Covet

The third installment in Tracy Wolff's Crave series, Covet picks up five days after Grace Foster, one of the last surviving gargoyles, survived the Ludares, a dangerous combat competition held at Katmere Academy, a boarding school for paranormal creatures in Alaska. During the challenge, a spell from the Bloodletter, an ancient vampire, severed the mating bond between Grace and her boyfriend Jaxon Vega, a vampire prince. Grace nearly died from an eternal bite, a lethal vampire attack, inflicted by Jaxon's father, Cyrus, the vampire king. Her friend Xavier was killed, and Hudson Vega, Jaxon's older brother whom Jaxon once killed and who was later resurrected, revealed that Grace is now his mate.

Grace attends Xavier's funeral alongside her cousin Macy, whose grief has transformed her from an irrepressible, pink-haired witch into a somber shadow of herself. In the weeks that follow, Grace struggles with an impossible triangle: She remains in love with Jaxon, whose coldness grows daily, while Hudson, who never graduated and is now completing credits at Katmere, hovers at the edges of her life as her new mate. Her research into mating bonds reveals that no bond has ever been broken while both mates were alive, raising the question of how the Bloodletter possessed a spell to do the supposedly impossible.

Jaxon breaks up with Grace, arguing their continued relationship causes unbearable pain for everyone. The breakup pushes Grace toward Hudson, with whom she shares a late-night encounter in the library. Hudson reveals he felt their mating bond snap into place when Grace was dying. He also remembers everything from the four months they spent trapped together inside his consciousness during a previous ordeal, memories Grace has lost entirely. He discloses that Jaxon's bond with Grace appeared abnormal, a twisted braid of green and black rather than a single solid color, suggesting something was fundamentally flawed.

Grace and Hudson fly to the Bloodletter's cave to demand answers. The Bloodletter freezes Hudson and confesses to Grace alone that she manufactured the bond between Grace and Jaxon as part of a bargain with a coven of witches, including Grace's father, who wanted gargoyles restored to the world. She claims the bond would only have activated if both parties were open to it, insisting the feelings were real even if engineered. She cannot break Grace and Hudson's bond or restore the one with Jaxon but directs them toward the Crown, a lost artifact said to grant its wearer power over all Seven Circles, the governing factions of paranormal society. The Unkillable Beast, a gargoyle king chained for a thousand years, may know the Crown's location, but his enchanted chains must first be broken by the Blacksmith who forged them.

The mission becomes urgent when the Order, Jaxon's group of vampire allies including Mekhi and Luca, returns from the Vampire Court, the central governing body for vampires, with news that Cyrus has issued an arrest warrant for Hudson. The Aethereum, the paranormal prison where he would be sent, tortures inmates through escalating psychological punishment. Grace proposes finding the Crown before graduation as their only defense. Meanwhile, Cyrus orchestrates violent attacks across Katmere to sideline potential opponents.

Hudson suggests starting with the giants of the Firmament, a hidden city of metalworkers in a Pacific Northwest redwood forest. Grace channels earth magic to reveal the city's entrance. Inside, the group locates Falia, the Blacksmith's wife, who has grieved for a thousand years since Cyrus framed her husband Vander on false charges and imprisoned him in the Aethereum. Falia's warning that separation from a mate is worse than death shakes Grace deeply. As the group departs, the Watch, a paranormal police force, arrives with a warrant for Hudson, and Grace uses earth magic to command tree roots against the pursuers, draining herself unconscious.

Queen Nuri of the Dragon Court invites the group to the Wyvernhoard festival in New York City, promising information about escaping the prison. Upon arrival, Nuri arrests Hudson to avenge her son Damien, whom Hudson killed. Grace negotiates his release through an impassioned argument about justice and the cycle of vengeance, forging an uneasy alliance. Nuri reveals the existence of the Crone, an ancient witch who helped build the prison, and who once helped a dragon escape at the cost of his dragon heart—the source of a dragon's ability to shift forms, a sacrifice considered a fate worse than death. Nuri gives Grace the Crone's location along with a one-week deadline. During the festival, Grace and Hudson's relationship deepens dramatically: She lets him bite her for the first time, they become physically intimate, and he tells her he loves her in his sleep, though Grace cannot say it back.

The group visits the Crone on a remote Pacific island. She refuses to admit Jaxon, calling him soulless, and provides enchanted butterfly weed flowers that simulate death, the prison's escape mechanism, branding three as tattoos on Grace's palm. After they leave, Jaxon attacks Hudson with terrifying violence, then reveals that his soul is dying: When the mating bond was violently severed, both Grace's and Jaxon's souls shattered, but Hudson's soul wrapped around Grace's and held hers together while Jaxon's fragments are disintegrating without an anchor. Grace realizes that restoring a bond with Jaxon through the Crown may be the only way to save him.

At graduation, Nuri arrests Hudson under a new law, and Grace invokes her right as his mate to accompany him. Cyrus issues an additional warrant for Flint Montgomery, a dragon shifter and one of Grace's closest friends. Inside the Aethereum, the three prisoners are stripped of their powers and placed in a cell with Remy, a seventeen-year-old warlock born in the prison who can see the future, and Calder, a fiercely loyal manticore. Reaching the Pit where the Blacksmith works requires six spins of the Chamber, a device that forces inmates to relive their worst acts. Over six nights the group endures the Chamber; Remy shields Grace, but she watches helplessly as Hudson, Flint, and Calder deteriorate. She uses the mating bond to enter Hudson's nightmare, where the prison compels him to murder her avatar repeatedly, and breaks through his guilt by telling him she trusts him.

In the Pit's marketplace, the group earns gold and Grace receives a magical tattoo that can store and channel power. They convince the Blacksmith to forge a key by delivering Falia's secret message. The corrupt prison warden, an immortal child named Charon, forces Hudson and Grace into a gladiatorial fight against two giants. Grace nearly surrenders, but Hudson refuses to abandon her. She rallies, uses the ballroom's chandeliers as weapons, and they kill both giants. Grace channels Remy's hidden magic through her tattoo, unlocking his power so he can remove everyone's enchanted bracelets, and the group escapes.

A massive battle erupts on the Unkillable Beast's island when Cyrus's hidden army ambushes Grace's allies. Luca, a vampire in Grace's circle of friends, is killed protecting Flint, who loses his lower leg to a catastrophic wound. Cyrus bites Jaxon with the eternal bite. Dying, Jaxon begs Grace to drain his remaining life force into Flint, and she complies. Grace declares to Hudson, "I choose you," resolving to find another way to save Jaxon through the Crown rather than sacrifice her bond with Hudson. Hudson unleashes his full destructive power across the battlefield, then bluffs the remaining forces into retreating. Queen Nuri sacrifices her dragon heart, a glowing jewel she removes from her own chest, and places it on Jaxon, reviving him and restoring his soul but permanently losing her ability to shift into dragon form.

Grace frees the Unkillable Beast with Vander's key. He does not possess the Crown but transfers its mark to Grace's palm, insisting she must deliver it to his mate. The group returns to Katmere to find the school destroyed and every student and teacher kidnapped by Cyrus's forces; the island battle was a diversion. Hudson and Jaxon vow to bring the fight to Cyrus, and the freed gargoyle king insists they need "her" before turning to stone. In an epilogue from Hudson's perspective, he resolves to tell Grace about a mysterious emerald-green string he noticed inside her, an element that may prove critical to what lies ahead. The story continues in the next volume, Court.