Return to Minos Falls with Callie and Tauro in this second chance, small town monster romance! Available October 3 but you can preorder NOW!

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When Callie Angelos sees her mate again after he humiliated her in front of her family and friends, she’s not ready to forgive or forget. She’s ready to fight.

For three years, she’s lived in the quiet town of Sparta, NC, trying to move on from being rejected by her mate, Tauro Constantine. So when he shows up, asking for a second chance, she’s determined to put him in his place. On his knees.

Tauro Constantine knows rejecting his mate was the biggest mistake of his life. He’s prepared to do what it takes to earn her forgiveness, even if it means bringing Callie along on his dangerous path to redemption.

Starting over isn’t always easy. As Callie and Tauro work together they have to confront the biggest obstacle of all – their past. 

Chapter One – Tauro

Whoever is banging on my door has a death wish. There is absolutely no reason why someone should be at my house at this late hour. I don’t have friends, and my parents are out of town—not that they would come over in the middle of the night. I do my best to ignore whoever is at the door but damn, they’re persistent because soon, they move on to the doorbell.  

I really hate the doorbell, and once I get rid of my visitor, I’m going to disable it. 

I stomp my way through the house until I get to the front door, flinging it open with a snarl. “What?” I growl. 

Deb, the town’s pseudo-prophetess, greets me with a little wave and a too-bright smile. She’s wearing a ridiculous hat with a fuzzy pink ball on top, and a heavy winter coat. I take a sniff—smells like snow will be here soon. 

“You need to bring Callie home,” she demands, and then she pushes herself past me and walks right into my house. 

I close the door, feeling the anger building inside me. “What did you say?”

She shrugs off her coat and hangs it on a nearby hook bolted to the wall, acting as if she’s an invited guest. “You need to get Callie and bring her home,” she insists. “You’re her mate. 

I cross my arms over my chest and look down at her. Deb is like everyone’s favorite aunt. She worries about us and bakes us cookies or pies, or if we’re really lucky, cinnamon rolls. And she’s a seer whose visions have finally returned after fifteen years. 

But none of that gives her the right to barge into my house and make demands. 

“I rejected her,” I say flatly. 

“I know. I also know you’ve been sneaking out of town to visit her.” 

My jaw drops. “How the fuck do you know that?” 

She grins and shrugs. “I had a hunch. The two of you are more than just mates. You’re fated mates.” 

I roll my eyes because I don’t know if I believe that. In minotaur culture, the oldest son and his mate are often fated mates and everyone else just kind of waits around for their bond to activate. But I’m the only child in my family; does that mean my mate and I were fated to be together? Was our relationship written in the stars long before our bond activated? 

“I haven’t visited Calliope,” I state, which is a half-truth. 

After I rejected her and she left Minos Falls, our bond tugged at me. Hard. Almost painfully. The only way to relieve the agony inside me was to go after her. It was a reckless decision because the moment I stepped outside the town’s boundaries, I worried I wouldn’t be able to return. When I turned back, everything was still the same. Same welcome sign. Same streets. 

I kept to the shadows, traveling at night and following her scent. When it stopped, I stopped until the wind brought me a new trail to follow and I ended up in Sparta, North Carolina. The minute I saw her—saw she was okay—the throbbing stopped. I could breathe again. 

And then I left. I made a choice—I rejected my mate—and I needed to deal with the consequences. I couldn’t undo what had been done. 

But when the pain returned, I found my way back to Sparta. 

“How do you do it?” she asks me, examining me with her ghostly white eyes. 

“Do what?” 

“Live with yourself. Visit her without her knowing. Take your pick.” 

“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming into my home and demanding something from me that I am incapable of doing.” 

“Lies!” She reaches a hand toward me. “I had a vision tonight. Let me show you.” 

I back away from her, shaking my head. “Don’t touch me.” 

Her hand drops. “Please, Tauro. Go and get her. She needs to come home to break the curse.” 

“I thought the curse was broken. Isn’t that why Molly’s arrival in Minos Falls was such a big deal? Why we had to keep the mimics and Zeus from getting to her.” 

Shaking her head, she steps toward me, her hand outstretched. “Please, let me just show you!” 

I take a step back toward the front door and open it, letting in an icy blast of air. “It’s time for you to leave.” 

Deb is defiant though, standing her ground and staring me down. “What’s holding you back?” 

“Absolutely nothing,” I tell her with certainty. “I just don’t need your creepy party tricks to show me something I know isn’t going to happen. 

Three years of stalking my ex has brought me a surprising amount of peace. I keep my distance so she doesn’t pick up on my scent, and some clever twist of fate allows me travel in disguise. Another happy accident I discovered during one of my trips to Sparta. 

I couldn’t exactly show up to a human town as a minotaur, which meant traveling at night and keeping to the shadows. It was exhausting though, and one night, I fell asleep in the wooded area behind Callie’s house. I woke up the next morning transformed into a human. It freaked me out, forcing me to abandon Callie and Sparta and return home sooner than I expected. 

I couldn’t stay away for long though, especially if a human disguise allowed me to spend more time in Sparta and to get closer to Callie. 

“It’s going to happen, Tauro,” Deb insists. “You just have to go and bring her back!” 

Annoyed, I snap, “And what if she doesn’t want to come back?” 

She smiles because I caved, letting my carefully constructed mask slip the tiniest bit. Fuck. 

“What if she’s so fucking happy she doesn’t want to come home?” 

It’s as if Deb can sense what I’m not saying. What if she doesn’t want me? Her head tilts to the side and her eyes soften as she stares at me with what is maybe a bit of familial affection. 

“Then you have to convince her,” she insists. “Remind her of everything and everyone she loves. Give her a reason to come home.” 

As if she’s completed her mission—which seems to be to throw my lift into chaos—she grabs her coat and tugs it back on. As she trudges past me, I notice her boots are laced up and it appears as if she rolled out of bed and threw on whatever she could find—a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a pink hooded sweatshirt. 

I open the door for her and as she steps out onto the front porch, she turns and gives me a reassuring smile. “I know you’ll do the right thing, Tauro. Deep down, you’re a good boy.” 

“I’ll let you think that,” I tell her before slamming the door in her face. 

Rude? Yes. But I bet she’ll think twice about coming back to my house without an invitation. 

Still, her visit unsettles me. Do I want Calliope back? Yes. I just didn’t plan on going after her now. I’m afraid if I show up out of the blue, Callie will chop my balls off or murder me and bury me in a shallow grave in the woods. I would rightly deserve all of those things and more for what I did to her. 

My life has been one mistake after the other, and when it comes to winning back my mate, I can’t be anything less than perfect.