Bloodline - Aeressa

"This isn't what belonging is supposed to feel like."

Dessa drove twelve hundred miles to Harrow Peak for a promise: a place to belong, a pack to call home, and a bond with a powerful Alpha who chose her above all others. The mountain town is beautiful, the people warm, and the life waiting for her seems carefully designed to feel like safety.

But safety has rules.

Every morning, there is tea-meant to "settle her instincts." Every conversation is gently guided. Every question receives an answer that feels complete... until it doesn't. And just beyond the torchlight, at the edge of the tree line, there is a woman no one wants to talk about.

When Dessa begins to notice the quiet inconsistencies-the locked doors, the rehearsed kindness, the way her thoughts feel just slightly out of reach-she realizes something is very wrong beneath the surface of Harrow Peak.

Then she finds the list.

Fourteen names. Only four marked bonded. The rest simply... gone.

As her instincts return and the truth sharpens into something impossible to ignore, Dessa is forced to confront a terrifying possibility: the life she was promised may be a carefully constructed cage-and the bond tying her to it may not be something she can survive.

With time running out before the irreversible bonding ceremony, Dessa must decide what she's willing to lose... and whether she's strong enough to run.

Because once the pack claims you, it doesn't let go.