Soraya was delivered to him in chains, the last living proof of a bloodline he’d just burned to the ground.
Soraya Hallowmere has one skill that’s kept her alive her whole life: the ability to disappear. Hide the fear. Hide the grief. Hide exactly what she is. It’s the only reason she survived the fall of her pack, and the only reason she might survive what comes next.
Because Kieran Ashguard has never once failed to sense a lie. Not from his council. Not from his enemies. Not from anyone who has ever stood in front of him and tried to hide something.
Until her.
For the first time in his life, the Alpha who conquered her home can’t read the girl he’s holding hostage and it terrifies him more than any lie ever could. He tells himself it’s a trap. He tells himself she’s dangerous. He tells himself keeping her close is strategy, not something else entirely.
But the bond between them is real, and it comes with a deadline. Under the next Blood Moon, he must claim her or renounce her forever, and either choice could cost him everything: his throne, his pack, his own certainty in a world he thought he understood completely.
Soraya isn’t just a hostage. She isn’t just a secret. And the closer Kieran gets to the truth of what she really is, the more he realizes the girl he conquered might be the only person who was ever honest with him at all.
A fated bond neither of them chose. A throne neither of them can afford to lose. And a truth that will burn everything down the moment it surfaces.
