Rating: 4🌈
“The Lunetti Pack is a steamy MM Enemies to Lovers Paranormal Romance series set in New Trinity, a city ruled by three crime families: the Lunetti Pack of mafia wolf shifters, the vampire mobster Cruor Coven, and the witch Elemental Mayhem MC. It features knotting (and other paranormal fun) but no mpreg.”
His Mate By Defiance is the penultimate story in Mel Aitchess’ paranormal mafia crime fated mate series. The Lunetti Pack has followed several top level members of this criminal wolf shifter pack as they fight to keep their place and power in the trinity of politics that’s New Trinity City, a dark horror of a city where it’s divided into sections ruled by witches, vampires or shifters, depending on the territory.
This is Rafe, the pack doctor’s romance, one that starts years prior with his first encounter with a badly injured young jaguar shifter in an underground fighting ring.
This meeting is recapped here and then we come forward to present day, where the jaguar shifter, Adrian ,aka Adri, is still part of the fight scene.
The author does an excellent job explaining Adri’s background and meshing that with the natural history/instincts of the jaguar to give Adri a distinctive personality and outlook from that of the other shifters.
And Rafe, as someone older and with different skill sets, has a perspective on what their relationship and how it might develop than Adri has.
Their dynamic is excellent and is the best thing about the story.
There’s also another aspect of the book, a continuation plot that’s not resolved here but will continue into the final story. It sets up the last fated mates match.
But the lack of at least some sort of completion to some aspect of this complicated conspiracy left me frustrated.
The romance was certainly completed but it’s a HFN, and far too many people were hurt and issues left unresolved.
I am certainly looking forward to the last book to see how it all wraps up. If you like to binge, wait until it’s finished, and read right through.
A definite winner.
Lunetti Pack (5 book series) :
- His Mate By Vengeance #1 – Angelo and Vin
- His Mate By Resistance #2 – Luca and Cal
- His Mate By Allegiance #3 – Rocco and Emilio
- His Mate By Defiance #4 – Rafe and Adri
- His Mate By Dominance #5 – Alpha Marco and Seth’s, the finale. Feb, 21,2027
Buy link
Blurb
“For you? I will take it all. All your pain. All your desire. Everything. It’s all mine.”
Rafe is done giving Adri space. For thirteen years, he’s waited for his jaguar shifter mate to be ready to acknowledge what’s between them. Thirteen years of tracking the pack’s fighting ring and racing to respond whenever they need a doctor. The night he turns up to find Adri brutalised by a feral shifter in the ring, he knows he’ll never let him go again. Especially when shifters start going missing.
Adri told the doc he didn’t need saving over a decade ago, and nothing’s changed since. The last thing he needs is Rafe’s overbearing protectiveness when he’s trying to save his friends from a new unsanctioned fighting ring and whatever bioweapon is at play. Waking up in Rafe’s bed wasn’t in the plan. As soon as he’s healed, Adri’s out of there.
His Mate by Defiance is an MM paranormal romance with a bite. It features age gap, fated mates, and hurt/comfort
Publisher
Mel Aitchess
Publication date
March 11, 2026
Language
English
Print length
254 pages
Book 4 of 5
Justice Volkov is the youngest Alpha Zenith to ever lead the wolf shifters. Following in his father’s large paw prints was a responsibility he met head on. Now at age thirty-three, he is alpha of the alphas. As a direct descendant of the original Siberian pack, his wolf is bigger and stronger than Justice, himself is sometimes able to control.
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 