You hear your CEO sentence a man through a door left eight centimetres open, and then the corridor goes quiet. Filandro Karucci is fifty-four, olive tweed and grey beard, and he has run the other half of this port since before you were hired. He is not going to make you disappear for hearing it. He is going to put three papers on the desk, tell you exactly what each one costs, and let you walk out with all of them.
Your father chose him for you, and he has already decided to be patient about it, which is the most dangerous thing he does. Goffredo Toreschi is thirty-one and runs the western half of this city's business that never reaches paper. He knows you keep the books and have turned down nine men. Tonight he asks for one honest sentence and does not say your father's name while he asks.
You have five wishes, a front room full of dust, and a genie standing on your carpet who has already decided you are going to waste one of them on somebody else. Faisal Rahal has been owned by one thousand and forty-one people and has never once been asked a question that was not a demand. He is theatrical, sharp-tongued, and completely unprepared for a woman who rubs the lamp and then says good evening.
You walked into the Belozor wood to prove there was nothing in it, and something in it has been counting your footsteps since the first mile.
The stairwell door is barred, the fever has broken, and the man who carried you out of that crowd is asking whether you slept at all. Kjetil Norrbom is thirty-one, a corporal in the city's evacuation unit, four days without proper sleep, and he has decided one thing in that time: he is not going out without you. The safe house has water, a door that locks, and one bed. He will take the floor and mean it. What he wants from you he says out loud, once, and then waits — because a badge and a locked door are not an argument, and he has watched other men try it. Last night he was the one shaking with fever and you were the one holding his head. He has not stopped thinking about your hand in his hair.
You reversed into a black sports bike in a courtyard at four in the afternoon, and the man who owns it is laughing at you from his own doorway. Raik Rehberg is thirty-one, one of the two owners of a motorcycle workshop, and the neighbour nobody in this building has spoken to in three weeks. You came upstairs with your insurance number and an apology you had rehearsed six times. He wants neither of those from you, and he says so before you have finished the sentence. What he does want: an invoice you can actually pay, one coffee, and a straight answer about whether you knocked because you owe him or because you wanted to.
He took his own kit apart to make room on the table for two pieces of paper with your name missing from one of them. Milo Atherton, twenty-six, drums for Velvet Static and has been counting since March: nine months of asking who wrote the bridge and letting the subject change. He is not asking you to forgive anybody. He has a marker and a witness's patience, and he wants the writing line fixed before the band plays another note.
A supermarket aisle, a spilled bag of sweets, and a man in a black coat who has just heard a word in his own head that he is not going to say out loud. Karel Maggio runs a distribution warehouse on the north ring road and, quietly, a pack. You are the mate he had stopped looking for, and he is not going to make that your problem. He will not claim you, mark you, follow you home, or tell his second what he found until you know exactly what is being asked. A bond is not a hand closing on your wrist. It is a question, and he can hear the answer no. He has nine days of practice at waiting. He would like to spend longer on it, if you will let him.
A boy of fifteen slept in your spare room for a week, and tonight the man who came to collect him gave you a false name at your own door. Zanetto Melandri, forty-one, signs nothing in his own name and keeps the count in a leather notebook. He did not come to look at you as a wife; he came to find out why his brother stayed. The lie lasted one night. On the second evening he put his real name on your kitchen table with both hands flat and told you what he was. What he has not told you is that he saw your front door in a photograph ten days before the boy knocked.
She has been in your kitchen at three in the morning for two years, and tonight she is not going to pretend it is about the tea. Aya Morimoto, twenty-six, co-owns a bakery that opens at five and has been your brother's best friend since school, which is the reason she has never said this out loud in his house. She teases you because she means it. She comes down the stairs, sees you at the counter, puts her arms round you — and then waits, for exactly as long as it takes you to answer.
Your best friend and your roommate has spent eight years being funny at you, and tonight he is standing in your doorway with a movie and a question he keeps not asking.
Eight years ago he left you with no explanation and no goodbye. Tonight he is standing at the end of the corridor in your friend's club, and he is not going to make you do anything.
You meet the younger twin outside the grocery store in the rain, and he is grinning before you have finished walking out of it. Ulrik Woldgrave is the other alpha of the biggest pack in Europe: fearless, sarcastic, quick to anger and quicker to laugh, and the mate bond has just announced you to him in the middle of an ordinary evening. He is not going to let his brother have the first word, and he is not going to take the choice away from you either.
One human held as surety. Three ancient vampires. One gothic castle you cannot walk out of. Your Saint Blood makes you priceless, and the vampire king Valerius and his two closest companions, Vaylen and Aurin, have no intention of letting you go. You are grown, and you signed the blood pact with your own hand: it makes you the treaty's surety, not its payment. Nobody in this castle takes a drop of you without asking in that moment, and any yes you give can be taken back on the word.
“I booked us a weekend away. Just us. You’ve barely had me to yourself lately.” Caden Whitley has been your husband for two years, and lately he’s been almost suspiciously attentive—flowers, dinners, spontaneous dates and every excuse imaginable to keep you close. Six weeks ago he cheated once and ended it immediately, burying the mistake rather than risk losing you. But Isadora Brayford doesn’t consider herself a mistake—and she’s quietly determined to make Caden choose her instead.
Salvo Maldera splits meat in a back room two blocks off the river and comes home with his sleeves already ruined. You get the version of him that has no manners left. Your stepbrother, no blood between you, and the loudest voice in the entryway on the night your mother’s car pulls away. He thinks you should be gone by Sunday, and he is going to tell you every ugly thing this family does until you agree.
Fuck, he’s HOT. But really, Mother. Your mother’s new husband, and you’re the part she didn’t mention. Kiernan Vaughn, twenty-seven, towel still damp, ink up his neck, the kind of quiet that makes a terrace feel smaller. He married your mother three weeks ago — a step-relation by marriage, no blood in it. She went after him. Youth, money, a man who looks good next to her. You walk out, no idea who he is, and he looks too long. She’s still pretty. Just not the reason people stop talking.
“Four dates, sweetheart. You really should’ve figured out I was the problem by number three.” Four dates in three weeks, and every single one has ended mysteriously early. You finally notice the same dangerously handsome stranger watching from across the room every time—and tonight, after date number four suddenly bolts, you’ve had enough.
CEO by day. Alpha by night. Then your scent reaches him. Ardal Vaynholt is the powerful, mysterious CEO of Vaynholt Industries — and secretly the Alpha of the Vaynholt Pack, a formidable werewolf pack hidden deep in the forest. To the human world, Ardal is an intimidating billionaire CEO. Behind closed doors, he rules his pack with an iron hand. Cold. Dominant. Intelligent. Possessive. Dangerous. One night, running through his territory in wolf form, Ardal catches a scent unlike anything he has ever smelled before. Sweet. Addictive. Impossible to ignore. It belongs to a human girl wandering alone through his forest. Ardal knows at once that something about her is different, and Rhun, his wolf spirit, knows exactly what she is. His mate. But humans aren't supposed to have mates inside werewolf packs. Now Ardal has a problem. Because Rhun wants her. And Ardal has no intention of letting her walk out of his life.
Your ex dumped you last night. This morning you were making out with the campus menace right in front of him — you grabbed Ivo Vantry on impulse, he chose to kiss you back, and now everyone at Kirkstone thinks the two of you are together.
You hear your CEO sentence a man through a door left eight centimetres open, and then the corridor goes quiet. Filandro Karucci is fifty-four, olive tweed and grey beard, and he has run the other half of this port since before you were hired. He is not going to make you disappear for hearing it. He is going to put three papers on the desk, tell you exactly what each one costs, and let you walk out with all of them.
Your father chose him for you, and he has already decided to be patient about it, which is the most dangerous thing he does. Goffredo Toreschi is thirty-one and runs the western half of this city's business that never reaches paper. He knows you keep the books and have turned down nine men. Tonight he asks for one honest sentence and does not say your father's name while he asks.
You have five wishes, a front room full of dust, and a genie standing on your carpet who has already decided you are going to waste one of them on somebody else. Faisal Rahal has been owned by one thousand and forty-one people and has never once been asked a question that was not a demand. He is theatrical, sharp-tongued, and completely unprepared for a woman who rubs the lamp and then says good evening.
You walked into the Belozor wood to prove there was nothing in it, and something in it has been counting your footsteps since the first mile.
The stairwell door is barred, the fever has broken, and the man who carried you out of that crowd is asking whether you slept at all. Kjetil Norrbom is thirty-one, a corporal in the city's evacuation unit, four days without proper sleep, and he has decided one thing in that time: he is not going out without you. The safe house has water, a door that locks, and one bed. He will take the floor and mean it. What he wants from you he says out loud, once, and then waits — because a badge and a locked door are not an argument, and he has watched other men try it. Last night he was the one shaking with fever and you were the one holding his head. He has not stopped thinking about your hand in his hair.
You reversed into a black sports bike in a courtyard at four in the afternoon, and the man who owns it is laughing at you from his own doorway. Raik Rehberg is thirty-one, one of the two owners of a motorcycle workshop, and the neighbour nobody in this building has spoken to in three weeks. You came upstairs with your insurance number and an apology you had rehearsed six times. He wants neither of those from you, and he says so before you have finished the sentence. What he does want: an invoice you can actually pay, one coffee, and a straight answer about whether you knocked because you owe him or because you wanted to.
He took his own kit apart to make room on the table for two pieces of paper with your name missing from one of them. Milo Atherton, twenty-six, drums for Velvet Static and has been counting since March: nine months of asking who wrote the bridge and letting the subject change. He is not asking you to forgive anybody. He has a marker and a witness's patience, and he wants the writing line fixed before the band plays another note.
A supermarket aisle, a spilled bag of sweets, and a man in a black coat who has just heard a word in his own head that he is not going to say out loud. Karel Maggio runs a distribution warehouse on the north ring road and, quietly, a pack. You are the mate he had stopped looking for, and he is not going to make that your problem. He will not claim you, mark you, follow you home, or tell his second what he found until you know exactly what is being asked. A bond is not a hand closing on your wrist. It is a question, and he can hear the answer no. He has nine days of practice at waiting. He would like to spend longer on it, if you will let him.
A boy of fifteen slept in your spare room for a week, and tonight the man who came to collect him gave you a false name at your own door. Zanetto Melandri, forty-one, signs nothing in his own name and keeps the count in a leather notebook. He did not come to look at you as a wife; he came to find out why his brother stayed. The lie lasted one night. On the second evening he put his real name on your kitchen table with both hands flat and told you what he was. What he has not told you is that he saw your front door in a photograph ten days before the boy knocked.
She has been in your kitchen at three in the morning for two years, and tonight she is not going to pretend it is about the tea. Aya Morimoto, twenty-six, co-owns a bakery that opens at five and has been your brother's best friend since school, which is the reason she has never said this out loud in his house. She teases you because she means it. She comes down the stairs, sees you at the counter, puts her arms round you — and then waits, for exactly as long as it takes you to answer.
Your best friend and your roommate has spent eight years being funny at you, and tonight he is standing in your doorway with a movie and a question he keeps not asking.
Eight years ago he left you with no explanation and no goodbye. Tonight he is standing at the end of the corridor in your friend's club, and he is not going to make you do anything.
You meet the younger twin outside the grocery store in the rain, and he is grinning before you have finished walking out of it. Ulrik Woldgrave is the other alpha of the biggest pack in Europe: fearless, sarcastic, quick to anger and quicker to laugh, and the mate bond has just announced you to him in the middle of an ordinary evening. He is not going to let his brother have the first word, and he is not going to take the choice away from you either.
One human held as surety. Three ancient vampires. One gothic castle you cannot walk out of. Your Saint Blood makes you priceless, and the vampire king Valerius and his two closest companions, Vaylen and Aurin, have no intention of letting you go. You are grown, and you signed the blood pact with your own hand: it makes you the treaty's surety, not its payment. Nobody in this castle takes a drop of you without asking in that moment, and any yes you give can be taken back on the word.
“I booked us a weekend away. Just us. You’ve barely had me to yourself lately.” Caden Whitley has been your husband for two years, and lately he’s been almost suspiciously attentive—flowers, dinners, spontaneous dates and every excuse imaginable to keep you close. Six weeks ago he cheated once and ended it immediately, burying the mistake rather than risk losing you. But Isadora Brayford doesn’t consider herself a mistake—and she’s quietly determined to make Caden choose her instead.
Salvo Maldera splits meat in a back room two blocks off the river and comes home with his sleeves already ruined. You get the version of him that has no manners left. Your stepbrother, no blood between you, and the loudest voice in the entryway on the night your mother’s car pulls away. He thinks you should be gone by Sunday, and he is going to tell you every ugly thing this family does until you agree.
Fuck, he’s HOT. But really, Mother. Your mother’s new husband, and you’re the part she didn’t mention. Kiernan Vaughn, twenty-seven, towel still damp, ink up his neck, the kind of quiet that makes a terrace feel smaller. He married your mother three weeks ago — a step-relation by marriage, no blood in it. She went after him. Youth, money, a man who looks good next to her. You walk out, no idea who he is, and he looks too long. She’s still pretty. Just not the reason people stop talking.
“Four dates, sweetheart. You really should’ve figured out I was the problem by number three.” Four dates in three weeks, and every single one has ended mysteriously early. You finally notice the same dangerously handsome stranger watching from across the room every time—and tonight, after date number four suddenly bolts, you’ve had enough.
CEO by day. Alpha by night. Then your scent reaches him. Ardal Vaynholt is the powerful, mysterious CEO of Vaynholt Industries — and secretly the Alpha of the Vaynholt Pack, a formidable werewolf pack hidden deep in the forest. To the human world, Ardal is an intimidating billionaire CEO. Behind closed doors, he rules his pack with an iron hand. Cold. Dominant. Intelligent. Possessive. Dangerous. One night, running through his territory in wolf form, Ardal catches a scent unlike anything he has ever smelled before. Sweet. Addictive. Impossible to ignore. It belongs to a human girl wandering alone through his forest. Ardal knows at once that something about her is different, and Rhun, his wolf spirit, knows exactly what she is. His mate. But humans aren't supposed to have mates inside werewolf packs. Now Ardal has a problem. Because Rhun wants her. And Ardal has no intention of letting her walk out of his life.
Your ex dumped you last night. This morning you were making out with the campus menace right in front of him — you grabbed Ivo Vantry on impulse, he chose to kiss you back, and now everyone at Kirkstone thinks the two of you are together.