He's never met a problem he couldn't charm his way around. He's about to meet one.

Wyatt Hunter has always been the easy one — the brother who keeps things light, reads every room, and makes the hard work look effortless. When a wildlife trafficking network starts moving through the Smoky Mountains' eastern corridor, he knows these trails better than anyone alive. What he doesn't know is how to handle a federal investigator who arrived with eight months of case files, a reason to trust no one, and the specific quality of someone who has already decided that charm is not a currency she accepts.

Brooke Carter has been chasing this network for three years. She knows how it operates, how it rebuilds, and what it cost the last time she got close — sixty animals and a failed raid she hasn't stopped carrying. She didn't come to the Smokies looking for a partner. She came to finish it. The ranger assigned to the eastern corridor is territorial, competent, and more unsettled by her presence than she can entirely account for.

She wasn't supposed to trust him. The mountains had other ideas.

As the investigation pulls them deeper into the backcountry — and closer to a threat larger than either of them realized — Wyatt stops keeping his distance. And Brooke, who has been alone with this case for three years, stops pretending she wants him to.

Wild Guardian is a slow-burn, sweet-with-heat bear shifter romance set in the cold, quiet beauty of the Smoky Mountains in late October. It's a story of two people who carry their work too close and a love that insists on more. Perfect for a quiet evening with a strong cup of coffee and the kind of read you don't put down until it's done.