Claimed by the Kraken: A Dark MM Fated Mates Shifter Romance by MAE TESSA

He charted a coastline the world swore didn't exist. It cost him everything — and then it wrecked his ship.

Balthazar Vance is a disgraced cartographer with nothing left but his instruments and his stubbornness. Six years ago, he glimpsed an impossible island through a break in the fog. The Guild called him a liar and struck his name from the roll. Now he's sailing alone toward the coordinates that ruined him, and the sea has been waiting.

Vaelen Cross has guarded Oakhaven Reef for six centuries. He is the last of an ancient leviathan bloodline, bound by a bargain his ancestor never should have made—and every turning tide calls a little harder for him to surrender what's left of his mind to the deep.

When Vaelen pulls a half-drowned human from the black sand, the moment their skin touches, something older than either of them locks into place.

A fated bond. The one thing that could break the curse — and the one thing that gives his enemies a way to break him.

Trapped together by a tidal storm that won't release for three weeks, and hunted by a deep-water siren syndicate that wants the reef's hidden channels, Balthazar and Vaelen have until the equinox to decide what they're willing to risk. Because the curse has learned something new. It's stopped feeding on the guardian.

It's started feeding on the bond.

Claimed by the Kraken is a standalone MM paranormal monster romance with a happily ever after. Expect a gothic atmosphere, forced proximity, a touch-starved six-hundred-year-old monster who has never once been chosen freely, and a mortal too stubborn to let the sea have him.

Tropes: Fated mates, forced proximity, human/monster, hurt-comfort, slow burn, possessive love interest, curse breaking, found home, touch-him-and-die.

Content Notes: On-page violence, peril, drowning, discussion of inherited grief and loss. Intimacy is sensual and emotionally explicit; sexual content is non-graphic.