The Bride Collector

THE BRIDE COLLECTOR KINGS OF SORROWS AND DREAMS CARI SILVERWOOD CONTENTS Other Books by Cari Silverwood Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Excerpt - Book 2, Nightmare Rising About Cari Silverwood Also by Cari Silverwood Other Books by Cari Silverwood Dark Romances Pierced Hearts Series The Dark Hearts Series Mff BDSM Romances Badass Brats series Sci-fi Dark Romances Machinery of Desire series Dark Monster Fantasy Beast Horde series Preyfinders series Ravaged series Steamwork Chronicles series Mauleon Captives series Squirm Files The Bride Collector Copyright © 2023 Cari Silverwood Excerpt from Nightmare Rising Copyright © 2017 by Cari Silverwood, Nicolette Hugo www.carisilverwood.net Editor: Nerine Dorman Cover design by Cari Silverwood Images from Depositphoto Cover Copyright © Cari Silverwood ISBN: 9798386174910 (paperback 2023) All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book only. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials. This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Created with Vellum ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My great thanks to my beta readers Louise Hallet and Sheri Cordell, and also to my Dark Hearts FB group and newsletter peeps who answered my poll about what to do with this book. I might have gone sideways with this one anyway, but it was fun and enlightening to see what you wished me to do. Alas, my muse is an asshole and rarely does anything except sulk when I kick it. Show it a dildo, a pair of handcuffs, and huge demon dick though, and my muse is all in. ABOUT THE BRIDE COLLECTOR A Dark Paranormal Monster Romance Today I met Harrow, the man I cannot love. Viktoria had the tragic childhood no one wishes for. She’s not normal and she knows it, but she’s made a living investigating and dispelling paranormal presences. Therapy would be good. Bitter revenge on the creatures that harmed her mother is better. She’s afraid to dream of togetherness and love, let alone climb into bed with a man and kiss. Until she visits Harrow’s Bookshop while researching the murder of a bride and finds a man who isn’t quite what he should be. He is just – like – her, but different....and possessed by a kraken, and an incubus. Harrow and Viktoria will need to get past demonic possessions, demonic evictions, general mayhem, and the immortal at the center of a web of bridal abductions and murders, before they can rest, breathe, pant, and fling clothes aside. NOTE: Clothes flinging may also occur earlier…and a lot of it does. Let the monstery f**kery commence. The Bride Collector and Nightmare Rising are standalone stories, and the third book will neatly tie everything together—okay, not so neatly since it’s a slippery mess of tentacles, monsters, weirdness, and some mythological creatures that like doing despicably filthy things. Join Cari Silverwood’s mailing list and receive notice of future releases and a free eBook CHAPTER 1 VIKTORIA I yawned and moved my pen across the cream page. Letters sprawled haphazardly. I wrote as neatly as a drunken chicken, but no one else would be reading this. Driven by memories, a need to reveal my darkness, and callused fingers… Lump meowed at me from the padded seating on the other side of the campervan, where he’d perched himself to lick his ass and do cat yoga. One leg stayed pointed at the stained ceiling. Who was I kidding? My Nerf gun was never giving me calluses. I chewed the pen’s already gnawed end then pointed it at Lump. “Small lie. I am not crossing that out.” He eyed me balefully, twitched his fluffy tail, and recommenced nether-end grooming. I poised my pen above the diary page. Nightmares again, last night. I shouldn’t be surprised after all these years. Amuses me, how I dream of the hospital roof, when I was inside her at the time and zero days old. “I am so fucked up.” I yawned again. Then I closed my diary, shifted it to one side, and placed the pen on top. The bench seat squeaked as I leaned back. At the smallest movement, the van often made weird noises and rocked. Such was life in a campervan. In the US, they called these recreational vehicles. Gently, I bumped my fist on the laminated table, making bits of spilled, dry cereal jump on the surface. The spoon propped inside my breakfast bowl rattled. “You, Rasputin, are a recreational vehicle? I think not.” Sex would qualify as recreation. Dirty, filthy, smutty, wonderful sex. Alas poor sex, I knew it well? Such is the winter of my dildo? I was stretching it there. A pity certain parts of me weren’t being stretched, much. Shakespeare never failed to provide me with ammunition for quotations. Wind gusted in through the open door, sending the cereal fragments skittering. Swearing off sex for eternity might be considered a bad move by some. Leaving my boyfriend with a back wound after a party was definitely bad. I would never forget that night… We’d been screwing on a blanket on the forest floor at three AM. He’d been an ex-boyfriend for the past four years. Finding out he needed stitches had been mortifying. Mentally, I winced. The cops had thought a wild animal had attacked him.