
Paladin
Arseny Lebedev lives a normal life. During the day, he’s a mechanic. At night, he livestreams a fairy tale video game called Paladin. And sometimes--only sometimes—he kills people. But they all deserve it.
Ever doesn’t know his last name. He doesn’t know much of anything. Most of his life has been torture, bought and sold by a woman who calls herself his mother. He’s resigned himself to a life of servitude, until he meets Arsen.
The moment Arsen sees Ever, they’re bonded. Ever is both fragile and feral, willing to defend himself with any tool at his disposal, even teeth. Arsen is color and light, a beacon in Ever’s darkness, as brave as the knight in the game he plays.
Arsen protects Ever fiercely, but just when he feels safe, someone attempts to drag him back to his old life, reminding him that reality isn’t fairy tales or video games. He knows staying puts Arsen in danger. But Arsen insists they’re safer together. Can Ever truly have his happily ever after or is it game over?
Paladin is a hurt-comfort, dark romance with an HEA and no cliffhangers. It features a vigilante twitch-streamer and the beautiful but feral gremlin he saves from a life of misery. As with any Onley book, you’ll find dark humor, steamy sexy times, and gratuitous violence against people who totally deserve it. This is book 1 in the Jericho’s Boys series. Each book follows a different couple.
- Pages
- 370
- Audiobook
- 10 hr 16 min
- First published
- June 6, 2024
- Language
- English
- Edition
- Audiobook
Reviews
- adventurousemotionalfunnyFast-paced
Started August 18, 2025 · Finished August 31, 2025
This style of 'dark' romance I think will never quite be my thing as the weird blend of 'oh we're all psychopaths who murder people a lot' combined with 'but obviously we are all scrupulous about consent and we found you a therapist who will keep quiet about the murders' is just...hm. I would prefer actually crossing lines rather than dancing on them weirdly like this but I understand the audience is clearly people who are not me. But I did enjoy the main couple and the writing was perfectly fine, though I could have done with a lot more world building earlier on. Might read a couple more if the mood takes me. However I didn't care for some of the misogynistic side swipes considering there's not really any major sympathetic female character. Also have some quibbles with how Arsen was portrayed as an ESL character as he seems to have immigrated very young and not lived in a FL speaking community on the whole so some of the stereotypical Russian-adult-ESL-learner-grammatical-errors came off a bit. Well, stereotypical.
