Her love is a weapon. It's killed before. And this time, she's sworn it won't happen again. Everyone at Blackthorn University thinks Kara is just another human girl juggling midterms, frat parties, and overpriced lattes. No one suspects the truth: that she's a Phoenix shifter, hiding in plain sight in a world ruled by werewolves and lycans. Even her closest friends don't know the fire simmering beneath her skin. But Kara isn't just hiding from them, she's hiding from fate. From the one thing she dreads more than anything else: her mate. She's done letting her love be a death sentence. She won't survive another loss. The scars she bears run deeper than flesh. So when Ryker, the dangerously magnetic lycan General, realizes Kara is his fated mate, she does exactly what she swore she would. She pushes him away. Again. And again. And again. But lycans don't walk away from their mates. And Ryker? He's dominant, possessive, and utterly relentless. He's a storm she can't outrun, a flame that won't go out. And every heated glance, every stolen moment, threatens to shatter the walls she's spent years building. As secrets ignite and her past begins to unravel, Kara must face the truth: Can she let herself love again, knowing it could destroy them both? Or will her lies-and the deadly curse entwined with her love-be the very thing that dooms them forever?

☆ SLOW BURN • DARK ROMANCE • NO SMUT ☆ 〜 They burned her kingdom to ash. Now she sleeps beneath the roof of its conqueror. Clarice, last princess of Sahradyn, was meant to die with her family. Instead, she was spared, dragged across enemy lines and locked in a tower by the man who shattered her world. King Caelen of Velmoras is cold, calculating, and ruthless. He offers her only one choice: become his concubine, or rot in the tower. Yet even as Clarice plots her survival, something stirs between them. A pull. A thread. The old texts call it the soul-thread: a bond said to bind enemies as often as lovers, rare and perilous, long dismissed as myth. But Clarice feels it now, in every glance, every silence, every clash of wills with the man she should hate above all others. As war brews on the borders and kingdoms begin to fracture, Clarice must decide whether the thread binding her to Caelen is a curse to be severed, or a weapon powerful enough to change the fate of empires.