summoning…
lore✦squadsummoning…
Every reason to stay away. You already know how this goes.
Your brother offered up the couch without asking you, and now his best friend Miles lives here. One bathroom. Thin walls. A man who keeps showing up in a towel at 7am like it is normal. You told yourself you do not care. Then he started smiling at you over the coffee maker, and the apartment got very, very small.
He bought the whole company and let everyone go but you. Now it is past midnight, your desk is ten feet from his door, and Damon Ashcroft has finally called you in. The folder with your entire future in it is sitting between you, and he still will not say why he kept you.
You're a mid-level nobody at Sterling Holdings until the CEO pulls your file and rewrites the org chart so you report to her and only her. Now every day runs through her office, her rules, her undivided attention. She says it's about your potential. The way she watches you says otherwise. Slow burn, all tension, one locked door at a time.
Your father doesn't say I love you. He hires it. This time he hired Roman Duarte, the coldest man on his security team, to follow you everywhere you go. Roman was supposed to be a wall between you and the world. He wasn't supposed to start watching you like you were the only thing worth guarding. Now there's a rule between you, and both of you can feel it bending.
You're the rival strategist Elio Bianchi publicly can't stand, the woman who keeps beating his team from the pit wall. Then he crashes out mid-race, and the second the marshals pull his helmet off, the coldest man in the sport does one thing before anything else. He looks for you. Now you have to decide what you saw.
You keep leaving coffee outside 5C for the neighbor who never drinks it, and tonight he is waiting in the stairwell to tell you why you have to stop. The air goes cold when Kieran Frost stands close, and he stands close anyway, asking you to forget his face. The trouble is you already can't, and something older than him has just moved into the building.
Your father hired the coldest man alive to guard your life, and told you both to keep it professional. For weeks Silas Kade has been a wall of silence at your shoulder - until tonight, when a stranger got through the gate. Now his control is gone, his hands are on you, and the one line you were never supposed to cross is the only thing left standing.
You slipped out of the merger gala to get one clean breath and found Jasper Lund waiting in the stairwell like he owned it - because, as of Tuesday, he does. He is the enemy your family raised you to beat and the one man who reads you like a contract he has already won. Now he wants to know why you took the same exit he did.
You wanted out. A clean transfer, a different floor, anyone else's name on your paychecks. Instead your boss bought the entire company you were trying to escape to, and now Sebastian Ridley owns every door you tried to walk through. He says it was a smart acquisition. The contract on his desk says otherwise. So does the way he keeps finding reasons to need you in the room.
You were only supposed to clean the books. Instead you found the single ledger line that could put the pakhan away forever, and now Nikolai Sokolov has decided the safest place for you is at his side - protected, watched, and never quite free. He pours you a drink and gives you a choice that is not a choice at all.
Your bike chain snaps a mile from home, way past curfew, and the only person who pulls over is the one boy your parents named out loud as off-limits. He could fix it in five minutes. He could also be exactly the kind of trouble they warned you about. You have a whole mile to figure out which.
You clean the penthouse floor of the Maren on the overnight shift. The guest in Suite 1408 is the most famous man in the country, hiding from a sold out tour and a city full of fans. Every night you come to do your job, and every night he asks you to stay and talk. The longer you stay, the harder it gets to remember he is not someone you are allowed to want.
You're the night-shift clerk at a hotel where nothing interesting ever happens. Then a man checks into the penthouse under an obviously fake name, and you realize you'd know that face anywhere. He keeps booking it. Always your nights. Always under a new name. And he never seems to want the room as much as he wants the five minutes at your desk.
You're the biggest pop star in the country, mid-tour, and your new security lead Andres is too good at his job and too easy to lean on. The label says he's off limits, the contract says he's temporary, and the cameras say one slip ruins both of you. So you keep telling yourself the way you grab his hand in the crowd is just for the act. Six weeks. You just have to make it to the last show without falling for the one man getting paid to walk away.
You took the overnight barista job at the city's most expensive hotel because it pays rent and nobody talks to you at 3am. Except the night auditor. He's cold, gorgeous, and weirdly territorial about a building he supposedly just works in. You don't know he's the heir. You don't know there's an engagement party three floors up missing its groom. You just know he drinks his coffee black, never smiles, and watches the front doors like he's waiting to get caught.
You've been crushing on the trainer at Iron Hollow for months and keeping it strictly to side glances. Tonight he finally offers to spot you. His hands land on your hips and the whole careful distance between you just collapses. Now it's a slow burn neither of you is supposed to want, and every rep is an excuse to stand a little closer.
You signed on as the new driver for the Vitale family expecting long quiet shifts and good money. Instead you got Sofia, the boss's daughter, who treats your car like her personal getaway and you like the only person in this house worth talking to. Every late night ride is one more secret you're not supposed to keep. And the man in your mirror is starting to feel like the most dangerous thing in the city, for all the wrong reasons.
You took a job at Hale Holdings to pay off your debt and disappear into a cubicle. Instead the CEO handed you his black card on your first week and told you to spend it on yourself. The card has no limit. The contract you signed has no real way out. Every dress, every dinner, every thing you let him buy pulls the leash a little tighter, and the worst part is how much you start to like the weight of it.
You work the graveyard shift at a highway gas station with Rhys, the coworker who never eats, never sleeps, and watches the woods like he is waiting for something. Tonight the lot is dead quiet, the lights keep flickering, and he just called you his. The closer you get to him, the more the truth claws its way out. And whatever is moving in the dark past the pumps wants you to come closer too.
In a cyberpunk city where love is outlawed and suppressed by government-controlled 'Lovechips,' two individuals discover a forbidden connection that causes their memories to be erased each time they fall for each other, leading them on a desperate quest to understand their past and fight for their future.
Forbidden romance draws its charge from the line you are not supposed to cross - wrong family, wrong side, wrong timing. The rules are the point: these worlds make you feel the cost of every choice, and choosing anyway is the story.
Every world above is a branching interactive story: read the opening free, make choices, or write what happens next. How it works.