Rating: 4 Stars

Publisher: Hard Rose Publishing

Genre: Gay Paranormal Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Age Gap, Fated Mates, Insta-Love, Paranormal, Romance, Series, Small Town, Urban Fantasy, Virgin

Length: 189 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

When your fated mate is also your prime suspect, love becomes the most dangerous crime of all.

Iven is a busy sheriff. After solving one case, he’s right back to it when a series of break-ins leads to a murder. The evidence leads to a wolf shifter named Marric Ransome. The only problem: Marric Ransome is Iven’s fated mate.

Marric is heir to the pack throne. He doesn’t want to be alpha, but his father won’t listen to reason. Leading the pack is the last of his worries when a deadly illness plagues his family.

The break-ins lead them on a crash course with a much more dangerous situation. Finding the killer could bring a war between packs.

Review –

Iven, the sheriff of Fortune Falls, was introduced in Midnight Whispers (Forbidden Entanglements, #2). He’s Riley’s father and Cass’ boss and best friend. Since Cass and Riley are now mated, Iven is also Cass’ father-in-law. Strangely, it does all make sense.

Iven and Cass are investigating a string of break-ins. There’s been no evidence left behind, or even a scent of the perpetrator that Iven and Cass can trace. Iven’s a warlock, and Cass is a wolf shifter. Cass for sure should be able to pick up a scent, but there’s nothing.

Marric Ransome, half wolf, half witch, is the thief they’re looking for, only he’s not your average run-of-the-mill criminal. He’s breaking into these homes for a very important reason.

Marric’s father is the alpha of the Timeston’s pack, and his only goal is to have his son, Marric, take over as alpha someday. Marric isn’t interested. Not only is he not interested, he doesn’t agree with the way his father runs the pack. Even so, it’s his dad and he loves him.

Marric and his younger sister Emery are both very ill. It comes and goes, but it gets worse with each new episode. An unknown person or entity has cursed them, and unless they find a way to lift the curse, they’ll both likely die.

Marric has just broken into another home when he finds a dead body. He can’t just leave, so he calls the sheriff of Fortune Falls, even knowing he’s implicating himself in the break-ins. He’s also putting himself in the position of being arrested for a murder he didn’t commit.

When the sheriff, Iven, arrives, they both know they’ve met their fated mate. With Iven being the sheriff, the smart thing would be to take Marric to the station for questioning. He doesn’t. What he does instead is have him go to his patrol car and stay there. What Iven’s not expecting when he gets to his car later is a very, very sick Marric.

I’m all about fated mates and the insta-love that usually comes with them, but in both books I don’t feel that the couples were even given a chance to breathe before declarations were made and the mate bond happened. Everything happens in only a couple of days.

As Marric is getting sicker by the minute, some serious stuff is happening in the background. Covens, wolf packs, and everything in between are about to go to war. With Marric’s father being the alpha of the Timeston’s pack, and Cass being part of the Fortune Falls pack, they have to decide if they’ll be working together or against each other. With Marric deathly ill from the curse, they have no choice but to work together, even if Iven and Marric’s dad butt heads a few times. The main goal is to get Marric better. They can have their pissing contest (so to speak) when everything else is over and done with.

It’s literally a race against time to find a way to lift the curse that’s making Marric and his sister so sick.

Characters from the first book are in this one, with my favorite being Griffin, Riley’s brother and Iven’s oldest son. He’s a lot more serious in this book than in Midnight Whispers, but he was still entertaining. There’s a lot of witch and wolf stuff happening, and some of that got a little confusing a few times. In the end it all made sense.

As with Cass and Riley, there’s an age gap between Iven and Marric. Marric is twenty-eight, but Iven’s age isn’t mentioned. Marric is the same age as Griffin, so I’m going to assume that Iven is fifty or close to it. As much as I wanted to, I didn’t really feel a whole lot of chemistry between Iven and Marric. Maybe it’s because everything happened so fast and there was zero build-up. I did like them together, but I wish they would’ve had more time to get to know each other before bam! mates.

Like in the first book, there are quite a few editing issues. I wouldn’t even mention them if it wasn’t so many. Another thing I noticed is that one chapter jumped between first and third person POV. It took me a minute to figure out who was saying what.

This was a nice read. There are a few things that still need to be resolved with regard to both wolf packs. No doubt they will be settled in a future book. I can’t wait to read Griffin’s story.

Overall, a nice addition to the series.