Reviewed by Jen
TITLE: 
Defiance
SERIES: The Triad Series
AUTHOR: Cari Z.
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 225 pages
RELEASE DATE: February 25, 2026
BLURB:
Two enemies, born into conflict, find love despite the odds. Their fight to stay together will define the future not just for themselves, but for the world.
Petur Alloui is a powerful prince, a gifted shifter, and a fighter at the top of his game. He wants for nothing…except a challenge. He didn’t expect that challenge to come in the form of a trained assassin, immune to magic, who saves his life even though their countries are sworn enemies.
If Deyvid was smarter, he would have let Petur die on the road instead of taking the spell meant for him. By saving the silver-tongued prince, he gives Petur the chance to woo him, and Petur is nothing if not persuasive.
They’re in love…but love might not be enough to hold back the forces fighting to tear them apart.
Defiance is the thrilling M/M fantasy prequel to the bestselling Triad trilogy with enemies to lovers, graphic violence, and explicit sexual content.
REVIEW:
I was not real sure about this one starting out, but once it got rolling, I was sucked in. It’s a prequel that starts out one way and then backtracks to tell you how it got there bringing you back to the beginning of the story. It is then that the worldbuilding really begins.
When the story begins, our three men are together, but as the story unfolds, we learn how that all came to be. Petur is a part of the royal family and a shifter capable of changing into multiple beings. He comes across Deyvid, a unique character who is immune to magic and whose people have generally been the enemy of Petur’s people. But he is basically an exiled assassin and they end up teaming together to defeat the mages wreaking havoc on Petur’s people.
There is a lot to the story about how Deyvid’s role in Petur’s life meshes out, but suffice to say their relationship has grown over the past decade. But, Petur’s sister, the Queen, has other plans for Petur and arranges a political marriage for him “for the good of the people.” This is where Sy comes in. He is the one chosen to marry Petur. He also happens to be a mage. We know they end up together from the very first pages of this story, but we don’t really see it all come to fruition by the end, although we know that is where things are headed.
By the end of this story, I was more than ready to continue on and really delve deeper into this threesome and how they all came to accept one another and how they dealt with their differences. It looks like this is all going to play out in the first book, which I am now eager to jump into. I really enjoyed the fantasy aspects at play here, between the shifters and the magic, and the mystery of who was attempting to cause trouble and the attempted assassinations. Cari Z. has not let me down yet, so I expect this story to get even deeper and more interesting than it already is.
RATING: 
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