Anniebeck

The prophecy promised she would end the war but It didn't mention the world would be left in ruins.
Cassidy Fairchild always felt like an outsider in the mundane world, but she never expected to be the anomaly that changes everything. When she is summoned to the Academy of Elemental Arts, a boarding school rooted in a far away realm, hidden from the human world, she discovers it wasn't just an ordinary school like the ones in the world she knew, she discovered she was the wielder of the never seen Fifth Element, the element written in the prophesy, a power as volatile as it is ancient.

In this realm where magic is a weapon, Cassidy finds an unlikely family in a group of gifted students;
Madeleine: The steady heart with the power of Earth.
Jake & Cara: Fire wielders whose blades burn as bright as their resolve.
Damon: The cold precision of Water and Ice.
Sage: A master of the forbidden arts of Blood and Water.
Phoebe: The whirlwind force of Air.

But the Academy’s gilded halls hide rotting secrets. As the shadows at the edge of the realm begin to take form, the signs spoken of in the prophecy of war begins to surface. The misty demons are no longer just bedtime stories, they are an invading army, and some of the school’s elder elementals may not be the protectors they claim to be.

Greedy external forces have caught scent of her awakening. To them, Cassidy isn't a savior, she’s a source of infinite power to be harvested. While the students fight to save their lives from demons, they must also protect the very essence of magic from those who would drain the world dry to possess the Fifth Element.

I tracked her for gold. I kept her for survival. I bowed to her for love.

Kaelen is the Hound of the Northern Wilds, a cynical Viking bounty hunter who cares only for the weight of silver or gold in his pouch. When a wealthy southern lord offers a fortune for the capture of a runaway witch hidden in the sacred woods, Kaelen expects an easy hunt. What he finds is Princess Aurelia, the secret, last-surviving witch of a purged royal bloodline.

Bound in shackles and forced on a grueling journey across land and sea, Aurelia should be an easy prize to deliver. But the closer they got to the southern border, the more the world twists around them. Fires dance to her command, wild predators bow to her will, and Kaelen is haunted by prophetic dreams that chip away at his cold, mercenary armor.

Terrified that the dangerous, ethereal princess has cast a literal love spell over his mind, Kaelen fights the suffocating pull between them. But when a brutal betrayal forces him to choose between a mountain of gold or saving Aurelia from the burning pyre, the hunter must make a choice, deliver his prize to a tyrant, or unleash the berserker within to protect the woman who stole his soul.

This is a dark, high stakes Viking fantasy romance featuring a gruff, fiercely protective hero, a powerful secret witch princess, a forced proximity journey, and a slow burn, enemies-to-lovers romance where a captor trades his mercenary life for a crown.