Sanctuary Files

She ran from God. She fell into something worse.Mercy Hollister has never seen the outside world. Raised inside The Fold-a remote, iron-fisted religious compound in the Pacific Northwest-she has spent twenty-two years learning one lesson: obey, or suffer. When she is promised in marriage to a man who has already buried two wives, she does the only thing left. She runs.Barefoot. Bleeding. Straight into the arms of Jude.He is calm where the elders were cruel. Gentle where they were brutal. He offers her warmth, safety, and something she has never been given: a choice. But Jude did not find Mercy by accident. He watched her for fourteen months. He studied her conditioning. And he knows exactly how to fill the void her shattered faith left behind.Not with scripture. With himself.As the walls of his mountain estate close in, Mercy begins to realize that the sanctuary she fled to may be more dangerous than the prison she fled from. Because Jude does not want her obedience. He wants her devotion. Her body. Her mind. Every prayer she used to whisper to a god who never answered-redirected to a man who answers every single time.And the most terrifying part? She does not want to leave.Vow of Thorns is a full-length, standalone dark captive romance featuring a morally obsidian hero, a heroine caught between two cages, corrupted religious themes, explicit content, and a possessive ending that does not apologize. Reader discretion is strongly advised. Ledger Hayes writes dark romance for readers who like their heroes dangerous and their love stories unforgivable. His work explores the razor-thin line between devotion and obsession, faith and captivity, salvation and surrender. When he is not writing, he is probably somewhere he shouldn't be, studying people who fascinate him more than they should. Vow of Thorns is his debut novel and the first book in The Sanctuary Files series.