Norse Halls

I spent my whole life trying to be invisible. I was the girl who was too broken to survive high school, the one who tried to end it all after they had filmed themselves cutting off her hair. The girl who had to be homeschooled for eight years. So when my parents forced me into one final year of university, I made a deal with them. I'll give it a try, if I hated it, I'd disappear forever. I walked those halls with my head down, drowning in oversized clothes, praying no one would notice me. But then I met him. Dreyven. The one person who pushed me so far that I lost control and slapped him. ​But what I didn't know was that he had three identical brothers, and I had just started a war. ​They planned their revenge together: make me fall in love with them, one by one, thinking they were the same person, then break my heart and leave me destroyed. ​I gave him everything: my trust, my body, my heart. ​I thought I was falling in love with one perfect man who kept surprising me with new facets of his personality. ​When I discovered the truth, it shattered me. They were four brothers who had used me for revenge, four men who had passed me between them like a toy, four liars who had laughed while I fell apart. ​So disappeared. ​Five years later, I wasn't that broken girl anymore. I had built an empire. I knew their secrets. I knew their weaknesses. ​And I was going to destroy them the way they destroyed me. ​But revenge had a price and I had to learn that, ​some love stories are simple. But ours was written in scars, secrets, and second chances.

I never should have let my mother hold my future hostage. She paid my tuition with his father’s money. Locked my birth certificate, my transcripts, every scrap of paper I need to survive in a safe I’ll never open. And the one thing I had left of my dad, his old watch, she dangled like a noose. Run, and I lose my education. Fight, and I lose the last piece of the man who actually loved me. So I moved into the Hunters’ mansion. Into the lair of the boy who spent years making my life hell. Chase Hunter. Six-foot-five of pure venom wrapped in muscle and money. The senior who cornered me in empty hallways, who whispered filth in my ear just to watch me flinch, who smiled that sharp, cruel smile every time I broke a little more. I thought graduation meant freedom from him. I was wrong. Now he’s my stepbrother. He hates that I’m here. Hates my mother for sinking her claws into his father. Hates me most of all, for breathing his air, for walking his halls, for daring to exist where he can reach me. But hate isn’t clean anymore. It’s tangled up in heat. In the way his grey eyes strip me bare every time they land on me, the way his hand closes around my throat, not to hurt, but to own. In the way he punishes me over his lap, in his car, against walls, until I’m shaking and soaked and furious at myself for wanting more. He calls me Little Lamb, I call him every name I can think of under my breath. How long until we stop fighting the deadly inferno raging between us and finally let it consume us both?

Deck the halls with daddy issues and scream "yes, Santa" until the neighbors complain. She sold herself to save her mother. He bought her to settle a score. Neither expected twelve days of captivity to feel like coming home. Ten years ago, Evangeline Rose fled Willow Creek and the cruel boy who made her life hell. Now she’s back with a new name, a new body, and one desperate choice: enter the town’s secret Christmas auction where wealthy men bid on willing women. When the hammer falls at five hundred thousand dollars, Eva expects a stranger. Instead, she gets Grayson Holt—her former tormentor, now a devastatingly dangerous man in a half-open Santa jacket who just bought twelve uninterrupted nights with the virgin he once swore no one would ever want. She should be terrified. He's the reason she hid in bathroom stalls and cried herself to sleep. But the first time he kisses her, his hands shake. The first time she fights back, he groans her name like a prayer. And somewhere between the firelight and the snow and the silk ribbons around her wrists, they both realize the ugly truth: He didn't buy her to break her. He bought her because he's been broken without her. The boy who spray-painted "fat ugly bitch" on her locker is the same man who falls to his knees in the snow on the last morning and begs her not to leave. The girl who swore she'd never forgive him is the same woman who has to choose: walk away free, or stay with the monster who finally admitted he's been in love with her since the day he made her cry. Eva spent a decade learning to hate Grayson Holt. Turns out she's been loving him the whole damn time.