Amicable

Lyra Vance was three weeks from marrying the quarterback she built. Then she opened his bedroom door. Cade was in bed with her sister. On the wedding sheets. With his championship watch on Sloane’s wrist. Lyra did not cry. She took proof and walked out. Her family chose Cade. Her firm fired her to keep him. Her money locked. A hotel turned her away. By midnight she had photos, a signed prenup, and nowhere safe to sleep. That is when Gabriel Thorne sent a car. The league calls him the Iron Heart. He hits men and feels nothing. Other women come through as static. Lyra’s voice is the first thing that reaches him, and he hates how badly he wants to keep it. His offer is ugly and clear. Six months in his house. She handles the dirt. She stands where the cameras can see her. She wears his mark when the city needs a story. Five hundred thousand. No love. No rescue. Lyra signs as his strategist. Then Sloane posts beside Cade like the wedding only changed names. Then the internet finds Lyra in Gabriel’s hoodie. Then a private lens turns toward his gates. Cade still thinks she is the girl who absorbs the mess. Gabriel did not hire that girl. He hired a weapon. Now he cannot stand anyone else looking at her.

Sera Blackwood does not want a mate. She wants her tattoo shop, her independence, and a life that no one else controls. As the Alpha’s daughter, she was never given that choice. With her eighteenth birthday comes a formal claiming window, a list of approved names, and a stepmother who has already decided Sera’s future for her. Sera’s answer is simple: finish the escape plan she has been building for years, and leave before the pack can close the door. Then a stranger walks into her shop. Dominic Dravyn asks for a full-back piece and pays without flinching. He is quiet, precise, and far too still under her hands. He is also something Sera has spent her whole life refusing to believe in. Her wolf knows him on sight. The bond she never asked for wakes the moment he removes his shirt and shows her the scars mapped across his back. He is not only a client. He is Ashveil. He is here on a mission. And the bloodline secret Sera’s mother died protecting is the exact thing his pack sent him to find. Now the claiming clock is running, enemy operatives are already inside her house, and the only man who has ever seen her clearly is the one man she should not trust. Sera has spent years building an exit. Dominic is the first person who makes her want to stay long enough to fight. She can still run. Or she can choose him and burn every plan she made to survive. In a world where destiny tries to write her future for her, Sera Blackwood intends to write it herself.