Novels by Cumfort

Aria's POV Riven pushed the door open and stood aside. Marta came in the way she always did, like the room had been expecting her, her basket over one arm and a bowl of steaming water balanced in her other hand. She took one look at Olive and set everything down on the table without a word. “I’ll leave you ladies to it,” Riven said quietly. He caught my eye briefly before he pulled the door closed. Something passed between us. Not words, just the particular look of someone putting everything they wanted to say in a place they’d come back to later. The latch clicked. Marta was already moving. “Chair closer to the light,” she said to me. I shifted it without being asked. She pulled a second stool up behind Olive and sat, dipping a clean cloth into the steaming water, wringing it out with practiced hands. “I need to take what’s left of this off,” she said to Olive. Matter of fact. No softness in it but no harshness either. Olive nodded once. Marta peeled the torn fabric away f

“He’ll do it again,” Olive said finally.“I know.”“Next time he comes. If he finds anything else to correct. He’ll do it again and it’ll be worse because now he knows you’ll come out to stop it which means he can use me to get to you whenever he wants.”She wasn’t being dramatic. She was being precise. That was the thing about Olive — she never catastrophized, she just saw clearly and said what she saw.“Yes,” I said.“So what are we going to do about it.”Not a question. A statement with a question’s shape.I opened my mouth.The door opened and Riven leaned in. He looked at Marta’s empty place and then at us and read the room in about two seconds.“Am I interrupting?”“No,” Olive said. “Come in. We’re problem solving.”He came in and pulled a chair up and sat with his forearms on his knees, his eyes moving to Olive’s back briefly before coming to my face.“She’s right,” I said. “Cassius will use her against me every time he wants to remind me of my position. As long as Olive is the

Aria's POV Riven pushed the door open and stood aside.Marta came in the way she always did, like the room had been expecting her, her basket over one arm and a bowl of steaming water balanced in her other hand. She took one look at Olive and set everything down on the table without a word.“I’ll leave you ladies to it,” Riven said quietly.He caught my eye briefly before he pulled the door closed. Something passed between us. Not words, just the particular look of someone putting everything they wanted to say in a place they’d come back to later.The latch clicked.Marta was already moving.“Chair closer to the light,” she said to me. I shifted it without being asked. She pulled a second stool up behind Olive and sat, dipping a clean cloth into the steaming water, wringing it out with practiced hands.“I need to take what’s left of this off,” she said to Olive. Matter of fact. No softness in it but no harshness either.Olive nodded once.Marta peeled the torn fabric away from her ba

Aria's povTwo guards appeared around the side of the palace before Riven could pull the door shut behind us. Beta trainees, broad and blank-faced, moving with the mechanical purpose of men following orders they hadn’t been asked to consider. They walked past me like I wasn’t standing there and took Olive by both arms.“Get off her—”They didn’t even look at me.Olive didn’t struggle. That was the thing that broke something in my chest, she didn’t struggle because she already knew it would make it worse, because she had lived in this world long enough to know exactly how this went. She let them take her arms and walk her out into the yard and I stood there watching them wrap her in the rough burlap sack, binding it around her shoulders, and I couldn’t move.The wooden platform was already there as if someone had set it up while Cassius was inside drinking his tea.He stood behind it with his hands folded at the small of his back, looking out at the frost-dead garden like a man waiting

Aria's povBreakfast was warm and the morning was quiet and for exactly forty seven minutes I forgot that the rest of the world existed.Riven sat across from me at the small table by the window, his bandaged chest hidden under a loose shirt, his hair still disheveled from sleep. Olive had made eggs with herbs from the cold palace garden and left the pot of tea between us and had the good sense to busy herself in the kitchen without commentary.I was reaching for the teapot when we heard footsteps on the gravel path outside. The particular rhythm of someone who walked like authority was a garment they’d been wearing so long they forgot it was there.Olive appeared in the doorway so fast she must have been listening for it.Her eyes were wide. She looked at Riven. Then at me. Then at the door.“Elder Cassius,” she mouthed.The blood drained from my face.Riven was already on his feet. No hesitation, no discussion. He picked up his plate and his cup and moved. I was right behind him, gr

Aria’s POVI woke before him.The room was pale grey, that thin early light that couldn’t decide if it was dawn yet. Riven was warm at my back, his arm heavy across my waist, his breathing slow and even. The bandage on his chest had dried overnight. Still needed changing but not bleeding. I exhaled quietly.I started to slide out from under his arm.He pulled me back firmly.His arm tightened and he tucked me back against his chest like I was something that belonged there and pressed his lips to the back of my head without opening his eyes.“Where are you running off to,” he said. His voice was thick with sleep.“Marta. Your bandages need…”“Five minutes.”“Riven…”“Five minutes, Aria.”I softened against him before I’d decided to. His warmth was everywhere, his heartbeat steady against my spine, and the mate bond hummed low and content in my chest like something that had finally been fed. I told myself I would get up in five minutes. I would be responsible and practical and fetch Mar

Valerie I rushed into the bedroom like the room itself had betrayed me. The sheets were still a mess from the night before. Pillows scattered. The duvet half hanging off the bed like silent evidence of everything that had happened there. My stomach twisted violently. No… It can't be. My eyes burned as I grabbed the first piece of clothing I saw from the floor. It was crumpled and twisted like it had been carelessly discarded in the heat of the night. My chest tightened. Behind me, footsteps entered the room. “Hey…” “Don’t!” I snapped without turning around. My hands trembled as I tried to shake the wrinkles from my dress. “Don’t come any closer!” Silence fell for a second, but I could still feel his eyes on my back. I dropped the dress on the bed and began searching frantically again. “My bag… where’s my phone?” I muttered to myself, pushing aside a pillow and lifting the edge of the blanket. Panic clawed up my throat with every passing second. If I could just call Seb

Valerie I woke to sunlight streaming through unfamiliar curtains, my head pounding with the kind of hangover that suggested I’d done something monumentally stupid. For a moment, I just lay there, trying to piece together the fragments of last night. A quiet laugh escaped my lips as I buried my face in the pillow. “Finally,” I murmured to myself. After years of watching him stubbornly remain distant, he'd finally warm up to me, and all he took was a public humiliation and rejection from Chelsea. I stretched, feeling the pleasant ache in muscles I hadn’t used in… well, ever. My fingers clutched the edge of the duvet as the memory of his intensity flashed through my mind again. My heart fluttered wildly. I shifted under the covers and slowly lifted the edge of the duvet. I looked down and found myself in only my underwear, the rest of me deliciously naked beneath the duvet. “Oh my gosh…” Heat flooded my cheeks and a shy smile spread across my face as I pulled the duvet over my

Mi Amor Mia I set her down just long enough to start removing her dress. The fabric slid off her shoulders, down her body, and pooling at her feet. She wasn’t wearing a bra, just a scrap of lace that could generously be called underwear. “Fuck,” I breathed, taking her in. She was perfect. All curves and smooth skin and the kind of body that made men write poetry or start wars. Her breasts were full and perfect, nipples already hard from arousal or the cool air conditioning. Her waist dipped in before flaring to hips that I wanted to grip while I… She reached for me again, and I caught her wrists, pinning them above her head with one hand. Her eyes went wide, pupils dilated with lust and alcohol, and I saw her breath catch. “My turn,” I said, my voice coming out rougher than intended. I kissed down her neck, her collarbone, taking my time despite the urgency screaming through my veins. When I reached her breasts, I took one nipple into my mouth and sucked hard. She arched against

Mi Amor Mia The Grand Lumière Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina had become something of a second home over the past three days. I’d checked in after attending the remembrance ceremony for my adoptive parents, Theodore and Meredith Foster. Five years since they’d fallen in battle, and the pain hadn’t dulled. If anything, it had sharpened into something cold and permanent that lived in my chest. I was barely eight years old when my birth parents shipped me off like defective merchandise to live with my aunt and her family in Ironwood Pack. My uncle-in-law, who was a strong warrior, had seen potential instead of problems like my birth parents had. “We’ll teach you how to win,” he’d told me on my first day in Ironwood territory. And he had. For fifteen years, he and his wife had given me everything my birth parents never could. They’d trained me, turning my wild, untamed energy into something deadly and precise. And I grew into a warrior, a leader, and someone who commanded respe

“I object,” Sebastian said, his voice carrying across the suddenly silent ballroom. “Chelsea, please. Don’t do this.”The look on Chelsea’s face wasn’t shock or confusion or even anger. It was annoyance. Like Sebastian was a mild inconvenience, a pest that had shown up at her perfect wedding and needed to be dealt with quickly.“Sebastian,” she said, her voice tight and controlled. “What are you doing here?”“I’m fighting for you.” He started walking down the aisle, and I felt my feet move to follow him even though every instinct screamed at me to run in the opposite direction. “I’m fighting for us, isn't that why you sent me the invite? Chelsea, you can’t marry him. You love me. I know you do. We’re meant to be together.”“We’re not meant to be anything,” Chelsea said coldly. The warmth from moments ago, the happiness that had radiated from her as she walked down the aisle, was completely gone. Now she just looked disgusted. “You need to leave.”“Not without you,” Sebastian said

ValerieThe knock on my door came exactly when I knew it would. I'd been going back and forth with Sebastian over his plan to crash Chelsea’s wedding. When he wouldn't listen, I’d actually practiced ignoring him over the past three weeks, letting his calls go to voicemail, responding to his texts with single words or not at all. It was pathetic how much effort it took to create even that small distance between us, because of how every ignored message felt like denying myself oxygen.But the knocking at my door persisted, and I knew Sebastian well enough to know he’d just keep at it until I gave in. Finally, I opened the door.Sebastian looked like hell. His hair was disheveled, his eyes red-rimmed and wild, his usual careful composure completely shattered. He pushed past me into my apartment without waiting for an invitation, pacing my small living room like a caged animal.“I’m going to do it,” he announced, spinning to face me with manic energy radiating off him in waves. “I’m