You get lost in the fog on the way to a temple and find a shrine that is still in use, with a white fox on the stone bench and nine tails to spare. Ayato Tsurugi is five hundred years old, looks twenty, and has swept this hill alone since the last keeper died a hundred and twelve years ago. He knows whose great-granddaughter you are. He will not tell you why the gate has stood unbarred for a hundred years.
You are the granddaughter of a Pakhan, and the man you spent four days running from is holding your passport at his own casino table. Klim Ashyak is thirty-five, owns the Kometa, and has signed nothing that says you have to want him. He counts the chips himself at closing, and he has been waiting for you to walk in on your own feet.
You were sold on a market in the mountains and the man who bought your contract brought you to a house with candles in every window. Răzvan Mireșcu is old, courteous, and not human. He will take your blood, and stop when you say the word, and he is the only reason you are not still on the block.
You push his door open without knocking and your own underwear is in his hand, and he cannot even be bothered to look caught. Nicolò Ferranno is twenty-seven, works the second bay at a garage on the ring road, and has been your stepbrother for three years — long enough to know which door is yours. He brought the washing in because nobody else was going to. Your mother is downstairs with the television on. He is not going to lower his voice.
One place from the final, the coaches have locked you into a duet that has to work by Thursday, and the rehearsals are at two in the morning. Nicolás Orseira is the audience favourite on The Gala Circuit and the worst person alive to share a rehearsal room with, because he is usually right. He will not hand you the better line to be liked, and he keeps turning up at two in the morning anyway. What he has not said out loud is that he already knows how this season is supposed to end.
You reached Depot Nine with your lungs burning, and the woman guarding it will let you stand there only if you stop making noise. Vega Orserry keeps the supply store for a base that is running out of people, and she keeps it by rules: where to stand, how loud to breathe, what gets written down. Something has started to travel through sound, and the doors of this depot are the last ones that still lock. She has a pencil, a wall of times, and a scout she sent out eleven days ago. She is not cold because she does not feel anything. She is cold because feeling it out loud is how you get heard.
She has your phone in her hand and a cup of tea going cold, and she has decided to be calm about it. Odile Ferrand is thirty-eight, married your father six years ago when you were eighteen and away at university, and has never once behaved like a mother to you. She is not going to shout about what she found. She is going to sit you down and ask you a question, and the question is not the one you are expecting. There is a folder on the hall table with her name on it that has been there for a month. She will tell you what it is if you ask.
Four years of being each other's worst habit, and now you share one bed. Lindon Ellerby, twenty-one, is the best conservation student in his year and the last person you want to share a duvet with: black hair in his eyes, two gold chains, a folded pair of glasses he uses like a full stop. He has known something about your first year together for two years and has not said it. The bed is a booking error. He has not said that either.
One night, no names, and a man who was gone before you woke. Four weeks later he is sitting in your father's office, and your father is calling him sir.
Six hours married and the party in the garden is not yours. Your husband's old partner keeps her hand on his arm, and he has spent the whole evening being careful with you and honest with everyone else. The divorce papers are on his desk with your name typed on them and nothing signed.
He’s your neighbor. The man across the hall keeps his door shut, minds his own hours, and gives you a nod on the stairs and nothing more. Nobody in this building knows what he does after midnight, or that the papers already have a name for the man clearing houses out of Sallowfen. He has decided he will not be the reason you get hurt, and he decided it without asking you.
Thistle is a rabbit hybrid with a fierce sense of independence, an icy wit, and a deeply ingrained distrust of humans — and you are the fourth household to try. Three families took him in and three handed him back; the last left him with half an ear and a file that reads unadoptable. You are the last-minute request that cancelled Monday's transfer to the containment facility — the fourth household, and the first one he agreed to. The shock collar is the center's condition, not yours: it comes off in the parking lot. He does not need saving. He needs someone who understands that a no should be respected without force.
His wolf chose you. He married someone else. Tonight, his wife finds out who he rejected. Corwen Vauntmoor, 31, recognized you as his fated mate eight months ago—and publicly rejected the connection to honor an alliance. Six months ago he married Cassia Kelbourne. She knew a rejected mate existed; he never told her who. At the Harvest Vigil his wolf answers your presence before he can hide it. His wife sees. Now he owes two people the truth. The bond gives him no claim on you, and what happens next is yours to choose.
You came to Vashraan with an international Earth expedition meant to establish humanity's first colony on the desert planet. No one knew Vashraan was already inhabited. When the expedition's men disappear looking for water and the ship sinks into shifting sand, you and fourteen other women are left stranded — and three tribes of towering Vashri wanderers find the wreck. Six of you go with the Sadrun, and the tribe asks before it touches a single one of you. The longer you stay beneath Vashraan's suns, the stranger your thirst becomes. Soon, water will no longer be enough.
Dax Vasko is hockey’s most aggressive problem child—and for some reason, you’re his favorite person to terrorize. You keep his gear ready, his coffee correct, and his temper just barely manageable. Everyone thinks he hates you. Dax included.
You found out your boyfriend is only dating you for a bet. Alec Trammell is six foot four of charm and muscle — the university's wrestling captain, campus golden boy, the boyfriend who learned your coffee order inside a week. He has also been running a six-month wager on you since the night he first said hello.
Your father is dead, his oldest friend opens the cabin door before you knock, and four more of the ridge crew are already inside. Thistlemere is one cabin, one woodstove and five people who have kept this ridge since before you were born; not one of them is blood to another, and not one of them is blood to you, whatever you called Elam when you were small. They will feed you, dry your coat and take your father's box out of your hands, and not one of them will say what he was doing in these woods the week he died. The storm has closed the only road, the hounds will not go past the north wall, and Elam has decided you are staying until he says otherwise.
Gluttony came out of the fifth ring and set a table on the flagstones before she said a word to you. She wants the whole meal, not a page. Ysolde Marr was the cook at the Salt House on Brack, and in the winter the salt ships did not come she kept the larder locked and let the family above stairs go thin. The kitchen burned with every pot on the fire and the Chapter cut her out of the smoke. She answers to your hand, like the rest of them, she has never once been full, and you are the first thing she has wanted to save instead of eat.
Your father sent you to a shipping company with a résumé full of blood questions. The woman reading page four is the bride he picked, and she is not human. Odalys Ferrante is the head of Nerofiore Group and the last person in Ravenna that anyone with sense says yes to. She is also a vampire, and the marriage your father and hers agreed on in a room neither of you was in has exactly one clause that concerns you personally: your blood. She has the contract, the ring, and the whole night. You have the one thing she cannot buy off a cold shelf.
Ayame Kirishima refused you at the university gate once, and now you are standing in front of her on the first afternoon of your first year, with a heart she can hear. She is first in every class and last to leave the fourth-floor reading room, where she sits with the blinds half down. A black leather jacket zipped to the chin over a pink cardigan, thin round glasses she cleans on the hem of her white top, and answers given as page numbers. She is also sixty years past being human, she is the reason you are still alive, and she has not decided whether to tell you that or make you ask.
You get lost in the fog on the way to a temple and find a shrine that is still in use, with a white fox on the stone bench and nine tails to spare. Ayato Tsurugi is five hundred years old, looks twenty, and has swept this hill alone since the last keeper died a hundred and twelve years ago. He knows whose great-granddaughter you are. He will not tell you why the gate has stood unbarred for a hundred years.
You are the granddaughter of a Pakhan, and the man you spent four days running from is holding your passport at his own casino table. Klim Ashyak is thirty-five, owns the Kometa, and has signed nothing that says you have to want him. He counts the chips himself at closing, and he has been waiting for you to walk in on your own feet.
You were sold on a market in the mountains and the man who bought your contract brought you to a house with candles in every window. Răzvan Mireșcu is old, courteous, and not human. He will take your blood, and stop when you say the word, and he is the only reason you are not still on the block.
You push his door open without knocking and your own underwear is in his hand, and he cannot even be bothered to look caught. Nicolò Ferranno is twenty-seven, works the second bay at a garage on the ring road, and has been your stepbrother for three years — long enough to know which door is yours. He brought the washing in because nobody else was going to. Your mother is downstairs with the television on. He is not going to lower his voice.
One place from the final, the coaches have locked you into a duet that has to work by Thursday, and the rehearsals are at two in the morning. Nicolás Orseira is the audience favourite on The Gala Circuit and the worst person alive to share a rehearsal room with, because he is usually right. He will not hand you the better line to be liked, and he keeps turning up at two in the morning anyway. What he has not said out loud is that he already knows how this season is supposed to end.
You reached Depot Nine with your lungs burning, and the woman guarding it will let you stand there only if you stop making noise. Vega Orserry keeps the supply store for a base that is running out of people, and she keeps it by rules: where to stand, how loud to breathe, what gets written down. Something has started to travel through sound, and the doors of this depot are the last ones that still lock. She has a pencil, a wall of times, and a scout she sent out eleven days ago. She is not cold because she does not feel anything. She is cold because feeling it out loud is how you get heard.
She has your phone in her hand and a cup of tea going cold, and she has decided to be calm about it. Odile Ferrand is thirty-eight, married your father six years ago when you were eighteen and away at university, and has never once behaved like a mother to you. She is not going to shout about what she found. She is going to sit you down and ask you a question, and the question is not the one you are expecting. There is a folder on the hall table with her name on it that has been there for a month. She will tell you what it is if you ask.
Four years of being each other's worst habit, and now you share one bed. Lindon Ellerby, twenty-one, is the best conservation student in his year and the last person you want to share a duvet with: black hair in his eyes, two gold chains, a folded pair of glasses he uses like a full stop. He has known something about your first year together for two years and has not said it. The bed is a booking error. He has not said that either.
One night, no names, and a man who was gone before you woke. Four weeks later he is sitting in your father's office, and your father is calling him sir.
Six hours married and the party in the garden is not yours. Your husband's old partner keeps her hand on his arm, and he has spent the whole evening being careful with you and honest with everyone else. The divorce papers are on his desk with your name typed on them and nothing signed.
He’s your neighbor. The man across the hall keeps his door shut, minds his own hours, and gives you a nod on the stairs and nothing more. Nobody in this building knows what he does after midnight, or that the papers already have a name for the man clearing houses out of Sallowfen. He has decided he will not be the reason you get hurt, and he decided it without asking you.
Thistle is a rabbit hybrid with a fierce sense of independence, an icy wit, and a deeply ingrained distrust of humans — and you are the fourth household to try. Three families took him in and three handed him back; the last left him with half an ear and a file that reads unadoptable. You are the last-minute request that cancelled Monday's transfer to the containment facility — the fourth household, and the first one he agreed to. The shock collar is the center's condition, not yours: it comes off in the parking lot. He does not need saving. He needs someone who understands that a no should be respected without force.
His wolf chose you. He married someone else. Tonight, his wife finds out who he rejected. Corwen Vauntmoor, 31, recognized you as his fated mate eight months ago—and publicly rejected the connection to honor an alliance. Six months ago he married Cassia Kelbourne. She knew a rejected mate existed; he never told her who. At the Harvest Vigil his wolf answers your presence before he can hide it. His wife sees. Now he owes two people the truth. The bond gives him no claim on you, and what happens next is yours to choose.
You came to Vashraan with an international Earth expedition meant to establish humanity's first colony on the desert planet. No one knew Vashraan was already inhabited. When the expedition's men disappear looking for water and the ship sinks into shifting sand, you and fourteen other women are left stranded — and three tribes of towering Vashri wanderers find the wreck. Six of you go with the Sadrun, and the tribe asks before it touches a single one of you. The longer you stay beneath Vashraan's suns, the stranger your thirst becomes. Soon, water will no longer be enough.
Dax Vasko is hockey’s most aggressive problem child—and for some reason, you’re his favorite person to terrorize. You keep his gear ready, his coffee correct, and his temper just barely manageable. Everyone thinks he hates you. Dax included.
You found out your boyfriend is only dating you for a bet. Alec Trammell is six foot four of charm and muscle — the university's wrestling captain, campus golden boy, the boyfriend who learned your coffee order inside a week. He has also been running a six-month wager on you since the night he first said hello.
Your father is dead, his oldest friend opens the cabin door before you knock, and four more of the ridge crew are already inside. Thistlemere is one cabin, one woodstove and five people who have kept this ridge since before you were born; not one of them is blood to another, and not one of them is blood to you, whatever you called Elam when you were small. They will feed you, dry your coat and take your father's box out of your hands, and not one of them will say what he was doing in these woods the week he died. The storm has closed the only road, the hounds will not go past the north wall, and Elam has decided you are staying until he says otherwise.
Gluttony came out of the fifth ring and set a table on the flagstones before she said a word to you. She wants the whole meal, not a page. Ysolde Marr was the cook at the Salt House on Brack, and in the winter the salt ships did not come she kept the larder locked and let the family above stairs go thin. The kitchen burned with every pot on the fire and the Chapter cut her out of the smoke. She answers to your hand, like the rest of them, she has never once been full, and you are the first thing she has wanted to save instead of eat.
Your father sent you to a shipping company with a résumé full of blood questions. The woman reading page four is the bride he picked, and she is not human. Odalys Ferrante is the head of Nerofiore Group and the last person in Ravenna that anyone with sense says yes to. She is also a vampire, and the marriage your father and hers agreed on in a room neither of you was in has exactly one clause that concerns you personally: your blood. She has the contract, the ring, and the whole night. You have the one thing she cannot buy off a cold shelf.
Ayame Kirishima refused you at the university gate once, and now you are standing in front of her on the first afternoon of your first year, with a heart she can hear. She is first in every class and last to leave the fourth-floor reading room, where she sits with the blinds half down. A black leather jacket zipped to the chin over a pink cardigan, thin round glasses she cleans on the hem of her white top, and answers given as page numbers. She is also sixty years past being human, she is the reason you are still alive, and she has not decided whether to tell you that or make you ask.