Some debts are paid in flesh. When the Cairnwood Bridge collapses in the middle of the night, Maren Alcott loses more than her daily commute. She loses the only thing holding her threadbare life together: routine. Stuck in a dying lumber town, drowning in a dead-end job, and going numb one beige day at a time, she cannot afford the forty-minute detour. So she does something stupid. She crosses through the ravine beneath the bridge on foot. Something is waiting for her down there. He is enormous. Grey-green skin like river stone. Hands that could wrap around her entire ribcage. Too many teeth. And eyes — dark, ancient, lit with amber — that see straight through every lie she tells herself. He demands a toll for crossing his territory. The price starts small. A button from her coat. A strand of hair. Her lunch. Then it stops being small. Maren tells herself she keeps coming back because the detour is too long. She tells herself the heat that floods her body when he blocks her path is just adrenaline. She tells herself the trembling is fear, not want. She is lying — and the creature she calls Toll knows it before she does. Because Toll is learning her. Every crossing, he takes a little more. Every crossing, she resists a little less. What begins as a forced bargain becomes a dark, consuming obsession — one she starts seeking out at hours she has no excuse for, in a ravine no one else knows she visits, with a monster who is rewriting her understanding of desire one devastating touch at a time. But desire this consuming does not stay hidden. Her behaviour changes. Her absences are noticed. And when the town announces the bridge will be demolished, Maren faces a choice that will define everything: let the only thing that has ever made her feel alive be destroyed — or bind herself to him permanently, body and bone, and become his territory forever. Under the Crossing is a dark monster romance for readers who like their fantasy raw, their heroines conflicted, and their love interests decidedly inhuman. Featuring dubious consent, forced proximity, size difference, and a slow-burn corruption arc that ignites into something all-consuming, this novel follows a woman who spent years feeling nothing as she discovers that the thing capable of waking her up has claws, too many teeth, and no intention of letting go. This book contains explicit content and is intended for mature readers only. If you are ready to cross, turn the page. He is waiting.