

Introduction
Chapter 1
Prologue
C
harlie
T
hree Years Ago
I
t’s her laugh that catches my attention.
I hear a chorus of tiny bells, the lilting symphony of piano keys and windchimes late in the summer when the breeze is mild and warm. One of those days when all you want to do is stay outside until the sun drops, casting a warm pinkish glow on ordinary things.
Her laugh sounds pink.
It reminds me of the kind of joy I felt in my bones as a kid when I had a new idea and couldn’t sprint home fast enough to make it happen.
I sure haven’t felt that way lately. And not today.
Most of the time, I don’t know what I feel. Stress, I guess—the weight of accomplishment and expectations ruining what might otherwise be a productive afternoon. I should be building the company I’ve dreamed of since I started messing with circuit boards and computer code two dozen years ago.
I shouldn’t be rethinking decisions that have already been made.
But I think about everything, especially the dreams. I’m a planner, so I work through scenarios, gaming them out with all possible outcomes to be sure I’ve chosen the best one. Even when I should be losing myself in an audiobook out on a run, I can’t stop my goddamned brain from wondering what if?
What if I should’ve when I could’ve?
Doubt will be the death of those dreams. I’ll have to try to remember that when all I can see are the question marks and second guesses.
If my thoughts sound wooden, it’s because they are—thought and overthought so many times they’ve become petrified.
Just keep moving forward, doing what’s expected, and everything will be okay.
More than okay. My virtual reality company, ViviTech, is about to be go public in a stock offering worth billions. Yes, there’s a “b” at the front of that word. I will be a billionaire in a matter of weeks.
And I’d be the biggest douchebag asshole on the planet if I complained. So, I won’t.
I will simply say that the past few years have been a grind. What started as a senior thesis in college with a bunch of my knucklehead computer nerd friends has turned into a twenty-four/seven life.
I’m not being overly dramatic.
Our joint paper on the subject of whether machines could learn emotions opened doors for all of us. Tech incubators and venture capitalists came calling and sent us all off in different directions once we’d turned in our research.
Two of my fellow knuckleheads developed an app that uses tech to predict who’s most susceptible to different kinds of cancers using a couple drops of blood and powerful computers. I founded a virtual reality company that makes a whole new category of sports games and allows astronauts to virtually explore Mars and run experiments there using rovers in real time.
The fourth member of our dude group started a landscape design firm. It has nothing to do with technology or machine learning unless drip watering on a timer counts as high tech. And he’s probably the happiest of the bunch, married to a pastry chef who tries out new recipes on him daily and doesn’t mind when he comes home smelling like fertilizer.
He zigged, I zagged. Until now, I had no problem with spending all my time on algorithms. If managed correctly, they’re predictable.
I like predictable.
So do shareholders. They want predictable profits and growth—and it’s my job to produce.
Billions of dollars will be changing hands based on work I’ve completed and bold promises I’ve made about what I’ll continue to do. Investment dollars will allow my company to grow beyond anything I’ve dreamed of, but every future decision I make will be with shareholders in mind.
A deal with the devil.
No wonder I’m stressed. No wonder I’m grasping at anything that will lighten my load.
No wonder that today, when my mind is deep in a trough of investor questions I’d rather not answer, the melodic laugh kind of saves my life.
It reminds me that in some alternate dimension from where I currently eat, breathe, and sleep my work, some things are still beautiful.
And for some people, still funny.
It’s a foreign sound at my company, despite what I’ve done to make our workspace a pleasant environment with a ping-pong table, flexible hours, and free vending machine food. People like coming to work, but they don’t laugh at work. Not like that.
So, even though I have a hundred emails in my inbox, I leave my glass-walled office and walk through the cubicle farm in search of the sound that warmed me from the inside out.
I’m certain of the source before I hear a second peal that’s even more gleeful than the first. It has to be her—the auburn-haired woman in the red dress standing near one of the lunch tables in our central common area. She’s grinning at my newest hire, Tatum Finley.
Long, dark red waves hang down her back with bronze highlights catching light from the overhead LEDs. I’m struck by the need to put the correct name to the color—copper, russet, chestnut?
The dress defies description, both tastefully covering most of her body in a hip-hugging knit fabric and screaming sexy at the same time. Even from across the room, I can see her long lashes brush her cheeks when she blinks over greenish eyes that could easily be gemstones.
It’s none of my business who Tatum is talking to, and I’m not the kind of arrogant jerk who’d walk over and puff my feathers in front of her just because I founded the company. One of my project managers, Paul, is already positioning his weak, slip of a body between Tatum and her guest. Given his lack of stature, his eyes are right at chest level, and he’s not even embarrassed to gawk. If he gets any closer, he could bite one of her breasts like an apple.
To her credit, the woman says something I don’t hear, but it has him scurrying away like a rodent under the heel of a boot.
A moment later, I hear a repeat of the delightful carefree sound that called me from my office like a siren song. She’s laughing at Tatum, who’s waltzing in front of her with her hands on her hips, her hair flipping from side to side, and a wild sway in her hips. They both break up over whatever they’re talking about, and I feel like a stalker creeper for lingering by the snacks watching them.
For a split second, she looks in my direction, the deep pink of her lips parting to reveal an open-mouthed smile that confirms I was right—there’s something joyful about her. Something uninhibited, as though she isn’t weighed down by a job she hates or a husband who she married for the wrong reasons. Her laugh tells me she’s happy.
Not that you’re projecting…
She just seems…content.
Of course, I don’t know her at all, and I’m reading into the things I want to be true. But isn’t that how it always is? We seize on something and believe in it without knowing whether reality will bear out our hopes.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the hopes are enough to drive reality.
And maybe it’s because I’ve been working endless, god-awful hours getting the company ready for its initial public offering—listening to power players in the banking industry tell me what they think I want to hear about my brilliance because it will translate into millions of dollars for them—but I could use a little joy and contentment right now.
Berta, the Icelandic model who I married a year ago, has just asked for a divorce. I know she waited for the options to vest before bailing because she told me. I almost don’t blame her for making a shrewd financial play, especially since I knew we weren’t in love by the honeymoon.
I dove headlong into the marriage anyway because I’m good at fixing broken things. It’s taken me a year of therapy to learn the distinction between broken machines and broken people, and I’m still not sure I understand.
Now I’ll stick to the technical things I can repair using logic. I don’t need a relationship in order to live a meaningful life.
Still…I do need to hear that laughter.
Its surprising warmth has me relaxing the smallest degree about all the things on my massive, awful to-do list. Who knew another person could make a sound with the power to do that? Not me.
The fridge has a selection of drinks—ginger tonics, green smoothies, seltzers, cans side-by-side of Red Bull and Diet Red Bull that once launched an office-wide debate—and I take my time deciding on a cranberry seltzer. And because I skipped lunch, I scoop some raw almonds from one of the glass jars into a blue bowl that looks like someone sculpted it out of Play-Doh.
Then I linger in hopes of one more peal of laughter to lift me out of work hell, one more look at this red-haired beauty before I head back to my office for another coding marathon.
Still lost in my head and dreading the calls I need to make when I get back to my office, I nearly miss Tatum and her friend walk past. I don’t even take advantage of the moment and get a closer look at the cherubic features of the woman whose hair bounces as she fades out of range.
I’m left only with a lingering citrus scent that makes me want to grow lemon and orange trees all around my house so I can prolong the memory of her.
Glancing over to the table where the two of them sat a moment ago, my eyes snag on a slip of paper, maybe what they were laughing at, maybe not. But I’m curious enough to walk over and look.
It’s a page from one of the notepads we have all over the office. Rule one in working with people who are paid to find new solutions to old problems is to make it easy to capture the barest whiff of an idea before it’s lost.
That’s the work I love—the creativity, the collaboration, the ideas.
Do I even want the company to go public? Does it even matter? What if I want to own a sports team or a piano bar or an eco-travel company?
Shut up, you whiny, lucky bastard who’s about to have the biggest IPO to hit Silicon Valley in a year.
Yeah, I need to keep my complaints to myself, bury them deep, and forget about them.
The first thing I notice on the paper is the drawing—it’s a pencil-scrawled image of a hockey player sweeping a puck into the net. It’s highly detailed, surprisingly so for what’s basically a doodle.
She drew this?
Beneath it is a quote I know to be from Wayne Gretzky: “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”
Yes, you do.
It’s exactly what I need to hear—or read—today. Not because I need courage before I take the company public. But because of all the other things I want to do someday.
Shareholders? Fuck ‘em.
Sometimes, the universe provides the exact inspiration at the exact time a person needs it. Sometimes, it’s provided by a mysterious redhead with a musical laugh. Either way, I’m smart enough to know it when I see it.
I understand that I’m holding something in my hands that could change my career trajectory if I do things right. It may even change my life. So I’m grateful for something a total stranger scribbled on a page, having no idea it would speak to me in a moment when I needed clarity.
I also know I need to see this woman again. When the time is right. When I have my life in order.
Popping the top on the cranberry seltzer, I take a long sip.
When I have my life in order.
Sure. I have no fucking idea when that will be.
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"What the f*ck, Zara!" Levi bumped into me and growled behind me.
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"Zara," my father uttered. "I understand that you are familiar with Alpha Noah."
I slowly nodded my head.
"Great," my father said. "Alpha Noah has also informed me that you are his fated mate."
I gave a nod in response.
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Both my father and Alpha Noah nodded.
"Interesting," I said. "Were you told by Alpha Noah that he rejected me more than a year ago?"
My father's smile wavered as Alpha Noah's face turned to ash.
Did Alpha Noah really believe I would just blindly obey an order from my father without a fight?
Zara is a silver wolf descended from one of the most powerful packs on the continent.
A year after he rejects her, her fated mate comes knocking on her door to tell her he is back to claim her.
Zara turns down his proposal, and he goes behind her back and asks her father for her hand. The old Alpha agrees to the arrangement.
Zara is unhappy and decides to handle things on her own. She informs her father that she has taken a chosen mate, her Beta, and her best friend, Levi—only he has a secret.
What will happen when Zara's second chance mate attends her and Levi's mating ceremony?
Will he stop the proceedings and claim her as his mate?
A story about two broken hearts finding each other and getting sucked into a web of lies and prophecies.
Will Zara find the happiness she so deserves?
Secrets of Us: A Forbidden Love Romance
He’s angry from the conversation last night. I can feel it, I can see it in his dark eyes. It’s only confirmed when he slams into me without preparing me.
I cry out and he soothes me with kisses on my neck and nibbles on my skin. Still he doesn’t slow down. He starts at a quick pace, at a strength that already has my legs trembling.
I grab onto his shoulders, cries leaving my lips every time he slams into me. It turn wet, not from the water, but from how much he makes my pussy happy.
Alina leaves everything she knows behind after she is in a terrible car accident that tears her family apart. A new home, a new school and a fractured relationship with her mother are only the beginning of the things this change will throw her way. Immediately she catches the attention of three men, and she can’t deny what she feels for them, too. Quickly, and much to her demise, she finds out that their lives are much more intertwined than she would have ever hoped for. She had hoped to discover herself in this new place, but everything only tears her apart. Who will she choose between Zaid, the bad boy, Aiden, her sweet jock, and Jake, and older man who can't seem to keep his hands off of her?
The Alpha King's Human Mate
“I have waited nine years for you. That’s nearly a decade since I’ve felt this emptiness inside me. Part of me began to wonder if you didn’t exist or you’d already died. And then I found you, right inside my own home.”
He used one of his hands to stroke my cheek and tingles erupted everywhere.
“I’ve spent enough time without you and I will not let anything else keep us apart. Not other wolves, not my drunken father who’s barely holding himself together the past twenty years, not your family – and not even you.”
Clark Bellevue has spent her entire life as the only human in the wolf pack - literally. Eighteen years ago, Clark was the accidental result of a brief affair between one of the most powerful Alphas in the world and a human woman. Despite living with her father and her werewolf half-siblings, Clark has never felt like she really belonged in the werewolf world. But right as Clark plans to leave the werewolf world behind for good, her life gets flipped upside down by her mate: the next Alpha King, Griffin Bardot. Griffin has been waiting years for the chance to meet his mate, and he's not about to let her go anytime soon. It doesn't matter how far Clark tries to run from her destiny or her mate - Griffin intends to keep her, no matter what he has to do or who stands in his way.
A pack of their own
My Dominant Boss
Mr Sutton and I have had nothing but a working relationship. He bosses me around, and I listen. But all of that is about to change. He needs a date for a family wedding and has chosen me as his target. I could and should have said no, but what else can I do when he threatens my job?
It is agreeing to that one favour that changed my entire life. We spent more time together outside of work, which changed our relationship. I see him in a different light, and he sees me in one.
I know it is wrong to get involved with my boss. I try to fight it but fail. It is only sex. What harm could it do? I couldn’t be more wrong because what starts as only sex changes direction in a way I could never imagine.
My boss isn’t only dominant at work but in all aspects of his life. I have heard about the Dom/subs relationship, but it isn’t something I ever thought much about. As things heat up between Mr Sutton and me, I am asked to become his submissive. How does one even become such a thing with no experience or desire to be one? It will be a challenge for him and me because I don’t do well at being told what to do outside of work.
I never expected the one thing I knew nothing about would be the same thing to open up an incredible brand-new world to me.
Strings of Fate
Like all children, I was tested for magic when I was only a few days old. Since my specific bloodline is unknown and my magic is unidentifiable, I was marked with a delicate swirling pattern around my upper right arm.
I do have magic, just as the tests showed, but it has never lined up with any known Magic species.
I can't breathe fire like a dragon Shifter, or hex people who piss me off like Witches. I can't make potions like an Alchemist or seduce people like a Succubus. Now I don't mean to be unappreciative of the power I do have, it's interesting and all, but it just really doesn't pack much of a punch and most of the time it is just pretty much useless. My special magical skill is the ability to see threads of fate.
Most of life is annoying enough for me, and what never occurred to me is that my mate is a rude, pompous nuisance. He's an Alpha and my friend's twin brother.
“What are you doing? This is my home, you can't just let yourself in!” I try and keep my voice firm but when he turns and fixes me with his golden eyes I shrink back. The look he gives me is imperious and I automatically drop my eyes to the floor as is my habit. Then I force myself to look back up again. He doesn't notice me looking up because he's already looked away from me. He's being rude, I refuse to show that he's scaring me, even though he most definitely is. He glances around and after realising that the only place to sit is the little table with its two chairs he points to it.
“Sit.” he orders. I glare at him. Who is he to order me around like this? How can someone this obnoxious possibly be my soul mate? Maybe I'm still asleep. I pinch my arm and my eyes water a little from the sting of pain.
Nanny and Her Four Alpha Bullies
I Am His Wolfless Luna
Ethan also kept emitting deep roars in my ear, 'Damn... I'm going to cum... !!!' His impact became more intense and our bodies kept making slapping sounds.
"Please!! Ethan!!"
As the strongest female warrior in my pack, I was betrayed by those I trusted most, my sister and my best friend. I was drugged, raped, and banished from my family and my pack. I lost my wolf, my honor, and became an outcast—carrying a child I never asked for.
Six years of hard-won survival turned me into a professional fighter, fueled by rage and grief. A summons arrives from the formidable Alpha heir, Ethan, asking me to return as a wolfless combat instructor for the very pack that once banished me.
I thought I could ignore their whispers and stares, but when I see Ethan's emerald-green eyes—the same as my son’s—my world tilts.
The Moon's Descendant
“You think I’m going to let my daughter sleep with whoever she wants” he spat. He kicked me in the ribs, sending me flying back across the floor.
“I didn’t” I coughed, gasping for air.
I felt as though my chest had caved in. I thought I was about to vomit when Hank grabbed my hair and lifted my head. CRACK. It was like my eye had exploded inside my skull when he punched me in the face. I landed on the cold concrete and pressed my face onto the floor. He used his foot to roll me over so that I was on my back.
“Look at you, you disgusting c**t” he huffed as he crouched down beside me and wiped the hair from my face. He smiled, a terrifying evil smile.
“I have something extra special for you tonight” he whispered.
Hidden in the dark forest, on Cape Breton Island, lives a small community of Weres. For generations they remained hidden from the humans and maintained a peaceful existence. That is until one small woman joins their pack and throws their world upside down.
Gunner the future Alpha, serving as a knight in shining armour saves the young woman from certain death. Bringing with her a mysterious past and possibilities that many had long since forgotten, Zelena is the light they didn’t know they needed.
With new hope, comes new dangers. A clan of hunters want back what they believe the pack has stolen from them, Zelena.
With her new powers, new friends and new family, they all fight to protect their homeland and the gift that the Moon Goddess has bestowed upon them, the Triple Goddess.
Game of Destiny
When Finlay finds her, she is living among humans. He is smitten by the stubborn wolf that refuse to acknowledge his existence. She may not be his mate, but he wants her to be a part of his pack, latent wolf or not.
Amie cant resist the Alpha that comes into her life and drags her back into pack life. Not only does she find herself happier than she has been in a long time, her wolf finally comes to her. Finlay isn't her mate, but he becomes her best friend. Together with the other top wolves in the pack, they work to create the best and strongest pack.
When it's time for the pack games, the event that decides the packs rank for the coming ten year, Amie needs to face her old pack. When she sees the man that rejected her for the first time in ten years, everything she thought she knew is turned around. Amie and Finlay need to adapt to the new reality and find a way forward for their pack. But will the curve ball split them apart?
Shattered Girl
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. Was that too much?” I could see the worry in his eyes as I took a deep breath.
“I just didn’t want you to see all my scars,” I whispered, feeling ashamed of my marked body.
Emmy Nichols is used to surviving. She survived her abusive father for years until he beat her so severely, she ended up in the hospital, and her father was finally arrested. Now, Emmy is thrown into a life she never expected. Now she has a mother
who doesn't want her, a politically motivated stepfather with ties to the Irish mob, four older stepbrothers, and their best friend who swear to love and protect her. Then, one night, everything shatters, and Emmy feels her only option is to run.
When her stepbrothers and their best friend finally find her, will they pick up the pieces and convince Emmy that they will keep her safe and their love will hold them together?