Match

A Dark Academia Arranged Marriage Lacrosse Romance

De: N.V. Merrick

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The brotherhood chose my husband before I was old enough to argue.

Margaux Sumner was born inside the society. Old blood, old money, old silence. She has known since she was a child that the Cross would hand her a marriage, a bloodline to secure, and a life she was never asked whether she wanted. She was raised to walk into it without flinching.

She was not raised for Scott Whitlock. Too loud, too quick, a joke balanced over every door he refuses to open. He was assigned to her. She was assigned to him. Neither of them was asked, and neither of them can refuse. The penalty for refusing is the kind of ruin this family has spent a century perfecting.

Then the arrangement does the one thing it was never built to do. In a life decided before either of them was born, the marriage becomes the only thing that is theirs. He watches her face for the crack she has spent her whole life hiding, and covers it before the room can see. For the first time, she stops performing.

And then she learns what he did. What her grandfather's brotherhood asked of him once, years ago, with his own two hands.

In this family, the thing you want is the thing they use to keep you.

For readers of Penelope Douglas, H.D. Carlton, and Pepper Winters.

Tropes: arranged marriage, marriage of convenience, dark academia, secret society, morally gray hero, he falls first, forced proximity, slow-burn dread.

Skull and Cross-Sticks, Book Two. A standalone dark academia romance, best read after PLEDGE and before the finale, THE CULL.