The Tidebound Heart: He Chose the Sea. Then the Sea Chose Him. Romance Fantasy

Marek Calder has spent years choosing the ocean over the risk of heartbreak. Then something in a hidden lagoon starts filling his nets—and one morning, it looks back at him.

Nerio is beautiful, sharp-toothed, tentacled, and impossible. He should be the kind of secret Marek sails away from. Instead, a cautious encounter becomes a kiss, a kiss becomes another visit, and soon Marek is measuring his days by the moment he can return to the water.

Far from the eyes of his tiny coastal town, the two lonely men build a language of their own through stories, music, touch, and stolen hours beneath the waves. The attraction between them is undeniable. So is the problem: Marek belongs on land, Nerio belongs to the sea, and the approaching tourist season will make their hidden refuge harder to protect.

Marek has spent most of his life believing solitude is safer than loving someone he could lose. But Nerio is hiding something about his kind—and about what it means to choose someone forever.

The deeper Marek falls, the less impossible Nerio feels. And when the sea asks him to risk the heart he has guarded for years, Marek must decide whether love is worth stepping beyond everything he thought a life could be.