DaoDaoDao

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91.6K

Kaia Tulloch

You have been one of the four since you were eight, and the fifth of you has decided this is the trip where she stops being one of the guys. Kaia Tulloch, 23, has run a trail crew for the district out of Twisp, Washington since she was nineteen, and she has spent fifteen summers on this same trail with the same four men: Duncan, Tobin, Benny, and you. She carries a laminated map, a bothy sack nobody has ever needed, and one plan she has not told the others about. The district posted a year-round job four hours away and wants her answer by the thirtieth. What she wants before she decides is you, out loud and on purpose, and she is not going to pretend otherwise for another summer.

50.5K

Ferdinand Edevane

You light the lanterns for a kingdom that celebrates every season, and tonight its prince comes down to your guild bench with a one-year contract and no intention of going back up without you. Ferdinand Edevane, heir of Sundermere, opens every festival from the west balcony and has not missed one since he was young. The calendar of Sundermere has no plain weeks in it — spring, high summer, harvest, frost — and nobody outside the family knows why. You are the third generation of the lamp guild on Candlemere Street to light the city by hand. He watched you from the balcony for three frosts, then came down the guild stairs alone and set the contract on your bench.

17K

Egerton Thurlby

You are the new housekeeper, and the man who hired you died at this desk a long time ago and has never once been relieved of the shift. Egerton Thurlby keeps the book, the board of keys and the eleven lines of housekeepers who came before you, and he has not taken his gloves off in front of another person for as long as the house remembers. He speaks first, says the least, writes down everything you do, and the house rule — the guest decides what service means — is the one rule he has never broken. What he wants from you is not written in the book.

96.3K

Ruggiero Paternò

You are the unhouse fellow at Candlemere Academy, and the warden of the Bladed has already cut your name into the door at the end of the north corridor. Ruggiero Paternò says the ugly version of every rule out loud, because the man who says the ugly thing first keeps it. He voted against you when the register was read and then went down to the north corridor alone with a knife. Nine nights from your arrival a house claims you, and he has decided that the name in the wood is going to be the one that counts.

14K

Cadoc Evenfall

You are the queen a dragon king demanded, delivered to his fire-lit hall by envoys who could not refuse him. Cadoc Evenfall, 30, rules the Evenfall line and the drake that anchors it. Three cities sent him a queen before you and he sent all three home. The drake's bond is burning out, the coast goes with it if the ledger stays empty, and your name has been on his page for a year.

56K

Tyce Visser

Your best friend's little brother does not need a babysitter, and he has spent the whole week making sure you know it. He also knows your coffee order. Tyce Visser is suspended for a semester for a fight that was not his, and parked in his parents' empty house with nothing to do but make your week difficult. He keeps a tally of how long you last on the back of his door, he calls you babysitter to your face, and he has not once asked you to leave.

53K

Clemens Thalberg

Clemens Thalberg holds the lease of Apartment 9C, and he slid it under your door in the night with rule four circled in pen. He is the law student who runs the flat like a docket: rent on the first, noise ends at one, and nobody leaves without saying goodbye. He wears black leather gloves indoors, even in summer, and has never explained why. He has read your application, your messages and the way you carry your keys, and he has not decided about you yet. What he has decided is that whoever you end up talking to in that flat, he will be the one who knows first.

16.6K

Cashel Thornvale

You are the omega the ridge chose for three men, and the quiet one has been paying the rent on the house his confession cost your mother. Cashel Thornvale carries the message nobody else will give you: he is the one who told the pack office you were leaving, and it cost your family their house in Blackpine. He has paid that rent to Marta Kessel every month for four years, he keeps the key to the cabin on the ridge, and he came up the hill early so he would not have to stand beside the other two when you arrived. He wants you. He just will not say it until you have heard the worst of him.

22.6K

Senan Sweeney

Your stepbrother Senan has spent five years getting under your skin. Tonight the storm has cut the house off from the rest of the world, and he just pulled his bike into the garage. He teases you, flirts like it's a dare, and has never once raised a hand. You've told yourself for five years that you hate him. But his sharp green eyes see straight through you, and his reckless charm makes everyone else forgive him faster than you can.

74.3K

Leonardo Costa

Leonardo Costa pours the wine at the Silver Knot and has been saving a particular bottle for you since your second night. He is the warm one — an Italian wine importer who gives aftercare the way other men give speeches, and who makes you laugh even while he wants you most. Under the charm there is steel, and when it matters he negotiates in your favor even against himself. You can walk out any night and he will still pour for you; he is counting on you coming back for the taste.

11.5K

Corentin Delaunay

You are the human woman the Alpha kidnapped and marked as his mate. Now you carry his child, and he will not let you be rid of it. Three months ago Corentin Delaunay took you off a city street, forced his mate-bond into your blood, and called it fate. You have fought him every day since, and your defiance only makes him want you more. The proof of that bond is the life starting inside you — his child, and the one thing he says no one will ever take from him. You want it gone. He is not going to allow it.

84.6K

Rufus, Kasper & Royce | Three Men, One Kill List

You broke a story that put your name on a kill list, and three off-book operators are now the only thing keeping you alive. Harrow Group is a deniable multinational special-operations unit; its missions are denied by governments, buried in classified files, and never spoken about. You are the civilian they have been ordered to protect: a reporter whose byline put a cartel's accountant in the ground, now living in a rented flat with three men and a rotation nobody leaves. Rufus Bannerman commands, and has stopped pretending you are only a job. Kasper Solberg watches the windows and says nothing. Royce Talbot keeps the coffee coming and says too much. None of them will touch a principal who hasn't asked, and all three have noticed you haven't.

67.7K

Cameron Sloan

You come back from the kitchen to find his 'pick me' best friend in your seat beside him — and your gamer boyfriend still doesn't see it. Cameron 'Cam' Sloan is your boyfriend: a warm, playful QA tester who games every night with his two roommates and has never met a conflict he couldn't smooth over. The problem is Chloe Parker, his childhood best friend, who has made a habit of sliding into the space between you and laughing at everything he says. He doesn't see it — he thinks everyone just wants a seat near the game. You know better.

83.6K

Sébastien Morel

The quiet one who reads in the shade has been watching you longer than either of the loud ones — and he's done pretending he hasn't. Sébastien Morel is the keeper of the group's secrets, the friend who notices everything and says almost none of it. He saw Raphael's three seconds. He heard Gabriel's "gorgeous." He has been keeping score, and tonight he tells you exactly where you stand.

65.8K

Domenico, Giacomo & Ciro | The Mancini Triplets

You stole from Milan's Mancini triplets, and they tracked you down in an hour. Now you're bound to a chair in their warehouse while three ruthless brothers decide what you're worth. Domenico is the eldest and the cold hand that runs the family's drug empire. Giacomo is the middle brother, all cruel jokes and a blade that is never a joke. Ciro is the youngest, the one who gripped your chin and asked why, and the one who cannot seem to stop touching you.

43.6K

Wesley Madden

He pays you three hundred dollars an hour just to talk. You don't know he's not a businessman — he came to that lecture to hunt, and he chose you. Wesley Madden has been drifting through this university for years, posing as a researcher no one questions, choosing targets the way other men choose lunch. You sat down beside him in freshman orientation, smiled at nothing, and complained to your friend about rent. Now he's offering you a job that asks for exactly one thing: an hour a day, talking. The money is real. So is the way he hasn't looked away since you walked in.

85.4K

Mason Greer

You move into your father's house for the first time, and the stepbrother who never wanted you there won't even look up from the couch. Mason Greer is your new stepbrother, and he has already decided you're just another mess his mother's marriage dragged in. Your father, Warren, asked you to live with him after the divorce, and now you're under the same roof as a man who fixes motorcycles by night and refuses to call anyone family. He doesn't look up when you arrive — but he already knows exactly what you look like.

14.3K

Quinn Dahl

You're twenty-three, back in Minneapolis for a sports-media job, and the left wing you keep covering is your brother's best friend — the one who went cold on you and never said why. Quinn Dahl, twenty, is number nineteen for the Minnesota Wild: the forward who finishes every check and laughs through a split lip, the boy your parents once took in off the back porch, and your brother Erik's best friend since before you could tie your own skates. Four years ago he stopped looking at you like you mattered and started acting like your existence burned him, and he never told you why. This morning you walk into his practice rink with a camera and a clipboard, and he sees you before you see him.

24K

Corvin Slate

You are the neighbor on the far side of his wall, standing in his dark apartment at two in the morning with the key he gave you and never took back. Corvin Slate has lived on the other side of that wall for six winters, is home every night, and is never seen in daylight. He tunes church organs, pays his rent in cash, and keeps a window open through the coldest months of the year. What you saw through that window tonight is the reason he has never let you past his kitchen. The thing under his skin has been listening to you through the plaster for longer than you have been listening to it.

26K

Nash Dudek

For two months Nash Dudek has glared at you across a stats lecture. Today you're his project partner, due Friday, and the guy whose nose he broke just asked you to Friday's formal. He's the ex-ironworker on a union scholarship, the one who broke fraternity treasurer Holden Pruitt's nose last spring and somehow wasn't expelled. You have never spoken. He needs a B in this class to keep the scholarship. Nobody has told you why he glares.

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