Grave Choices

Tatum Locke's job is to listen to the dead, but the whispers she hears are about to tear her world apart.As a freelance crime scene consultant, Tatum navigates the city's gruesome underbelly using her unique ability to commune with the spectral residue of the recently deceased. She guards a dangerous secret: her bloodline carries a forbidden, ancient necrotic energy. When victims are discovered bearing the impossible hallmarks of two warring species—the savage lacerations of a werepanther and the venomous bite of a vampire—Tatum realizes the city is under siege. A grief-stricken sorceress named Seraphina is using forbidden texts to forge Chimeras, monstrous hybrids designed to shatter the fragile balance of the supernatural world.To stop this unnatural plague, Tatum must broker a suicidal truce between two ancient, bitter enemies.Enter Valerian Croft, the enigmatic Master of Shadows. An ancient vampire of immense, calculated power, Valerian sees the Chimeras as a fascinating puzzle to be studied—and views Tatum's rare magic as a prize to be cultivated and controlled for his own dominion.Standing against him is Gideon Nash, the fiercely protective Alpha of the city's shifter clan. Grounded in raw, primal strength, Gideon sees the abominations as a blight that must be eradicated from the earth. More dangerously, Gideon recognizes Tatum as his fated mate, offering her unwavering pack loyalty, fierce protection, and a bond forged in primal instinct.As Seraphina's twisted grief threatens to detonate in a cataclysmic wave of death, Tatum is forced to awaken the terrifying, untamed magic within her own blood to survive. Now a conduit for immense necrotic power, she stands at a perilous precipice. Tatum must choose between Valerian's seductive offer of ancient, calculated authority and Gideon's fierce promise of primal, untamed partnership.In a city where the mundane is just a fragile illusion, Tatum must master the darkness within herself, or risk being consumed by the very monsters she hunts.