Leo is having a pretty bad day. A glitch with his lease means he has to move out of his apartment on 24 hours notice. He's planning to ask his boss if he can use the spare room over the flower shop where he works for a few days while he looks for a new place, but when he arrives he finds the shop has burned down. Somewhat fed up with people, Leo decides he'd rather camp out for a few days rather than spend money on a hotel. Instinct takes him farther than he planned, to a state park in the mountains. Leo finds a nice place to set up camp, but after a couple of nights it's clear he is being watched. When the young man finds out who, and why, it turns his world upside down.
“Deep in Dette” is a story set in what is popularly referred to as the “omegaverse”, a world where animal shifters of various types exist, and some of the males – omegas – can get pregnant. I'm not a huge fan of the genre, but the blurb on this one intrigued me and it proved to be a good read. Alphas and omegas aren't actually mentioned except in reference to popular fiction. Leo turns out to be a dragon “dette”, which are rare and treasured. The rest of the dragons are drakes.
The book doesn't spend much time up front developing the characters or world-building, and gets to some scorching scenes between Leo and the drake who finds him, Hallr, very quickly. The fantasy relies on the common omegaverse idea of omegas, or dettes in this case, coming into “heat” and needing to mate. However, we still get to know Leo rather well over the course of the story. He's a feisty young man who is hard not to like. We get enough information about his background to make us understand how he may have gotten the way he is, and creates a very believable character.
Given the high heat start of the book, there's a surprising amount of drama in the story as it unfolds after Leo and Hallr get together. Their relationship causes some displeasure among other drakes who don't have a dette to breed, and there's the question of the orphan Leo's true parentage. It all adds to a much richer story than I was expecting based on the first few chapters.
“Deep in Dette” is available from Amazon.