"Markus Del Reyes, I reject you." He left me no choice. I refuse to spend the rest of my life with my childhood bully for a mate. I may be a cursed shifter, incapable of shifting--but I wasn't desperate. Not till the Alpha Supreme cast me out of the House of Fire and Fluorite for rejecting his son. Now I'm packless. Homeless. No longer under the protection of a House. Until the dark vampire king of Blood and Beryl turns his sights on me. In return for protection from my former House, I have to become his fake mate. I'll be a queen and a fraud. It's a treacherous lie to live--and I find myself forgetting what's real and what's not with every stolen touch and heated kiss we share. What starts as a business arrangement turns complicated when my heat hits, and the king insists on being the one to help me through it. I've lost everything for doing what I know is right, but the greatest danger I ever faced was never losing my life . . . it was opening my cursed heart. Contains mature themes.