Calder Sloane left Bianca Quinn on a Thursday with a ring in his pocket and never once explained. Eleven years later he's back in her kitchen, rifle by the screen door, guarding a dying man's estate - and Bianca has been hired to appraise every acre of it. The old man's will is a list of four families who owe him. His fields hide a stolen herd. His lawyer won't meet eyes. And Bianca's own brother is on the list. She should walk away. She already walked away once, in the other direction, with worse timing. But Calder kept the ring. Bianca's about to find out what eleven years of that looks like.

Rennie Kaur built her career on one argument: fated mates aren't real. Then the magazine sends her to profile the Lycan King, and on day one, in a children's hospital, in front of five cameras, the bond she doesn't believe in switches on between her and the most famous wolf in the country. King Adric Vane has spent twenty years telling reporters the bond is a fairy tale. Now they both have to file. Six weeks. Six states. Six hospitals. One signed agreement that either of them can walk at any time. If the bond survives peer review, they print the results. If it doesn't, they print that too. Rennie isn't marrying a king. She isn't moving into a palace. She's writing the paper that will either dismantle her own reputation or build her a better one. A fated mates werewolf shifter doctor romance for readers who like their mythology with a control group.