Rude Awakening — Athena Grayson

An Otherworldly mid-life crisis... Book One in the WinterJacked CycleSometimes you reinvent yourself...Sometimes you redefine reality.Jack Winters lost his perfect, upwardly-mobile life (along with the perfect, upwardly-mobile wife) when it intersected with a pack of fantastical creatures. He's spent three years determined to ignore the Things that want to call him Master, and kept his failures frozen under a thick layer of isolation from even his closest friends. But when a holiday reunion presents him with the woman who Might Have Been, suddenly the impossible doesn't seem so improbable anymore...Lin Sanada thought she was long over her college crush and the missed connections that kept her and Jack Winters "just friends" for nearly twenty years. She's moved on, and left wishful thinking behind. But when a winter night, a full moon, and a little magic lead her into a very real relationship with the man of her dreams, she finds a reality far more fantastical than her wildest imaginings...To the young, impossible dreams are magic. At forty, they're a mid-life crisis.If Jack wants to earn a new chance at a future, he'll have to confront all the raw wounds failure left on his expectations. And he'll have to choose: keep clinging to the shreds of his old life...or make a whole new reality.