Hidden Dragons

I married a man I met three days ago, and his first wife died in the house he brought me to.

Daphne Garlin has never left Florida, never dated, and never once chosen a thing for herself. She buries her grandmother, takes a job as a hotel heiress's assistant, and climbs a bell tower in Florence on her first free evening. A man stands at the top, past the safety nets, looking down.

Robert De Marco writes horror novels, owns an estate on the Maine coast, and lost his wife three months ago. He asks Daphne to dinner. He asks her to marry him the next night. He never mentions his two children, his two brothers, or why every window at Hallimore locks at sundown.

Robert is a dragon. So is Daphne. Her grandmother spent a lifetime hiding her from the vampires who hunt single dragons before a flight can form, and nobody ever told her what she was. Now the dead wife's portraits fill the sitting room, the dead wife's sister runs the nursery, the housekeeper measures Daphne out loud against a ghost, and something with a white face scratches at the glass.

Daphne wanted a home and a family. She will breathe fire to keep them.

Fated mates. Whirlwind marriage to a stranger. Widower hero, virgin heroine. Instant stepmother, ready made family. A gothic estate with a murdered first wife. Vampires who hunt dragons.

Narrated by Victoria Pinder in an AI digital voice.