After watching my mother succumb to a mysterious illness, I promised myself two things. I'd find the cure for what ravaged her and leave the godforsaken city where she abandoned me. Four years later, I received an acceptance letter from Dracadia University, one of the oldest most prestigious schools in the country. Nestled on a secluded island off the coast of Maine, it's rumored to be haunted by the souls of the mental patients exiled there centuries before, those whose bones are said to make up the island's white sandy shores. And restless ghosts aren't even its most daunting peculiarity.

The man upstairs in apartment six doesn't belong here, in our rundown block on the slum side of the city. High-class and educated, suited and booted, and at least thirty years my senior. Yes. Thirty whole years. But that doesn't matter. He's absolutely gorgeous. What does matter is they say he's a disgraced teacher who preys on his college students. A filthy, sick man who deserves prison.

Once upon a time… there lived a man with a vengeance-filled heart that held too many secrets and a woman, pure of soul, intent on uncovering them. What they failed to realize is that through the storm their love would create, a legacy would be born.

The night of my birthday looked as boring as the rest of my life. Sitting on my own, trying to avoid my insanely gorgeous but horribly mean flatmate, all while waiting for him to leave so I could have a party for one…if you know what I mean. But that was before I almost crashed on the way home, when a big top rolled into town. Before I locked eyes with the hottest guy I’d ever seen swinging a sledgehammer in the rain. Before I read the flyer promoting the once-in-a-lifetime circus. A circus that wasn’t the usual garish carnival…oh, no…this one was most definitely not for children.

They say bad things happen in threes. The first was when I lost my parents. The second came when I had to leave behind everything I knew to move across the world to live with my only remaining relative. But what was life for, if not for living? So I kept moving. Then the third thing happened, just as I was about to begin my junior year at the prestigious Blackstone University. I caught the eye of not one, not two, but three of the most infamous guys on campus. The three guys from the wrong side of the tracks.

Pine River was supposed to be a new start for me. And it was, especially attending school with my three overprotective cousins, who were the triplets at the top of the social hierarchy. Except they weren’t alone there, and the first day when I came to school, I saw him. Scout Raiden. Tall. Lean. Tattooed. Mesmerizing. He was a golden god with dark and piercing eyes—looking like he wanted to eat me up. The feeling was mutual, and that was a problem.

They say eyes are the windows to the soul—but when he looks at me through hues of slate-green and flaring blue embers, I'm terrified of what's watching me from behind his clashing gaze, something primal and feverish that threatens to melt me like fire in ice. I fear falling into Kallum Locke's pitch-black soul. But after I'm called to a crime scene to investigate the most gruesome act of violence to descend on the legendary town of Hollow's Row, I have no choice but to turn to Kallum, to the man I had locked away in an asylum for the criminally insane.

An outcast her entire life, Corvina Clemm is left adrift after losing her mother. When she receives the admission letter from the mysterious University of Verenmore, she accepts it as a sign from the universe. The last thing she expects though is an olden, secluded castle on top of a mountain riddled with secrets, deceit, and death.

The Lords own me, and they are never going to let me go. At least, that’s what they tell me. Lord Alaric Cross. Lord Gideon St. Claire. Lord Sterling Beauchamp. Lord Theodore Wolf. Four brooding men who make my worst nightmares seem tame. To the public, they are titled aristocrats with royal lineage. In secret, they make up the Lords of Darkness—an ancient order that rules the underbelly of England with a lethal, iron fist, leaving skeletons in their wake. And as fate would have it, my father was the fifth Lord of Darkness. His sudden death means I am now a Lady of Darkness.

The first letter arrived the day my husband was buried. It was postmarked from the state penitentiary, and contained a single sentence: I’ll wait forever if I have to. It was signed by Dante, a man I didn’t know. Out of simple curiosity, I wrote back to ask him what exactly he was waiting for. His reply? You.