Thea Wilder inherits her great-aunt's crumbling estate and, along with it, a two-hundred-year-old marriage contract binding her family's witch line to House Thorn's vampire heir -- a bargain she never chose and can't simply refuse. The Widow's Bargain follows Thea and Alaric Thorn as they uncover the real purpose behind the old treaty: a magical lock, buried beneath the manor, that keeps a rival coven from claiming a ley-line powerful enough to remake whoever controls it. With the rival coven closing in and the old binding weakening, Thea and Alaric must decide whether to honor a bargain neither of them chose -- or build something real enough to hold the lock on their own terms. What's inside: - A slow-burn arranged-bond paranormal romance between a reluctant heiress and a vampire heir - An original ley-line magic system tied to two centuries of family obligation - A rival coven plot that turns a quiet inheritance into a race against a weakening lock - A found bond that grows from obligation into something freely chosen - Atmospheric old-manor setting with real consequences for the town it protects Perfect for readers who love arranged-bond romance, old family treaties, slow-burn vampire heroes, and heroines who turn inherited obligations into choices of their own. Thea Wilder had met her great-aunt Cordelia exactly twice in her life, both times at family funerals where the old woman had said almost nothing and watched everything, so the phone call informing her she'd inherited Cordelia's entire estate came as less of a surprise than the estate itself, which turned out to be a crumbling manor on the edge of a town called Wychcombe that Thea had never heard of, bound by a two-hundred-year-old treaty she understood even less.
