Shadow & Flame Book One
by C. A. Davore
Twenty-year-old Melodie Archer has nothing left to sell but herself. Thrown out, hunted, and out of options, she's auctioned off in a world she doesn't understand—until a stranger in a beautiful suit outbids a monster, pays a fortune, and walks her out into the dark.
Demitri Markov is the vampire lord of the city: five hundred years old and colder than the grave—except his hands are warm, his door is never locked, and there is only one thing he wants from her that he refuses to take. As his Companion, Mel is safe, salaried, and—for the first time in her life—free to choose. He swears he will never mark her, never touch her, never claim a single thing she doesn't offer first.
But the pull between them is a slow fire neither will name.
And Demitri is keeping a secret.
Her blood carries a scent he cannot place in five centuries of memory—something ancient, something hidden, something waking. A rival Alpha wants her for reasons she can't imagine. Powers older than the Alphas are whispering her name. And on the night of a masked ball, on her twenty-first birthday, everything Mel believes about who she is will burn to the ground—and something far older will rise in its place.
She was bought.
Now, at last, she gets to choose.
THE COMPANION is Book One of the Shadow & Flame trilogy—a full-length paranormal dark romance where the girl who was sold learns that the most dangerous thing she owns is her own heart. It ends on a bond sealed by her own free will… and the first spark of a war fought over what she is.
For readers who love:
A centuries-old, morally grey vampire protector
"He won't touch her until she asks"—consent as mythic law
A slow burn to scorching, open-door heat
Auction-to-sanctuary, and found family among monsters
A hidden heritage and a power everyone wants
Vampires vs. wolves—and a bond sealed by choice, not force
Dark romance for adult readers (18+). Contains explicit content and mature themes, including references to trafficking and assault. A fierce, consent-forward love story, and the beginning of a trilogy that burns toward a hard-won happily-ever-after.
One night changed everything.
Begin the trilogy where she was sold—and start with The Companion.
More books by C. A. Davore
Becoming Belladonna
She is fifty. She has hot flashes. She is exactly who they have been waiting for.
At fifty, Belladonna Blackbriar thought she knew exactly who she was.
A horticulture professor at a Tucson community college. A divorced mother. A grandmother of two. A woman moving quietly through perimenopause and the strange new geography of her own body, who had accepted that her best years were behind her — and that the rest of her life would be small, careful, and her own.
She was wrong about all of it.
On a Friday morning at three-thirty-one, on a balcony of the Grand Floridian, Bell finally hears the voice she has been ignoring her entire life. I am Belladonna. And in the small dry register she will come to know as her permanent weather, she understands — for the first time — that she has never been the woman she thought she was.
Three thousand feet beneath the eastern slope of the Appalachian mountains, a civilization has been waiting for her. A people who are not quite human. A line that descends from a king who abdicated his throne for love three centuries ago. A man who has been preparing to receive her for one hundred and fifty-seven years, four months, and twenty-eight days.
A working chord, in her chest, that has — in operational fact — been ringing for her since April.
She is fifty. She is exhausted. She is exactly who they have been waiting for.
A slow-burn romantasy for women who are tired of being told their stories are over.
Becoming Belladonna is the first book in a planned trilogy following Bell as she descends into an ancient civilization beneath the Appalachians, claims a throne three centuries empty, and falls slowly — across the long careful working interval of one impossible summer — into a love she had stopped allowing herself to imagine. A romantasy of fated love, found family, and a mature heroine who discovers, at fifty, that her life has only just begun.
Inside this book you will find:
A fifty-year-old heroine navigating divorce, hot flashes, and the awakening of a self she has never met
A slow-burn romance with sensual but closed-door intimate scenes
An underground civilization with three thousand years of patient ethical philosophy
A family — daughter, grandchildren, ex-husband — held together across two worlds
A working chord, in the chest, that resolves only when the bond does
The small specific working register of a woman becoming, in operational fact, herself
For readers of mature, character-driven romantasy who have been waiting for a heroine who looks like the women they actually know.
Becoming Belladonna — Book One of a planned trilogy. The working interval ahead is waiting.