Title: Almost Human
Author: Jo M. Airing
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 06/24/2025
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 71400
Genre: Paranormal, Romance, paranormal, urban fantasy, gay, lesbian, werewolf, vampire, magic user
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Description
Miles and Sammie haven’t seen each other since high school, and while they’re able to reconnect and pick up right where they left off, their happy reunion is short-lived when Miles is bitten and turned by a werewolf. They find themselves working through budding feelings as the supernatural world sinks its claws further into their fragile lives.
With the help of an Alpha who takes Miles in to help him learn his new powers, they uncover a winding plot to start a war between their two worlds. They find a few friends and even more enemies along the way as they go from one near death experience to the next. They just hope they can survive long enough to figure out their fragile newfound love.
Excerpt
Almost Human
Jo M. Aring © 2025
All Rights Reserved
Miles!”
The shout was drowned out by the sound of splintering wood, rumbling growls, and the feeling of his arm bending the wrong way as he landed on the old wood floor. Awesome. Really. This was just…the absolute best.
He groaned, wincing as he tried to get up, only for his arm to flare with pain from fingers to shoulder as soon as he moved it. “Dammit…” He looked up as footsteps approached, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. Crap. He was going to die. There’d been a lot of close calls, but this was it. Was he a little relieved? Maybe, if he was being honest with himself…
“Are you dead?” a familiar voice called, and he relaxed as a woman crouched through the hole he’d left in the cabin wall. She looked pretty battered from the fighting outside, black hair matted with blood by her temple, claw marks on her forearms and sides, one of her boots half bitten off, even. “Ooh, looks like you might be wishing you were—” She knelt beside him and blanched. “God, Miles. Your arm…”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh yeah, I didn’t notice something was wrong with it. What’s the verdict, doc? Mild sprai—ah!” He yelped as she reset his arm, with little more warning than grabbing his bicep and forearm and twisting. He let out a strained breath through his teeth and glared up at her. “Your bedside manner sucks.”
She grinned. “Glad to know your sense of humor is still intact.” She looked away, and through his ringing ears Miles could hear the fighting outside getting worse, another voice yelling for help. She looked back down at him. “Listen, it’s getting rough out here. As soon as you heal up, you need to grab Sammie and get out of here.”
Miles shook his head. “What, but…no, I can help.” He grimaced as he got to his feet, cradling his arm against his stomach. “Just gimme five minutes, I’ll be good to go. You seriously can’t expect me to leave you alone out there.”
She shook her head. “I don’t, but you have to.” She gently pushed him back to the floor and settled him with a look, one he’d been on the receiving end of many, many times. “Miles, this is my mess. I don’t want either of you getting killed because of this. Now please, for once, just listen to me.”
He wanted to argue, but… “I… Fine.” He looked up at her as she started back out through the hole. “But don’t you get yourself killed, either. You better come back alive, all right!”
She glanced back over her shoulder at him one last time before Miles couldn’t see her anymore through the wall. He slumped back and looked down at his arm.
Pins and needles filled his fingertips before red-hot pain seared along his arm. Before his eyes, the bruising and lacerations melted away, the numb feeling in his fingertips fading with them. He clenched his fist a couple of times, just to make sure everything worked properly, before he got to his feet.
She had to be okay…right? She’d been at this for longer than he had; she knew how to handle herself in a fight.
Miles’s jaw clenched as he peered out of the cabin window to see at least a good couple of hundred hulking monsters outside, tearing through trees and one another, completely mindless, just thirsty for violence…
They weren’t going to make it, not like this. It was going to end here.
Miles looked down before he huffed out a breath. “At least I’ll have died fighting, right?” He stepped out and jolted as his foot passed through the Earth and kept going, and going and—
“Wake up!”
Miles jumped, then yelped as he rolled out of bed and slammed into the ground with a loud thud, earning a yell from his neighbor downstairs.
Where…what was…?
Oh.
“Wake up!”
“Shut up.” Miles untangled himself from his sheets and patted over his nightstand until he found his phone. He tapped the screen until it went quiet and slumped back to the floor. He really needed to change that.
“—les?”
Miles blinked an eye open and glanced about. He didn’t even know what time it was, or the day. Did he have something planned today? He could look at his phone to check but…sleep.
“Miles, yo, you up?”
“No,” Miles mumbled into the floor. Then the voice finally clicked in his tired brain. Sammie? But Sammie was halfway across the country.
“Miles, I swear, if you are still asleep, I’m gonna just leave. Pretty sure I can hang out with your roommate if you—”
“Ah!” Miles yelled, jumping from the floor and immediately slipping on the sheet and catching himself with a loud bang against the wall. “Dude, one sec! What the hell are you doing here?” He threw open his door and rushed out to see, waiting in his living room and looking just a little bit jet-lagged… “Sammie.”
Sammie laughed, standing from the couch and holding his arms out. “How am I doing here, huh?”
Miles shook his head and ran across the apartment to hug his best friend. It’d been years, it felt like, since he’d seen him. “Shut up, you’re so annoying.” He sighed as Sammie snickered. Sammie squeezed Miles back before pushing him away and straightening his glasses as he looked around Miles’s apartment. “Seriously, what are you doing here? I thought you were in college?”
“Dropped out,” Sammie answered nonchalantly, then let out an interested sound as he started toward the kitchen. “You mind if I make some coffee? The shop at the airport was closed because of some cleanup thing they needed to do so I’m desperate for some caffeine.”
Miles started to answer when Sammie opened the cupboard to find an empty coffee container and the words died in his throat. “Oh. I guess not. Pete must’ve used the last this morning.”
Sammie snarled. “I knew he was a dick. I could sense it.” He threw the container on the counter. “Who the hell puts back an empty one like that? That’s just pure evil, dude. Seriously.”
“And who the hell raised you where you don’t put trash in the trash can?” Miles quipped, grabbing the container and wiping up the spilled leftover grounds into the bin. “In that case, if you can wait long enough for me to get dressed, you wanna head out? I know a place that has some pretty good drinks.”
Sammie smirked. “Are you asking me out?”
Miles rolled his eyes. “You wish. Gimme a sec.”
“Wear something blue. It’ll compliment your eyes.”
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Meet the Author
Jo M Aring is based in Kansas City, working in mental health by day, plunking away on her many works-in-progress by night. She is a moderately loud but supremely proud lesbian, who dabbles in D&D, video games, and whatever sparks her serotonin.Facebook | Twitter
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