Novels by Author mae

Serena Vale had never been particularly skilled at lying. Until now. Now, lies sat beneath her tongue like sugar—necessary and sharp, coating each word she spoke with the taste of something hidden. She’d become fluent in the art of silence. Of passing by guards without being noticed. Of slipping into restricted halls with quiet, calculated grace. She was no longer just Matteo De Luca’s captive bride. She was her father’s daughter. And her mother’s, too. Even if she didn’t want to be. --- The investigation began two nights after Matteo gave her the truth. He’d gone to Naples to meet with southern allies. She was left behind, for her safety. But Serena had no interest in safety. She wanted answers. She waited until the guards shifted on rotation. Mara had retired early, and the eastern wing of the estate—where all physical archives and security tapes were stored—was left quiet, humming beneath soft amber lights. She picked the lock with a hairpin. She became

The past had teeth.Serena Vale had felt its bite before—first in the bloodline she never asked for, then in the bullets fired through glass in a garden meant for beauty. But nothing prepared her for the ache that bloomed in her chest the moment she opened the envelope Mara left on her table.It was cream-colored.Unmarked.Inside: a photograph.A woman. Young. Regal. Auburn hair spilling across her shoulders like fire, eyes fierce and familiar.Serena’s breath caught.Her mother.There was no name written on the back. No message. No date. But Serena would’ve recognized that face anywhere—because it was hers, twenty years earlier.But this version wore something Serena never had.Power.And behind her, in the photo’s blurred corner, stood a man Serena did recognize.Arturo Bianchi.Her heart slammed in her chest, threatening to jump out.---She didn’t wait for guards. Didn’t wait for Mara. She walked straight down the corridor, wrapped in a storm of questions, and headed for the one

The bruises on Serena’s palms had already begun to fade, but the ache in her chest hadn’t.It wasn’t the gunfire. It wasn’t the blood or the knowledge that someone had tried to kill her.It was Matteo.The way he’d looked at her when she was bleeding.The way he’d killed for her—again.And the way, even now, as she sat in the warm light of the library, she couldn’t stop thinking about the warmth of his hand against hers, or the way his voice had lowered when he said he’d burn the estate down before letting harm touch her again.He was not a good man.But he was a dangerous one who was beginning to make her feel something she didn’t know how to name.And that made her terrified.---She didn’t expect to see him that night.Dinner had passed in silence—delivered by Mara with no explanation. She thought he might have gone to handle the fallout from the attack. Maybe interrogate another informant. Maybe bury another body.But just after midnight, the door to her chambers opened without wa

Serena didn’t like being followed.Not by the guards who watched her every movement like she was some rare animal about to bite, not by Mara’s silent glances during breakfast, and not by the flickers of shadows she kept seeing from the corner of her eye—too fast to be real, too frequent to ignore.It had started the day after the chapel. The day after Matteo had finally told her the truth—or at least part of it.Since then, something had shifted.Not just between them.In the house itself.---It was nearly dusk when she stepped into the greenhouse. She hadn’t planned to go there—her feet simply moved on instinct, away from the corridors buzzing with hushed voices and increasingly tense guards.The greenhouse was at the edge of the estate grounds, surrounded by high walls and iron fencing wrapped in thorned vines. Inside, the air was dense with heat and the perfume of blooming night roses—black-red petals so dark they almost looked bruised.She brushed her fingers against one of them.

The storm didn’t stop.By morning, the skies had sunk into an unbroken gray, heavy with rain and silence. Serena sat by the window in her chambers, fingers resting on the old leather ledger. She hadn't slept. Not after what she’d read.“Matteo owes me a life.”The words refused to fade from her mind.They weren’t just ominous. They were personal. Raw. Handwritten by her father. A message never meant for her—but left behind like a ghost. And Matteo… he had lied. Again.Not directly. But in that carefully controlled way he spoke, always balancing threat and charm, power and restraint. Every answer he gave was an edited truth. Every silence, a blade held to the throat of something deeper.She needed to confront him.But not as a girl desperate for answers.As a woman with a right to know the truth.---She found him where she didn’t expect him to be—in the chapel.The villa’s private cathedral sat on a hill behind the eastern courtyard, veiled in ivy and silence. She’d only seen it from

The De Luca estate never slept. Even in the depths of night, shadows moved like sentries—men in black suits murmuring into radios, vehicles gliding silently along gravel paths, lights shifting behind tinted glass. Power didn’t rest, especially not here.And Serena Vale was beginning to learn that power had a scent. Sharp. Clean. Cold as steel. It clung to every surface of the villa, woven into the silk sheets she slept on and the wine she wouldn’t drink. Power draped itself over Matteo De Luca like a second skin—and tried to coil itself around her like a noose.She didn’t let it.Not in the three days since she’d woken up a captive bride, not even after Mara explained the legal trap she’d been signed into. Marriage documents. Fingerprints. Surveillance footage staged to show her walking into the private marriage suite under her own will. It was airtight.But Serena wasn’t stupid.There were holes in Matteo’s story. She could feel them. And tonight, she intended to find one.---The li

Serena Vale had never been particularly skilled at lying. Until now. Now, lies sat beneath her tongue like sugar—necessary and sharp, coating each word she spoke with the taste of something hidden. She’d become fluent in the art of silence. Of passing by guards without being noticed. Of slipping into restricted halls with quiet, calculated grace. She was no longer just Matteo De Luca’s captive bride. She was her father’s daughter. And her mother’s, too. Even if she didn’t want to be. --- The investigation began two nights after Matteo gave her the truth. He’d gone to Naples to meet with southern allies. She was left behind, for her safety. But Serena had no interest in safety. She wanted answers. She waited until the guards shifted on rotation. Mara had retired early, and the eastern wing of the estate—where all physical archives and security tapes were stored—was left quiet, humming beneath soft amber lights. She picked the lock with a hairpin.She became skilled at it w

The next morning, the Hollow woke with a wind that screamed.It wasn’t the playful rustling of leaves or the occasional howl of the distant wilds. This wind was angry, it sounded like a thousand voices howling through a shattered veil. It clawed at the trees, bending them to its will, and made the sanctuary stones hum with unease.Kaelen stirred first, muscles tense beneath his fur-lined cloak. He rose soundlessly from the moss-covered floor, eyes already narrowing at the stones surrounding the sanctuary’s boundary. Usually, they glowed with a soft silver light—like moonlight reflected on calm water. But now… now they bled red, a pulsing crimson like an open wound, he didn't like the feeling at all.He didn’t need a seer’s gift to know something was wrong.Lyra emerged moments later, breath fogging in the frost-bitten air, her boots crunching lightly on the frost-laced earth. Her hair was tangled, her eyes wild from sleep, but the beast within her was already stirring threatening to r

The morning in the Hollow did not come with sunlight. It came with silence.Not the kind Lyra had grown used to in the Shadow Ridge Pack, the silence of fear and submission—but a heavy, reverent quiet. Sacred. The fire in the den had burned down to embers, and frost glazed the edges of the roots that wove into the ceiling. Still, Lyra felt warmer than she had in days. Not because of the fur Kaelen had draped over her shoulders, but because something inside her had shifted.She was no longer hunted prey. Not just a cursed orphan.She was becoming something else. Something dangerous.Kaelen stood outside the den when she emerged. His coat was off, muscles taut and gleaming with sweat as he struck a heavy staff against a carved stone pillar, over and over, each strike sending sharp echoes through the glade. The rhythm was intentional—measured, almost meditative.Lyra leaned against the tree, watching."You don’t sleep?" she asked.Kaelen didn’t stop. "Didn’t need to. The Hollow restores

“I choose fight.”The words left Lyra’s lips with a clarity that settled into the ground like a spell.Kaelen’s eyes didn’t flicker. They locked on hers, the fire between them crackling with shared purpose. For the first time since the blood moon, Lyra didn’t feel like she was surviving — she felt like she was choosing.The corner of Kaelen’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close. “Then let’s make you unstoppable.”He turned toward the body of the rogue whose neck she’d broken only moments earlier. Blood pooled in the snow beneath its broken spine. Without hesitation, Kaelen knelt, pulled a pouch from his belt, and scattered a dark, metallic powder over the corpse.Lyra watched with unease as smoke curled up from the powder, hissing like it was alive.“What is that?” she asked, her breath ghosting in the air.“Ritual ash,” Kaelen replied, voice low. “It masks scent, corrupts memory. When they find this body, they’ll smell your blood, your wolf, even your shift signature. It’ll

The first thing Lyra noticed after the shift was the cold.Not the bite of the winter air—but the absence of pain. For the first time in her life, her bones didn’t ache, her skin didn’t bruise at the lightest touch, and her breath didn’t feel like a silent scream trapped in her throat.She stood in the snow, breath heaving, her paws—my paws—sinking slightly into the frozen ground. Her wolf was massive, sleek as obsidian, the silver-blue in her eyes glowing like a star caught in shadow.It had worked.The seal was broken.And the wolf was real.I’m here, the voice whispered inside her mind. It didn’t sound like her. It sounded like wind sharpened into a blade. Cold, calm, feral. You are not alone anymore.Lyra didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the tears freeze on her fur. They weren’t from pain. Not this time.Freedom had a taste. It was raw and wild and unfamiliar. It tasted like air untainted by blood.Kaelen stood just beyond the tree line, eyes trained on her, watching.

The scent of ash and frost clung to Lyra’s skin as she drifted between waking and oblivion. She was vaguely aware of movement—arms around her, powerful and warm, carrying her like something precious.She didn’t understand.The last thing she remembered was the way the earth had split beneath her soul, the way her skin had burned with a light that wasn’t silver, and the man whose eyes had pierced through everything.Alpha Kaelen.They said he was cursed. That he’d been exiled from his pack and had disappeared into the wastelands, haunted by the ghosts of wolves he’d slaughtered.But if he was a ghost, then why did his touch feel so real?---Kaelen’s jaw was tight as he moved through the woods, Lyra pressed against his chest, limp but breathing. Her scent tangled around his mind like a binding spell—lavender, pine, and something darker. Like old magic. The kind the Moon Goddess buried and prayed no one would ever find.But she had found it.Or it had found her.Her skin had glowed with