Mercy's Edge

She came to Oakhaven to disappear. He made sure no one else could find her.Veda Monroe was a star. Principal ballerina, sold-out stages, a name synonymous with perfection. Then her ankle shattered on a raked stage, her director replaced her with his new lover, and the spotlight went black. Broke, broken, and out of options, she limps back to her dead mother's rotting house in a small Oregon town that forgot her the day she left.Kellan Cross hasn't forgotten.The town pariah. Ex-convict. A man who spent ten years in a state penitentiary for nearly killing someone with his bare hands - and who would do it again without hesitation. He owns the local junkyard, speaks in single syllables, and hasn't touched another person in three years.Until the night Veda's car dies on Millhaven Road and he watches her step into the rain.He doesn't introduce himself. He fixes her porch steps in the dead of night. Leaves ice packs on her doorstep. Scares every man in town into crossing the street when she walks by. He builds an invisible fortress around her life - silent, systematic, absolute.And Veda, who should be terrified, finds herself leaning into the walls instead of pushing against them.But Kellan's protection comes with a price. He doesn't share. He doesn't compromise. And when a ghost from her past shows up to drag her back to the world that destroyed her, the monster she's been sleeping next to finally shows its teeth.The question isn't whether he'll burn it all down.The question is whether she'll hand him the match.MERCY'S EDGE is a gritty, rain-soaked dark romance with an obsessive, possessive, blue-collar hero who speaks in silence and loves in violence. Intended for mature readers. This is Book 1 in the Oakhaven Pariahs series.Content includes: obsessive and stalker behavior, graphic protective violence, explicit intimate content, coercive control, references to past domestic abuse, chronic pain, and morally gray characters who do not apologize for what they are. Tamsin Locke writes dark romance for women who like their heroes dangerous and their love stories without a safety net. Her books live in the gray space between obsession and devotion - where broken people build something real out of wreckage, rain, and raw need. She believes the best love stories leave bruises on the heart. When she's not writing, she's drinking black coffee in the dark and plotting terrible things for decent people. Mercy's Edge is the first book in the Oakhaven Pariahs series.