Keri Lake

When I was a little girl, I dreamed a handsome knight would come and rescue me from my wretched mother. He'd ride up on his white steed and break the curse I've been fated to carry since the day I was born. Funny how things changed over time. How the fairy tale twisted into something far more crooked, darker than I ever imagined. In reality, my knight is scarred and broken, living alone in a castle of bones that overlooks the sea. He isn’t searching for me. He never was. Lucian Blackthorne is as cursed as I am, and equally shunned by the locals, the fishers of men, who believe him to be the devil in the flesh. Perhaps he is, with the way his amber eyes draw me in, ignite me like an infernal blaze. And the sins he whispers in my ear are as wickedly intoxicating as the man himself. Yet, his touch is heaven and his will is my weakness. He calls us forbidden, an unsalvageable tragedy, with no happy end. Maybe we are. But in this story, he’s the one who needs saving.

This island alone boasts more ghost stories than all of Louisiana combined. And I'm one of them. In the Louisiana swamplands, ghost stories are as much a part of childhood as chasing fireflies and crawfishing. They never much scared me, though, nor the possibility of evil out to do me harm. Until the night I watched shadows come to life and butcher everything I loved. With a stranger's help, I managed to escape to an isolated place miles north, and, in time, became my own ghost story. A cautionary tale for the locals. Nearly a decade passed, before I returned to my birthplace, in hopes of unearthing long-awaited answers. Instead, I found something I wasn't looking for. Someone. A remedy for my loneliness. Or so I thought. Turns out, Thierry Bergeron is no elixir. He's a deadly poison, cursed by the demons of his past, and feared by those who call him the elusive Rougarou of the bayou. A devious rogue, whose seductive whispers and rough hands haunt my dreams. The big bad wolf that defiles me without apology, or remorse. I should resist him, but I can't. And when the shadows return to stake their claim on me, his darkness is the only safe place to hide.

Phobia is an 18,000 word novella set after the events in Nocticadia. The setting and tone of this short story is a complete departure from Nocticadia, and echoes my gritty contemporary books. Nocticadia was meant to remain a standalone, so please know before diving in that this will not be a full story. It’s merely a glimpse of these two characters and nothing more.

Passion is blind in vengeance and love ... Ayden’s suburban home was invaded by a pack of Lycans. The brutal attack is the only memory she carries of her former life. Now, one motive burns in her soul: KILL THEM ALL. The Sons of Wrath—a brood of vengeance-dealing warrior demons—band with Ayden to hunt the Lycans on Detroit’s most deadly feeding grounds. Kane Walker should’ve been her easiest kill. Unfortunately, the newly bitten Lycan has something she wants—clues that may finally lay her past to rest. To reach them, she must be willing to submit to the sensual pleasures awakened by his touch. Time is running out. In seven days, Kane will become what Ayden despises most. She can halt his transformation but the antidote requires the ultimate sacrifice. As the beast takes hold, Kane becomes more of a threat. Ayden must choose between her lust for revenge, or surrender to her enemy and discover a horrible truth. Sons of Wrath Never gamble with vengeance

As Wrath’s fiercest son, Logan carries the scars of fifty years spent in the most dreaded prison of the underworld, for a sin he’d kill to keep secret. Enduring decades of gruesome torture has left Logan feared by and detached from others, until a female Alexi’s blood resurrects his soul from death and, with it, the pleasures he’s been denied for so long. Plagued by shame of her own, Calla is drawn to the ruthless demon, Logan, whose insatiable craving for her touch rouses buried passions and, for once, leaves her feeling desired. A dark and dangerous evil has been reawakened, however, and when Calla is drawn too close to its breeding grounds, Logan vows to summon the violence of Wrath in order to keep her safe. First, though, Calla must save him from a past riddled with deceit and corruption … but only if she can accept the chilling consequences of unearthing his vilest skeleton. Sons of Wrath Never gamble with vengeance … Warning: This book contains explicit language, sex, and violence. Not suitable for readers under 18 years of age.

A love so forbidden, it would shake the heavens. My father called them messengers. He once told me they walked among us, and that somewhere in this dark and godless city, there shined a faint sliver of hope. I had only to look for the signs. Well, I’ve spent my whole life investigating the inexplicable, and all I've found are the unsettling vestiges of iniquity - the evidence of another world shrouded by the obscure. Purgatory to some, where depravity hides in shadows, and girls like me are little more than delicious bites of temptation. Others call it Nightshade. This peculiar place is where I first met the cold and callous recluse living in a decaying cliffside cathedral. Jericho Van Croix is the epitome of everything I’ve been told to fear. A raven-winged harbinger who wears intrigue like a warm black cloak. An enigma that I’m determined to unravel – even if it means getting closer than I should. One touch is forbidden. Even so much as a kiss would be my demise. But the sin on his lips burns me up like a wild flame, and his growing infatuation weakens my resolve. Giving him what he wants, though, will mean no chance for redemption, or escape. What's worse is, the signs I’ve followed yet failed to see all these years begin to unmask a terrifying reality: That falling may be my only saving grace.

Get ready for a heart-wrenching story of survival, love and resilience, set in a world of brutal inhumanity. Papa says everyone has a story that deserves to be told. Most begin years ago, after the second bomb hit, unearthing a deadly contagion that divided the population into the pure, the infected, and the Ragers. Many recount the moment we rose up from the ashes and started anew. Others tell of the day we built a wall to keep them out. For some, they’re nothing more than the vestiges left behind—a simple name carved into the knotty bark of a Juniper tree. My story begins with a boy. A mute, from the other side of the wall, known only as Six, who touched my heart in ways that words never could, and gave me the courage to face my darkest truth. Juniper Unraveling is a full-length dystopian romance set in a post-apocalyptic world. SERIES ORDER: Juniper Unraveling Calico Descending Kings of Carrion

A dark, atmospheric tale of deadly secrets and forbidden love.Mortui vivos docent.The dead teach the living.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 receive 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.Devryck Bramwell, known on campus as Doctor Death, is a brilliant pathologist in charge of the midnight lab. He’s also my devastatingly handsome professor, who seems to loathe tenacious first-years, like me. Except, his dark and enigmatic gaze tells me all the ways he’d devour me if given the chance, and his stolen kisses burn my lips with forbidden jealousy.I crave his authority.He aches for redemption.Together, we’re toxic. Delicious fodder for the prying eyes hellbent on exhuming the rotted skeletons of our pasts.For the dead have much to teach, and it’s only a matter of time before Dracadia’s most depraved secret is resurrected.Nocticadia is a standalone dark academia gothic romance.

It takes a killer to catch a killer. And no one understands the motives of ruthless murderer, The Sandman, quite like Rhett Voss. Having spent his childhood in the shadows of the deranged lunatic, he’s become an expert on the topic. Killing is in his blood, and as a hitman for hire, Voss maintains a steady diet of carnage, himself. Except lately, it’s lost its appeal. Until he’s enticed to track down the clever Sandman who has his sights set on Nola Tensley. The stunning single mom is a distraction Voss can’t afford, but to catch his elusive kin, he needs to watch the next victim closely. Consequently, stalking her soon becomes a dangerous obsession, turning a friendly game of cat and mouse into more than he bargained for, when someone close to Nola goes missing. Suddenly, it’s no longer an old vendetta fueling Voss’s need to hunt down his enemy, but new stakes that are sure to mean more bloodshed. Voss knows better than anyone, though: to draw a killer out of hiding, one must have the right bait. And both of them want Nola.

From USA Today Bestselling author Keri Lake comes an intense and gritty romantic thriller that’ll have you turning the pages well past your bedtime.The most terrifying monsters aren’t found in dreams ...Four young socialites have gone missing in the Chicago area. Two found dead, bearing the signature marks of a brutal serial killer. With the kind of tragedy that mars Nola Tensley’s past, she should be concerned, but without a pot to piss in, all the struggling single mom cares about is making a normal life for her son. After all, she’s clearly not the murderer’s type.Or is she? When Rhett Voss, an enigmatic and handsome stranger, answers her ad for the outdated in-law suite at the back of her property, offering double her asking price, Nola really can’t refuse. Even though the supposed Wall Street Wolf seems better suited for a high-rise downtown—a suspicion that quickly turns into hindsight once she submits to the flirtations of her charming new tenant, and consequently, unearths a series of disturbing revelations. Her curiosities lead her down the path of a madman, whose moniker, The Sandman, only hints at the grisly nature of his crimes. He’s smart. Evasive. A cunning psychopath with a twisted method of disposing his victims.And his hunting grounds are hitting too close to home.

A new gothic dark fantasy coming in 2024 Only the banished know what lies beyond the woods ... There are whispers about what lurks in Witch Knell—the forest where sinners go to die. The villagers call it The Eating Woods because what’s taken is never given back. Only those who’ve lost their senses would dare to go near it. Or the banished. Maevyth Bronwick knows better than to breach the misty labyrinth of trees, but a tragic turn of events compels her beyond the archway of bones, to a boundary no mortal has crossed before. One that cloaks a dark and fantastical world that’s as dangerous as it is alluring. It’s there that he dwells, the cursed lord of Eidolon. The one tasked to keep her hidden from the magehood that seeks to crucify her in the name of an arcane prophesy. Zevander Rydainn, known to his prey as The Scorpion, is the coldest, most calculated assassin in all of Aethyria and he’d sooner toss his feisty ward to a pack of vicious fyredrakes than keep her safe. If only he could. Maevyth’s blood is the key to breaking his despised curse and vanquishing the slumbering evil in Witch Knell. Unfortunately for Lord Rydainn, fate has other plans for the irresistible little enchantress. And his growing obsession with her threatens to destroy everything. Including himself.

The second book in The Eating Woods Duology

Pain is an abyss. How naive of me to think I’d already reached the very depths of it when fate shook my world with a crushing blow. It turns out, there are fathomless levels of pain, like a winding labyrinth of doors leading to shadowy figures and long-forgotten secrets. The kind of inescapable descent into madness that twists nightmares into reality. What lies at the end of this obscure path I have yet to discover, but where it begins, is a place called Infernium. An asylum, feared by those in Nightshade and untrodden by the angels who’ve forsaken its many lost souls. Some say it’s the gateway to hell. Others believe it’s where you go when the last flicker of hope dies out. For me, it’s where I’ve damned myself for eternity–my penance for a crime against the heavens, and home to the demons that claw at my mind. Yet, not even they stand a chance against my dark angel, Jericho. He fears nothing. Except losing me. The longer I remain trapped, though, the stronger this darkness inside of me grows. A duality dividing my heart between love and revenge. And, soon, saving me may no longer be an option.

I've heard stories about the Alphas. Violent soldiers, bred to kill both humans and mutations, whose sole purpose was to balance our survival against the infected. Until they turned on their masters. Held as subjects of the Calico research facility, they were forced to endure the gruesome experiments that transformed them into callous savages with hearts as impenetrable as their defenses. More terrifying than the monsters that decimated our world with disease and famine. In the aftermath of Calico's collapse, many of the Alphas fled, only to be hunted by our own Legion army. And in their absence, the balance has shifted. I thought they no longer existed. Until I met him, the god of monsters. Now I don't believe in the stories anymore. To fall in love with the unyielding heart of an Alpha is said to be impossible. But to fall in love with a god would be a tragedy.

Decades have passed since our world was decimated by the Dredge. Some say it was an act of God. Others believe the devil himself breached the gates of hell and turned the masses into the mindless infected with an appetite for carnage. Those of us who’ve survived the Calico experiments know the only thing more terrifying than the monsters that seek to ravage what’s left of us, are the men who created them. Ones too capable of hiding their true form, and burying their darkest secrets. Somewhere beneath the facility lies the answers, a cure for our suffering. To reach it, we’ll have to open the haunting tomb, where man’s deadliest mistakes, the most violent mutations, lie trapped within its tunnels, waiting to be set free. Our only hope in surviving them are the very Alphas who were designed to hunt us down. The titans forged by cruelty and pain. Kings of carrion. We taught them to love, and in turn, they vow to protect us. To deliver the cure for humanity’s sake. Except this world doesn’t give without taking, and any chance of saving us will require the greatest sacrifice of all. SERIES Juniper Unraveling (Book 1) Calico Descending (Book 2) Kings of Carrion (Book 3)

In a world of suffering and brutality, she's the key to his humanity ... I was fourteen when I was sold to the men in black uniforms. Too young to understand I served a purpose beyond that of the other girls they’d taken. For the greater good. Now, after four years in Calico, I’ve seen more death and suffering than during my days of surviving out in the Deadlands against the threat of Ragers and famine. I didn’t think this world could get any bleaker. Didn’t think it could take any more from me than it already had. Not until I finally learned my purpose. That same day, I walked the dark halls in the bowels of this hell, where the suffering is in silence, and ghosts of the dead whisper through the walls. A place where nightmares are real. A place where I met my Champion—the most revered Alpha in S-Block—locked away in his dark cell. For the greater good. He’s their weapon, their only line of defense against the mistakes of the past: the mutations that could wipe out all of what’s left of us. Me, I’m his whipping girl. His reward for good behavior. And his punishment for acts of defiance. Calico Descending is the follow up book to Juniper Unraveling, a full-length dystopian post apocalyptic romance. SERIES READING ORDER: Juniper Unraveling (Book 1) Calico Descending (Book 2) Kings of Carrion (Book 3)

The only sure way to destroy a man is to take what he cannot live without. Three years ago, I had everything. A beautiful wife. A son. A reason for living. Until a ruthless task force, assembled under Mayor Michael Culling, with a brutal strategy to make the streets of Detroit ‘safe’, ripped away everything I loved in a deadly hunt called The Culling. They tried to kill me, too. I wish they had. Now I'm cursed by the memories of that night, and the words I whispered to my dying wife. A promise—to avenge the wrong and set it right. I’m no longer Nick Ryder. I’m a masked vigilante. Faceless. Loveless. Fearless. A man with nothing left to lose—one who's seen the dark and violent truth behind the city’s flawless veneer. Michael Culling doesn’t know who I am. Or what I want. All he knows is that I’ve kidnapped his beautiful wife. An eye for an eye—isn’t that how the saying goes? And Aubree Culling is the perfect pawn to destroy him. If she doesn’t destroy me first.

According to canon law, it is forbidden for a priest to betray the penitent for any reason. Even murder. The consequences? Excommunication. For years, I've listened to your confessions. I know your darkest secrets, and have swallowed your sins in silence. In return, I've offered you forgiveness in His name. But behind the partition that separates us, I'm nothing more than a man who has long questioned his own faith. Your contrition is my invitation: to mete out the kind of justice you pray will never come. I'm neither pious, nor merciful, despite what you see. I'm an imposter, an abomination to all I represent. A quiet executioner who's kept below the radar. Until her. She's seen what I've done. She knows the man beneath the cloth and my every mortal sin. She has witnessed the uncontrollable vices she hopes to use against me in order to get what she covets most. Yet, I know her sins, too. Ones she doesn't bother to confess. The kind, for which, there is no absolution. *The short story first appeared in the Wanted: An Outlaw Anthology. This is the full-sized novel, which includes the conclusion to Damon and Ivy's story.

From the author of Ricochet and Backfire comes a dark and gritty alpha male romance, set in the Chicago underground. What happens when a ruthless killer with no conscience takes in an irresistible young drug addict on the run from dangerous men? Ripley They call me RIP. I’m a killer. A murderer. A psychopath. In the eyes of the righteous, I’m a monster, born of sin and depravity. I want to protect her, but I’m not a good man. I want to love her, but I no longer feel. She gets under my skin, though, and has awakened something inside of me. Something I’d kill for. I’m not her savior—not even close. In fact, I’m worse than the hell she’s already suffered. I’m her vengeance. Tit for tat, as they say. And if she’s not careful, I’ll be her ruin. Dylan For months, I’ve watched him. I’ve fantasized him as my savior, my lover. My ticket out of the hell I’ve lived in for the last six years. I never dreamed he’d be my nightmare. Had I known what he really is, I’d have never gotten in the car that night, but life is full of cause and effect. And sometimes the choice on offer isn’t a choice at all. It’s the result of something already in motion, and we’re merely left to survive the ripple effect. RIPPLE EFFECT is a full-length, standalone dark hitman romance. Comes with a link and password to steamy bonus scene.

A work assignment in Kittery, Maine should be routine for Allie Lynch; nothing more than to prove herself as a brilliant engineer. Instead she finds herself torn between two men: a gorgeous military guard, Colton Briggs, and her devilishly handsome colleague, Drew Costa. To resist temptation, Allie does the only thing she can: she throws herself into her work. But fate has other plans for Allie. Women are going missing all around her, Allie is struck with a series of life-threatening mishaps, and she becomes the obsession of a local deranged psychopath. Thrust into a dark world that she can hardly fathom, Allie must fight for her very survival, open her mind to new realities – and open her heart to the possibility of love. Because both of these men are trouble – but one is a greater danger than she could ever imagine …