I used to have it all. Football made me popular. Money made me desirable. My name made me a king. Girls tried to tame me, but I valued my freedom too much to be tied down. Until I lost it all.

West Golden - so easy to hate, yet so hard to resist. Don’t let that pretty face of his fool you. He isn’t the boy next door, or the kind you trust with your heart. He’s the devil in designer jeans, with all the charm of a bona fide psycho. Trust me. He swears I did something to cross him before I even stepped foot inside Cypress Prep, but it’s a lie. No one knows better than me that I’m all out of chances. His money, status, and the loyalty of his equally entitled brothers makes him seem untouchable. Only, I know better than that.

Mysterious. Dark. Deadly. They say crows are bad omens, but until I met them, a single crow was my only friend. Then, the boys next door come to welcome me to the neighborhood.

It’ll be easy, my father said. When we move to a small town in the south, we’ll own it, my brothers said. After all, my family is rich as sin and used to getting whatever they want. How hard could it be? Except, when we arrive in Faulkner, someone already owns this town. The Darling family. They are every bit as wealthy as we are, and they’re not happy with our new money moving in.

In one moment, my freedom is snatched away when my father tells me I have to marry a man I’ve never met. I expect an 80-year-old retired boss who craves my virgin flesh in payment for his service. Bright side—in a few years, he’ll be gone, and I’ll be free again. I’m not prepared for the dangerously gorgeous soldier my father presents. Like anything that looks too good to be true, so is my new husband. He’s cold, cruel, and worst of all, young. Suddenly, marriage is a life sentence. That is, if I don’t show him from day one that no one controls Eliza Pomponio.

Today I start school at Pacific Prep. This is my new lease on life, and I won’t be wasting it. I need this, now, more than ever. I need the education, the promise of a future that I wouldn’t get anywhere else. These rich kids don’t like me, though. When Hawk Davenport decides he doesn’t want me here, his friends back him. Along with Hawk, Westley Warren, Cam Rutherford, and Mason Hayes rule this school...and nobody dares go against them.

The vampire prince has never claimed a human. Until now. My whole life I’ve been nothing but a means to an end; livestock kept caged for the production of blood. I’ve stared through fences at the promise of freedom countless times, but the only way anyone escapes this hell is in the hands of a bloodsucker.

Moving in with a billionaire playboy is supposed to be some sort of Cinderella story, right? I’m supposed to be having the time of my life while living the dream. Wrong. When the bank took our home, it didn’t come as a surprise. The bomb was when mom told me we were moving out of Breakers Flats, away from my crew, and to a place that existed only in fairy tales - Bellevue Springs. Home of the insanely beautiful, rich, and famous.

The hot stranger, who gate-crashed my party and almost came to blows with my boyfriend and my other lover, is my loathsome new stepbrother. Ares delights in telling me he’s named after the God of War, as he threatens to ruin me. Not sure what I have done to deserve his instant hatred, but whatever.

I thought I knew who I was, where I came from, but my life is turned upside down when a stranger knocks on my door with promises that seem too good to be true. I should have run like hell and never looked back, but it’s too late now. I’m enrolled at Cadieux College, where secrets and deception line the walls, and the founding families rule without question. They all think I’ll be easy to use, to control, but I’m nobody’s puppet.

Barrington University is home of the Lords, a secret society that requires their blood in payment. They are above all—the most powerful men in the world. They devote their lives to violence in exchange for power. And during their senior year, they are offered a chosen one.

Bred in a world of gang wars, violence, and secrets, they rule the bloody town of Thorn Valley and all the people in it...too bad for me, I’ve never been good at kissing ass or keeping quiet. Even if their savage spirits awaken something inside of me I thought was long dead, I can’t break. I won’t. They think they scare me, that I’ll run and hide, but the joke’s on them. The Crows aren’t the first monsters I’ve faced, and they won’t be the last. There are worse evils out there waiting to take their stab at Ava Jade Mason. I say, let them try.

The plan was simple: Destroy the girl. Ruin her life. Make her and her mother leave. Only…she’s not as easy a target as I thought she’d be. She’s nothing but a pawn, a tool for my father to use against her mother. But pawns don’t fight back the way she does. They don’t violate my sanity the way she does. She put herself in the mouth of the beast. I wanted her out of the way, but now…I can’t let her go.

The night my sister died, a piece of me died with her. So I made a vow to enroll at Spine Ridge University just like her, find the person responsible… and make them pay. Until I meet three sick boys of the Skull & Serpent Society: Felix, Dylan, Alistair. Rude, heartless, vicious guys who are obsessed with making me regret I ever stepped foot on campus. They make me a deal: My body in exchange for a glimpse at their violence.

When Wren Jacobi sets eyes on Wolf Hall Academy’s newest inductee, all he sees is an easy mark. A reserved little girl with a target painted on her back. He knows nothing of my troubled past, though. Nothing of my mother’s suspicious death or the horrific treatment I’ve had to endure at the hands of my psychotic father. And he has no idea of the lengths that I, unassuming little Elodie Stillwater, will go to in order to break the savage beast who dreams of breaking me first.