Book Review: Balance

Title: Balance
Author: Leia Stone
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, fiction

What It’s About: Four months ago, Kai revealed werewolves to humans and since then, there has been chaos–some humans sided with them while others think that werewolves and vampires should be removed for good. Layla still has not been found and no one knows if she is pregnant or not because she is being protected by a dark witch. Emma, Aurora’s best friend asks Kai and Aurora to become the guardians of her child in the event that something happens to her. Aurora signs the guardianship papers, but tells Emma that nothing will happen to her.

Alex shows up out of the blue with a teenager and it turns out that Layla and her pack of vampires had crashed a house party, where they compelled the boy to take heroine, and then they drank nearly all of his blood, resulting in him being turned into a vampire. Alex informs them that the blood bank that vampires like him had gone to before had been burned down so they have nothing to drink or eat, and some vampires may join Layla if only to get fed. Kai gives Alex some of his blood and Alexa gives some of her own to help the two vampires, and the teenager tells them that when he woke up again, he overheard a doctor tell a woman that she lost the baby because she is cold and to get more blood as well as a werewolf so that they could incubate the wolf with what seems like a vampire baby.

Emma gives birth to her daughter, which she ultimately names Avery, per Devon’s request but it almost costs her life to give birth. Aurora is able to heal Emma to an extent but Emma had lost too much blood and Aurora has to use the Devi’s powers to save her, resulting in a small part of her hair turning jet black. She’s unable to change or remove the jet black hair even with dyes.

Aurora gets ready for her witches ball and comes across an argument between Kai and Alexa as he had asked her to be the liaison for the US government, while Alexa doesn’t want the US government to know more than they do. Ultimately, she agrees to continue serving as the liaison. Aurora attends her witches ball and at one point, she drinks a beverage that makes her extremely drunk. When she comes out of the restroom, she comes face-to-face with Prudence’s coven, who try to take blood from her which is made easier by the fact that Aurora is unable to shift. She uses the mate bond to communicate with Kai who is outside of the club, and he and Max barge into the party to save her, but Sylvia knocks the other witches out so they cannot do any harm to Aurora. Sylvia then tells her that the jet black hair is most likely from the Devi and she had just made it 10 times harder on herself to extricate herself from the Devi in the end.

Aurora is then made in charge of sparing practice between humans and wolves, and decides to have a friendly game of football between them. Earl, the militia’s leader comes and talks to her on the bleachers, but suddenly he notices three sniper dots on her and pushes her down. As a result, he gets shot, and Aurora shields him getting shot as well, before passing out in Max’s arms. Kai yells at Aurora the next day for that as he had held her dying and bleeding in his own arms too. She hangs out with Max and has a vision of Tara being kidnapped by the Vampires, which actually comes to pass. Max is gutted that he didn’t do anything that could strengthen his bond with Tara to be able to find them.

Aurora babysits Avery and Alexa comes over to take the shift. As they touch, Aurora has a vision of Alexa’s mate–his name is Jameson and he is chained to a tree by the former Second of the Portland Pack, who had run away when he lost to Kai. The reason for him to be chained to a tree is because Jameson amplifies the alpha’s own powers. So Max, Aurora, Kai, Anna, and Alexa go to the pack when they find out about Aurora’s vision, and Kai fights the Alpha there until Anna gets involved. They manage to kill the alpha and capture his 2nd in command who reveals that he knew that the alpha had turned Jameson and Jameson’s friend, Murphy, without any reason, which is punishable by execution. Murphy turns out to be Kat’s mate, so he turns into an eagle and flies off to meet her in the South.

The following day, Aurora find out that Kai is having a secret meeting about her, and it turns out that his team had an idea of using her as bait for Layla. Kai did not want to entertain the idea because he knows that Aurora will do it, and she does agree to it when she finds out. They have a love-making session later in the hot-spring to make up.

The day after, Aurora asks what the plan is and Kai tells her that he’ll start working on it. The witches arrive with an idea–to hid his smell, and Sylvia also gives her a hair for Aurora’s protective pouch. Kai, and the witches go to create the new smell spell on other wolves so that they can be part of the bait without warning Layla, whose senses of smell will pick up on them. Aurora is left alone and gets a call from her mom, except that it is Layla telling her that she will kill her mom if Aurora doesn’t come. So Aurora goes, breaking Kai’s hold on her when he tries to stop her, and a vampire drains her blood for Layla at her mom’s house. A fight ensues, and a weakened Kai is unable to protect her. Aurora is pissed and wants to get ahead of it, so she calls the coven and asks for Prudence’s real name. Sylvia tells her that the person who knows Prudence’s real name is dead. So they do a seance with Nahuel’s help to ground her, and she gets Prudence’s full name. Nahuel also tells Aurora good-bye because his journey is coming to an end, but tells her that he will always guide her.

One evening after watching Avery, Aurora meets with Alexa who tells her that the humans are trying to get to Mount hood because they want to be changed into werewolves. Kai and Aurora head down there and Kai explains to the humans that he cannot change them unless they are near death; it’s not done for fun, but to save lives. Later, Todd, Earl’s second in command, asks if they could change his brother to a werewolf, because he cannot walk as a result of having polio as a child. Kai tells him no, because it’s not a dire situation–he’s not dying. Earl also tells Kai, Aurora, Alek and Jeremy that the militia have agreed to donate blood to the vampires in exchange for their assistance. They talk about taking Layla, but since she has another bag of blood, they do not want to use Aurora as bait. Instead, Kai decides that they will try to disrupt the drug trade again, and offers the house that belonged to Aurora’s mom instead to Alek and his wife to protect them alongside with Jeremy, the teenager. Alek accepts the invitation.

Kai asks Aurora to stay behind while they run the operation on the border, and Aurora agrees. She also tells him that she is pregnant, which makes him happy. While Kai and several members of the pack go to disrupt the supply lines, Emma comes to Aurora and tells her that she wants to move in with her parents. It turns out that she cannot stand to be in the house where all of her memories are with Devon while raising their child alone. Emma agrees to stay part of the pack as long as she and Avery can switch houses.

Max is tasked with watching over Aurora and Alek tells Aurora the secrets of the vampire race–how turning humans into vampires gives them strength and preserves them but kills their organs except for the heart and the head. These are the only two things that make vampires function and it is why these are the only two ways that vampires can be killed.

Brett calls Aurora and tells her that he doesn’t think this Mexico angle will work, and he can’t help being separated from Sadie any longer–she is his mate and was kidnapped by Layla as well. He tells Aurora the plan of her being the bait and Aurora agrees to it. Max tags along and agrees to help her after he finds out about it. Aurora ends up getting captured by the vampires, placed on a boat and then is taken onto a helicopter. Prudence is on the helicopter and she finds Aurora’s protection necklace, which she promptly tosses out. Aurora comes to and the vampires force her to walk through a bunker. She manages to fight the vampires off, and then kills Prudence using Prudence’s true name and her own magic. Layla comes and shows Aurora that Tara is being tortured, so Aurora agrees to go with them. When she sees all of the female wolves alone, she gets an idea-breaking off from her current pack and creating a new pack with the wolves. The women begin working together as a pack against Layla, making plans, and one of the girls admits that she is pregnant with Layla’s baby.

The Vampires come and take Aurora into a separate room, and at first, they wonder if she could be an incubator, which makes Aurora worried because one of the other wolves was pregnant and they had the pregnancy aborted. The doctor suggests to leave her alone in case her fertility ends when she becomes pregnant and they can’t use the blood. They strap Aurora into a bloodletting machine, and at one point Layla comes in with a couple who want their own baby. She has them see the pregnant girl and then gives them a bag of Aurora’s blood with specific instructions. Aurora tricks Layla to leave one of the doors open to the other women, and when all the women are freed, she communicates with Sadie through the pack bond that she should make a scene. When Sadie does, Aurora escapes her bloodletting machine, kills the doctor and starts killing vampire. She sees Layla grab the pregnant wolf and run, so she pursues her.

When Aurora fights Layla, the wolf runs away back into the building. Sylvia comes with her coven to the rescue as RAIDOS starts shooting at them. Because of the protection spell that Sylvia has placed over Aurora during the shootout, Sylvia dies. Aurora kills Layla by sticking her head into the helicopter blades. She also commands one of the wolves with the power to delete memories in her human form to change into her human form and carry Sadie out of the building. Tara escapes the building as well, but the pregnant wolf dies in the explosion, fulfilling her wish to not have to live long enough to see the baby.

Aurora starts dying as the Devi soul begins to leave her. Kai joins her back to the pack’s link, and reminds her that she is strong and dominant. Flooded with the love of everyone in the packs speaking to her as an alpha, Aurora wants to stay, but her soul is being pulled by the Devi. Nahuel shows up in her vision of light, and takes the hand of the Devi’s soul, who in turn lets go of Aurora’s hand. The Devi tells her that she will have twins, and Aurora comes back to her body, feeling half as powerful as before. Sadie is smitten with Brett, when she wakes up, but has no recollection of who he is or why she’s smitten with him, because her memory from before the building has been deleted. Brett is amused and sad at the same time, but mostly he is just glad that she is alive, as they can make more memories together.

Two years later, Aurora and Kai spend time with their one year old twins, Jaxon and Anya. Aurora does not have the power to heal as the Devi took it with her, and she hasn’t seen Nahuel since the day he was in the light during her soul’s separation from the Devi. She has made the decision to permanently go infertile so that Layla’s followers don’t get any ideas–most of them had been killed or turned to more gentle ways, but she does not want to take her chances. The US Government had created a blood bank where humans can donate blood in exchange for money, and vampires can receive it to their house. Tara and Max got mated and Tara is pregnant. Alek, Jeremy and Miriam continue to live in the home given to them, while Aurora’s mom moved to the guest house that they had near their home. Emma and Avery had switched homes with Trent and Diya, who also have a child of their own. And Kai is happy–he is in love with Aurora, who still finds mates for wolves, and is proud of his two children.

My Thoughts: I enjoyed this last book in the mate finder series, but I did find this story to be a little rushed–almost as if the author just wanted to be done with the series. It definitely was less interesting than the first book, and I most likely won’t be re-reading this series at all.