Aria V. Wilde

Marry the man who ruined your family, or watch your father die. Aurora Reed thought she knew exactly what kind of monster Julian Vance was. She didn't know he had a reason. A fake engagement built on hatred is about to unearth a fifteen-year-old secret worth killing for — and neither of them will walk away from the truth unchanged.

On the night the moon was supposed to bind her to her mate forever, Elara Vance was cast out instead — branded, humiliated, and left for dead in the wilderness beyond Blackwood's gates. Alpha Ryker Blackwood didn't just reject her. He erased her. Three years later, something else walks back through those gates. They call her the Phantom — a masked mercenary commander whose company has become the most feared name in the underworld. No one in Blackwood recognizes the girl they threw away. Not even the Alpha whose bond with her should have died the night he severed it. But Elara didn't come home for revenge alone. Blackwood is dying from the inside, bled dry by a conspiracy that reaches back decades — and the deeper she digs, the more she uncovers about a bloodline she was never supposed to survive, and an ancient order that has spent centuries hunting it to extinction. Every truth she claws back comes at a price: who she really is, what she's capable of becoming, and whether the man who once destroyed her deserves a second chance to stand beside her. The people hunting her believe power always corrupts. Elara is about to prove them catastrophically wrong — or become exactly the monster they always said she was. Revenge was supposed to be simple. Falling for the Alpha who exiled her was never part of the plan.

On the night of the Blood Moon, Seraphina expects to hear her name called beside Malaran’s, the heir she has loved in secret since childhood. Instead he rejects her in front of the whole pack. Before dawn the High Alpha strips her of her name and throws her across the frozen river into the North, where no southern wolf has ever survived. The North belongs to Valerius, the Lycan King. For thirty years his beast has driven him to the edge of madness, and the south calls him a monster. He finds a half-frozen girl in the snow at the edge of his land and comes down to kill her. Then she touches him, and for the first time in thirty years his beast goes quiet. Seraphina has no idea why. She has spent her whole life scrubbing floors as a powerless orphan. But the mark on her collarbone is waking, roses are blooming in corridors that have been dead for centuries, and a door in the King’s garden that no one has opened in three hundred years has started to hum. The south wants her back, and the man who threw her out has been hunting her bloodline since before she could walk. Someone in the King’s own fortress is waiting to betray them both. To survive, Seraphina must learn who she really is. To keep her, Valerius may have to burn down everything he has ever ruled. She was cast out as nothing. She is about to become the one thing the wolves fear most.

She wasn’t the bride he was promised. She was the one he couldn’t let go. On the morning of her sister’s wedding, Giulia Ferraro wakes to find Bianca gone, a note burned, and her father’s hand on her shoulder. The Table has ruled. A Ferraro bride will stand at the altar by two o’clock, or the most dangerous Don in Chicago will collect the debt in blood. So Giulia puts on her sister’s dress. Lorenzo Vitale lifts the veil and knows in one second that he’s been handed the wrong sister. The quiet one. The spare. And he’s certain she’s hiding something. He’s right. Because Bianca didn’t run away. Someone took her. And every clue Giulia follows leads her deeper into the house of the man she married, and closer to a truth that could destroy them both. He doesn’t trust her. She shouldn’t want him. But behind the cold eyes of the Don is a man who has never once asked a woman what she wants. Until her. In a world where brides are bought and debts are paid in blood, Giulia must find her sister before time runs out, without losing her heart to the enemy she was given.

On the night of their anniversary, Hazel Kingsley had a gift for her billionaire husband: a box tied with ribbon and two pink lines inside. She never got to give it to him. Rafe Kingsley came home with divorce papers, a file full of evidence that his wife had sold his company’s secrets, and one cold sentence: anything she said would be a lie. By morning, Hazel was gone. She took a bus out of Chicago with nothing but a suitcase and a secret. Five years later, she’s back. She’s no longer a foster kid nobody wanted. She is Isla Whitmore, the lost heiress of the family that has been Rafe’s rival for forty years, and she now sits across from him at the negotiating table. She has a new name and a seat on the board. She also has two children with stormy gray eyes, and she’ll do anything to keep them hidden from the man who threw her away. Then Rafe sees a little boy in a school lobby with his face. Now the most powerful man in Chicago wants his children, and the truth. But the deeper he digs into the night he lost her, the more he discovers that someone close to them both wanted Hazel gone. Not once, but twice. Some betrayals are paid for. Some secrets were buried twenty-four years ago. And some doors, once closed, were never meant to stay shut.

Rejected by her Alpha. Claimed by a cursed king. Hunted for a secret she doesn’t know she carries. Vera has spent her whole life making herself small. Then, on the night of the Blood Moon, her Alpha rejects her in front of the entire pack, and she runs into the one place no wolf is meant to survive: the forbidden forest of Shadow Ridge. She expects death. Instead, she is pinned to the earth by Alaric Vega, the cursed Lycan King the packs whisper about, and every instinct she owns screams one word: mate. Alaric wants no mate. His bloodline is cursed, his enemies are circling, and the Council is already at his gates demanding the girl. So he tells the court a lie. She is his. A claim made to save her and spite a rival, a bond meant to last only as long as the story holds. But Vera’s touch calms the monster in his blood. Her wolf, silent for years, is starting to wake. And someone very powerful has just realized what she really is. Some bonds are chosen. Some are forced. And some are the most dangerous thing a king can ever claim.

Seis meses. Un anillo. Y un hombre al que juró odiar toda la vida. Cuando su padre cae fulminado por un derrame y la empresa familiar se hunde en deudas, Aurora Reed solo tiene una salida: entrar a la oficina de Julian Vance, el millonario despiadado que lleva quince años destruyendo a su familia, y pedirle clemencia. Julian no ofrece clemencia. Ofrece un contrato. Seis meses como su prometida. Vivir en su penthouse, usar su anillo, sonreír para las cámaras y convencer a todo Nueva York de que está perdidamente enamorada de él. A cambio, él pagará las cuentas del hospital y dejará en paz lo que queda del apellido Reed. Aurora firma. Lo que no sabe es que Julian tiene sus propias razones para querer a una Reed a su lado. Ni que alguien más los está observando. Porque la muerte del padre de Julian no fue lo que todos creyeron. Y entre llamadas desde un teléfono que no debería sonar, mensajes anónimos y secretos que su propia familia enterró hace años, Aurora descubre que el enemigo que tiene enfrente quizá no sea el más peligroso de la historia. Lo que empezó como una venganza se convierte en algo que ninguno de los dos planeó. Y cuanto más se acerca a la verdad, más difícil le resulta a Aurora recordar por qué debería odiarlo. Un compromiso falso. Una deuda de sangre. Y un amor que podría costarles todo.