She trusted one man completely for seven years. Until she discovered that he had a wife she knew nothing about. A wife and two kids. So Maya Hartley did what any woman with a functioning survival instinct would do — she buried herself in work, sealed herself off from anything that looked like vulnerability, and decided that the cleanest love story she would ever have was the one between her and a stack of ungraded papers. It was working perfectly. Until Tyler Cross started failing English. His father is only supposed to be a parent-teacher meeting. A forty-five minute conversation. A signature on an academic improvement plan. But the moment Jax Cross walks through her office door, something happens that Maya cannot explain, cannot rationalize, and absolutely cannot afford — her whole body recognizes him before her mind has time to object. He's massive. He's intense. He smells like something she doesn't have a word for. And he's looking at her like she's something he stopped believing in a long time ago. She's already talking herself out of it when he leans forward, holds her gaze, and says the words that rearrange her entire life. He's a werewolf. She's his fated mate. And apparently, the universe didn't ask either of them. Now Maya has to decide if she can trust a man who has never lied to her — even when the truth sounds impossible. And Jax has to figure out if protecting her means pulling her into his dangerous world or walking away from the only thing that has felt like home since he lost everything. She swore she was done letting people in. Fate has terrible timing and absolutely no regrets.

She was sent to destroy him. She never expected him to be worth saving. Ivy Thorne has never failed a mission. Not once in twenty-five years of training, infiltration, and carefully constructed lies. The Sanctum made her what she is — a weapon wearing a woman’s face — and she has never had reason to question the hand that built her. Until now. Her assignment: become Dr. Ivy Thorne, wolf behavioral biologist, and embed herself inside the Blackwood Pack. Earn the Alpha’s trust. Document enough to make it look like research. Then, on the night of the full moon ceremony, poison the entire pack leadership and walk away clean. Simple. Clinical. Exactly the kind of mission she was built for. What The Sanctum didn’t account for was Cain Blackwood himself — a forty-year-old Alpha who has spent six years quietly trying to build a world where his pack doesn’t have to hide. A man who mediates instead of dominates, who lets elderly human women put their hands on his arm outside diners, who looks at Ivy like she is something he has been waiting for without knowing he was waiting. What she didn’t account for was the mate bond — the thing The Sanctum taught her about only as a vulnerability to exploit, never as something she could feel herself. She feels it the moment his hand touches hers. Every cell she has reorienting around a single, devastating truth her training has no protocol for. Now she is living among people she came to kill, watching them love each other with a ferocity that has no tactical explanation, and the poison is already in her bag. Her hands have never shaken before. They are shaking now.