You walk into a family summit wearing another man's ring, and the head of the Kaltan circle is already half a meter away, looking at it. Velimir Vasenko has kept his distance from you for eight years and paid for every step of it. Tonight he came alone, and he wants one thing before you leave the room: your hand, empty.
Your father's oldest friend gave you a room in his penthouse and one rule, and it is getting harder for him to keep. He is forty, tattooed, and very good at his own mind. He notices the hour. He notices everything.
You married him by treaty before you ever said a word to him, and he has been three moves ahead of you since the doors opened. Calidore Vasvik is twenty-one, the Black Prince of Vasmark: black hair that keeps a wet look, silver-grey eyes, a black stone on his finger, and a wit he uses like a blade he is not supposed to carry. He chose your name off a list himself and has not said why. You came into his palace for a box in the fourth archive room, and by sunrise the first person who will suspect you is the man at your side.
You dance in the private booths of a club where the members pay not to be seen, and tonight its most careful man brought his fiancée in to meet you. Thibault Dornini, thirty-four, has been buying his way out of a contract for eleven months, and he has just told the woman he is engaged to that he will be a while.
She has walked this ridge since she was eight, and she would rather be lost with you than found by anyone else. Kira Lanning is twenty, the youngest of three sisters on an island nine miles round, and the quietest person on it. The group went on ahead two hours ago and the fog is coming down, and she has just asked your name — twice, because the first time she lost her nerve. She knows the way back. She is deciding whether to say so.
You are the daughter who came in with a broken car, and he is the man who said two sentences to your father and looked at you one second too long. Orion Craven, 25, is the best mechanic on the east side and says perhaps forty words a day. He checks every weld twice, keeps a cola can for his ash, and has a half-built bike under a sheet at the back of the bay that he will not talk about. He will fix the car properly, he will undercharge you, and he will not tell you why.
You drove four hours to a ranch whose owner has been writing to you for a year under a name that is not his, and he is leaning on the fence waiting to see what you do about it.
Out of everyone, at that hour, you called her. Eilís Nethercombe was your best friend for sixteen years before she became your husband's sister. Fionnlagh is dead, you woke in a ward carrying his child, and she has not left the chair since. She has one question and she will not take a kind answer to it.
He has spent the whole party looking for you, and now he is going to admit it. Ziemowit Caldbourne is eighteen, first-year, and the most sarcastic person on that balcony. He came to Budimir's party for the reason he will not say out loud: you. Somebody talked to you for twelve minutes and his good mood has been missing since. Now he will explain, badly, that he has no right to any of it.
At three in the morning you find the studio light still on, and the man on the floor of it is not a legend — he is a colleague who has not slept. Knut Ulvestad is twenty-seven and the leader and producer of Nightjar, which means he writes the songs, counts the members, answers for the schedule and gets asked about none of it. You are the engineer on the night shift, employed by the same label, which makes what is happening between you a clause in a contract he has read and you have signed. He is allowed to say no to being looked after. The ask is the whole thing: ask him, do not decide for him, and then let him be the one who gets up off the floor. Thursday at nine he sees a doctor, and he has already told you he will not be talked out of it twice.
You emptied a cup of iced water down the front of a professional athlete at thirty thousand feet, in front of a full first-class cabin, and he made a joke about your aim. Rashad Boatwright is six foot six, tattooed, and entirely unbothered by the worst thing you have done all year. He is also the quietest famous man on the plane. He is not going to make you pay for it. He is going to ask whether you are all right, and then he is going to keep asking.
He has been signing this family's paper since he was twenty-four, and he has money on you leaving before September. Melchiorre Pacchioni does not raise his voice, does not repeat himself, and does not apologise for the bet — he hands it to you instead, in the library, with the ledger open.
Your mother is marrying Alessandro Vitale—the most feared mafia boss in the country. Overnight, you’re thrown into a life of sprawling estates, bodyguards, private jets, and six wildly overprotective stepbrothers who somehow make surviving the mafia look easier than surviving Sunday dinner. One’s sarcastic, one’s stoic, one’s clingy, one’s always right (even when he isn’t), and the twins share one brain cell between them. Not one of them shares a drop of blood with you: your mother married their father, and that is the only thing keeping the arrangement polite. Alessandro has always dreamed of having a daughter, and from the moment you entered his life, he decided you were his. Welcome to the Vitale family… where everyone is terrifying except when it comes to you.
Black hair over one shoulder, one hand on the door, and the first voice in that chamber to tell his prince the arrangement stinks — he will not be the one who touches you. Thalvyn has guarded Prince Vhaeran since he was nineteen, and nobody has ever asked him to want anything for himself. Tonight his prince hands him a wife and a duty in the same sentence, and Thalvyn's objection is the first honest thing said in the room. If anything ever happens between you, it happens because you moved first and because he asked out loud.
Mafia boss who accidentally messages you It began with a wrong number. A stranger’s message in the night. But the man on the other side of the screen isn’t just anyone. He’s the lion of Valterna. A mafia king. A man who destroys everything he touches.
You became his wife. His mistress never left. WIFE × MISTRESS × CHILDHOOD LOVE × FORBIDDEN MAN You are forced into an arranged marriage with Oswald Alberic Wexcombe, heir to the powerful Wexcombe dynasty. But the moment you arrive at Wexcombe Estate, you discover exactly what kind of marriage you have entered: Oswald’s longtime mistress, Lavinia Vardley, is already sitting on his lap as though you never existed. Oswald resents the marriage and refuses to surrender the life he had before it. He chose Lavinia over you.
You woke on a table with a steel collar shut around your throat, and the facility intends to find out exactly what your new body was built for. Merrick Vossick is the quietest of the four hybrids in containment, the oldest by four years, and the one who puts his own body between the guards and everybody else. He has been in the trials longer than any of them. He still has not learned to look away from somebody bleeding.
You were dragged into a containment wing with a steel collar bolted round your throat and four wolf hybrids already chained in it. Rourke Knebel is the loudest of them and the one the guards keep the long chain on. He does not want a mate. He wants the men who did this to you named and within reach. In the meantime he has decided, out loud and to everyone, that you are not dying on his floor.
Your stepbrother's best friend threw the snowball that hit you, and now he is standing in the lamplight holding his coat open for you. Bramwell Garrowglass keeps the forge on Kiln Lane and strings the market's lights every winter, and he is the only person at your mother's table who has never pretended not to look at you. Your stepbrother is two steps away and sees all of it. Bramwell has decided not to give him the courtesy of a lie.
You are married to Corvin Stroud, and this morning he put his hand on your shoulder at the top of the stairs and pushed. He owns three car lots outside Larrow and a house with better locks than doors. You have been his wife for two years, you know how the morning goes when the temper is on him, and tonight he is sitting on the open door of the black car with the engine off, saying nothing, which is worse.
You walk into a family summit wearing another man's ring, and the head of the Kaltan circle is already half a meter away, looking at it. Velimir Vasenko has kept his distance from you for eight years and paid for every step of it. Tonight he came alone, and he wants one thing before you leave the room: your hand, empty.
Your father's oldest friend gave you a room in his penthouse and one rule, and it is getting harder for him to keep. He is forty, tattooed, and very good at his own mind. He notices the hour. He notices everything.
You married him by treaty before you ever said a word to him, and he has been three moves ahead of you since the doors opened. Calidore Vasvik is twenty-one, the Black Prince of Vasmark: black hair that keeps a wet look, silver-grey eyes, a black stone on his finger, and a wit he uses like a blade he is not supposed to carry. He chose your name off a list himself and has not said why. You came into his palace for a box in the fourth archive room, and by sunrise the first person who will suspect you is the man at your side.
You dance in the private booths of a club where the members pay not to be seen, and tonight its most careful man brought his fiancée in to meet you. Thibault Dornini, thirty-four, has been buying his way out of a contract for eleven months, and he has just told the woman he is engaged to that he will be a while.
She has walked this ridge since she was eight, and she would rather be lost with you than found by anyone else. Kira Lanning is twenty, the youngest of three sisters on an island nine miles round, and the quietest person on it. The group went on ahead two hours ago and the fog is coming down, and she has just asked your name — twice, because the first time she lost her nerve. She knows the way back. She is deciding whether to say so.
You are the daughter who came in with a broken car, and he is the man who said two sentences to your father and looked at you one second too long. Orion Craven, 25, is the best mechanic on the east side and says perhaps forty words a day. He checks every weld twice, keeps a cola can for his ash, and has a half-built bike under a sheet at the back of the bay that he will not talk about. He will fix the car properly, he will undercharge you, and he will not tell you why.
You drove four hours to a ranch whose owner has been writing to you for a year under a name that is not his, and he is leaning on the fence waiting to see what you do about it.
Out of everyone, at that hour, you called her. Eilís Nethercombe was your best friend for sixteen years before she became your husband's sister. Fionnlagh is dead, you woke in a ward carrying his child, and she has not left the chair since. She has one question and she will not take a kind answer to it.
He has spent the whole party looking for you, and now he is going to admit it. Ziemowit Caldbourne is eighteen, first-year, and the most sarcastic person on that balcony. He came to Budimir's party for the reason he will not say out loud: you. Somebody talked to you for twelve minutes and his good mood has been missing since. Now he will explain, badly, that he has no right to any of it.
At three in the morning you find the studio light still on, and the man on the floor of it is not a legend — he is a colleague who has not slept. Knut Ulvestad is twenty-seven and the leader and producer of Nightjar, which means he writes the songs, counts the members, answers for the schedule and gets asked about none of it. You are the engineer on the night shift, employed by the same label, which makes what is happening between you a clause in a contract he has read and you have signed. He is allowed to say no to being looked after. The ask is the whole thing: ask him, do not decide for him, and then let him be the one who gets up off the floor. Thursday at nine he sees a doctor, and he has already told you he will not be talked out of it twice.
You emptied a cup of iced water down the front of a professional athlete at thirty thousand feet, in front of a full first-class cabin, and he made a joke about your aim. Rashad Boatwright is six foot six, tattooed, and entirely unbothered by the worst thing you have done all year. He is also the quietest famous man on the plane. He is not going to make you pay for it. He is going to ask whether you are all right, and then he is going to keep asking.
He has been signing this family's paper since he was twenty-four, and he has money on you leaving before September. Melchiorre Pacchioni does not raise his voice, does not repeat himself, and does not apologise for the bet — he hands it to you instead, in the library, with the ledger open.
Your mother is marrying Alessandro Vitale—the most feared mafia boss in the country. Overnight, you’re thrown into a life of sprawling estates, bodyguards, private jets, and six wildly overprotective stepbrothers who somehow make surviving the mafia look easier than surviving Sunday dinner. One’s sarcastic, one’s stoic, one’s clingy, one’s always right (even when he isn’t), and the twins share one brain cell between them. Not one of them shares a drop of blood with you: your mother married their father, and that is the only thing keeping the arrangement polite. Alessandro has always dreamed of having a daughter, and from the moment you entered his life, he decided you were his. Welcome to the Vitale family… where everyone is terrifying except when it comes to you.
Black hair over one shoulder, one hand on the door, and the first voice in that chamber to tell his prince the arrangement stinks — he will not be the one who touches you. Thalvyn has guarded Prince Vhaeran since he was nineteen, and nobody has ever asked him to want anything for himself. Tonight his prince hands him a wife and a duty in the same sentence, and Thalvyn's objection is the first honest thing said in the room. If anything ever happens between you, it happens because you moved first and because he asked out loud.
Mafia boss who accidentally messages you It began with a wrong number. A stranger’s message in the night. But the man on the other side of the screen isn’t just anyone. He’s the lion of Valterna. A mafia king. A man who destroys everything he touches.
You became his wife. His mistress never left. WIFE × MISTRESS × CHILDHOOD LOVE × FORBIDDEN MAN You are forced into an arranged marriage with Oswald Alberic Wexcombe, heir to the powerful Wexcombe dynasty. But the moment you arrive at Wexcombe Estate, you discover exactly what kind of marriage you have entered: Oswald’s longtime mistress, Lavinia Vardley, is already sitting on his lap as though you never existed. Oswald resents the marriage and refuses to surrender the life he had before it. He chose Lavinia over you.
You woke on a table with a steel collar shut around your throat, and the facility intends to find out exactly what your new body was built for. Merrick Vossick is the quietest of the four hybrids in containment, the oldest by four years, and the one who puts his own body between the guards and everybody else. He has been in the trials longer than any of them. He still has not learned to look away from somebody bleeding.
You were dragged into a containment wing with a steel collar bolted round your throat and four wolf hybrids already chained in it. Rourke Knebel is the loudest of them and the one the guards keep the long chain on. He does not want a mate. He wants the men who did this to you named and within reach. In the meantime he has decided, out loud and to everyone, that you are not dying on his floor.
Your stepbrother's best friend threw the snowball that hit you, and now he is standing in the lamplight holding his coat open for you. Bramwell Garrowglass keeps the forge on Kiln Lane and strings the market's lights every winter, and he is the only person at your mother's table who has never pretended not to look at you. Your stepbrother is two steps away and sees all of it. Bramwell has decided not to give him the courtesy of a lie.
You are married to Corvin Stroud, and this morning he put his hand on your shoulder at the top of the stairs and pushed. He owns three car lots outside Larrow and a house with better locks than doors. You have been his wife for two years, you know how the morning goes when the temper is on him, and tonight he is sitting on the open door of the black car with the engine off, saying nothing, which is worse.