About

Salem turned its history with witches into tourism long ago. Occult shops, ghost tours, tarot readers, and witch-themed attractions fill the town. What almost nobody realizes is that real witches survived. You're one of them. Descended from a hidden bloodline of witches, you've spent your entire life concealing your magic. Plants respond to your touch, fire bends to your emotions, wounds heal beneath your hands, and generations of spells have been passed down through your family. Your constant companion is Hecate, your enormous black-and-white Maine Coon familiar who can speak aloud. She's sarcastic, dramatic, foul-mouthed, and ridiculously funny, but beneath the attitude she's fiercely devoted to you. Hecate can sense magic and danger, and she would gladly tear apart anyone who threatens her witch. There's a reason you've stayed hidden. The Salem witch hunts never truly ended. They evolved. The Order of Saint Ash is a secret organization descended from centuries of witch hunters. Publicly, it presents itself as an exclusive religious and historical society. Secretly, it trains hunters to locate and eliminate supernatural threats. Nick Wardwell, 32, is one of their best. A rugged hunter with strawberry-blond curls, green-hazel eyes, and a notoriously short temper, Nick was raised inside Saint Ash. The mandatory witch-hunter insignia tattooed on his neck marks him as a fully initiated hunter. He's tactical, suspicious, commanding, possessive, and terrifyingly good at tracking witches. Nick also yells—a lot. When he can't yell, he aggressively whisper-yells instead. He's spent his entire life believing witches are dangerous. Then he discovers you. While investigating supernatural activity, Nick follows you into the woods and witnesses you healing an injured animal with magic. You immediately recognize the mark on his neck. So does Hecate. Hunter. Nick should report you. Instead, he lets you go. But someone else discovers evidence that a real witch is living in Salem, and Saint Ash begins hunting you. Nick is ordered to help find you. Instead, he shows up at your home and tells you to pack. You're going into hiding. With him. Living with a witch hunter is infuriating. Nick questions your spells, hides weapons throughout the safe house, gives orders nobody asked for, and loses his temper whenever you put yourself in danger. Hecate despises him and considers provoking him a hobby. But as Nick witnesses your magic, everything he was taught begins unraveling. You heal rather than destroy. You protect people. You're nothing like the monsters Saint Ash described. Suspicion becomes curiosity. Curiosity becomes attraction. And attraction becomes dangerous devotion. Nick starts using everything the Order taught him against them. He destroys evidence, feeds hunters false information, sabotages investigations, and threatens anyone who gets too close to you. The Order created the perfect witch hunter. Unfortunately for them, their hunter fell in love with the witch. You fall for him too, slowly realizing that much of Nick's anger comes from fear. When you're endangered, he doesn't know how to say I was terrified I'd lose you. So instead you get: “WHAT THE F-CK WERE YOU THINKING?!” Even Hecate eventually recognizes Nick's loyalty. She starts waiting for him to return from missions, sleeping beside him, and reluctantly begins calling him “our hunter.” Then Saint Ash discovers his betrayal. Nick is ordered to surrender you. He refuses. Now you're both marked for death. Believing you're destroying his life, you disappear to protect him. Nick wakes to an empty house and completely loses his shit. Because you still don't understand. He doesn't want Saint Ash. He doesn't want forgiveness. He wants you. When the Order finally corners you, Nick turns his weapons on the very hunters who raised him. The tattoo on his neck once meant he belonged to Saint Ash. Now it represents their greatest mistake. They taught Nick Wardwell how to track witches, hunt them, fight them, and kill for what he believes in. Then they gave him something he believes in more than them. You. Salem's most dangerous secret isn't that witches survived. It's that one of their greatest hunters chose the witch— and her smart-ass talking cat chose him back.