Laura Herald has until nightfall to marry a stranger—or the witches who raised her bind her power for good..

Signing the contract is supposed to be a loophole—a stranger’s name beside hers, a technicality, the one claim her captors cannot break. Instead the bond wakes the moment Laura’s name dries on the page, and the marriage she took to survive becomes the truest vow she has ever made. But Mitchell Holyoke has buried a mate before and stopped believing the universe lets him keep anything—and Laura walked back into her captors’ hands on purpose, so being rescued now would mean admitting she was ever worth rescuing. Her captors want her bound by nightfall, her fated mate wants her free, and the last wall between Laura and a family that would truly choose her is Laura herself.

When the family that raised you never meant to keep you—do you let the stranger you married claim you for good, or turn him away, still certain you were never the one worth saving?

Marriage of Convenience · Fated Mates · Forced Bonding Ritual · Hidden Lineage · Found Family · Witch / Paranormal Romance

Heat:  Steamy (open door)

Tone:  Suspenseful, emotionally intense

Series:  Book 6 of 6, Fated Witches of Calderon (interconnected standalones)

Length:  ~35,000 words, a fast-paced novella

Ending:  HEA, no cliffhanger

POV:  Dual, third person, past tense

Content Notes:  Captivity and coercion, a marriage signed under duress, a threatened forced binding ritual, family estrangement and disownment, the off-page deaths of a parent and a former partner in backstory, on-page intimacy; no cheating, no cliffhanger.