Darkmore Penitentiary

About the Darkmore Penitentiary series

Darkmore Penitentiary is a reverse-harem prison romance set in the same Solarian universe as Zodiac Academy and Ruthless Boys of the Zodiac, roughly ten years before the Ruthless Boys timeline. Rosalie Oscura, an alpha werewolf and underground cage-fighter from a family with deep criminal roots, deliberately gets herself thrown into Darkmore — a maximum-security prison built to hold Solaria's most dangerous magical criminals — to break out Roary Night, the lion-shifter she's loved since childhood. Once inside, she's forced into uneasy alliances with a rival werewolf alpha, a volatile incubus serving an isolation sentence for an unnamed crime, and the vampire guard tasked with keeping order, all while plotting an escape that gets more complicated with every book.

Published between 2020 and 2024, the four-book series leans into rejected-mates, enemies-to-lovers, and second-chance romance tropes against a claustrophobic prison backdrop rather than the academy setting the authors are best known for. It stands on its own but rewards readers who've spent time in the wider Solarian world Peckham and Valenti built across Zodiac Academy and its spin-offs.