Three hundred years. Two hundred witnesses. Nobody has ever said no to a Claiming."I claim you."
Three words, and the whole chapel waits for me to walk up that aisle and kneel down and let Caspian Ashford put his hand on my head like I'm a dog he's decided to keep.
I say no.
Not loudly. I say it the way you'd decline a drink.
And the golden heir of Blackridge — the boy every professor adores, the boy who has never once raised his voice because he has never once needed to — stands in front of his entire university and smiles at me.
That's when I understand I've got it backwards.
He didn't claim me because I'm a scholarship nobody he can ruin for sport. He claimed me because of what's in my blood, and because his father gave him an order, and because there is one thing on this island that would end the Ashford name forever.
Me.
I came here for proof my father was murdered.
He came here to make sure I never find it.
One of us is going to burn this family down. Neither of us expected to want the other one this badly first.
Book one of The Lords of Blackridge. Dual POV dark college romance. Full HEA, no cliffhanger.Content Explicit sex, dubious consent, graphic violence, coercive control, bullying, murder. All characters are eighteen or older. Full warnings at the front of the book.