The Countdown Beneath Us: Love Awakens What Sleeps Below

On New Year’s Eve, the city’s most exclusive gala gleams with champagne, silk, and the promise of a clean slate. Event planner Alyssa Hart has spent months shaping every detail of the night, never realizing the ballroom she revived was built over an ancient seal. Its foundation thrums with a hungry rhythm one that stirs the moment she meets Julian Rhest, the elusive heir who commissioned the event.

Julian is everything the ballroom refuses to be: precise, restrained, carrying a legacy he’s sworn to protect. He feels the creature beneath the marble like a pulse in his bones. One brush of Alyssa’s hand wakes something older than longing, and every second near her threatens to crack the seal his bloodline has guarded for centuries.

Pulled together by a connection neither can name, Alyssa and Julian try to resist a burn that spirals too quickly. Guests sway, chandeliers tremble, and slick shadows move beneath the parquet. The closer they draw, the more the room begins to shake.

No ritual has prepared Alyssa for the truth: the entity feeds on intensity hope, emotion, the spark that makes people believe in change. And midnight is coming fast.

As the countdown begins, Alyssa must decide if she can trust the man who hid the danger beneath her feet or risk setting loose what sleeps under the city.

In a ballroom lit by glamour and threat, will love quiet the darkness or finally wake it?

***

As the clock counts down in this story, its forbidden passion and creeping terror echo the haunting heartbeat that binds the entire Fireworks and Shadows series.

On the final night of the year, the line between longing and fear blurs. Fireworks flare overhead while something restless moves beneath the surface lovers drawn together by desire, timing, and the darkness that lingers after the light fades. From haunted houses to towns that remember too much, Fireworks and Shadows unravels what happens when connection turns into invitation, and love insists on surviving what should be left behind. Each story burns briefly, beautifully, before midnight falls and nothing is the same again.

© 2025 Velvet Ink Press (E-bog): 6610001112882

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E-bog: 1. december 2025