Coil Instead of a Ring

The ring photographs beautifully. It also cuffs.

Camille's engagement is everything her family's money expects: polished, public, built to reward her compliance. At the Halloween party halfway through her own bachelorette weekend, her fiancé's texts stacking on her lock screen, she slips through the one door that does not belong.

Behind it: Dorian. A naga who survives by not existing, in a room no staff list knows. His coil reads the hitch in her ribs before she can form a word. On the first night he teaches her the rule his body will never break: one knock on his scales, and everything stops.

She has spent years being arranged instead of asked. Now the most dangerous thing in the building waits for her knock. She steers. She demands the real body, not the performance. The heat is open-door, breath-close, entirely hers to direct.

But being seen burns away the secrecy that keeps him alive, and leaving the engagement detonates the family machine built on her obedience. The gold is safe, and it is a cage. The coil is lethal, and it lets go when she asks.

Take the wrong door. Then decide which hold to fear: the ring, or the coil that answers a knock.

Coil Instead of a Ring is Book 4 of All Hallows Guest List: four scorching Halloween monster romance novellas, each a complete standalone with its own happily-ever-after. This one belongs to the bride.