A Guide Thicker Than Blood Chapter 1

Isidora Moretti always appeared to be a chess player, overseeing her family’s massive enterprise and grappling with the city’s menacing mafia clans. Her father orders her to marry the Vescari heir, and she discovers that theirs is not romance that would involve love-it is of power and obedience. Declining could be her last word so she thinks of an escape-engagement, a lie she is betting would work. She teams up with Dante Romano,the boy who beats her every time in school. He is good looking, cold, smart and has chased the same deal she wants. He often mocks her stubborn ways and never offers real help. Still, he oddly agrees to act as her fiancé. The agreement sees only looks, no real feeling involved. It may mean just a clever contract. Business agreement looks clean, no feelings. But Dante seizes Isidora at the engagement party and kisses her in front of the city. Everything becomes upside down. Rivalry and obsession — everything seems to blur. Others soon witness Isidora as Dante’s Achilles’ heel. In another world, weakness is a weapon. Maybe they both have this tilt, not just one side. With threats growing closer-in business offices ,back alleys, and mob hits, both find they need to stand up together. As they fight, they come closer and closer, and each threat reduces the boundaries they’ve constructed between them on their feelings. As danger narrows in on Isidora, Dante’s left to contemplate the sacrifices he’ll make just to keep her safe. He’ll do anything he can to protect her, to make her his, even if it’s damaging everything in his path. In the end, the promises they’ve made, no matter how unserious, appear to be the only thing they can reasonably believe.

The night I found out, I almost fixed it. Almost. My assignment had been changed to Everglades Academy. Two thousand miles south. Swamp territory. Three omegas died there last year. I'd asked Kael to file my school preference. Silver Peak Academy. Together. The way we'd planned since we were twelve, lying in the snow making promises to the stars. Now the screen said Everglades. I called him immediately. He picked up on the second ring, relaxed as always. "Hey." "My assignment," I said. "It says Everglades." "Oh." Not guilt. Recalibration. "Lil came by while I was filing yours. She wanted to play a prank—switched it to Everglades for a laugh." He laughed. Light. Careless. "Deadline's tomorrow night. Just override it yourself. It takes thirty seconds." "If I hadn't checked—" "But you did check." That patience. "Fen. You always check everything. That's why she knew you'd catch it. It was just a joke." Just a joke. So my future was a punchline. My life, someone else's entertainment. I said nothing. I packed my gear. I left for the transport hub on departure day. Kael found me at the platform. His smile was gone. "I told you to override it. You didn't change it back?" "No."

As an ordinary wolf-girl, Scarlett Black is turning 17 the only thing she was worrying about was boys, friends and coming closer to her wolf awakening. Little did she know the next few years would change her life forever.

Yuri He wasn’t looking for anything pure or righteous. He’d never known tenderness, nor did he want to know. It didn’t fit with being Bratva. But when he met her, this tiny bundle of woman, he almost wished he were different. Something about her just appealed to a place deep inside him. A feeling he never realized was even there. She had reached down deep into his soul and taken a piece of him. For her, he almost wished he was different. Because now that he had tasted her he wouldn’t let her go. Raven She knew who he was and what he was but she never expected to be drawn to him. She had nothing to offer a man like him. He was one man she never should have met, let alone been allowed to taste. He was everything she’d ever dreamed of and so much more. She knew she should have walked away from him for her own sake. But if she did, she’d be nothing more than a shattered soul.

All Hailey has ever known is the quiet, peaceful life she's lived in her small town of Silver Creek. But without warning, all that is about to change in the blink of an eye and life as she knows it is about to take a big turn. - Trey is a troubled man, haunted by his past and all he lives for now are the dangerous assignments he deals with every now and again. Currently, that assignment includes the daughter of an old time family friend. He has to protect her at all cost from the Leviathans and that shouldn't be hard. Except it is, as sparks begin to fly between them and feelings he's worked to keep buried starts to resurface again.

The demon wolf is afraid. There are dark creatures in the world, Zaira Silvera used to think that Gideon Demetrius was the darkest but there are those he fears and so should everyone else. There are secrets locked away in the past and we must unlock them in order to survive.

A dark romance, vividly grotesque, morally questionable, fate-defying, vampirically induced tale of happily ever after. With a little bit of dark humor, of course. ****** Tessa was one of the best assassins for hire, she lives for the thrill of the kill. The blood of her victims never tainted her subconscious. Until one day there was a threat to her life. She had three months to live. Tessa was doomed, she had tried everything and she knew she couldn't get out of her impending death. And what did Tessa do when she only had three months to live? She made a bucket list. She had been busy with her lust to kill that she didn't get to live a normal life, after all, she was a psychopath. Within weeks numbers were being crossed off from her list, from having tacos for breakfast, the morning after sex, and somewhere on the list was falling in love. Tessa wrote that as a joke, but deep down she wanted to feel it, she wanted to be able to love someone before she died. Fun fact: Psychopaths are almost incapable of truly loving another. Will Tessa manage to cross everything on her list? ***** The Angel of Death, that was what they called him. Nero Severus Xerxes was a vampire King who was among the oldest. Nero had taken lives, he had taken humans, vampires, and other supernatural beings. Yet none would challenge him. He was a possessive bastard, he was a ruler, a sadistic male who protects what was his. One day Nero was faced with the most beautiful woman with a strange view of death. She even had a bucket list. As a vampire King who had lived a thousand lives her careless attitude intrigued him. Will Nero fall for her?

Dmitri Volkov is the heir to one of New York’s most ruthless Russian mafia families—cold, controlled, and carrying scars no one is allowed to see. He has spent his life obeying blood oaths and burying every part of himself that doesn’t serve the syndicate. Love, especially love for a man, is a weakness he cannot afford. Ethan Moreau is a twenty-two-year-old French art student on scholarship at NYU—soft-spoken, openly gay, and painfully trusting. He came to New York to chase beauty in a city full of sharp edges, never expecting one of those edges to look back at him with ice-blue eyes. Their worlds collide by chance in Central Park. A fleeting encounter becomes stolen nights, desperate kisses in shadowed alleys, and whispered promises neither of them can keep. For Ethan, Dmitri is intensity and danger wrapped in tenderness he’s never known. For Dmitri, Ethan is the first crack of light in a life built on darkness—and the one thing that could destroy everything he’s been raised to protect. But secrets have weight. Dmitri’s family is closing in, a rival syndicate is circling, and every touch between them pulls the noose tighter. Misunderstandings fester into silence, jealousy into rage, and love into something that hurts to hold. When blood finally stains the canvas of their fragile world, Ethan will have to decide if he can love a man who was born to break hearts—and Dmitri will have to choose between the family that raised him and the only person who ever made him want to be free. In a city that devours the innocent, their story is a slow bleed of devotion, betrayal, and the kind of love that can ruin you completely.

“I, Marcus Steele, Alpha of the Silver Moon Pack, reject you, Luna Blackwood, as my mate and Luna.” Luna Blackwood’s wedding day becomes her nightmare when her Alpha publicly rejects her, declaring her too weak to bear his children. As her former best friend steps forward as his chosen replacement, Luna’s world crumbles. But what Marcus doesn’t know could destroy them all. Luna carries the last royal werewolf bloodline, a secret that makes her the most powerful supernatural being alive. Hidden from those who hunted her kind to extinction, she possesses abilities that could reshape their world forever. When mysterious Alpha Kai Nightshade reveals the conspiracy behind her rejection, Luna faces an impossible choice: remain broken and hidden, or embrace her destiny as the prophesied Lycan Queen who will unite all supernatural beings. From public humiliation to ultimate power, Luna’s transformation will prove that being rejected was the best thing that ever happened to her. But first, she has a war to win.

Some families run from their past. The Hawkins siblings hunt it down. Katherine Hawkins never asked to grow up in a world where demons were real and survival meant learning how to fight them. Alongside her brothers—William and Alex—she’s spent years tracking the things that live in the dark. But when an old exorcism tape surfaces and names from a forgotten case start resurfacing—Malcolm Smith, Matthew Conner, Gabriel Spender—their past begins catching up with them fast. Secrets their father kept buried are beginning to unravel. And the deeper they dig, the clearer it becomes: the monsters they’re chasing now are connected to something older, something unfinished… something personal. Now, with danger closing in and trust wearing thin, the Hawkins siblings must head straight into the heart of a mystery that could shatter everything they thought they knew—about their family, their history, and the war they were born into. Because sometimes, the real fight doesn’t start until after the ghosts come back.