He spent thirty-four years being chosen second. Then a vampire and a mountain went to war over who got to keep him first.
Jace Warren arrives at Black Pine Mountain Retreat hollowed out — divorced, broke, and running on bourbon and a brochure that promised renewal.
What he finds is Canyon Thibodeaux: six-three of scarred, silver-eyed wilderness guide with three rules and a voice that makes Jace’s pulse do things it never did in eleven years of marriage.
Don’t go into the forest alone after dark. Don’t question his decisions. Don’t ask what happens after midnight.
Jace breaks all three within twenty-four hours.
Because Canyon isn’t a man. He’s a three-hundred-year-old predator who has spent centuries refusing to love what he might destroy — and Jace’s heartbeat sings at a frequency Canyon’s blood recognized before the bus even stopped.
Now the wolves are watching. The mountain is whispering.
And a beautiful golden-haired rival has arrived with an offer, a warning, and a thousand-year-old master who collects rare things.
Jace Warren just became the rarest thing on the continent.
"Tell me to stop and I stop. Whatever else I am, that holds. Always."
