How To Trust Again, After Your Party Betrays You
Leon was once the blade of a famed adventuring party-respected, deadly, and loyal to a fault. But loyalty means nothing in the face of betrayal. Left for dead after a mission gone wrong, sold out by those he once called friends, Leon crawled from the wreckage with a single lesson burned into his bones: trust gets you killed.
Now, he walks alone.
Silent. Efficient. Dangerous. He takes contracts that don't ask questions and leaves behind a trail of bodies and rumors. He's a ghost on the battlefield, a phantom in the night. People don't talk to Leon-they talk *about* him. And that's exactly how he likes it.
Until her.
Selene is fast-talking, sharp-eyed, and impossible to ignore. A rogue with her own scars and secrets, she crashes into Leon's life in a moonlit clearing full of dead Orcs and half-spoken gratitude. She doesn't scare easy, and she doesn't let go once she's got her claws in something interesting. And Leon-grudgingly, unwillingly, inexplicably-is *interesting*.
What starts as a reluctant alliance becomes a tense companionship. They hunt together. Eat together. Sleep back to back beneath the stars. But for all their closeness, something lingers unspoken between them-something fragile and dangerous.
Leon struggles to believe she's real. He watches her like she'll vanish, like everyone else did. Selene wants to understand him, but every time she reaches out, he slips just out of reach.
They don't realize they're falling in love-at first. They don't understand the way their silences start to feel comfortable, the way their banter hides concern. They don't see that the person they fear most to lose... is now standing beside them.
As old enemies resurface and ghosts from the past claw their way into the light, Leon and Selene must navigate not only the dangers around them-but the even more treacherous ground between their hearts.
Because sometimes the hardest battle isn't the one with blades.
It's the one with trust.
