It has been eleven secretaries in three years. Eleven resignations. Two of them in tears. Then came Evelyn Marlowe. At nineteen, she cleaned the 88th floor of Kingsley Tower at midnight. At twenty-seven, she’s the private secretary to Damian Kingsley, the coldest billionaire in New York, a man who believes everyone has a price. Evelyn doesn’t have one. She doesn’t laugh at his jokes. She doesn’t flinch when he raises his voice. She corrects him in front of the entire board, and she is always right. And Damian, who has never heard the word no, can’t stop watching her. Then a clause in his late grandfather’s will surfaces: marry within ninety days, or lose the company to his scheming uncle. His engagement is destroyed in public. He needs a wife, and the only woman he trusts is the one who can’t be bought. So he offers her a contract. Twelve months. Any price she names. She names none. She’ll do it for the six thousand people who would lose their jobs, and only on her terms. One year. One ring. One rule: don’t fall in love. But pretend gets real fast when he waits up for her, when she laughs at his worst jokes, and when a Paris hotel only has one bed. Then she finds a sealed file that suggests the Kingsleys knew the truth about her father’s death, and the man she’s falling for might have been hiding it. Now the billionaire wants her back. The secretary wants the truth. And someone in his own boardroom will do anything to make sure neither of them gets it.

On the night of her first shift, Arielle stands before the Blood Court and faces her fated mate, the future Alpha who calls her weak, cursed, and unworthy. To seal his rejection, he brands her with a mark meant to kill her slowly. But Arielle doesn't die. Something ancient awakens instead. Banished to the Haunted Forest where rejected mates rot, she faces horrors that feed on pain. Feral wolves with hollow eyes. Shadow spirits that whisper her name. Ghosts of the rejected who became monsters. The forest wants her alive, and she doesn't know why. Years later, war forces her former pack to seek help from the cursed woods. Standing at the forest's edge is Arielle, changed, terrifyingly beautiful, no longer human enough to be called wolf. Beside her is Lucien, Alpha of the forbidden wolves. Cold. Cruel. Her former mate's sworn enemy. He claims Arielle as his weapon, then as his obsession. Their bond is violent and intoxicating. He touches her like he wants to ruin her. She hates him like she wants to tear out his throat. Yet every full moon, their wolves crave each other with a hunger that feels wrong and irreversible. As secrets unravel, Arielle discovers the truth: her rejection wasn't random, it was ordered to prevent her from becoming something monstrous. Now her former mate wants her back. His Luna wants her dead. Lucien wants her soul. And the moon demands blood.