Author: Maria Dean
Title: Beautifully Beastly
Genre: Mafia Romance
Subgenre: Dark Romance
Release Date: February 5, 2026
Publisher: Hot Tree Publishing
Cover Designer: BookSmith Design
Available now!
All Links: www.books2read.com/beautifullybeastly
My father is a king in a kingdom of blood—Barrett Devall, ruthless gang lord, feared by everyone.
When war breaks out, I’m forced into hiding, exiled to an isolated mansion deep in the mountains of Hellion Ridge. My only protection? Fenrir Therion—scarred, brutal, and bound to me by loyalty alone.
But Belial House isn’t just old and cold. It breathes. It listens. The walls whisper, and something in the shadows is waiting for us.
As a blizzard traps us inside, the lines between protection and possession blur. Fenrir is more beast than man—violent, broken, and infuriatingly irresistible. And the deeper we sink into the house’s secrets, the more I can’t tell what’s haunting me: the ghosts in the halls… or the heat in his eyes.
He was sent to keep me safe.
But no one warned us that the real danger would be falling for each other.
Beautifully Beastly is a dark, haunting romance steeped in mystery, tension, and forbidden heat. Perfect for fans of twisted longing and slow-burning desire in the face of the unknown.
But before I could delight in this thought, the water exploded, and I was pulled from its clutches and hauled onto the side of the pool.
My eyes were full of water, my mouth gasping as my lungs burned, and it was a few seconds before I could open them, but when I did, he came into focus, the man who’d pulled me from the depths, who’d put an end to my demise.
He knelt beneath me, my body draped over him as if he were a large chair, dark trousers plastered to his skin. And as my eyes adjusted, I glanced up at his face and was convinced that I’d succeeded because this wasn’t a man at all, but an angel. He was beautiful. His face was a serene masterpiece made up of only the finest qualities, the likes of which I have never seen on this earth. Yes, he was an angel, and he had come to take me.
But then he turned, slowly, slightly, a fraction of a movement that distorted the light and the image of him. And my angel was gone, the smooth skin on the right-hand side of his face replaced with something else. Scars. Ugly, snaking scars roamed from his collar and clawed their way up his neck, touching the underside of his chin and almost making it up to his left eye, stopping before they took his sight.
The skin was mottled, distorted, nothing like an angel, and every bit the devil.
I pushed away from him.
And I saw it in his face, the acceptance of my reaction, for this was how it must always be for him. The response he was used to, because who wouldn’t look at him and not think he looked like a beast, his perfect portrait slashed down one side?
I could imagine people were afraid of him. But it wasn’t fear I felt. This wasn’t the reason I pushed back from him, a look of what he thought must have been horror upon my face.
No. I saw something else. A man who’d endured pain. A man who’d seen the worst. A man who was as scarred as I am, yet his scars were visible. A man who has been to hell and lived to tell the tale.
And he’d come to me, on the brink of death, as if fate had hand-delivered him.
Maria Dean is an author from Yorkshire in England where she lives with her husband, two boys, and her faithful Boston Terrier. Her short stories have appeared in various publications and range from fantasy to science fiction and the supernatural, but for the long haul, her heart remains rooted in romance novels. An avid reader, she can be known to devour a book in a day, especially if there’s a twist in the tale and a swoon-worthy main character. She’s more than prepared to have her heart broken by a good book, just as long as it’s put back together again by the happily-ever-after. When she’s not reading or writing, she can be found walking her dog in her local woods, usually dreaming up her next novel or listening to an audiobook.
