Whispers of Dawn and Black Roses

by Kelly Kalas

When Delia Ashbourne arrives at the ancient Raven Manor, she isn't searching for a fairy tale. She is choosing Lucien Raven—a guarded, grieving lord whose heart has belonged to shadows for far too long.

Their months of intimate letters have already awakened something neither can deny. But stepping through the doors of Raven Manor means entering Lucien's world of candlelit halls, windswept cliffs, black rose gardens, and memories that refuse to remain buried.

Lucien has loved before. He has lost before. And opening his heart to Delia means risking the kind of devastation he swore he would never survive again. Delia refuses to become another ghost in his past.

As their wedding approaches, desire deepens into devotion, old wounds begin to heal, and Raven Manor prepares to welcome a new bride into a legacy written in love, grief, and black roses.

A sensual gothic historical romance featuring an older, protective hero, a virgin heroine, marriage for love, emotional healing, and explicit open-door romance.

ebook

Expected publication October 8, 2026

About the author

Kelly Kalas lives in downtown Portland, Oregon, with her family, her soulmate, and their only child. This quiet, ordinary life hides an insatiable obsession with the dark and the forbidden. She is drawn to art in all its forms—painting, cooking, and collecting people the way some collect secrets, turning them over in the dark until they gleam. She loves deeply, fiercely, and without apology, the way her characters do—past the point of reason, past the point of safety. When she steps away from the page, you'll find her camping with her family, either along the misty coastline or tucked beneath the shadows of Mt. Hood, where the fog keeps its own secrets.
Her stories are born from obsession, tension, and the things left unsaid—written for readers who crave what they know they shouldn't want. She writes taboo desire, aching intimacy, and the beautifully dangerous complexity of human connection, where love is never clean, boundaries are made to be broken, and the darkness is always more seductive than the light.