M.K. Rhodes

The Alpha’s Ancient Hunger One stolen life. One ancient curse. One hunger that cannot be tamed. Sloane Sterling is the perfect daughter. The perfect socialite. The perfect pawn. Controlled by a family that treats her autonomy like a business expense, she’s one signature away from a loveless marriage and a life behind glass. But Sloane has a secret: a "Freedom Fund" and a haunting, rhythmic thrum in her marrow that calls her to a land of salt and shadow. In the jagged ruins of the Irish Burren, Caius Vane has waited two thousand years for a reason to breathe. As the last Prime of the First Blood, he is a king of ash, a monster of restrained violence who has watched empires crumble while his own heart remained frozen. When Sloane steps onto his soil, the silence of twenty centuries shatters. Caius doesn’t want to court her. He doesn’t want to love her. He wants to claim her. To mark her. To keep her in his obsidian halls until the mountains turn to dust. But as Sloane's past hunts her down and a restless pack smells weakness in their King, she must decide: return to the safety of her gilded cage, or surrender to the ancient, ravenous hunger of the wolf who would burn the world to keep her. He’s waited lifetimes for her. And he’s tired of being gentle.

One man wanted her dead. The other decided she was his. Elara was the star witness in the city’s biggest corruption trial—until her mentor, the man she trusted most, sold her life for a wire transfer. But when the assassins closed in, it wasn’t the police who intervened. It was Julian Thorne, the very man she was supposed to testify against. Known only as "The Ghost," Julian has spent months watching Elara from the shadows, cataloging her habits and memorizing her fears. Now, he has wiped her from the world, whisking her away to a cliffside manor that is as much a sanctuary as it is a prison. Trapped between a traitor who wants her silenced and a protector who refuses to let her go, Elara must navigate a blurred line of terror and desire. In a world where the law is for sale, she’s about to learn that the only thing more dangerous than a man who wants you dead is a man who would burn the world down just to keep you in his cage.