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- Herausgeber: Moonlight Publishing
- Sprache: Englisch
When archaeologist Elena Vasquez accidentally awakens a cursed beast king, she discovers that some legends are dangerously real—and irresistibly seductive.
Ambitious graduate student Elena has built her life around independence and academic success. But when her research in Romania's ancient ruins awakens Kieran Blackthorne—a three-hundred-year-old werewolf king trapped by a vengeful curse—everything she thought she knew about the world crumbles.
Bound to him by magic she doesn't understand, Elena finds herself caught between two worlds: the rational life she's carefully constructed and a supernatural realm where passion burns as hot as the power coursing through her veins. Kieran is everything she's sworn to avoid—dominant, possessive, and utterly devoted to claiming her as his destined queen.
But breaking his curse isn't just about love—it's about survival. Ancient enemies are rising, determined to destroy their bond before Elena can unlock the queen-maker magic in her bloodline. As political intrigue threatens both their worlds, Elena must choose between the safety of her old life and a love powerful enough to reshape supernatural civilization.
Perfect for readers who devour Patricia Briggs, J.R. Ward, and Sherrilyn Kenyon, this standalone paranormal romance delivers scorching chemistry, supernatural politics, and a heroine who refuses to bow to anyone—except the beast king who proves worthy of her surrender.
Experience a love that transcends species, defies ancient laws, and burns hot enough to melt the coldest curse. One-click now and lose yourself in a world where destiny can't be denied.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of contents
Chapter 1: The Ritual Chamber
Chapter 2: Beast in the Shadows
Chapter 3: First Contact
Chapter 4: Bound by Magic
Chapter 5: Enemies in the Night
Chapter 6: Safe House Tensions
Chapter 7: Blood and Destiny
Chapter 8: The Beast Unleashed
Chapter 9: Under Siege
Chapter 10: Healing Touch
Chapter 11: Royal Expectations
Chapter 12: Hunt or Be Hunted
Chapter 13: Passion and Promises
Chapter 14: Time Running Out
Chapter 15: The Ultimate Gambit
Chapter 16: The Trap
Chapter 17: The Claiming
Chapter 18: Queen's Power
Chapter 19: New Beginnings
Chapter 20: Ever After
BOUND TO THE BEAST KING
A Royal Shifter Romance of Ancient Curses and Destined Queens
Mia Blackwood
Copyright © 2025 by Mia Blackwood
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First Edition: 2025
Publisher: Moonlight Publishing
Content Warning: This book contains mature themes including sexual content, mild violence, supernatural elements, and themes of captivity and magical compulsion that are resolved positively. Intended for readers 18 years and older.
Author's Note: This book features a happily ever after ending with no cheating between the main couple.
For updates on new releases and exclusive content, visit https://payhip.com/MiaRomanceBooks
If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews help readers discover new books and support independent authors.
Connect with Mia Blackwood:
Special Thanks: To the readers who believe in the magic of forever love and the power of strong women who bow to no one but choose to stand beside worthy partners.
Dedication:For everyone who has ever felt bound by circumstances beyond their control and found the courage to rewrite their own destiny.
Table of Content
❋ ◊ ❋
Chapter 1: The Ritual Chamber 5
Chapter 2: Beast in the Shadows 22
Chapter 3: First Contact 37
Chapter 4: Bound by Magic 55
Chapter 5: Enemies in the Night 67
Chapter 6: Safe House Tensions 83
Chapter 7: Blood and Destiny 95
Chapter 8: The Beast Unleashed 112
Chapter 9: Under Siege 128
Chapter 10: Healing Touch 145
Chapter 11: Royal Expectations 158
Chapter 12: Hunt or Be Hunted 173
Chapter 13: Passion and Promises 188
Chapter 14: Time Running Out 200
Chapter 15: The Ultimate Gambit 213
Chapter 16: The Trap 226
Chapter 17: The Claiming 240
Chapter 18: Queen's Power 256
Chapter 19: New Beginnings 270
Chapter 20: Ever After 282
Chapter 1: The Ritual Chamber
Chapter 1
❋ ◊ ❋
The Ritual Chamber
The ancient stone whispered secrets I couldn't understand.
My flashlight beam cut through the darkness of the hidden chamber, illuminating walls covered in symbols that seemed to pulse with their own inner light. Three weeks of careful excavation beneath the ruins of Castelul Negru had led to this moment—the discovery that would make my career and finally prove to the academic world that Dr. Elena Vasquez was more than just another graduate student chasing impossible theories.
If only I'd known it would destroy my life in the process.
"This can't be right," I breathed, stepping deeper into the circular chamber that shouldn't exist. According to the castle's historical records, these ruins dated back to the fourteenth century. But the symbols carved into these walls... they were older. Much older.
Ancient. Primal. Calling to something deep in my bones that I didn't want to acknowledge.
The air down here tasted different. Thick with something that made my skin prickle and my pulse quicken. Like standing in the eye of a storm that hadn't broken yet. Like breathing in raw power that had been sleeping for centuries, waiting for someone stupid enough to wake it up.
I ran my fingers along the smooth stone, marveling at the craftsmanship. No tool marks. No signs of wear despite the centuries that should have weathered these walls to dust. The carvings looked like they'd been made yesterday, carved by hands that knew secrets the modern world had forgotten.
My archaeological training screamed that this was impossible. But standing here, surrounded by perfection that defied explanation, I couldn't deny what my eyes were telling me.
Magic. Real, honest-to-God magic.
Wolves.
That's what the symbols depicted. Wolves in various forms—some realistic enough to leap from the stone, others stylized into geometric patterns that hurt to look at directly. But always wolves. Running through carved forests. Hunting beneath stone moons. Howling their grief to stars that would never answer.
And at the center of it all, carved into a raised dais that dominated the chamber's heart, was the largest wolf I'd ever seen rendered in stone. Its eyes were inlaid with some kind of crystalline material that caught my flashlight beam and threw it back in golden fragments that made my breath catch.
Beautiful. Terrifying. Watching me with an intensity that made my skin burn.
"Elena!" Dr. Sarah Chen's voice echoed down from the excavation site above, shattering the spell that had been weaving itself around me. "Find anything interesting?"
Interesting. That was one word for it. Life-altering. Career-ending. Sanity-destroying. Those were a few others.
"Still cataloging!" I called back, my voice bouncing off the curved walls like a whispered prayer. I didn't want to share this discovery until I understood what I was looking at. Three years of graduate school had taught me that extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence, and this... this felt extraordinary in ways that made my hands shake and my heart race.
I pulled out my camera and began documenting everything methodically, the way Dr. Chen had taught me. The symbols first—photographing each section of wall with clinical precision even as my skin prickled with awareness. The curved architecture that shouldn't have been possible with medieval engineering. The perfect preservation that defied every law of entropy I'd ever studied.
With each flash, shadows danced across the walls, making the carved wolves seem alive. Watching. Waiting.
The last photo I took was of the central wolf statue, and that's when I noticed the depression at its base. Perfectly round, about the size of a human handprint. Smooth stone worn to silk by countless touches over the centuries.
Without thinking, I reached out and pressed my palm against the carved indentation.
The world exploded.
Light erupted from every symbol simultaneously, flooding the chamber with brilliant silver radiance that had me stumbling backward, temporarily blinded. The stone beneath my palm grew warm, then hot, then almost unbearably so, but I couldn't pull my hand away. Something held it there, some force I couldn't see or understand or fight.
Power rushed through me like lightning in reverse, flowing from the stone into my skin, racing up my arm and straight to my heart. It felt like drowning in electricity, like being turned inside out and reassembled as something fundamentally different. Every nerve ending in my body came alive with sensation that bordered on pain.
And then I felt it.
Him.
A presence, ancient and wild and utterly male, suddenly aware of me as I was becoming aware of him. Hunger slammed into my consciousness—not for food, but for something infinitely more primal. Images flashed behind my eyelids: golden eyes in darkness, massive paws padding across stone floors, the sensation of being hunted by something that moved like shadow and struck like lightning.
Finally.
The word whispered through my mind in a voice that definitely wasn't mine. Deep. Rough. Edged with a longing so profound it brought tears to my eyes and made my knees weak with want I didn't understand.
My mate. My queen. Come to me.
The endearments hit me like physical blows, awakening something in my chest that I'd never felt before. Something that recognized those words, that yearned toward the voice speaking them with desperate hunger.
"No," I gasped, finally managing to wrench my hand away from the stone. The light died instantly, plunging the chamber back into ordinary darkness broken only by my flashlight beam. My hand burned where it had touched the stone, marked by heat that would probably scar.
I scrambled for my flashlight with shaking hands, desperate to restore some sense of normalcy to a situation that had careened completely out of control. The metal felt cold and real against my palms—a lifeline to the rational world I understood. The world where stones didn't light up and voices didn't whisper impossible things through your mind.
But when I directed the beam back toward the dais, my blood turned to ice.
The wolf statue was no longer stone.
Golden eyes stared back at me from a massive head that moved with predatory grace. Real fur, dark as midnight, covered muscles that bunched and shifted as the creature—because it was definitely a creature now, alive and breathing and watching me with intelligence that was unmistakably human—rose to its feet on the ancient dais.
It was easily the size of a small horse, with fangs that gleamed white in my flashlight beam and claws that scraped against stone as it stepped down from its perch. Power radiated from every line of its impossible body, the kind of raw strength that could tear through steel like paper.
But it was the eyes that held me frozen. Golden eyes that looked at me like I was everything they'd been searching for. Like I was salvation and damnation wrapped up in one terrified package.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Could only watch as the most beautiful and terrifying thing I'd ever seen stalked toward me with purpose that made my skin burn with awareness I didn't want to examine.
Don't run, that voice whispered through my mind again, gentle despite the predator approaching me with liquid grace. I won't hurt you. I could never hurt you.
But every instinct I possessed screamed at me to get out of this chamber, out of this castle, out of Romania entirely. I stumbled backward, never taking my eyes off the wolf, until my shoulders hit the stone wall.
Trapped.
The creature stopped just out of arm's reach, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from its massive body. Its golden eyes held intelligence that was unmistakably human, and something else that made my heart race for reasons that had nothing to do with fear.
Recognition.
Like looking into a mirror and seeing the other half of your soul staring back. Like finding something you'd been searching for your entire life without knowing you were lost.
"This isn't real," I whispered, more to convince myself than anything else. My voice came out breathy, affected by proximity to something so fundamentally other that my body didn't know how to process it. "Wolves don't turn from stone. Ancient chambers don't light up like Christmas trees. And they definitely don't create psychic connections with graduate students who should know better than to go around touching mysterious artifacts."
The wolf's massive head tilted to one side, and I swear I saw amusement flicker in those golden depths. Then it began to change.
The transformation was like watching time-lapse photography of evolution in reverse. Fur receded, revealing golden skin stretched over muscles that belonged on a Renaissance sculpture. Limbs elongated and reformed with wet sounds that should have been horrifying but somehow weren't. The muzzle shortened and reshaped into features that were aggressively masculine and absolutely perfect.
Within moments, a man knelt where the wolf had been.
A naked man.
A naked man with shoulder-length dark hair that caught the light like silk, a body that could have been carved by Michelangelo if the master sculptor had been having particularly erotic dreams, and the same golden eyes that had stared into my soul from the wolf's face. Scars crisscrossed his chest and arms—pale lines that spoke of battles fought and won, of violence survived and enemies conquered.
Power radiated from every inch of him, even in his vulnerable position on the stone floor. Especially in his vulnerable position, as if he could be naked and kneeling and still be the most dangerous thing in any room.
He was the most magnificent thing I'd ever seen.
He was also completely impossible.
"You're not real," I said again, but my voice lacked conviction. Everything about him felt real. The way he moved with unconscious grace, like every gesture was a work of art. The way his scent reached me even from several feet away—something wild and clean that made my body respond in ways I definitely didn't want to think about. The way his presence filled the chamber until there was no room for anything else, until the air itself seemed charged with his existence.
"Real enough," he said, and his voice was exactly what I'd heard in my mind. Rough velvet wrapped around steel, with an accent I couldn't place that spoke of old places and older power. "Though I must admit, this isn't how I imagined our first meeting would go."
He rose to his feet in one fluid motion that showcased every perfect line of muscle, and I forced myself to keep my eyes on his face. Mostly. It wasn't easy when every feminine cell in my body was cataloging exactly how well-built he was, and exactly how much I wanted to run my hands over all that golden skin just to see if it was as warm as it looked.
The thought terrified me almost as much as his impossible transformation.
"Our first meeting," I repeated slowly, my academic mind latching onto the phrase like a lifeline. "You talk like you were expecting me."
"For three hundred years," he said simply, as if mentioning centuries was as normal as discussing the weather. "Give or take a decade."
Three hundred years. Right. Of course. Because apparently, my life wasn't surreal enough already.
"I need to leave," I said, pushing away from the wall and edging toward what I hoped was the passage that led back to the main excavation site. Back to the world that made sense, where men didn't turn into wolves and ancient magic didn't reach out to claim unsuspecting graduate students. "I need to get out of here and figure out what kind of hallucination I'm having, and probably check myself into a psychiatric facility, and—"
Pain lanced through my skull like someone had driven a spike between my eyes. I gasped and stumbled, my vision graying at the edges as agony unlike anything I'd ever experienced tore through my head. The flashlight slipped from nerveless fingers and clattered across the stone floor, its beam spinning wildly before settling on the wall.
Strong arms caught me before I could fall, pulling me against a chest that radiated heat like a furnace. The pain in my head receded instantly, replaced by a sensation of rightness so profound it made me want to weep. Like coming home after years of wandering. Like finding the missing piece of a puzzle you didn't know was incomplete.
"Easy," he murmured against my hair, his voice a rumble that I felt in my bones. "The bond isn't used to separation. It will hurt until you stop fighting it."
His skin was exactly as warm as it looked, and being pressed against his naked body was making coherent thought nearly impossible. He smelled like winter forests and lightning storms, like danger and safety all wrapped up in one impossible package. Like something I wanted to breathe in until it became part of me.
"Bond?" I managed to ask, though my voice came out more breathless than I would have liked.
"The mating bond," he said, as if that explained everything. As if those two words didn't just turn my entire understanding of reality upside down. "Created when you activated the binding ritual. We're connected now, you and I. Permanently."
The words hit me like a slap of cold water. I pushed against his chest, putting distance between us that my body immediately protested with a low ache that settled deep in my bones. Every inch of separation felt wrong, like tearing something vital that was never meant to be severed.
"Connected? What do you mean connected?" My voice rose with each word, panic bleeding through despite my attempts to stay calm. "I didn't agree to be connected to anyone, especially not some... some..."
"Cursed beast king?" he suggested, one corner of his mouth quirking up in what might have been amusement. There was sadness there too, old pain that spoke of centuries of loneliness. "That's what I am, among other things."
"Cursed." I latched onto the word like a lifeline. Curses could be broken. Curses weren't permanent. "You're cursed. That means this can be undone."
Something flickered in his golden eyes. Pain, maybe. Or longing so deep it hurt to look at. "Not undone, no. But it doesn't have to be completed either. You can choose to walk away, though it will be... uncomfortable."
"Uncomfortable?" The word came out sharper than I intended, edged with the hysteria I was trying to keep at bay.
"The bond will always be there, pulling you back to me," he said, and his voice grew rougher with each word, like the admission was being torn from somewhere deep in his chest. "You'll dream of me. Think of me at inappropriate times. Feel empty in ways you can't explain." He paused, his golden eyes holding mine with intensity that made my breath catch. "And I'll know exactly where you are, every moment of every day, until one of us dies."
Horror washed over me in cold waves. "You're talking about stalking."
"I'm talking about biological imperative," he corrected, but there was gentleness in his voice that took the sting out of the words. "I have no more choice in this than you do. Less, actually, since you hold all the power."
"I hold the power?" I laughed, but there was no humor in it. Only the high, thin sound of someone whose world had just been turned completely upside down. "You're the one who can turn into a wolf. You're the one with supernatural strength and three hundred years of experience. How exactly do I hold any power here?"
"Because the choice is yours," he said simply, and the quiet certainty in his voice made something clench in my chest. "Accept the bond completely, and become my mate in truth. Or reject it, and condemn us both to three centuries of longing for something we can never have."
Three centuries. The casual way he mentioned timespans that dwarfed human lifetimes drove home exactly how far out of my depth I was. I was a graduate student from a middle-class family in San Diego. I researched dead civilizations and wrote papers about pottery shards and spent my free time reading romance novels where supernatural creatures swept ordinary women off their feet.
This was supposed to be fiction.
"I need to think," I said, backing toward the passage again. Every step away from him felt like swimming upstream against a current that wanted to drag me back to his side. "I need time to process this."
The pain hit me again the moment I was more than arm's length away from him, but I gritted my teeth and pushed through it. Sharp agony that started in my skull and radiated down my spine, like my nervous system was protesting the separation. Whatever this connection was, I wouldn't let it control me. I'd built my entire life around independence, around never needing anyone the way my mother had needed my father before he walked out on us.
I wasn't about to throw that away for some supernatural destiny I hadn't asked for.
Even if every cell in my body was screaming at me to stay.
"Elena." The way he said my name made my knees weak. Like a prayer. Like a promise. Like something sacred that shouldn't be spoken aloud. "Be careful. Activating the ritual will have consequences beyond just our bond. There are others who have been waiting for this moment."
"Others?" Fear shot through me like ice water, temporarily overwhelming the pain of separation.
"Those who benefit from keeping me cursed," he said, and now his voice carried an edge of something darker. Something that spoke of violence and old grudges and enemies who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted. "They'll come for you. Tonight."
My hands started shaking. "Come for me? Why?"
"Because you're the key to breaking the curse entirely," he said, his golden eyes burning with intensity that made me want to step closer despite the fear clawing at my throat. "And there are those who would kill to prevent that."
I stared at him, this impossible man who claimed to be bound to me by magic and destiny. Every rational part of my mind insisted this was all an elaborate delusion brought on by too much stress and too little sleep. Hallucinations brought on by spending too much time alone in ancient ruins, breathing in dust and dreaming of discoveries that would change everything.
But the part of me that had always known there was more to the world than what textbooks contained, the part that had driven me to study the mysteries of the past in search of something I couldn't name, recognized truth when I heard it.
I was in danger.
We were in danger.
And for the first time in my carefully ordered life, I had absolutely no idea what to do about it.
"Elena!" Dr. Chen's voice echoed down from above again, more insistent this time. "Everything alright down there?"
I looked back at the man who claimed to be my mate, memorizing features that were already burned into my memory like brands. The strong line of his jaw. The way his dark hair fell across his forehead. The scars that spoke of battles I couldn't imagine. The golden eyes that looked at me like I was everything he'd ever wanted and the one thing he couldn't have.
"What's your name?" I asked, though I'm not sure why it mattered. Why I needed to put a name to the face that would haunt my dreams.
"Kieran," he said, and even that single word sounded like music in his accent. "Kieran Blackthorne, King of the Northern Territories. At least, I was before the curse."
King. Of course he was royalty. Because apparently, my life wasn't complicated enough already.
"Elena!" Dr. Chen called again, worry creeping into her voice.
"I have to go," I said, though every step away from him felt like tearing something vital inside my chest. The pain was getting worse with distance, a constant throb that made my vision blur at the edges. "This... whatever this is... I need time."
"Time is the one thing we don't have," Kieran said, but he made no move to stop me. His hands remained at his sides, even though I could see the tension in his muscles, the way he fought not to reach for me. "They'll come for you tonight. When they do, find me. The bond will guide you."
I nodded and stumbled toward the passage, my flashlight beam wavering as my hands shook. Behind me, I heard the soft whisper of transformation—bones reshaping, muscles reforming, the ancient magic that turned man into beast. When I glanced back, the golden-eyed wolf sat on the dais exactly where the statue had been.
Watching me leave with eyes that held too much knowledge and too much sorrow.
I climbed the rough stone steps toward the surface, toward the ordinary world of archaeological digs and rational explanations. But with each step, the certainty grew in my chest like a cold weight:
My ordinary life was over.
And the terrifying part wasn't that I'd been bound to a cursed beast king.
It was that some traitorous part of me didn't want to break free.
Chapter 2: Beast in the Shadows
Chapter 2
❋ ◊ ❋
