Belle and the Beast: A College Enemies to Lovers Romance

Three years is a long time to nurse a grudge — but for Belle, it's not nearly long enough.

In the isolated community of Citrine Cove, tradition runs deep and merciless. Every three years, eligible young adults are gathered for a high-stakes social ritual designed to end in arranged engagements, stripping away any illusion of choice. Belle already despises everything about this archaic practice. What makes it infinitely worse? The three men waiting for her on the other side of it — Preston, Nathan, and Carter, the same boys who spent years tormenting, deceiving, and breaking her trust in ways she's never forgotten.

She has no intention of forgiving them. She has no intention of wanting them either.

But Preston, Nathan, and Carter aren't the careless boys she remembers. They're something darker, more deliberate — and dangerously focused on her. As the ritual tightens its grip around their fates, they begin dismantling the walls Belle has spent years constructing brick by careful brick, and the hatred she's nursed so faithfully starts twisting into something she doesn't have a name for yet.

This dark new adult why-choose romance doesn't shy away from shadow or complexity. Citrine Cove holds secrets that run deeper than tradition, and the connection forming between Belle and her former enemies may be the most dangerous thing in it.

She came prepared to hate them. She wasn't prepared for this.