The Hearth-Keeper

She came to take one photo. He hasn't let anyone warm him in two years.

Maeve has a camera, a coat and a tin of pastry she meant to drop off at her neighbour's. She's a London baker who never says no to a good story. When an old stone archway at an Aldgate market feels warm under her hand, she steps through it.

She comes out on another world.

Nexival's canyons are cold, and the warrior pack that lives there is colder. Their Chieftain, Torin, is scarred down one side of his face. Since the raid that killed his closest friend, he has let the great hearth of his lodge stay dark. His pack eats standing up. Nobody laughs. The monster in the room is the only thing he thinks he has left to be.

Then a stranger walks through his ancient gates holding a tin of pastry, and she doesn't flinch.

For nineteen nights Torin has smelled bread that wasn't there. Now he knows why. The mate bond snaps tight the moment he sees her. Three nights later, at a cold hearth in the middle of the night, he kisses her. Then he decides the bond stole her choice, and he swears it won't happen again.

Maeve has other ideas. She has never met a kitchen she couldn't wake up. She takes over the empty ovens and feeds a pack of half-starved warriors. Slowly the lodge comes back to life, and so does the man who runs it, one loaf, one burn scar and one stolen kiss at a time.

But a Chieftain's warm hearth tells every rival clan that his pack is whole again. Vorruk of Clan Draveth has always taken what other packs build. He wants Torin's lands, his forges and his heart. Most of all, he wants the woman everyone now calls the Hearth-Keeper.

A traitor is already inside the walls. A way home is about to open. Maeve must decide if she's a guest who will leave or the woman who stays and fights for the people she feeds.

She has no magic. She has her hands, her nerve, a four-hundred-pound sack of flour and one stubborn belief: people deserve to be fed.

It might be enough to save a pack, and to teach a scarred warrior that he was never a monster at all.

A fated-mates romance with a grumpy-sunshine slow burn, plus found family, a starving pack, a loyal cyborg cat and a cold lodge brought back to life. Steamy, closed-door, and full of bread.