Salt & Bone / The Saltmere Chronicles 01

Book 1 of 6: The Saltmere Chronicles

£0.99 • £7.99 GBP / $0.99 • $9.99 USD / Free in KU

🔥 Fated mates • Selkie shifter • Forbidden magic • Steamy British paranormal romance

A marine biologist with a secret buried beneath her skin.

A selkie who’s tired of pretending to be human.

And a stranger who knows far too much about both of them.

Welcome to Saltmere, where love can drown you faster than the tide.

Start the Saltmere paranormal romance series with Salt & Bone – Book One of the Saltmere Chronicles

Contains mature content. Written in British English with authentic Cornish setting and dialect.

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Read an excerpt …

Dawn broke grey and begrudging, the storm having finally blown itself out. Isla laced her hiking boots and pulled on her waterproof jacket, checking her camera and emergency kit with practised efficiency. The village slept on, exhausted by the night's battering.

The path to Seal's Hollow proved treacherous after the storm. What Tamsin had described as a "bit of a scramble" turned out to be a near-vertical descent down rain-slicked granite, using rusted iron pegs hammered into the cliff face decades ago. Isla's London gym sessions hadn't prepared her for this particular brand of Cornish mountaineering.

"Brilliant," she muttered, testing each handhold. "This is how marine biologists die. Done in by overconfidence and shoddy homework.”

But the compulsion drove her downward, that strange certainty that she needed to be here, needed to see what the storm had left behind driving her. The scientific part of her mind noted the unusual tidal patterns—the water had receded further than normal, exposing rock formations that would usually be submerged.

Seal's Hollow opened before her like a secret chamber carved from living stone. The cove was everything the locals had promised—dramatic, isolated, accessible only at the lowest tide. Ancient granite formed towering walls on three sides, worn smooth by millennia of wave action. Tidal pools dotted the exposed seabed like scattered mirrors, reflecting the pearl-grey sky.

She was photographing storm damage to the rock pools when she saw him.

He lay sprawled across a shelf of black granite, unconscious and utterly still. For a heart-stopping moment, Isla thought she'd found a corpse—some poor soul swept from a boat or the coastal path. Then she drew closer, and her breath caught in her throat.

He was beautiful in a way that made her chest tighten and all thoughts of science go right out the window. Long-limbed and broad-shouldered, with bronze skin that seemed to glow despite the grey morning light. Blond hair, almost as light as her own, hung in wet tangles around a face that belonged in a pre-Raphaelite painting—sharp cheekbones, strong jaw, lips that were sensual even in unconsciousness.

But it was the wounds that made her doctor's training kick in. Strange cuts marked his torso and arms, too clean to be from rocks, too precise to be from debris. They looked almost ritualistic, forming patterns she didn't recognise.

"Hello?" She knelt beside him, pressing fingers to his throat. His pulse was strong but irregular, and his breathing too shallow. "Can you hear me?" His skin burned with fever despite the cold morning air.

He wore no shirt, only what looked like leather trousers that had seen better days. No identification, no belongings visible anywhere. His feet were bare, showing calluses that spoke of a life lived outdoors, close to the sea.

When she touched his shoulder to check for injuries, his eyes snapped open.

They were the colour of storm-dark water, grey-blue with flecks of silver, and ancient beyond his apparent age. For a moment, they stared at each other—her hand still on his fevered skin, his gaze boring into hers with an intensity that made her stomach flip.

"You shouldn't have come," he said, his voice rough with salt water and something deeper. His accent was unplaceable—oddly posh but terribly old-fashioned, as if English wasn't quite his first language. "It's not safe."

"I'm exactly where I need to be," she surprised herself with the certainty in her voice. Something shifted in his eyes—recognition, perhaps, or the first stirring of hope he'd thought long dead. "You're hurt," she said practically, though part of her wanted to snatch her hand away from the electric warmth of his skin. "I'm a doctor—well, technically a marine biologist, but I have medical training. We need to get you to the hospital."

"No." The word came out sharp with panic. "No hospitals. No authorities. Please." He struggled to sit up, wincing as the movement pulled at his wounds. "I just need ... I need to get back to the water."

"Back to the water?" Isla mentally ticked through the absurdities of his request. "You've been injured, possibly shipwrecked. You're running a fever, and those cuts need proper cleaning. The sea is the last place you should be."

Something flickered across his features—pain, longing, desperation. "You don't understand. I can't stay on land. I'm already—" He swayed, fighting unconsciousness. "Please. Just help me to the water's edge."

Every medical instinct screamed against it, but something in his voice—raw need wrapped in barely controlled terror—made her hesitate. His skin felt wrong under her touch, too warm, as if he burned from the inside out.

"At least let me clean these wounds first," she compromised. "Then we'll see about getting you home, wherever that is."

The relief in his eyes was profound. "Thank you," he whispered, and fainted again in her arms.

Isla looked down at the unconscious stranger, at the mysterious wounds marking his bronze skin, at the way he seemed to belong to this wild place as naturally as the granite and the sea. Every sensible thought told her to call for help, to do things by the book.

Instead, she found herself calculating whether she could get him back to the cottage without anyone seeing.

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