Viola, the heroine in my book To Seduce an Omega grows herbs and sells them to survive.
Sometimes she made herbal vinegars.
Why would she? And what would her customers do with them?
Firstly, she made them because they are cheap and easy. She'd take common herbs and turn them into something amazing.
A few drops can freshen up a sickroom. In the seventeenth century, people soaked sponges in them and sniffed them if they felt ill. They'd run their sponge on an invalid’s brow or freshen up clammy hands. A sick person’s bed linens could be sprinkled with herbal vinegar to keep them fresh too. Of course, today, we use them as salad dressings.
My personal favorite? Elegant men about town had compartments built into the heads of their walking sticks. They’d fill them with a herbal vinegar soaked sponge that they’d sniff as they walked foul-smelling streets. I can just imagine a regency dandy, all starched linen neckcloth and formal breeches, strolling down Mayfair while sniffing at his walking stick. Maybe, Jane Austin’s Mr. Darcy used something like that.
One thing I know for sure. The werewolves in my book didn’t use them on anything but salads. Maybe, if a she-wolf had a hot date, she’d add a few drops of a special vinegar to her bathwater.
Fancy making your own bath vinegar? Here’s an easy recipe to follow.
Ingredients
1 cup cider vinegar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon dried basil
1 tablespoon dried peppermint.
Mix the vinegar and water and heat until almost boiling. Remove from heat and add herbs. (If you don’t like basil or peppermint, choose your own.) Let it steep overnight.
Strain and bottle. Allow one cup for a bath.
I haven’t tried it, but I might give it a go.
Want to know more about Viola? Then check out this standalone romance in my Scattered Sibling’s series.
Blurb
The Rock Prowler alpha condemns Viola for her inability to shift. Forced into poverty and isolation, she ekes out a meager existence as a healer. As the pack omega with a crippled knee, she’s forbidden to mate. Her first heat beckons, but no wolf will dare to bed her.
Titus, a wolf rejected by his true mate, overflows with violence and anger. The Lykae King sends him to take over the Rock Prowler pack. He condemns Viola for wanting payment before she treats her patients and threatens to bring in a new pack healer. With her crippled knee and no other income, she’d starve.
She-wolves from families who disagree with the alpha have vanished. When Titus investigates, the alpha’s allies imprison both him and Viola. To escape, he must seduce Viola—the she-wolf he insulted and reviled. If that’s not bad enough, she despises him for his seeming allegiance to the alpha. As he gets to know her, she steals his heart, but after all that’s happened, how can she accept him when even his fated mate refused him?
Titus, a wolf rejected by his true mate, overflows with violence and anger. The Lykae King sends him to take over the Rock Prowler pack. He condemns Viola for wanting payment before she treats her patients and threatens to bring in a new pack healer. With her crippled knee and no other income, she’d starve.
She-wolves from families who disagree with the alpha have vanished. When Titus investigates, the alpha’s allies imprison both him and Viola. To escape, he must seduce Viola—the she-wolf he insulted and reviled. If that’s not bad enough, she despises him for his seeming allegiance to the alpha. As he gets to know her, she steals his heart, but after all that’s happened, how can she accept him when even his fated mate refused him?
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Excerpt
The Tundra Toughs, his adopted pack, had watched over his recovery; then King Caleb sent Titus on this mission. If he married, not mated, the alpha’s daughter, he could remake his life as the Rock Prowler alpha.
His primal wolf—the seven and a half feet of violence and rage that lived inside him—hated the idea. His natural wolf—the part of him that would pass for a wolf on the mundane world’s Russian steppes—howled with outrage. Even his human side wasn’t sure it was sensible to bind himself to a stranger, but since losing Jilly, he hadn’t been rational at all.
His stupid natural wolf prowled through his psyche, demanding to run its tongue over the scratches in the healer’s arm. Afterward, his wolf would have licked at the soft flesh of her breast before it moved on to taste her pussy. Then, when she moaned and thrashed with need, he’d turn human and screw her until she screamed his name.
His inner wolves must be so desperate for sex that they’d settle for any woman they could get. It couldn’t be more than animal lust that drew him to Viola. Not after everything he’d endured to save Jilly.
Viola’s sweet floral essence reminded him of the open hillsides where he’d run as a pup. She made him think of family, home, and pack—all the things he’d given up to keep Jilly safe. Titus wondered how the healer would look naked and smiling, her nipples peaked and her body wet with desire—for him. Then he snarled, and he cursed himself for a fool.
One woman—his true-mate—had almost broken him with her lack of compassion. He refused to let another she-wolf bring him down again, least of all a healer who preferred cold, hard cash to caring for those in pain.
Every pack needed a healer, but given this she-wolf’s greed, he understood why the Rock Prowlers didn’t offer her the support she deserved. Other packs revered their healers and treated them as second only to the alpha female.
When he thought of how Viola had demanded coins before she so much as looked at the injured woman he’d found huddled in a murder thorn, a growl rumbled in his throat. Bedding any female but Jilly—especially the Rock Prowlers’ healer—wasn’t in his game plan, no matter what his inner wolves thought.
Wise men fled from his angry glare, but the Viola had lifted her chin and held his gaze. Her courage could prove addictive, and the sooner he put some miles between them the better. Time for him to leave.
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