Your father didn’t just leave behind a debt; he left behind a target on your back. When the city’s most feared kingpin, Silas, sends his three most lethal shadows to collect his collateral, you expect a nightmare. Instead, you find yourself caught in the crosshairs of three men living double lives.
Moving to a town where the most popular hobby is "staring ominously at the treeline" should have been your first red flag. But you were too busy unpacking boxes and trying to survive a chemistry syllabus that seemed designed by a madman to notice the local peculiarities. That is, until Stiles Stilinski tackles you into the dirt to save you from something that definitely wasn't a mountain lion. Now, you’re stuck with a crash course in lycanthropy, a permanent seat in a beat-up blue Jeep, and a boy who keeps showing up at your window with research files and a baseball bat. Stiles says he has a plan to keep you alive, but in Beacon Hills, plans have a habit of bleeding
England, 1818. When Miss Y/N is left without financial security following her father’s unexpected death, she is forced to confront a reality she was never prepared for: a future dictated not by affection, but by necessity. Thomas Ashford, newly appointed Duke of Blackwood, has inherited a title he never desired and responsibilities he is ill-equipped to manage. Bound by obligation and expectation, he requires a wife—not for love, but for function. Someone capable of navigating the social demands of the aristocracy so he may focus on the duties he understands. Their marriage is arranged with unsettling practicality. No courtship. No promises of romance. Only mutual benefit: stability for her family, and control over his fractured new world. But life within Ashford House does not remain confined to contracts and expectations. In the quiet routines of shared meals, unspoken understandings, and moments of reluctant consideration, the boundaries of their arrangement begin to blur. What was meant to be a transaction slowly becomes something neither of them intended—and neither is prepared to name. In a world ruled by propriety, reputation, and restraint, even the smallest shift in feeling may prove the most dangerous change of all.