Bloom || ONC 2023

Chase Evans works up the courage to talk to a cute stranger on the bus, only to discover he isn't human. And worse, he informs her that neither is she.

All this time her parents have tried to suppress who she really is. All this time she has denied her true nature.

But despite their best efforts, her powers begin to wake.

For better or worse.

*********

Seventeen-year-old Chase Evans has always been the "good girl". Straight A's, minding her manners, keeping chaste? All within a good day's work. Besides, her dads hold her to incredibly high standards and she can't let them down. After all, they did adopt her when no one else would.

But all this changes when Chase works up the courage to speak to an attractive guy on the city bus. A guy she can't stop thinking about. A guy that drives her absolutely INSANE with want.

The only problem is that she isn't supposed to see him. Because he's not even remotely human. And worse, because she can see him, this means she isn't human either.

Plunged into a world of creatures that go bump in the night, Chase teams up with this annoyingly proud but handsome stranger from the bus. She's desperate to finally understand who she really is and why her adoptive fathers have worked so hard to keep her a secret from the Seven Deadly Houses.

But what if the truth is too much for Chase to handle? And who the hell can she trust when both the Seven Deadly Houses and the Seven Houses of Virtue want her under their control?

||This book is an entry for the ONC2023 contest. My prompt is #20: You finally build enough courage to talk to that cute someone you see every day on the bus. Their face turns dark as they respond, "You shouldn't be able to see me."||