This HaBO is from Tarli, who wants to find this book:
Ok honestly I feel like I remember so much I could just rewrite the book myself, but I’ve honestly been looking for it for over 10 years. It was a Mills and Boon type book that I read in the early 2000s (but it was probably published earlier—maybe 1980s or 1990s).
The heroine had red hair and was on an anthropological expedition (maybe archaeology-related).
Her uncle or mentor figure had investigated a mysterious hidden people before her and may have been killed by a cult of humans who worshipped these people and saw themselves as their protectors.
When she was on her expedition, all her coworkers/guides were murdered by the cult. She dragged their bodies into a jeep to protect them.
She somehow made it to the secret lands through a cave or underwater portal, but was quickly taken as captive.
The main guy has silver hair and can shapeshift into a wolf. He’s a leader of some sort of the secret people.
She’s held captive (but treated okay, like a guest except she can’t leave), and her room she’s given is attached to the main male character’s room. At one point, she feared assault and hid a knife above the wardrobe—but he never harmed her, and they built trust over time.
There was a cultural festival at some point in this secret land involving fabrics, ribbons or satin or something, and she ends up taking part in.
Eventually, she escaped or was let go and hid out in a beach house back in the modern world, but the cult followed her there.
The wolf-shifter hero had been watching over her in wolf form, and I think fought off the cult.
At the end, she finds out the secret land is vanishing and won’t be accessible for long and she makes the decision to go and live there with the main guy permanently.
It wasn’t a lengthy novel, probably not part of a series, and I think had one of those bodice-ripper covers (maybe red-haired woman + bare-chested man).
I think the title might’ve been something like “Call of the Moon” or “Howl of the Wolf”, but I could be totally off.
Let’s HaBO!
If it was Mills and Boon-like, it could have been the Silhouette/Harlequin Nocturne line, which featured paranormal romance (although the line was established in 2006, so it might be too late for your book). Here is a list of them: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/11180.Harlequin_Silhouette_Nocturne
I think Silhouette Shadows was the pre-cursor to the nocturne line. I remember reading those in high-school, so that would have been in the late 90s. Here’s a list of them
https://www.fictiondb.com/series/silhouette-shadows~14151.htm
Secrets of the Wolf by Saranne Dawson? And it has a prequel called Heart of the Wolf.