Slack Tide

A bear who belongs to the military. A fox who belongs to no one. And a funeral that hands them both the family neither was looking for.

When Caleb Holt comes home to bury his best friend's wife, he finds three grieving children wrapped around a fox he's never met, and something the Army spent seventeen years trying to monitor wakes all the way up. He's a conscripted bear who stopped expecting a life of his own. Rowan is an omega who walked away from everything to make sure no one could ever own him. Neither is looking for a family. The children have other ideas.

Caleb Holt has belonged to the military for seventeen years. Chipped, tracked, deployed to places that don't officially exist. Rowan MacLeod left old fox money and an arranged mating and built a quiet life in the one place no clan could follow. They have no business needing each other. But the kids climb into Rowan's arms like they've been waiting for him, and the enormous bear standing guard looks at him like he's already decided something.

The pull is immediate, and it's real, and it could not have come at a worse time. You don't reach for a fated mate across the grave of the woman who held this family together. So they don't. They wait, and they build, and they put three grieving kids first, while the thing between them burns slow and certain underneath.

Slack Tide is Book One of Common Ground, a slow-burn omegaverse romance with fated mates, found family, and a houseful of heart. No on-page violence. No cliffhanger. A complete love story with a guaranteed HEA.