Stop Saving Me, I'm Going Home

Stop Saving Me, I'm Going Home

Juniper Marlow · Completed · 6.7k Words

284
Hot
341
Views
0
Added
Add to Shelf
Start Reading
Share:facebooktwitterpinterestwhatsappreddit

Introduction

The Blood Moon Festival ended the night Caelan Voss stood up in front of every faction in Aurevael and announced he only wanted one person.
Her name wasn't mine.
The other consorts took their gold and went home. The Ironpact warriors headed back to their barracks. The Sylvari delegation slipped out before the second toast. The Covenant scholars packed their notes. Reunions. Celebrations. The kind of night the holiday was made for.
I had nowhere to go.
The mark on my inner wrist had always been warm. Just a low, steady pulse—easy to ignore after a few years, like a clock you stop hearing. I pressed my fingers over it out of habit.
Cold.
The contract was over. Twenty-one years, four failed routes, and now this. The ancient binding that had pulled me into this world had made its verdict.
I went to find a rope.

Chapter 1

The Blood Moon Festival ended the night Caelan Voss stood up in front of every faction in Aurevael and announced he only wanted one person.

Her name wasn't mine.

The other consorts took their gold and went home. The Ironpact warriors headed back to their barracks. The Sylvari delegation slipped out before the second toast. The Covenant scholars packed their notes. Reunions. Celebrations. The kind of night the holiday was made for.

I had nowhere to go.

The mark on my inner wrist had always been warm. Just a low, steady pulse—easy to ignore after a few years, like a clock you stop hearing. I pressed my fingers over it out of habit.

Cold.

The contract was over. Twenty-one years, four failed routes, and now this. The ancient binding that had pulled me into this world had made its verdict.

I went to find a rope.


The Ruin Tower gate wasn't very high. I stacked two empty crates beneath the lintel, looped the rope through the iron hook overhead, and stepped up.

I was almost home.

Somewhere past the city walls, Blood Moon fireworks kept going. Red and gold, same as every year. I could hear the crowds from here. They were having a fine night.

I kicked the crates away.

The pain was immediate—throat, air, everything compressing at once. My thoughts started going soft around the edges.

I'd been summoned into this world as a girl, dragged out of my own life and dropped into a kingdom of four factions that barely tolerated each other, bound to a contract I never agreed to. The terms were simple enough: earn a genuine bond from at least one of the four faction representatives, and I could go home. Time had frozen there the moment I left. My family was still waiting.

Four targets. Twenty-one years. Every single route had collapsed.

Tonight was the last one.

The contract had given me its verdict an hour ago, when Caelan stood up at the banquet and said Isolde's name.

So I'd done the math. There was only one way out.

I was giving it exactly that.

Through the pressure in my ears, I thought I heard someone shout my name.

The rope went slack.

Then a bucket of water hit me in the face.

I came down hard, coughing, hands scrabbling at the gate. When I could see again, I was on the ground with rope burns on my neck and someone standing over me, watching me the way you'd watch something unpleasant you'd stepped in.

Grey ceremonial robes. Prayer beads looped through his fingers. Empty bucket at his feet.

I knew that face.

"Caelan—"

The word was out before I could stop it.

"Don't." His expression didn't shift. "You're not in a position to call me that."

Of course.

Caelan Voss. Heir of the Dusk Court, the most feared name in Aurevael's vampire faction. Also the man I'd kept alive for three days in an abandoned mine, when every other faction was hunting his bloodline to extinction. I'd led the search party away from his hiding spot until they scattered. He'd been half-dead by the time I got back, running on nothing but spite and whatever blood I could spare.

He'd tried to mark me afterward. Protection, he'd said. A Blood Mark would let him sense me, keep me tethered to his awareness.

The mark had settled. The turning hadn't.

My body rejected the transformation—something about being summoned, about not belonging to this world the way the others did. The mark stayed behind, broken and incomplete, lodged in my wrist like a splinter that wouldn't come out.

From that point on, I was the Tainted Consort. Wrong blood, failed mark, a bad omen with a title.

He'd given me the consort position as a consolation. I'd told myself it meant something.

That was four years ago.

Four years ago on Blood Moon night, I'd stood next to him at the Accord assembly and thought—for one genuinely stupid moment—that the contract was going to close. Then Isolde arrived with a letter and a bruise on her cheek and a story about what I'd supposedly done to her. She could be turned. No failed mark, no splinter—she could become what I never would. And everything came apart in the span of a week. Corvin threw me out of the family workshop in one sentence. Caelan reassigned me to the Ruin Tower without discussion. Ruen sent the oath-brand back by messenger. Faeron dissolved our bond the same afternoon, quiet as a door closing.

Four years of hauling water and scrubbing linens, every word out of my mouth treated like evidence.

And now Isolde was back, Caelan had said her name in front of the whole assembly, and the mark on my wrist had gone cold, and I was sitting in the dirt outside the Ruin Tower with rope burns on my neck.

Caelan snapped his fingers. Two guards stepped forward and hauled me upright.

He looked at the marks on my throat. Something moved through his expression—not concern.

"The Ruin Tower gate isn't even a proper stage," he said. "And you're already performing."

My throat still burned. I talked through it anyway.

"Administrator Voss." I kept my voice level. "If the tower is so remote, why are you here? Did you come all this way just to see me?"

His jaw tightened. Just for a second.

"Isolde came back tonight. I won't have you making a scene on her reunion." He turned to the guards. "Get her things. Outside the gate."

They threw my bundle out first.

Then me.

I sat in the road outside the city wall and looked up at him, standing above the threshold with the festival light behind him. He looked down at me the way you look at something that's your problem until it isn't.

"Once you're outside," he said, "don't expect me to find you again."

I looked up at him and smiled.

That was fine.

I got up, picked up my bundle, and turned toward the outer road. The Accord Cliff was just past the wall. I'd seen it every morning from my tower window for four years.

Closer than the rope.

Last Chapters

You Might Like 😍

Taste of Fate: The Vampire King's Human Mate

Taste of Fate: The Vampire King's Human Mate

5.3k 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.
First Taste in a Century​

First Taste in a Century​

1k Views · Ongoing · Sherry
Fresh out of college and fumbling through his first year in the real world, twenty-two-year-old Lysander wanders away from a friend’s party and into an isolated forest. There, he stumbles upon the high-tech laboratory hidden within the ancient castle of Vivienne—a vampire who has spent one century cultivating solitude. Disgusted by the intimacy required to hunt, she long ago withdrew from humanity, passing the endless decades perfecting homemade synthetic blood rather than sampling the countless varieties of plasma she grew tired of.

But Lysander’s arrival spells disaster. In a clumsy accident, he doesn't just ruin dinner; he obliterates her state-of-the-art scientific instruments. With her life’s work destroyed and her synthetic supply cut off, the scent of his living blood overwhelms her engineered senses. Forced to break a century-long abstinence, she takes what she needs, only to find herself addicted not just to his taste, but to the man himself.

Using the equipment as a flimsy excuse to lure him back, Vivienne battles a terrifying new obsession. She craves his body despite believing he’s taken, despising her own weakness. Meanwhile, Lysander’s initial terror curdles into a forbidden fascination. Can a relationship survive when one person feels everything, and the other only hungers?
The Dark Witch & The Alpha Book 2

The Dark Witch & The Alpha Book 2

1.1k Views · Ongoing · Kassy Rae Wall
Pythia comes from a long line of dark witches, she killed her mother for her reckless behavior and becomes the queen of the dark witches and teamed up with the Great White Witch and the vampire queen to fight in the battle to keep the balance in all the different worlds, she meets her mate, Tye in the great battle. Tye is the great white witches brother and a alpha. Together they will embark on a battle to correct the elders and take a step forward to peace among the dark witches, the road is long especially when they find out Pythias true royalty line. When realms collide and the moon goddess has to step in and not only aid because of the new found threat but to tell the secrets she has helped keep hidden for many years, Pythia is forced to train harder, work harder and plan for the absolute unexpected but, as she learns her true powers she starts to realize that she can handle anything that may threaten her and her family.
The vampire queen (Ambrosia) and Pythia will become close and discover the true origins of their pasts. They rely on each other when their mates are not around. New family is discovered and it is time they all come together to face one of the toughest moments in the dark witches history.
Tempted By The Enemy

Tempted By The Enemy

3.9k Views · Completed · rituparna darolia
Twenty-two-year-old Alyssa Van Every is in a dilemma. Her close friend, Sienna, is marrying billionaire, Lucas Donnelly who, along with his brothers, happens to be her older brother, Alex's sworn enemy.
She escapes to Preston Island to attend the wedding without informing him only to collide with Lucas’s hot, fiery and arrogant brother, the twenty-three-year-old, Nicholas Donnelly. Sparks immediately fly between them but Alyssa refuses to acknowledge them fearing her brother's wrath.
The wedding is over and Alyssa tries hard to forget the mysterious Nicholas Donnelly but can he forget her? Can he ignore the attraction he feels for her, feelings that have resurfaced after ten years?
What will Allyssa do when she is stalked by the man who has been invading her dreams since the day she met him? What will she do when she is whisked away to a deserted island by the unpredictable Nicholas Donnelly? Can she tame her heart or surrender to sinful temptations? Read to find out!
Part of the Temptation Series. Can be read as a standalone.
The Alpha & The Vampire Queen

The Alpha & The Vampire Queen

1.1k Views · Ongoing · Kassy Rae Wall
Ambrosia, the Vampire Queen, believed her only duty was to safeguard the hard-won peace; yet, due to her brother Xander’s descent into chaos, she finds herself once again ensnared in a vortex of destiny. Ambrosia must make one of the hardest decisions she has ever had to make before, she must hunt her brother down and get a handle on the chaos that he is so determined to create. With the help of her sister in laws and a head dive she is able to see and know that her entire life she has had forbidden magic used against her to block her memories. As her sealed memories gradually reawaken, she uncovers a history of brutal betrayal suffered in her childhood—and discovers that her true enemy is none other than her own father. She tasked herself with finding Xander and saving him, her need for vengeance grows and she makes the choice to challenge her father to the death. Rising from Queen to the ultimate Guardian, Ambrosia will exact her vengeance amidst blood and fire, undergo a rebirth to claim her true crown, and face the final battle that will determine the ultimate fate of the throne.


Whips crack against her skin, blood pooling on the cold stone floor, while her mother's pleas fade into silence, abandoning her to the monster's wrath. Xander's protective cries turn to accusations under Penny's dark spells, fracturing their sibling bond into shards of mistrust and isolation.
The Family Books 1-3 (A Mafia romance)

The Family Books 1-3 (A Mafia romance)

2.4k 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-
A PRINCESS IN DISGUISE; BOUND TO THE ENEMY KING

A PRINCESS IN DISGUISE; BOUND TO THE ENEMY KING

5.3k Views · Ongoing · Jennifer Nwabueze
"You will be married to the King of Grok on the fourth night, and that's final!"

I fell to my knees, the cold marble digging into my skin. I had studied for years in the flickering candlelight, memorizing every herb and poison to pass the healer's exam. I wanted freedom. I wanted to save my mother from the servant's quarters. I placed second. I thought I had won my life back.

But the King didn't give me a badge of honor. He gave me a death sentence.

"Raven Thorne shall be wed to the King of Grok," he announced, his voice echoing in the silent hall. Princess Ellie, the woman who had tormented me for years, slapped her hands over her mouth to hide her cruel laughter. She was supposed to marry the Beast. Now, I was the lamb being sent to the slaughter in her place.

They say King Liam drinks the blood of his enemies. They say he is more monster than man. And now, I have to walk into his bedroom, wearing the Princess's silk gown, and pray he doesn't tear me apart.

I looked at the King, tears streaming down my face. "I'll do it," I whispered, my voice trembling. "But my mother must be safe."

I sold my body and soul to a monster to save her. But when the carriage door opened and I finally looked into the Beast's golden eyes, I realized the terrifying truth...

He wasn't a stranger. He was the man I met in the woods.
Omega Bound

Omega Bound

2.6m Views · Completed · Veronica White
Ayla Frost is a beautiful, rare omega. Kidnapped, tortured, and trafficked to rogue clans and corrupt alphas to do with as they pleased.  Kept alive in her cage, broken and abandoned by her wolf, she becomes mute and has given up on hope for a better life until one explosion changes everything. 

Thane Knight is the alpha of the Midnight Pack of the La Plata Mountain Range, the largest wolf shifter pack in the world. He is an alpha by day and hunts the shifter trafficking ring with his group of mercenaries by night. His hunt for vengeance leads to one raid that changes his life. 

Tropes:
Touch her and die/Slow burn romance/Fated Mates/Found family twist/Close circle betrayal/Cinnamon roll for only her/Traumatized heroine/Rare wolf/Hidden powers/Knotting/Nesting/Heats/Luna/Attempted assassination
Falling for my boyfriend's Navy brother

Falling for my boyfriend's Navy brother

2.8m Views · Ongoing · Harper Rivers
Falling for my boyfriend's Navy brother.

"What is wrong with me?

Why does being near him make my skin feel too tight, like I’m wearing a sweater two sizes too small?

It’s just newness, I tell myself firmly.

He’s my boyfirend’s brother.

This is Tyler’s family.

I’m not going to let one cold stare undo that.

**

As a ballet dancer, My life looks perfect—scholarship, starring role, sweet boyfriend Tyler. Until Tyler shows his true colors and his older brother, Asher, comes home.

Asher is a Navy veteran with battle scars and zero patience. He calls me "princess" like it's an insult. I can't stand him.

When My ankle injury forces her to recover at the family lake house, I‘m stuck with both brothers. What starts as mutual hatred slowly turns into something forbidden.

I'm falling for my boyfriend's brother.

**

I hate girls like her.

Entitled.

Delicate.

And still—

Still.

The image of her standing in the doorway, clutching her cardigan tighter around her narrow shoulders, trying to smile through the awkwardness, won’t leave me.

Neither does the memory of Tyler. Leaving her here without a second thought.

I shouldn’t care.

I don’t care.

It’s not my problem if Tyler’s an idiot.

It’s not my business if some spoiled little princess has to walk home in the dark.

I’m not here to rescue anyone.

Especially not her.

Especially not someone like her.

She’s not my problem.

And I’ll make damn sure she never becomes one.

But when my eyes fell on her lips, I wanted her to be mine.
The mafia princess return

The mafia princess return

940.5k Views · Completed · Tonje Unosen
Talia have been living with her mother, stepsister and Stepfather for years. One day she finally get away from them. Suddenly she learn she have more family out there and she have many people that actually love her, something she have never felt before! At least not as she can remember. She have to learn to trust others, get her new brothers to accept her for who she is!
Pregnant by My Husband's Rival Alpha

Pregnant by My Husband's Rival Alpha

13.5k Views · Completed · Christina
I woke up three years into a marriage I barely remembered—pregnant with twins that weren't my husband's.

Those words should have destroyed me, but the truth was worse: I'd been used as a broodmare by the man who swore to love me, set up in a hotel room with a stranger because My husband Alexander Cross couldn't father children himself, and now I carried the secret babies of Damon Lester—the most powerful and dangerous Alpha in San Loris—while my own family replaced me with the daughter they'd always wanted. But when that same stranger's doctor appeared at my door, when twenty million dollars exchanged hands over a fake perfume bearing my secret identity, and when Damon's gray eyes locked onto mine with recognition I couldn't afford, I realized my carefully hidden life as the legendary perfumer Vera was colliding with a pregnancy that could cost me everything.

Could I protect my babies from the husband plotting my death, hide my true identity from the Alpha who's been hunting me for years, and reclaim the freedom I'd buried along with my dreams—even if it means standing alone against the wolves who see me as nothing more than a womb to be used and discarded?
Where The Ice Gives Way

Where The Ice Gives Way

46.3k Views · Completed · Sheridan Hartin
Charlotte Pierce is used to surviving in motion. New towns, new schools, the same old house on the edge of nowhere, and the same rule that keeps her standing. Keep her twin brother, Charlie safe. Keep his hockey dream alive. Keep her own needs quiet. She works too much, sleeps too little, and saves the one thing that still feels like hers for the middle of the night, when she can lace up her worn skates and carve freedom into dangerous frozen ice. Charlotte and Charlie shifted once, years ago, and never understood what it meant. They had no pack, no guidance and no protection. Just two twins clinging to each other and pretending the voice in their heads was stress, imagination, or loneliness. Then they move to Wellington.
Blake Atlas scents his mate the moment Charlotte arrives. The bond hits hard and unmistakable, but Charlotte doesn’t recognise it. She doesn’t know why her chest keeps pulling toward the one boy she absolutely cannot afford to want. Blake is Charlie’s new hockey captain. Charlie’s chance at making something good. Charlie makes it clear; his sister is off-limits and Blake tries to do the right thing, but secrets don’t stay buried forever. Rogues prowl the edges of town. The ice cracks. The bond tightens. Then Charlotte’s rare white wolf awakens, the very thing that makes her powerful, also makes her a target.
Shanti needs Shakti. (Peace needs strength.)

Where the Ice Gives Way is a slow-burn YA paranormal romance filled with fated mates, protective alpha energy, fierce sibling loyalty, found family pack bonds, hurt/comfort, and quiet, aching tension. It’s a story about first belonging, learning to be cared for, and what happens when the girl who has always held everyone else up finally falls, and someone catches her.