favor of both her people and her love life, she shuts down completely and just tries to push everything between Elijah and her aside. I thought Elijah would be the pigheaded one in this book, but instead it turns out to be the female's role instead. Siena's stubbornness bordered on that of a petulant child unwilling to listen to reason and instead would rather throw tantrums and pout. She was by far not my favorite female protagonist.
While Elijah showed compassionate insight into a warrior's mind, it was also the grounds of how stubborn women of power can be to share such a thing. It is a story that shows the reversed roll of stubborn men and easy going females.
