Shadowbound Hearts

Elara Vance (22) exchanged one prison for another. After years of quiet endurance, the desperate night she fought back and killed her abusive father landed her in Blackwell Penitentiary. Out of place, fragile, and marked by trauma, she craves the anonymity of the stone walls-but anonymity is a luxury Blackwell doesn't afford.

The man who truly runs this world of steel and concrete is Asher 'Reyes' Thorne (27). He's an incarcerated crime lord, a kingpin serving multiple life sentences for calculated murders, whose influence flows like a cold current through every cell block. When Asher sees Elara-the quiet, defiant woman with fire in her eyes, jailed for justifiable violence-he doesn't see a victim; he sees a kindred spirit he intends to own.

Their relationship begins as a terrifying contract: Asher offers her absolute protection from the brutality of the guards and the cruelty of the inmates. In return, she owes him only her attention.

But in the confined, suffocating space of Blackwell, proximity is poison. Their tense, transactional meetings-whispered words across the common room, charged silence in the visiting booths-quickly ignite into a desperate, forbidden need. Elara begins to chip away at the monster, discovering the strategic intelligence and fierce loyalty beneath the calculated darkness. Asher, in turn, finds his iron control shattered by the fragile defiance of the one person he can't truly cage.

Shadowbound Hearts is the story of two souls defined by violence, finding dangerous comfort in the one place they are most exposed. In a place where freedom is impossible, they must decide if their forbidden love is the ultimate act of rebellion, or the final, irreversible surrender to the shadows.