He shattered her heart five years ago. Now she’s the only one who can save him — and she’s walked straight back into his territory carrying the one secret that will bring him to his knees.
Zara Okafor has spent five years building a life from the ruins of a rejection she never understood. A thriving healer’s practice. A quiet, fiercely protected world for her and her son. Everything she needed — and not one single thing she wanted. She was done with Damien Blackthorn. Done with fated mates, pack politics, and the phantom ache of a severed bond she’d taught herself to ignore.
Then her cousin panics, a treaty falls apart, and Zara finds herself standing at the iron gate of Blackthorn Estate — the stand-in bride for a political ceremony she was never meant to be part of.
Except the cursed Alpha she’s been sent to marry is the same man who broke her.
Damien Blackthorn is dying by degrees.
A witch’s blood curse has been stripping his wolf for three years, and in seven days — on the blood moon’s rise — it will take the last of him and cascade through his entire pack. Four hundred wolves. Every shift, every bond, every life in his territory is counting down with him. The only thing that can break the curse is a willing mate bond. He never expected the fates to send him her.
He rejected Zara once. He told himself it was to protect her. He has never once stopped believing she was the one.
And then she arrives — composed, guarded, and utterly unwilling to let him close — with a four-year-old boy who has Damien’s jaw and golden eyes that know things children shouldn’t.
Seven days. One blood moon. A mate bond that never fully died — and a secret that will shatter them both before it saves them.
When a rival Alpha arrives to exploit the curse’s final hours and the clock runs out faster than either of them planned, Zara and Damien will have to choose: let five years of wounds keep them apart and lose everything, or trust the bond that broke them — and find out what they could have been all along.
Cursed Alpha’s Stand-In Bride is a scorching, emotionally charged paranormal romance featuring a rejected mate second chance, a secret baby revelation, forced proximity, a cursed alpha hero, and a heroine who rebuilt herself from nothing and chooses love anyway — not from need, but from the terrifying, hard-won knowledge that she wants him. Complete standalone with a fully satisfying HEA.
Perfect for fans of Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, and Celia Kyle.
If your heart needs a wolf who will wait — and a woman fierce enough to make him earn it — this is your book.
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