To Be Kept: An M/M Dragon Shifter Arranged Marriage Romance

Caelum of the Aurelian Reach has spent fourteen years as the senior envoy to dragon courts. He is good at his work. He is, on the whole, a man who has stopped expecting his life to surprise him. When his family finalizes his political marriage to the young dragon prince Vaeryn of the Vaelkir Spires, he prepares — with the careful diplomatic attention he brings to every consequential thing — to be possessed.

He has not prepared to be seen.

Vaeryn was not consulted. A dragon’s hoard is sacred and personal, and the keystone of any hoard is its mate, and his mate has been chosen for him by a council of his elders for political reasons that have nothing to do with what a young dragon’s hoard might actually want. He intends to make this perfectly clear at the formal presentation. He intends, in fact, to be furious for as long as the marriage requires it. He has not prepared, either, for what he finds himself doing instead — which is laying his careful claws against the side of his diplomat husband’s face on the dais of the audience hall, and watching every line of the man go still.

The marriage was supposed to be the end of the negotiation. It is, both of them are about to learn, only the opening of one. As the political match between their countries begins to unravel, Caelum and Vaeryn must decide what they have actually been making with each other — and what, when the rest of the world demands they release it, they intend to keep.

To Be Kept is a slow-burn, literary m/m fantasy romance about forced political marriage, dragon hoards, mutual choosing, and the difference between being possessed and being seen. It contains explicit content, knotting, hurt/comfort, and a deeply earned happily-ever-after.