She's an assassin who doesn't want anyone. He's fae royalty who can't stop wanting her. The bond between them doesn't care what either of them planned.
Rae doesn't need people. She needs shadows, takeout Chinese food, and the particular anonymity of a life built to keep everyone at arm's length - because the last time someone got close enough to have leverage over her, she spent a year in a cellar learning what her own magic tasted like just to survive. She is the Wraith of the Shadow District: a shadow-vampire hybrid assassin the city fears and nobody actually knows. That's exactly how she likes it.
Then she smells Darius Scorch's blood across a crowded room, and eleven years of careful, deliberate solitude stop mattering.
Darius is fae - powerful, magnetic, marked head to shoulder in the bargains he's made with half the city - and his magic touches everyone in a room except her. That should have been the first sign. Instead it's the reason neither of them can walk away: a fated bond neither one asked for, refusing to be ignored, pulling an assassin who trusts no one toward a fae who's never had anyone refuse to be charmed by him.
One reckless rooftop bargain turns into a mark that isn't what either of them expects. And as the bond deepens whether they fight it or not, Rae and Darius have to decide if two people built by very different kinds of survival can actually build something real - or if the thing that finally caught up to the Wraith is the one thing she can't outrun.
A fated-mate paranormal romance about an assassin who never wanted a soulmate, a fae who refused to take no for an answer, and a bond that had other plans all along.
Perfect for readers who love reluctant fated mates, morally gray assassin heroines, possessive fae love interests, found-family healing, and slow-burn bonds that turn scorching once they stop fighting it.
