Outrunning a Forced Betrothal

Isabelle Blackthorne has only days left before a marriage in Britain takes the last of her freedom, under a system her father spent years cementing and that no longer treats women's autonomy as a right.

Outwardly educated and compliant, she places her survival in the hands of strangers who work from the shadows, knowing the cost may be everything.

A blizzard cuts her off in a Kent cottage, where she must shelter with three men who owe her nothing.

Their possessive attention gives her the first sense of being chosen she has ever known, even as coercive control, reproductive coercion, forced sedation, and threats of institutionalisation wait beyond the snow.

The cottage cannot hold the world back forever, and she still has to decide how far she will go to stay out of the system's reach.