RANKED BY BLOOD

RANKED BY BLOOD

Ayomide Nifemi · Ongoing · 112.9k Words

325
Hot
330
Views
3
Added
Add to Shelf
Start Reading
Share:facebooktwitterpinterestwhatsappreddit

Introduction

Ethan Cole was just an ordinary man.

He worked at an office for $12 an hour, was three months behind on his rent, and only had four numbers in his cell phone, which was cracked in a bus stop. He was not unlucky. He was just one of those guys that no one cared about.

Then on a Wednesday night, a mugger got a knife into his ribs and that's the end of Ethan Cole.

Except it wasn't.

Chapter 1

He remembered dying.

The first thing that occurred to him wasn't where he was, nor the sky overhead or the hard ground underfoot or the noise of traffic somewhere nearby. Just that. The memory of a knife entering his body below his left ribs and his legs giving out, and the feeling of cold wet concrete coming up to meet him. He recalled the streetlight would dim and flicker. He recalled his thoughts of his sister. He recalled the man walking away and not running and, It was the weirdest part, he didn't even run, he's like, 'Well, that's not worth the urgency of running, I'm just going to walk away.'

He recalled his death and he'd awoken to look at the sky, but it was the wrong color.

Ethan didn't move for a long time.

How long he could not have said. Long enough that he felt the chill of the ground under his feet, and then the noises, cars, far-away voices, a hum of machinery two or three streets away. Long enough that his brain tried to come up with an explanation and finally gave up and rejected it all because none of them worked. He wasn't in the alley. The ground beneath him was level and arid. The part that didn't make sense, that his mind would always go back to, always turn over and set down and pick up again, was that he was breathing.

He wasn't breathing at his death. He knew this to be a fact.

Ethan sat up.

The jolt made him dizzy and he had to place both hands on the ground and wait it out. He was shaking with fear. He looked at them — at his own hands and the knuckles he knew and the scar on his right index finger that he had gotten from a box cutter incident three years ago — and felt something else: it wasn't fear or relief, but it was in the terrible middle ground where the mind exists when it doesn't know what to label what it feels.

He was unmarked on his side.

He slapped his hand on that. At the point where the knife had penetrated, right under the ribs on the left. Nothing. No wound. No blood. Not even a tenderness. He pushed harder, unable to believe, and only his own ribcage and the fast beating of his heart were to be felt.

He made a noise, involuntary and barely audible, like something a person lets out when they can't hold it in anymore when he has to release something the mind has yet to master. He put his hand over his mouth and sat down on the ground where he didn't know and shook.

He shook some while. It was not something of which he was embarrassed. He was dead. He was almost sure that he had been dead and he was sitting on dry clean pavement in a coat that he didn't own, with his heart pounding against his ribs, and no explanation for anything. Shaking appeared the right thing to do. Shaking was the only thing one could do.

As it passed he could see over it, and he looked up.

The street in front of him was known, like a word in a language he didn't know. it was familiar in form, but not in details. It was properly laid out. The spacing of the grid, the density, the specific type of urban noise produced by cities that have reached a stage of development beyond their own planning. However, the buildings were not the right heights. There were different signs. And to the east, above all that the city had ever seen, and to the east where nothing else ever stood before him, tall as an impossible tower that stretches up forever, lit in a twinkling blue-white, the slow rhythm of something breathing.

He looked at it for quite a while.

There were people walking down the sidewalk, and Ethan was watching them, focusing on them like a man who is searching for something familiar to cling onto. They looked normal. They dressed normally. They walked quietly, like an ordinary Monday night, and nobody was watching him but —

He was aware of it slowly. How you know there is something wrong with a room before you can find out what it is. People were slowing. No stopping, no staring, but slowing in a specific manner of people who have received a notification and are focused upon that notification while walking. He observed three people pass through in quick succession who were looking at their wrist with the same look on their faces – something between alert and curious – but kept going.

Their wrists.

Ethan took a first proper look at the closest of people. Man wearing a work jacket passing close by. Ethan could not read what was on his wrist, but there was a thin sheen of white light glowing faintly on his wrist.

He looked at his own wrists.

Nothing. Bare skin.

He glanced at the person who was next. Band. The one after that. Band. The woman unlocking the storefront across the street. Band. The young person carrying the backpack. Band. The man who makes deliveries coming around the corner. Band.

Every single person.

Ethan lowered his sleeve over his bare wrist and knelt very still on the ground, trying to breathe slowly as his mind did what it had tried to avoid since opening its eyes: it accepted that wherever he was it wasn't where he had been. Same city shape. Same sounds. A homelike texture from a hard-lived place for a long time.

Different sky. Different tower. Wristbands on everyone who passed him.

He was dead. He knew that he had to be dead.

He was now here, in a coat he didn't own, with forty-three dollars in the pocket – he found them when his trembling finger went searching, and bare wrists in a world where a bare wrist, apparently, was the sign of something that was not yet good, that he could already feel.

This kid who was across the street was pointing at him. Said something to the woman next to her. The woman glimpsed at him, her eyes on his wrists, and took the child's hand, and they walked faster.

Ethan looked on at them.

He remained on the ground for a few minutes longer. Then two. He was not strong enough to stand up. He was not ready for anything but to sit here and be alive when he shouldn't have been and trying to find the bottom of what he was feeling so that he could put his feet on it. There was too much. Grief at some loss that he had yet to express. The illusion of the knife's presence. He remembered the feeling of concrete being cold under him and no one coming. That his sister's face showed up when it happened over and over, that her face was always her face when she didn't want him to see she was afraid; that her face didn't look at all like his sister's face.

She had died for two years before he did.

He placed the palms of his two hands on his eyes and took deep breaths.

When he took his hands away the street was still there. There still stood the tower. There were those with the glowing wristbands walking past him, as people do, and he knew no reason why. Some of them looked at him on the ground and turned away, a scheme that the city has practiced over the years, avoiding people that have learned that it is more expensive to acknowledge than to ignore.

He was a man sitting on a sidewalk. He didn't have any wristband. Together apparently these two facts told something significant enough for a woman to remove her child from the sight of him.

Ethan put his hand flat on the ground. He pushed himself up to his feet. He stood on the sidewalk of a city he didn't know and with his knees threatening to buckle, and he looked at the tower that was on the east side, the tower that was pulsing slowly blue, and he tried to find something he could use, something he remembered, something he could use in the shaking and the grief and the absolute disorientation of a man who remembered dying.

It was among all the rest, he found it.

He was alive.

He didn't know how. He was unaware of where. He didn't know what the wristbands were or what the tower was or why the sky wasn't the right grey. All he knew was that he was standing up when he should have been in an alley off Pelham Avenue with forty-three dollars and a knife wound and nobody coming.

He lived and he was on his feet, that's all that mattered right now.

He made a decision on a course of action. He started walking.

He wasn't quite sure what he was doing there. That was fine. For twenty eight years, he didn't know where he was headed. Minus this time, he was breathing.

Last Chapters

You Might Like 😍

The Princess's Revenge

The Princess's Revenge

59.1k Views · Completed · Xena Kessler
Two nations are at war. Valencia's pack is massacred by Alpha Marcus, and she is enslaved by him. When he dies, she is to be buried alive with him as a sacrifice.

Alpha Logan is an illegitimate son whose mother disappeared when he was 10 years old. He grew up suffering from humiliation and lacking maternal love.

Alpha Logan saves Valencia at Marcus's funeral, which seems to be destined by fate—part of the Moon Goddess's grand plan.

As Valencia accidentally discovers prophecies in Logan's mother's diary that seem to be related to her, the truth gradually surfaces. Valencia appears to be merely a tool in a princess's revenge plot. How will Logan and Valencia navigate their path amid the national war and pack politics?
Diaries Of A Hybrid And Her Mate

Diaries Of A Hybrid And Her Mate

1.9k Views · Ongoing · Sherryann Martinez
R18 MATURE CONTENT

Beautiful Aubrianne Ivanov, raised by her single mom, had a tough childhood. With low self-esteem, she became an outcast and was alone one too many times for her liking. Time spent at her part time job, she eventually grew into a brave, confident, and determined young woman who walked right into an opportunity that would change her life forever.

Will Aubrianne truly feel whole? Will she find what has been missing in her life? Will she allow herself happiness and joy? Will she find love, and most importantly, will she survive what's to come?

Join Aubrianne on her journey as she discovers who/what she is and navigates all the heartbreak, betrayal, drama, and exciting and thrilling events that come her way...

Excerpt:

She lay before him in all her magnificent beauty draped across his king-size bed in the most compelling and provocative way known to man or beast. And for Alpha Zayne, it was the most captivating view he had ever had the pleasure of seeing with his own eyes.

She stared at his every movement, lips slightly parted, her stunning brown eyes scanning every inch of his gorgeously toned and glorious body while heat radiated off of hers. He was HERS.

Her body trembled in delight and anticipation; she was ready and wanted to be with him in every way.

As innocent as she was, she wanted him to...no need him to take her in the worse ways, bringing her to heights of pleasures she had never experienced before.

Fuck she is beautiful, one fine specimen, and she is all MINE, MY MATE. A wave of pure unbridled possessiveness vibrated through Alpha Zayne. He thanked the Divine Moon Goddess, for she has truly blessed him.

He drank her in, eyes trailing up her toned sexy legs spread wide for him, and she gave him that come-and-get-it look.
Bella and Her Beast

Bella and Her Beast

17.4k Views · Completed · Sheridan Hartin
For all the little girls who grew up wondering what happens after the prince kisses the girl—this is the story they never told you.
.
Locked in her frozen tower, Bella dreamed of warmth, of touch, of freedom and of love. Cursed with the power of ice and snow, she’s spent her life alone. A secret they tried to protect the world from. Her only escape comes in the form of the books she reads. Stories of heat, desire, and the kind of love that could melt even her frostbitten heart.
Damien is the Beast. A dragon King with a temper forged in flame and a soul hollowed by duty. The world fears him. The people call him a monster. But beneath the scales and the rage lies a man who has never been touched by love.
When frost meets fire, the world shatters. She was never meant to leave her tower. He was never meant to find her. But destiny doesn’t bow to kings or care for cages and now the question burns through them both: Can Bella have her Beast? Or will the girl of snow melt in the heat of his desire?

.
"I’m keeping her."
"What?"
Before I can react, he scoops her up. Her small body fits easily in the cradle of his talons. For a split second, she looks startled, but not afraid. Her hand rests against one scaled finger, and she stares up at him with that same curious wonder, as though she’s already forgotten she was ever meant to fear me.
"Put her down," I try to command, panic threading through my thoughts. "You’ll hurt her."
"She’s ours," the beast insists, possessive and fierce. "Our snowflake."
The Last Tribrid: Hunted & Hollow

The Last Tribrid: Hunted & Hollow

1.6k Views · Ongoing · Dancingpen
Hera is dead.
That’s what the blood in the woods says.
That’s what Astrid saw with her own eyes.
And that’s what should have ended it.
But it didn’t.
Because her death wasn’t the beginning of justice.
It was the beginning of the hunt.
As grief fractures their world, Astrid and her friends are forced to confront a terrifying truth—someone isn’t just killing.
They’re choosing.
Marking.
Watching.
And now, the circle is closing.
What started as a single investigation quickly unravels into something far more dangerous, pulling them into a web of ancient forces that have been waiting… watching… and are no longer willing to stay buried.
Enemies rise from places they never thought to look.
Allies become something else entirely.
And survival begins to demand impossible choices.
Because some lives can only be saved by sacrificing others.
As power awakens inside Astrid—wild, unstable, and willing to burn everything in its path—she’s pushed to the edge of what she can control… and what she’s willing to lose.
Even if it costs her everything.
Even if it costs them.
Because this time, they aren’t just being hunted.
They’ve already been marked.

(this is a continuation of 'the last tribrid')
Taste of Fate: The Vampire King's Human Mate

Taste of Fate: The Vampire King's Human Mate

4.7k Views · Ongoing · Miranda Carr
I never knew my blood could kill a king—until I met one. Sebastian, the ruthless and immortal King, rules with precision. For centuries, he's ruled with ruthless precision, his heart as cold as the stone throne beneath him. One moment, I'm nothing. The next, I'm his obsession. His touch burns like ice fire. His stare follows me through shadows. And when he feeds from me—God help me—it feels like drowning in darkness and craving more. He tells me my blood is unlike any he's tasted, that my scent drives him to the edge of madness.


He reached for the back of my head and pulled me up just enough to reach my neck. When his fangs slid into me, the pain was instant, electric. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. My hands found his shoulders, clawing for something to hold. My legs kicked. Tears streamed down my cheeks.

He moaned against my throat as he drank, and the sound was devastating.
The Family Books 1-3 (A Mafia romance)

The Family Books 1-3 (A Mafia romance)

2.1k Views · Completed · Emma Mountford
Saints and Sinners- She was the light to my dark.
The saint to my sinner. with her innocent eyes and devilish curves.
A Madonna that was meant to be admired but never touched.
Until someone took that innocence from her.
She left.
The darkness in my heart was finally complete.
I avenged her, I killed for her, but she never came back.
Until I saw her again. An angel dancing around a pole for money.
She didn’t know I owned that club. She didn’t know I was watching.
This time I won’t let her escape.
I will make her back into the girl I knew.
Whether she likes it or not.
2/ Judge and Jury- I can’t stop watching her.

I’m not even sure I want to.

Taylor Lawson, blonde, beautiful, and totally oblivious to how much dangers she’s in.

She’s also the one juror in my upcoming murder trial that hasn’t been bought.

The one who can put me behind bars for a very long time.

I know I should execute her.
After all that’s what I do.

I am the Judge.
I eliminate threats to The Family.
And Taylor is a threat.
But I don’t want to kill her.
Possessing her, making her love me seems like a much better plan for this particular Juror.

3/ Rags and Ritches-
Offside With You

Offside With You

2.4k Views · Ongoing · Eanie Ruth
For eighteen years, Aveline Carter has lived in the shadows, forgotten by a mother who only seems to see her identical twin brother, Asher Carter, whose heart disease demands constant care. She resents him until the night she finds him lying unconscious on his bedroom floor.
At the hospital, Asher falls into a coma. His scans reveal bruises, internal bleeding and signs of prolonged physical abuse. Broken and furious, Aveline vows to expose the cruelty hidden behind the prestige of Crestwood Academy.
Cutting off her hair and disguising herself as her brother, Aveline infiltrates Crestwood Academy and fights her way onto the hockey team determined to unmask those responsible. Revenge should have been simple until she meets Kieran Hampton, the team’s arrogant and sharp-eyed star player. From their first clash, tension ignites. Aveline is certain he’s guilty and has no problem making his life miserable, but their undeniable chemistry only draws them closer with every confrontation.

While Aveline focuses on the wrong target, the real threat stands closer.

Cassian Thorne seems strange at first, his interest in her uncomfortably personal yet he gradually becomes her friend. Meanwhile, Kieran despite believing Aveline is male finds himself drawn to “him” in ways he can’t understand. When he uncovers her true identity, he chooses to protect her at all costs even as she refuses to trust him.
Revenge turns to grief when Asher dies, leaving Aveline drowning in guilt for falling for her brother’s supposed tormentor. Questions remain unanswered, and the truth is far darker than she imagined because Asher Carter was never just a victim. The bullying wasn’t just random.
As secrets unravel and loyalties shatter, Aveline must face one devastating question: what happens when the brother you were ready to destroy the world for isn’t who you thought he was?
Let Them Kneel

Let Them Kneel

237.8k Views · Ongoing · My Fantasy Stories
Kaelani spent her life believing she was wolfless.
Cast out by her pack. Forgotten by the Lycans.
She lived among humans—quiet, invisible, tucked away in a town no one looked at twice.

But when her first heat comes without warning, everything changes.

Her body ignites. Her instincts scream. And something primal stirs beneath her skin—
summoning a big, bad Alpha who knows exactly how to quench her fire.

When he claims her, it’s ecstasy and ruin.

For the first time, she believes she’s been accepted.
Seen.
Chosen.

Until he leaves her the next morning—
like a secret never to be spoken.

But Kaelani is not what they thought.
Not wolfless. Not weak.
There is something ancient inside her. Something powerful. And it’s waking.

And when it does—
they’ll all remember the girl they tried to erase.

Especially him.

She’ll be the dream he keeps chasing… the one thing that ever made him feel alive.

Because secrets never stay buried.
And neither do dreams.
From Substitute To Queen

From Substitute To Queen

1.7m Views · Completed · Hannah Moore
For three years, Sable loved Alpha Darrell with everything she had, spending her salary to support their household while being called an orphan and gold-digger. But just as Darrell was about to mark her as his Luna, his ex-girlfriend returned, texting: "I'm not wearing underwear. My plane lands soon—pick me up and fuck me immediately."

Heartbroken, Sable discovered Darrell having sex with his ex in their bed, while secretly transferring hundreds of thousands to support that woman.

Even worse was overhearing Darrell laugh to his friends: "She's useful—obedient, doesn't cause trouble, handles housework, and I can fuck her whenever I need relief. She's basically a live-in maid with benefits." He made crude thrusting gestures, sending his friends into laughter.

In despair, Sable left, reclaimed her true identity, and married her childhood neighbor—Lycan King Caelan, nine years her senior and her fated mate. Now Darrell desperately tries to win her back. How will her revenge unfold?

From substitute to queen—her revenge has just begun!
Goddess Of The Underworld

Goddess Of The Underworld

945.5k Views · Completed · Sheridan Hartin
Left at a pack border with a name and a stubborn heartbeat, Envy grows into the sharpest kind of survivor, an orphaned warrior who knows how to hold a line and keep moving. Love isn’t in the plan…until four alpha wolves with playboy reputations and inconveniently soft hands decide the girl who won’t bow is the only queen they’ll ever take. Their mate. The one they have waited for. Xavier, Haiden, Levi, and Noah are gorgeous, lethal, and anything but perfect and Envy isn’t either. She’s changing. First into hell hound, Layah at her heels and fire in her veins. Then into what the realm has been waiting for, a Goddess of the Underworld, dragging her mates down to hell with her.

When the veil between the Divine, the Living, and the Dead begins to crack, Envy is thrust beneath with a job she can’t drop: keep the worlds from bleeding together, shepherd the lost, and make ordinary into armour, breakfasts, bedtime, battle plans. Peace lasts exactly one lullaby. This is the story of an orphan pup who became a goddess by choosing her family; of four imperfect alphas learning how to be better. Steamy, fierce, and full of heart, Goddess of the Underworld is a reverse harem, found-family paranormal romance where love writes the rules and keeps three realms from falling apart.
Mated To My Ruin: A Dragon's Debt

Mated To My Ruin: A Dragon's Debt

1.7k Views · Ongoing · ashlennox8
Nyx would risk anything to save her dying sister. Even steal from a dragon. Even trust a prince who promised her a crown in exchange for the impossible.

But the prince lied. The dragon she touched bound itself to her soul and now she is trapped in the vampire kingdom with a king who has waited centuries for her return. King Caelan remembers everything. The love she destroyed and the great war she started. The lives she burned to ash with the very dragon now living inside her.

She remembers nothing.

He wants her to suffer for crimes she cannot recall. She wants to survive long enough to save her sister. But the bond between them refuses to stay buried and the dragon has its own plans. When she turns twenty and her fae powers awaken, Nyx discovers the truth is far more twisted than centuries of hatred.

The prince who sent her was the one who destroyed her family. The king who hates her saved the only person she loves. And the past life she cannot remember might be the key to stopping another war.

This time she will not run. This time she will burn the world herself if that is what it takes.
The Ice Between Us.

The Ice Between Us.

1.4k Views · Ongoing · Nora Obeche
In the world of elite hockey, discipline is the only currency that matters. For Julian Thorne, the perfectionist Captain of the Northwood Olympic Center, every stride is calculated, and every emotion is frozen solid. He is one season away from the pros, but the team is drowning under public scrutiny and a board of directors looking for any reason to cut the cord.

​Then comes Jax Miller.

​Jax is a hotheaded rookie with a lightning-fast puck and a reputation for burning bridges. He doesn't follow playbooks, he doesn't respect authority, and he’s determined to melt Julian’s icy composure. When a viral video of their on-ice collision threatens to bankrupt the program, Coach Clain delivers an ultimatum that feels like a death sentence: they must live together in a cramped, two-bed dorm for the duration of the season.

​Forced to navigate the high-stakes world of sports fame, "forbidden" locker-room tension, and the mysterious blackmailer who caught their first mistake on camera, Julian and Jax must decide what’s more dangerous: losing their careers, or losing themselves to the person they were supposed to hate.