Meet The Characters
Leilani Vance
Leilani is a sharp-tongued wolf shifter with amber eyes, dark hair, and a deep emotional attachment to properly arranged furniture. She loves her family, distrusts surprises, and believes most disasters can be prevented with enough planning, snacks, and aggressively specific instructions.
Unfortunately, fate delivers the one thing she cannot organize: an enormous Council investigator standing at her front door.
Elias Ward
Elias is a towering wolf shifter, senior Council investigator, and the proud owner of more official forms than any reasonable person should possess. With his slate-gray eyes, immaculate suits, and beloved leather clipboard, he looks like bureaucracy became sentient and started lifting weights.
He believes rules exist for a reason, consent should never be assumed, and filing paperwork correctly is an underrated form of romance. He does not have a sense of humor. At least, that is what he has written in the official report.
Graham Blackwood
Graham is Leilani’s older brother, Alpha of the Blackwood Pack, and a broad-shouldered monument to flannel, loyalty, and grilled meat. He can command an entire room with one growl but remains powerless against his mate when she tells him to use a coaster.
He is fiercely protective of his family and suspicious of anyone who arrives carrying official paperwork. In Graham’s opinion, most legal disputes could be resolved faster with direct conversation and perhaps a carefully timed table flip.
Aria Bennett
Aria is Graham’s human mate and the calmest person in Blackwood Manor, which is admittedly not a competitive category. Warm, perceptive, and quietly stubborn, she can settle an angry Alpha with one touch and silence an entire dinner table with a single raised eyebrow.
Some people mistake her kindness for fragility. Those people generally reconsider after meeting her elbows.
Marcus Blackwood
Marcus is the family cousin, resident troublemaker, and a firm believer that housekeeping is an elaborate conspiracy invented by people who dislike fun. He is loyal, observant, and much smarter than he appears while stealing food from someone else’s plate.
Marcus treats every crisis with the gravity it deserves, which is usually very little until someone he loves is threatened.
Tessa Dane
Tessa is a young wolf shifter with a bruised past, a stubborn heart, and considerably more courage than she gives herself credit for. She arrives frightened and exhausted but refuses to let fear make her obedient.
Although she needs safety, she does not need anyone making her choices for her. She is learning that asking for help is not surrender and that the Blackwood definition of “quiet family dinner” should come with protective equipment.
Evelyn Vance
Evelyn is Leilani and Graham’s elegant, complicated mother. She arrives with immaculate clothing, carefully chosen words, and enough emotional baggage to require its own taxi.
Controlled and polished, Evelyn prefers difficult feelings to remain neatly folded and stored somewhere nobody can trip over them. Unfortunately, her children inherited both her stubbornness and her excellent memory.
