Homepage

Take a peek at opening chapters shaped by real picks, real people.

Expand to continue reading whole story.

Some secrets are worth dying for—and some are worth killing to keep.

The woman who stepped off the overnight train from Madrid looked nothing like her file photo. Callum Reade had memorized that photo during the twelve-hour briefing: corporate headshot, polished smile, sleek dark hair pulled back in the universal style of tech industry professionalism. The woman walking toward him through Lisbon's Santa Apolónia station had chopped that hair into a jagged bob, dyed it a deep auburn that caught the morning light, and traded the corporate uniform for worn jeans and a leather jacket that had seen better decades.

She looked like trouble. She looked like a headache wrapped in attitude and bad decisions. She looked, against all his professional instincts, absolutely magnetic.

"You're late," he said when she reached him. "You're taller than your photo suggested." Her eyes—amber brown, sharp with intelligence and something harder underneath—swept over him with an assessment that felt uncomfortably thorough. "Also older. And crankier." "I'm not cranky. I'm efficient. There's a difference." "Sure there is." She adjusted the strap of her backpack. "I'm Mira. But you knew that. You're Callum Reade, former MI6, current contractor for Sentinel Protection Services, and according to my research, you haven't smiled in a photograph since 2019." "You researched me?" "I research everyone. It's how I ended up in this mess." Her mouth curved—not quite a smile, but close enough to suggest she found something amusing about their situation. "Shall we? I assume you have a car waiting, probably black, probably armored, probably with emergency supplies in the trunk because you're the type who prepares for every contingency."

She wasn't wrong about any of it, which irritated him more than it should have. Callum led her through the station, hyperaware of their surroundings—the businessman checking his phone too frequently, the couple whose body language didn't quite match their vacation attire, the transit officer whose gaze lingered a beat too long.

Six months in the field had honed Mira Santos's instincts for danger, but she was still an amateur. Still vulnerable. Still his responsibility for the next three weeks until the EU tribunal convened and she could finally testify. The file had been comprehensive: twenty-five years old, MIT graduate, rising star at Nexus Technologies until she'd discovered their surveillance software was being sold to authoritarian regimes and used to track dissidents, journalists, and human rights activists. She'd copied the evidence, contacted the EU's whistleblower protection program, and vanished twelve hours before Nexus security could make her disappear permanently.

That had been six months ago. Four safe houses. Three close calls. Two protection officers who'd requested reassignment because, according to the reports, she was "unmanageable." Callum had never requested reassignment in fifteen years of protection work. He didn't intend to start now. The car was exactly as she'd described—black, armored, practical.

He opened the passenger door and waited while she climbed in, noting the way she automatically checked the mirrors, scanned the street, positioned herself to see both the road ahead and the driver's side approach. Not entirely amateur, then. "The safe house is in the Alentejo region," he said, pulling into Lisbon's chaotic traffic. "About two hours southeast. Remote, defensible, with multiple extraction routes if needed." "My grandmother's estate." "Your grandmother's former estate. She passed three years ago, and the property has been managed by a local trust since then. It provides excellent cover—you're simply the American granddaughter returning to settle family business." "I know. I suggested it." Mira was looking out the window, watching Lisbon's waterfront slide past—the ancient Belém Tower, the Monument to the Discoveries pointing toward the Atlantic like a stone promise. "Avó left it to me. I was supposed to visit after I finished the Nexus project. Turn it into a writing retreat, maybe. Something peaceful." "And instead?" "Instead I found out my company was helping dictators murder journalists, and peaceful stopped being an option."

Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact, but Callum caught the tension in her shoulders, the way her hands curled into fists in her lap. "Funny how that works." They drove in silence through the city's outskirts, where concrete apartment blocks gave way to industrial zones and then, gradually, to the rolling cork forests and golden plains of the Alentejo. The landscape was beautiful in a stark, ancient way—olive groves casting shadows across red earth, white-washed villages clustered around medieval churches, the occasional ruined castle marking a hilltop like a broken tooth.

"You don't talk much, do you?" Mira asked after the first hour.

"I talk when there's something worth saying."

"That must make parties a real joy."

"I don't go to parties."

"Shocking." She shifted in her seat, turning to face him more directly.

"Okay, since we're going to be stuck together for three weeks, we should probably establish some ground rules."

"I have rules. They involve you staying alive."

"Those are your rules. I have my own." She held up a finger. "First: I'm not a package to be delivered. I'm a person. Treat me like one."

"I always treat my clients like people." "Your last two clients called me 'the asset.' Directly to my face."

Callum's jaw tightened. "They were wrong to do that."

"Second rule." Another finger. "I don't do helpless. I've survived six months on my own. I know how to move, how to hide, how to fight if I have to. Don't sideline me because you think protection means wrapping me in cotton wool."

"I don't wrap anyone in cotton wool. I keep them alive by making smart decisions." "Good. Then we'll make them together." She lowered her hand. "Third rule: if you're going to be brooding and mysterious, at least make it interesting. The strong-silent-type act gets boring after about twelve hours."

"I'm not brooding."

"You've had the same expression since the station. It's somewhere between 'existential crisis' and 'constipation.'"

Despite himself, Callum felt his mouth twitch. "That's... descriptive."

"I'm a details person. It's why I noticed the surveillance logs at Nexus in the first place." She turned back to the window, but he caught the ghost of a smile on her reflection. "So. Callum Reade. Former spy, current babysitter. What made you leave MI6?"

"That's classified." "Everything's classified with you people until it isn't. Someone always talks eventually."

"I don't."

"We'll see."

The estate appeared as the afternoon light was turning golden—a sprawling farmhouse of whitewashed walls and terracotta tiles, surrounded by cork oaks and olive groves that stretched to the horizon. It looked peaceful. Serene. The kind of place where nothing bad had ever happened. Callum knew better than to trust appearances. "Home sweet temporary home," Mira said as he pulled through the gate. "There's supposed to be a caretaker. Maria. She was here when I visited as a child."

"Maria Ferreira. Sixty-three, former nurse, vetted by Sentinel's Lisbon office. She's been maintaining the property and will provide domestic cover for our presence."

"You've investigated everyone."

"It's my job."

"Must be exhausting. Trusting no one." He parked the car and turned to face her fully for the first time since the station. In the golden light, her features were sharp and striking—high cheekbones that spoke to her Portuguese heritage, a stubborn jaw, full lips currently pressed into a challenging line.

Her eyes held his without flinching, and he saw something there that the file hadn't captured: a fierce, unbroken spirit that six months of running hadn't managed to dim. "Trust is earned," he said quietly. "Not given." "Then I guess we'll have to earn it." She opened her door and stepped out into the Portuguese evening. "Race you to the house. Loser makes dinner." She was running before he could respond, backpack bouncing, laughter trailing behind her like a challenge. Callum watched her go, something unfamiliar stirring in his chest. Three weeks. He had to keep her alive for three weeks. He was beginning to suspect it would be the longest—and most complicated—three weeks of his career.

His phone buzzed. A message from Sentinel's Lisbon station: Intel update. Nexus has deployed a recovery team. Six operatives, military background. Last tracked heading south from Madrid.

The complication had just become considerably more dangerous.

Title: The Lisbon Protocol

Customization: Story Engine: Duty & Danger

Pacing: Slow Burn

Species: Human x Human

Expand to continue reading whole story.

When concrete meets wildflowers, something has to give.

Maya Reyes had fielded a lot of ridiculous phone calls in her three years running the Southside Greenway Project, but this one ranked somewhere between the woman who wanted to rent their community garden for a goat yoga influencer shoot and the alderman who suggested they "pivot to crypto." "I'm sorry," she said, wedging her phone between her ear and shoulder while she wrestled a bag of mulch off the truck bed. "You want to schedule a what?" "A preliminary site assessment," the voice on the other end repeated, clipped and professional. "Ashford Development would like to discuss the future of your property." "It's not a property. It's a garden. And there's nothing to discuss." "Mr. Ashford has asked me to convey that he's prepared to offer extremely generous terms—" "Tell Mr. Ashford he can take his generous terms and compost them." Maya ended the call and shoved the phone into her back pocket, then immediately felt guilty.

Her grandmother would've told her that was no way to handle business, even bad business. But her grandmother had also believed in fairies, so.

The Southside Greenway stretched across two acres of what used to be an abandoned lot, now transformed into raised beds, fruit trees, a greenhouse, and the centerpiece: a crumbling but beloved Victorian gazebo where neighborhood kids did homework while their parents worked the plots.

Maya had poured four years of her life into this place—first as a volunteer during college, then as the youngest program director the nonprofit had ever hired. And now some developer wanted to turn it into what? Luxury condos? A parking structure? Another soulless glass tower? Over her decomposing body.

"That face means trouble." Delia Washington, the Greenway's seventy-two-year-old master gardener, appeared from between the tomato rows, her silver locs piled high under a wide-brimmed hat. "What now?"

"Ashford Development." Delia's expression flickered.

"Dominic Ashford?"

"You know him?"

"Know of him. His company's been buying up half the South Side. But I've also heard..." She paused, seeming to choose her words. "There's old money behind that family. Old ways. Some folks say they're different."

"Different how?" Delia just shrugged, a gesture that somehow communicated both everything and nothing.

"You'll see for yourself soon enough, I imagine. Men like that don't take no for an answer." She was right.

Three hours later, Maya was elbow-deep in the compost bins when a black town car slid to a stop at the garden's chain-link entrance.

The man who emerged didn't belong here. That was Maya's first thought—that he looked like someone had Photoshopped a magazine cover onto her neighborhood. He was tall, broad-shouldered in a way that his charcoal suit couldn't quite civilize, with dark hair pushed back from a face that was all sharp angles and intensity.

His jaw could've been carved from the same limestone as the old Chicago water tower, and his eyes—she caught the color even from twenty feet away—were an unsettling amber-gold, like whiskey held up to afternoon light. He moved wrong, too. That was her second thought.

Most men in suits walked like they owned the sidewalk. This one walked like he was tracking something, his gaze sweeping the garden with an alertness that seemed almost predatory.

A thin scar traced his left eyebrow, disappearing into his hairline—the only imperfection on an otherwise annoyingly symmetrical face. Maya wiped her hands on her jeans and went to meet him at the gate.

"Mr. Ashford, I presume."

"Ms. Reyes." His voice was lower than she'd expected, with a rasp at the edges.

"You hung up on my assistant."

"Your assistant called during mulch delivery. I was busy."

"Too busy for a seven-figure offer?"

Maya laughed, short and sharp. "You could offer eight figures and I'd still tell you no. This land isn't for sale."

"Everything's for sale. It's just a matter of finding the right price."

"That's a very sad worldview, Mr. Ashford." Something shifted in his expression—surprise, maybe, or curiosity. Up close, she could see that his eyes weren't just amber; they had flecks of darker gold, almost bronze, and the way he was looking at her felt strangely... focused. Like she was the only thing in the frame.

Among his kind, Dominic had learned to mask his nature so thoroughly that most humans never sensed anything unusual. The old bloodlines had survived centuries by adaptation—living openly in plain sight, holding their shifts for private hours or the protected acreage outside the city, building fortunes that insulated them from scrutiny.

Werewolves reached full maturity in their mid-twenties, and at thirty-five, Dominic had spent a decade leading his pack's business interests with the same control he applied to everything else. But something about this woman was making that control slip.

She was beautiful—he'd noticed that immediately—but not in the polished way he was used to. Her features were warm brown skin with golden undertones, dark eyes that tilted slightly at the corners, a full mouth currently pressed into a stubborn line. Her black hair was escaping from a practical braid, and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheekbone.

She was small, maybe five-four, but she was standing in front of him like she was ready to physically block a bulldozer. Dominic's wolf stirred, interested in a way it hadn't been in years. Down, he told it. This is business. "The city's already approved the rezoning application," he said. "Your lease expires in eight months. I'm offering you a chance to negotiate while you still have leverage."

"And I'm offering you a chance to leave before I introduce you to our community's feelings about gentrification. Fair warning: Mrs. Patterson in plot 14 has a surprisingly good arm."

His mouth twitched. "You always threaten billionaires with elderly women?"

"Only the ones who show up uninvited." Maya crossed her arms. "Look, I get it. You see an undervalued asset. A quick flip. But this garden feeds two hundred families. It's where kids learn that food doesn't just come from plastic containers. It's where veterans from the VA come to remember that growing things is the opposite of destroying them. You can't put a price tag on that."

"I'm not trying to."

"Then what are you trying to do?"

Dominic hesitated. The honest answer was complicated—something about legacy, and his father's relentless expansion, and the fact that he'd inherited an empire he wasn't sure he wanted to keep building the same way. But he wasn't about to explain his existential crisis to a woman who looked at him like he was the physical embodiment of everything wrong with capitalism. "I'm trying to understand what I'm working with," he said finally. "Before I make any decisions."

Maya studied him for a long moment. He had the strange sense that she was seeing more than he intended to show. "Fine," she said. "You want to understand? Come back Saturday. Six a.m. Wear clothes you don't mind ruining. You're going to help us harvest."

"I have a board meeting Saturday." "Then I guess you don't want to understand that badly." She turned and walked back toward the compost bins, tossing over her shoulder: "Nice meeting you, Mr. Ashford. Don't forget to wipe that look off your face before your driver sees it."

Dominic watched her go, something unfamiliar turning over in his chest. His phone buzzed. His father's assistant, probably, demanding an update on the acquisition timeline. He ignored it. Saturday, he thought. Six a.m.

He was already rearranging his calendar in his head when his wolf made a sound that, in human terms, could only be described as smug.

Title: Roots & Steel

Customization: Story Engine: Billionaire with a Heart

Pacing: Slow Burn

Species: Human x Werewolf

Expand to continue reading whole story.

Some returns feel more like surrendering than coming home.

The Oregon coast greeted Leila Holbrook with rain. Not the gentle mist San Francisco occasionally offered, but proper Pacific Northwest rain—relentless, horizontal, determined to remind her that she'd forgotten what weather actually meant during her six years of California sunshine. She'd rented a sensible sedan at the Portland airport, but sensible felt foolish now as she navigated the winding highway toward Astoria, her windshield wipers fighting a losing battle against late November's assault.

The town emerged from the gray like a ghost—Victorian houses climbing hills, the Columbia River meeting the Pacific in a churning gray expanse, fishing boats huddled at docks. She'd grown up here, learned to code in the public library, kissed her first boy behind the Maritime Museum, dreamed of escape in every one of its fog-shrouded streets.

Now she was back.

Her grandmother's house sat at the top of Fourteenth Street, a Queen Anne Victorian that had seen better decades. The paint was peeling, the porch sagged ominously, and the garden had achieved a state of romantic neglect that probably looked charming in real estate photos and disastrous in repair estimates. Dev had warned her. Her older brother, currently building schools in Ghana with an NGO, had spent three months managing their grandmother's estate remotely before admitting defeat. "I can't do this from here," he'd said over their last video call. "Someone needs to be on the ground. Figure out what to do with Nani's house. And Lei—Cal's been helping. He's the one who kept it from falling down completely while she was sick. Be nice to him." Be nice to him. As if the problem had ever been niceness.

Leila parked in the driveway, steeling herself for what came next. The house, the memories, the weight of a grandmother who'd believed in her even when she hadn't believed in herself. Nani—her father's mother, who had crossed an ocean from Mumbai and built a life in this small fishing town through sheer force of will. And somewhere in this town, the man Leila had walked away from six years ago. She was reaching for her suitcase when a truck pulled up behind her. The vehicle was practical, mud-splattered, with "Reeves Restoration" painted on the side in letters that somehow managed to look both professional and hand-done. The door opened, and six years collapsed into nothing.

Callum Reeves had always been beautiful in a way that felt unfair—the kind of beauty that snuck up on you, made you realize you'd been staring only after it was too late to pretend otherwise.

He unfolded from the truck with the easy grace of a man comfortable in his body, and Leila's treacherous heart stuttered at the sight of him. He was broader now, more solid, the lean build she remembered filled out with the kind of muscle that came from actual work rather than gym memberships. His sandy brown hair was longer, curling at his collar, darkened by the rain that he didn't seem to notice. His jaw was sharper, shadowed with stubble, and when his blue-gray eyes found hers through the downpour, she saw the same jolt of recognition she felt—followed by something more guarded. He had a scar on his left hand she didn't remember. A habit of rubbing his thumb against his forefinger when he was thinking. She wondered what else had changed.

She wondered a lot of things.

"Leila." His voice was deeper than memory, roughened by time. "Dev said you were coming." "Cal." She was grateful her voice stayed steady. "You didn't have to meet me." "The porch stairs are rotted through. Figured you'd want to know before you fell through them." He moved past her, pulling a toolbox from his truck bed. "I was planning to fix them this week anyway. Might as well do it now." "You don't have to—" "I told your grandmother I'd take care of the place." His eyes met hers, and something in them made her chest ache. "I keep my promises."

The implication landed like a blow. She had made promises too, once. Promises about coming back, about figuring it out, about love being enough to bridge the distance between ambition and home. She'd broken every one. "I appreciate everything you've done," she said carefully. "Dev mentioned you were basically keeping the house standing while Nani was sick." "She was a good woman. Deserved better than rotting alone in a house that was falling apart around her." "I visited when I could—" "I know." His voice softened, just slightly. "She talked about you all the time. How proud she was. The startup, the acquisition, all of it." He paused. "She kept every article. Had them framed in her room." Leila's throat tightened. She hadn't known that. "Can I see the house?" she managed. Cal nodded, leading her around to the back entrance where the stairs were apparently less murderous. The kitchen was exactly as she remembered—yellow cabinets, worn linoleum, the smell of spices that had seeped into the walls over decades.

Her grandmother's reading glasses still sat on the counter, next to a mystery novel with a bookmark three-quarters of the way through. She'd never finished it. "The structural issues are mostly in the front of the house," Cal said, shifting into professional mode. "Foundation's solid, roof needs work, plumbing's ancient but functional. I can give you a full assessment if you want." "That would be helpful." She was grateful for the practicality, for something to focus on besides the grief pressing at her ribs. "Dev and I need to decide what to do with the place. Sell it, probably." Something flickered across Cal's face—disappointment, maybe, or resignation. "Makes sense. Market's good right now. Victorian like this, even in rough shape, would attract buyers." "Unless we fixed it up ourselves. Better return on investment." "That would take months. You planning to stay that long?" The question held more weight than it should have. "I don't know yet," she admitted. "My startup sold. I'm technically between things." "Between things." He tested the phrase. "That's one way to put it." "What would you call it?" "Lost, maybe." His eyes held hers. "Trying to figure out what matters now that you've gotten everything you thought you wanted."

The accuracy of it stung. "You don't know what I wanted." "No. I guess I don't." He turned away, examining a window frame with unnecessary attention. "Not anymore." They toured the rest of the house in careful silence, Cal pointing out repairs with professional detachment while Leila cataloged memories she'd tried to forget. Her grandmother's room, where she'd spent countless afternoons learning to make dal and kheer. Dev's old bedroom. And at the end of the hall, the guest room where she'd stayed that last summer—the summer everything changed.

"I should go," Cal said finally. "Let you settle in. I'll come by tomorrow with the assessment." "Cal." She caught his arm before she could stop herself. "Thank you. For taking care of her. For taking care of this place." He looked at her hand on his arm, then at her face. "She was family," he said quietly. "You were all family. That doesn't just stop because someone leaves."

He was gone before she could respond, the sound of his truck fading into the rain.

Leila stood in her grandmother's kitchen, surrounded by ghosts of choices she'd made and paths she'd abandoned. She'd left Astoria to build something. To prove she was more than a small-town girl with big dreams—the mixed-race kid who never quite fit anywhere, who coded her way out of confusion and into certainty. Now she had the success she'd chased. The money, the recognition, the validation. She'd just never counted on how empty it would feel. Or how much it would hurt to stand in the ruins of what she'd left behind.

Title: What We Left Behind

Customization: Story Engine: Second Chance Romance

Pacing: Balanced