Temporary Mates, Permanent Cravings: A Dark Mate Romance

Briar Sinclair has done the math a hundred times — and it never works. Her mother’s medical bills are climbing faster than her paycheck, and every option is running out. Then a contract lands on her desk with an Alpha’s signature at the bottom.

Nine months.

One heir.

No feelings.

All she has to do is survive Kael Ashworth long enough to collect.

Kael doesn’t do feelings. He does control — the kind that’s kept his pack safe, his enemies at bay, and a twenty-year-old political bond from collapsing into war. An heir was supposed to be a technicality. A name on paper. Instead, the woman he hired keeps finding cracks in every wall he’s built since the night he lost the last person he let get close.

What starts in a firelit study with a strict list of rules — no kissing, no feelings, no questions about Vesper — doesn’t stay that way for long.

As old betrayals surface, the council starts asking questions no contract was built to answer, and Vesper’s return threatens to destroy everything they haven’t admitted to wanting… Kael is forced to choose:

Hold onto the control that’s kept him safe for twenty years…

or finally let in the woman who was never supposed to be permanent.

Temporary was the plan.