Cordelia Rain is eighteen, terrified of the world beyond her house, and too afraid to live like everyone else. She doesn't have a job. She doesn't drive. She barely speaks above a whisper. The outside world feels too loud, too fast, too cruel-and she has no idea how to survive in it. Then she meets Cedric Dax. Twenty-three, German, and impossibly precise, Cedric is calm where the world is chaotic, confident where she feels weak, and unnervingly attentive to her every movement. He notices everything-the bus she takes every night, the way she flinches when strangers speak to her, the little routines she doesn't even realize she follows. He doesn't rush her. He doesn't judge her fear. He simply steps into her life... and makes it smaller, quieter, safer. He walks her home. Guides her through the city. Handles the things that terrify her-strangers, responsibilities, the outside world-until she begins to rely on him completely. Every step, every gesture, every decision seems easier with him nearby. But Cedric's love isn't normal. It isn't gentle. It isn't entirely safe. His devotion is obsessive. His protection is controlling. And his soft spot-the only place he truly softens-is reserved for her alone. The most terrifying part? Cordelia doesn't know if she wants him to stop. A dark, obsessive romance about fear, dependence, and the fine line between love and possession, where the world outside is too loud-and the one inside his control feels impossibly safe.

18-year-old Lena runs away from home after years of neglect, hunger, and fear caused by her mother's worsening drug addiction. With nowhere safe to go, Lena falls in with a group of older teens who survive by robbing convenience stores, pickpocketing strangers, and dealing drugs. The violence and cruelty of their actions horrify her, but survival leaves her no room to refuse. Every night she tells herself it's temporary-just until she figures something out. One night during a drug deal gone wrong, Lena comes face to face with her own mother, shaking, desperate, and buying drugs from the very crew Lena now runs with. Neither recognizes the other at first. When realization hits, Lena freezes-her worst fear confirmed: she didn't escape her past; she became part of it. Her mother doesn't even notice the resemblance, too consumed by addiction. On the streets, Lena meets Eli, a quiet, guarded boy her age who sleeps in abandoned buildings and avoids the gangs. He tells her he ran away from his father, a violent man who nearly killed him in a drunken rage. Eli is different-gentle, protective, and deeply observant. He helps Lena see moments of humanity in a world that feels irredeemable, Love, Fear, crime, secrets, will this new beginning, become the end of her?