What the Sea Took - THE DIFFERENCE

The first night, Lena figured she was dreaming.

The second, she was fairly certain she was cracking up.

The third night, he spoke.

Adrian has stood guard at the boundary between worlds for a hundred and thirty years. He doesn't breathe. He doesn't cross thresholds. He watches, and he waits, and he warns those who might stray too close to the dark.

Lena Halbrook is seventeen, newly homeless in the fog-shrouded coastal town of Wraithhaven, and absolutely not interested in being rescued by anyone—especially not by a boy her own age with ancient eyes and a voice that sounds like it learned English from a Victorian textbook.

But Adrian knows what happened to her missing mother. Knows what took her. Knows that whatever hunted her is now hunting Lena.

The realm below the sea is ancient, hungry, and patient. It's been waiting for someone like Lena—boundary-born, conceived between worlds, carrying power she doesn't understand. The creatures that live there wear borrowed faces. Feed on trust. Consume from the inside out.

And the one who took her mother is her father.

To find the truth, Lena must cross into that darkness. Adrian can't follow—the pact that binds him to the boundary won't allow it. But the rules might bend for her. They might break. And if they do, a hundred and thirty years of watching from the outside might finally end.

What the Sea Took is a dark paranormal romance about grief and stubbornness, the cages we build and the people who wait inside them. For readers who want their love stories atmospheric, their heroes morally gray, and their heroines too practical to be saved—but willing to be met halfway.