Lila Merren has been dreaming of the motel sign since she was seven years old.

The curved neon arch. The pink and blue glow. THE MOONLIGHT MOTEL. She’s drawn it a thousand times without knowing it was real—until her roommate’s viral TikTok photo proves the place actually exists, hidden in the mountains of New Mexico.

When her truck breaks down on the way to Jemez Springs, Lila walks the last miles guided by something she can’t name. A pull. A certainty. The dreams that have haunted her since childhood finally leading somewhere real.

What she finds is Elias Vale—and a motel that shouldn’t exist.

The Moonlight Motel sits beside hot springs that glow in the dark and hum with ancient power. Elias has run it since 1865, bound by guilt over a woman named Clara Merren who died saving him the night he became a vampire. For over a century, he’s watched women from Lila’s family arrive at his door. And every time, the springs claim them.

Her great-great-grandmother Clara. Her grandmother Eleanor, who vanished on a camping trip in 1985. All the Merren women, drawn here by dreams and drowned by a curse Elias has spent 160 years trying to break.

But Lila isn’t like the others.

She sees the man beneath the monster. The healer who’s spent lifetimes trying to atone. And when she learns the truth—that transformation isn’t damnation, that some curses can only be broken by choice—she makes an impossible decision.

Some loves are worth dying for. This one is worth living forever.

A gothic vampire romance set against the haunting beauty of the Southwest desert, where family curses meet conscious choice, and the only way to break a cycle of death might be to embrace eternal life.

Perfect for readers who love:

• Vampire romances with depth and emotion
• Southwest/desert gothic atmosphere
• Morally complex heroes seeking redemption
• Heroines who choose their fate
• Family mysteries spanning generations
• Transformation as empowerment, not tragedy
• Happily Ever After that lasts forever