Year of the Fledgling by Linda Kage

Theron, the Eradicator, has one job: to protect the people of Starcast by killing the deadly creatures that attack them. That’s it.

Being an Eradicator comes with a heavy price, however, for he’s strictly prohibited from having any kind of personal contact with the villagers.

But one night, he sneaks into the town’s harvest festival, anyway, and meets Xia, the lovely, young healer’s apprentice.

As Theron and Xia grow close, it becomes harder to tell what’s more dangerous: risking a fatal injury while battling dark ones or risking fatal punishment by beginning a secret, forbidden dalliance.

In either case, doom seems to be the only outcome, and tension mounts as love and danger blur across the reach of this fantastical, seaside landscape.