Hidden Within the Secret Heart (Desperate Disguise #4)

A Quick Recap

When I took my brother Sawyer's place as a sacrifice to the Black Guard, I knew my life would never be the same again.

What I didn’t expect was to find myself trapped between two worlds.

In the Gray, I was Sawyer — a nobleman hated by the other guardsmen. They saw me as entitled and weak, and every day was a battle to survive their "lessons" and hide my secret.

In the Garden, every time I fell asleep, my spirit manifested as a fae woman.

And that fae woman was kidnapped and almost forced into unwanted mating bonds by a bunch of fae men led by Wells and Crane.

My Fantasy Man, Rider, Talon, and Quill saved me, and I killed Wells in the struggle, but Crane and three others escaped. On top of that, I was trapped in the Garden by a magical bracelet Wells had put on me, and the power in my mating marks grew out of control, overwhelming me with desire.

But my Fantasy Man, Ash, helped me, caring for me and protecting me like he’d always done despite me learning that he was another Captain of the Black Tower, and despite the fact that he thought I’d reject him for the horrible scars marring his face and body.

But I could never reject him. I believed he wouldn’t abandon me like Talon and Quill had when Rider had commanded I run on the running trail until I threw up. I’d already seen Ash’s soul and knew it was beautiful. It didn’t matter what he looked like.

Rider and the others brought a fae knight to hear my testimony and a healer to help me, who thankfully put my blazing mating marks to sleep. Sure, my sleeping marks might never wake up, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t fae. I wasn’t supposed to be searching for my mates to begin with.

The only downside: because of what had happened to my marks, the overwhelming desire I’d experienced before they were put to sleep could still flare up, making me desperate for sexual relief.

With that settled — and absolutely nothing else, like the bracelet still trapping me in the Garden — the High Priestess summoned me to her throne room.

Standing before her, surrounded by courtiers who stared at me like I was prey, I realized the ruler of the Garden was even more dangerous than the men who'd attacked me. She was a powerful ruler who liked to play games with people’s lives.

She assigned a massive knight named Sir West as my protector, spirit-linked him to me against my will so he'd know whenever I entered the Garden and exactly where I was, and bound me to a spirit anchor so I always manifested beside him.

At least she gave me a nice dungeon cell— I mean guest suite.

At dawn, when I was getting nervous about someone walking into my room in the Black Tower and discovering my spiritless body, a magister finally arrived and removed the bracelet.

I woke exhausted and sore from having run for hours on the running trail. Kit, Payne, Lewin, and Grefin were banging on my door, wanting to check on me before they retired to their rooms from their night shift.

They discovered I didn’t feel safe bathing with all the other men in the bathhouse in the basement of the Black Tower and invited me to use the private bathing room in their elite team suite while they were on patrol that night.

They didn’t know the real reason I avoided the bathhouse, and I wasn’t going to tell them, but I still accepted their offer with gratitude.

Except while I soaked my sore muscles in their tub, a horrific vision of the team being attacked by shadow bears crashed through me.

Kit and Lewin were bleeding out on the tables in the Tower’s infirmary, and Payne was going to die from a shadow poison infection that only I now knew about…