A Trace of Hope (a Keri Locke Mystery--Book #5)

Being the middle Child ignored and neglected, rejected by family and injured, She receives her wolf early and realizes she is a new type of hybrid but doesn't know how to control her power, she leaves her pack with her best friend and grandmother to go to her grandfather's clan to learn what she is and how to handle her power and then with her fated mate, her best friend and her fated mate little brother and grandmother start their own pack.

“You don’t run from me, Ira,” Ruel growls, rough hand caging me against the wall.
“Watch me,” I snap.
His icy gaze flicks to my lips.
I know I’m trapped.
I’m a stray fighting to keep orphans alive—until I’m caught and chained to the North’s most feared Alpha.
Xuaru Ruel is war-forged, ice-cold, bound to a king who owns him.
He was born to kill my kind. Instead, he keeps me close.
Calls it discipline. Lies.
The fated mate bond ignited, and his wolf won’t let me go.
He fights the pull, yet always comes back.
If he learns my secret…
He’ll choose: hand me to his king…
Or burn the world to claim me as his.

"Show off." I scoffed, the words coming out airy.
"You're fucking killing me, Laura." He groaned.
There were several ways to celebrate her best friend getting hitched off to the man of her dreams. Having sex with a stranger wasn't one of them—at least Laura didn't plan on it. But when an opportunity presents itself in the form of an incredibly sexy tattooed man, who was she to say no?
Laura doesn't do relationships, or dates, or anything related to the subject. She is strictly a one-night-only type of girl and doesn't go back on that rule no matter what.
So what happens when this sexy stranger Laura hooked up with, turns out to be a close friend of Jack—her best friend's husband—who had actually been at the party that day, and now wants more than one night from her?
A game of wills ensues.
Will Laura succumb to the sexy stranger under his top-notch seduction skills?
Or will she go the extra mile and beat him at his own game?

“Was she the one who sent you?” he growled “Did she pay you to whore yourself to me?”
“Please… Nick, wait.” He pulled out, thrusted back in. “How much? Twenty thousand? Fifty? Hundred?” With every question, he thrust harder and harder. My neurons are frying with the confusing feeling in my brain. Torn between pleasure, fear, and panic. I couldn't utter a single sentence to save my life.

His cold eyes pinned me in place while he plundered my body with deep thrusts, which only added to my confusion. My dumb body mistook the mixed signals, my pussy becoming even wetter than before.

“I hope she'd paid you well, because I'm going to fuck you all night long, hard,” he growled. “Sleep, then do it all over again. I want to feel you come for me, Andrea, want to feel you squeeze my cock, milking me.

Begging for me to give you the high only I can, I'm going to fucked you until I fuck all my wife's money's worth, I want you to remember how hard I took you while you're meeting her.” I sobbed, moaned, and tried to scramble out under him.

“No, please…Nick, let….let me explain.” Nick abruptly pulled out. His eyes were cold but hooded.


Andrea was sent to take down billionaire magnate Nicklaus Montgomery.
Her mission was simple: get close, seduce him, find the proof, and disappear. Instead Andrea finds herself exposed—cornered into signing a contract that binds her to Nicklaus's side as his lover. Now she’s living in his world of wealth, danger, and secrets… and the deeper she falls into his bed, the harder it becomes to remember what side she's on.

I was born the year the Rift opened. They said I would close it. They were wrong about so many things.

My name is Mia, and everything I touch is dying.

The flowers beneath my mother's window turned black overnight. The herbs I gathered at dawn rotted in my hands. When the court wizard finally told me the truth—that someone cursed me, that my presence would kill everyone I love—I realized the prophecy everyone believed was never meant to save the kingdom. It was meant to destroy me.

So I ran. Not to fulfill some destiny, but to survive it.

Now I'm traveling with a hunter who lost his companions to the same curse I carry, chasing fragments of a prophecy the Fae sing differently. An elf took a baby from the palace the night I was born. And somewhere between the lies I've been told and the truth I'm hunting, I'm starting to suspect: What if I'm not the princess from the prophecy at all?

Falling for my boyfriend's Navy brother.

"What is wrong with me?

Why does being near him make my skin feel too tight, like I’m wearing a sweater two sizes too small?

It’s just newness, I tell myself firmly.

He’s my boyfirend’s brother.

This is Tyler’s family.

I’m not going to let one cold stare undo that.

**

As a ballet dancer, My life looks perfect—scholarship, starring role, sweet boyfriend Tyler. Until Tyler shows his true colors and his older brother, Asher, comes home.

Asher is a Navy veteran with battle scars and zero patience. He calls me "princess" like it's an insult. I can't stand him.

When My ankle injury forces her to recover at the family lake house, I‘m stuck with both brothers. What starts as mutual hatred slowly turns into something forbidden.

I'm falling for my boyfriend's brother.

**

I hate girls like her.

Entitled.

Delicate.

And still—

Still.

The image of her standing in the doorway, clutching her cardigan tighter around her narrow shoulders, trying to smile through the awkwardness, won’t leave me.

Neither does the memory of Tyler. Leaving her here without a second thought.

I shouldn’t care.

I don’t care.

It’s not my problem if Tyler’s an idiot.

It’s not my business if some spoiled little princess has to walk home in the dark.

I’m not here to rescue anyone.

Especially not her.

Especially not someone like her.

She’s not my problem.

And I’ll make damn sure she never becomes one.

But when my eyes fell on her lips, I wanted her to be mine.

Meadow never imagined her life could change so quickly, until Luna Amber appeared at her door with an offer no ordinary girl would refuse: marriage to her son, the Alpha of the pack.

It sounded like fate. Like rescue. Like the moment the universe finally chose her.

Even with the suspicion clinging to the proposal, Meadow let herself believe it. She stepped into the marriage blindly, hoping love would fill the quiet spaces of her mute, colourless life.

But the truth comes fast, and cruel.

The Alpha never asked for her. Never wanted her. Luna Amber arranged everything without his consent, driven by selfish motives Meadow couldn’t see until it was too late. What should have been tender and sacred becomes a cage, and Meadow is trapped in a nightmare she can’t wake from.

I could feel him standing in front of me. He grabbed my legs and in one single move thrusted into me.
“Fuckkk”, I couldn’t help but scream.
“You need to learn to be obedient” he said as he kept thrusting into me. When I felt his hands on my clit my body shook.
“Asher please, it’s too much”.
“No. if I really wanted to punish you, I would give you all of me”, he said against my ears and my entire body froze. Suddenly he moved and I was standing again. This man was insane.
I felt him behind me. “Ten Lashes for your disobedience”, he said
“Asher please”,
“No”. His voice was cold and void of any emotion.

Asher was what I wanted , what I truly craved until it was too late. An orphan should never fall in love with someone out of their reach. I thought loving him was the right thing to do until he revealed his true identity and Ruined me. I was ruined for everyone one else . I could still feel his touch, it was as if it was etched into my skin. I tired to avoid him but fate wouldn't let it happen.
The Sterling's were the most powerful in Havenwood and Dorian Sterling was off limits.

As an orphan finding out you still have people looking for you is hard to take but when it turns out to be people of wealth and standing I took the other road and ran, but running led me right back to the place I was avoiding and the person I was avoiding.
Asher and Dorling Sterling one and the same. When his first love shows up and along with everyone that has set out to ruin me, I prayed that he could protect me.

Isabella believes that her boyfriend can change is way again and be the man she fell in love with. But when she get kidnapped because of him, and he is to busy with another lady instead of saving her. She understands she is better off without him. She gets saved by her boyfriend cousin who has loved Isabella for years. Just stayed in the shadows. Will Alexander help her heal from the broken heart his ignorant cousin leaves her with, and then win her heart?

“I am Maya Blackthorn, the first daughter of Alpha Darius of the Ashbourne Pack, and I am damned… damned by the Moon Goddess. And destined to bring kingdoms to their knees.”
Cast out by her pack for being wolfless and plagued by uncontrollable heat, Maya has spent her life surviving humiliation in silence.
Fate drags her into the path of Kael Draven, the ruthless Lycan King who claims her… only to reject her.
But Kael is not the only Alpha bound to her.
Finn, her childhood best friend and the rising Alpha, loves her with a devotion so fierce, he spends four years locked away in the most ruthless dungeon only to keep her safe.
Xander, a rogue wolf who can make even Alphas bow to his will, has waited centuries for her to be reborn, and he has no intention of losing her again.
Three Alphas.
Three claims.
One cursed destiny.
They called her wolfless. They thought she was weak. But she is done hiding, and this time, she's rewriting the rules.

“No, no, no,” she said, pointing at a platter. “If it’s called ‘Goth Girl French Toast,’ then it has to be black. I don’t care how you do it. Activated charcoal. Blackberries. Food coloring. Demon blood. Whatever.”

The head chef looked like he was silently praying for death.

I rushed forward. “Amara. Stop traumatizing these poor people.”

She spun around, delighted. “Sera! Good, you’re here. Taste this. It’s missing despair.”

The chef’s face morphed into existential crisis.

I grabbed her arm. “Put the spatula down.”

“But—”

“Down.”

With exaggerated offense, she dropped the spatula and muttered, “Fine. But if no one here has artistic vision, that’s not my fault.”

She went undercover to expose a mafia empire.
He offered her thirty nights to save her life.

When investigative journalist Seraphine Vale steps into the glittering underworld ruled by billionaire crime lord Dante Vescari, she thinks she’s chasing a story about missing women and corruption.
Instead, she uncovers a secret older than blood—an empire built on fire, sin, and dragons.

Bound to Dante by a forbidden pact, Seraphine finds herself caught between fear and desire, truth and temptation.
Each night pulls her deeper into his world of power, passion, and danger…
and closer to the monster hiding beneath his perfect skin.

Thirty nights. One bond.
And a love that might just burn the world to ash.

Bodhi Singh wanted the quiet dorm.
The safe dorm.

The boring dorm.

What he got instead was Maverick Hale campus menace, underground street fighter, walking bruise factory, and the last person he ever wanted anywhere near his neat piles of textbooks.
Maverick doesn't care that he's broke.

or in arrears with his fees.

Or one wrong move away from getting kicked out.
He’ll graduate out of sheer spite—he refuses to give his estranged, homophobic father the satisfaction of calling him a failure.
He definitely doesn’t care about the determined, overachieving half-Indian nursing major he’s stuck sharing a room with…
Until Bodhi becomes the only thing keeping him in school.

His tutor.

His healer.
His undoing.

And when Maverick stumbles into their dorm one night with a knife wound and Bodhi stitches him up with shaking hands and a breaking heart…

no longer can that be denied.

Opposites weren’t supposed to collide this way.

But they did.

Hard.