Sometimes the hardest part of saving the world is believing you deserve a future in it.
Julian Eskridge didn’t come to York to fall in love. An ex–Philadelphia mob enforcer on the run from both the Mafia and the Feds, Julian is surviving under an alias—and sharing his body with Nigel Clark, a gentle ghost from the Jazz Age who saved his life by accident.
York should have been a place to disappear. Instead, Julian meets Raffa Heraldson.
Raffa is sunshine wrapped in Viking muscle: cheerful, open, relentlessly kind, and cursed to protect York since 1066. He’s stuck inside the city walls, burdened by centuries of duty and heartbreak, and still believes in happy endings. Julian is everything he shouldn’t want—gruff, guarded, and very sure he’s straight—until attraction turns into banter, banter turns into heat, and Raffa finds himself falling for the one man who makes him feel human again.
Supernatural shifters have moved into the city, using a powerful artifact that lets them steal not just human bodies, but identities. Council members, officials, influencers—anyone useful becomes a puppet. Their leader believes supernaturals are meant to rule, not hide, and he intends to reclaim power through fear, control, and an addiction that bends human will. In this quest for power, Raffa becomes the target. His curse is the key to domination, and the cost will be human lives. As the shifters tighten their grip and Raffa becomes the ultimate prize, Julian must choose whether to run like he always has—or stand beside the man he loves and fight.
