The Ward He Swore to Protect

He swore to protect her when her parents died. He never planned on wanting the woman she became.

Rhett Calder has guarded Marigold Vantree from a careful, aching distance for twenty years- a blood oath sworn to her dying father, a promise he's kept by staying just far enough away to never once risk breaking it. Now she's home, all grown up, and burying the grandmother who raised her, and the wall he spent two decades building is cracking with every look she gives him.

Her parents didn't die in a mining accident. Marigold has always known the official story never quite fit, and the truth waiting for her in Widderfell is older, hungrier, and far more dangerous than a cold case. Something ancient sleeps beneath the mountain, bound there generations ago by a bargain her family helped keep. It's been waking up since the moment she came home. And the man who's spent twenty years teaching himself not to want her is the only one standing between Marigold and the debt someone else is determined to collect using her.

Rhett has broken every rule that mattered to keep his distance. He's not sure he can survive breaking the one rule that matters most: never let himself have her. But a danger this old doesn't care about sacred laws, and neither, Rhett is starting to realize, does he — not anymore.

Some oaths are made to protect. This one might be the only thing left that can save them both.

If you love age-gap romance, forbidden love, slow-burn tension that finally snaps, and a small-town paranormal world with real teeth, you'll tear through Rhett and Marigold's story in one sitting. One-click now and fall for the wolf who swore he'd never want what he was sworn to protect.