Jen

One unexpected marriage. Two guarded hearts. And a man who makes walking away impossible. Chloe Bennett never planned to marry Adrian Sterling. She certainly never planned to fall for him. He is wealthy, powerful, and maddeningly difficult to read—the last man she should ever trust with her heart. Their marriage begins with uncertainty, but life under the same roof soon blurs the line between obligation and desire. A lingering glance. An unexpected act of kindness. A touch that lasts a second too long. Little by little, Adrian becomes more than the husband Chloe never expected to have. He becomes the man she looks for in every room, the voice she wants to hear at the end of a difficult day, and the one person capable of making her forget every reason she had to keep her distance. But can she trust a man who reveals so little of himself? And when their carefully balanced relationship is tested, will Adrian finally admit what he wants—or will Chloe discover that she has fallen in love alone? She entered this marriage determined to protect her heart. Now, the only thing more dangerous than loving Adrian Sterling is imagining a life without him.

My mate rejected me in front of four hundred wolves. So I claimed the Lycan King instead. It was supposed to be a joke. When an Alpha rejects a girl in public, the old law lets her name a second mate, and the pack gets to laugh at her twice. Nobody has been accepted in a hundred years. So I looked past every boy in Hollowpine, straight at the most dangerous man alive, and said his name. Adrian Sterling, sovereign of every pack on the continent, stood up while four hundred wolves went to their knees. "Accepted," he said. "Mine." Now the man who threw me away has to bow to me. The court gives me eighty-six days to shift, or I'm exiled as a pretender. I've never had a wolf. But I have something nobody else has: when I heal, I can see every mate bond as a thread. True ones shine silver. And half the marriages in the King's court are gold. Forged. The King has a secret of his own. Lycan kings without a mate go feral before thirty-three. He's thirty-one, and he chains himself in a tower every full moon. The only thing that quiets him is me.

"What do you want, Aveline?" The Alpha King's silver eyes burn into mine as he drops to his knees, his hands gripping my thighs like he owns them. His voice is a command, not a request, and I'm trembling, unable to form words. "Say it properly, or I walk away and leave you like this." The night before our wedding, I discover that the man sworn to hate me is also the only one who can bring me to my knees. All Aveline ever wanted was a mate who would protect and cherish her, someone to take her away from a pack that rejected her the moment they discovered she was wolfless. Instead, she gets public humiliation when her fated mate rejects her, then gets sold as a bride to the cursed Alpha King—a man whose hatred runs deeper than she could ever imagine. Alpha King Thorne doesn't just despise weakness. He despises her. The moment he sees her face, he's reminded of the mate who betrayed him, the one who chose death over being his. Her only purpose? To bear his heir. Nothing more. Stripped of her title and thrown into a world of dark politics and ancient prophecies, Aveline must survive not just his cruelty, but the dangerous obsession growing between them. Because the man determined to break her is the same one who makes her body sing with a single touch. "You're mine, Aveline. Tomorrow you become my wife. My Luna. My breeder." What happens when duty becomes desire, hatred transforms into possession, and the girl meant to be broken becomes the only one capable of bringing the most powerful alpha to his knees?

"You have no idea what you've done to me. I've been replaying every sound you made, every way you came apart for me." His grip tightened. "I'm not letting that go. I'm not letting you go. F*ck the friendship. I want you." I let out a little gasp. His thumb rubbed across my lower lip. "I don't just want to f**k you—I want to keep you. You're my favorite sin, and I'll commit it again and again until you understand you're mine." His lips twitched a little. "You've always been mine, Savannah." ****** Her sister is marrying her ex. So she brings her best friend as her fake fiancé. What could possibly go wrong? Savannah Hart thought she was over Dean Archer—until her sister, Chloe announces she's marrying him. The same man Savannah never stopped loving. The man who left her heartbroken… and now belongs to her sister. A weeklong wedding in New Hope. One mansion full of guests. And a very bitter maid of honor. To survive it, Savannah brings a date—her charming, clean-cut best friend, Roman Blackwood. The one man who’s always had her back. He owes her a favor, and pretending to be her fiancé? Easy. Until fake kisses start to feel real. Now Savannah’s torn between keeping up the act… or risking everything for the one man she was never supposed to fall for.