If her Viking family are to escape annihilation, Sassa must venture through ice-wastes haunted by ravening tribesmen and blood-famished revenants, just to fulfil her arranged marriage to the depraved prince they call The Werewolf. She must arrive chaste, but the sleep demons are out there, armed with all their powers to lure and seduce.

Legend knows these demons feed off your soul. They need to get close enough to take it. They need you lustful and raging with the need to give it. They come in irresistible form, male or female. They come in your dreams, where all your most private thoughts hide. They can see even your darkest desires, draw them out, and make them come true. There never can be any escaping them.

Sassa may not want to escape them. She yearns for warrior-life: the fighting, the feasting, and the carnal pleasures she’s denied being a princess who must remain pure if she is to be married off profitably. Now, she is off the leash. Miss these delights in this life, and she’s condemned to miss them in the afterlife also; a thought too devastating to bear. Yet, not staying pure and true to her family will surely see them perish—and family means everything. Even if she decides to, how can she fight off the seductions and ravishments?

The warrior Aleks arrives as an unlikely ally. He needs her alive and free from the clutches of sleep demons. He wants her, it’s obvious, but his faith must see him resist. He might be the answer to everything, if only he can be charmed. Then Sassa learns he shares one of her deepest yearnings: to see her over his knee, her bare behind roasted by his open palm. This is her chance to conquer him. Only one trouble remains: is he after her heart, her body, or her blood?