
When the Rain Stopped Falling
Agatha Christie · Completed · 5.3k Words
Introduction
Choking on blood, I dialed my ex-fiancé Damien's number.
In the background, jazz played at the Waldorf Astoria. People cheered for Aria—the girl my parents raised in my place.
"Thea, are you SERIOUS right now?" Damien's voice dripped with disgust. "Faking your own death to ruin Aria's engagement? Jesus, Thea. Even for you, that's low."
My mother Diana grabbed the phone. Her voice was ice. "If you don't show up tonight, don't ever come back to the Sinclair house. Better yet—don't bother."
Then she hung up.
They didn't know this time I was really dying.
- Abuse
- After Death
- BXG
- Bittersweet
- Cheating
- Childhood Crush
- College
- Drama
- Family Emotions
- Feel-Good Story
- Female Growth
- First Love
- Goodgirl
- Heartbreak
- Hypocrisy
- Infidelity
- Lovesick fool
- Pain
- Poor Girl
- Redemption
- Scumbag
- Silly
- Sister's Boyfriend
- Strong Female Lead
- Tragic love
- True and Fake Heiress
- Unattainable Love
- Uplifting
- Vengeance & Betrayal
Chapter 1
I died in New York on a cold November night, a piece of guardrail through my chest.
Choking on blood, I dialed my ex-fiancé Damien's number.
In the background, jazz played at the Waldorf Astoria. People cheered for Aria—the girl my parents raised in my place.
"Thea, are you SERIOUS right now?" Damien's voice dripped with disgust. "Faking your own death to ruin Aria's engagement? Jesus, Thea. Even for you, that's low."
My mother Diana grabbed the phone. Her voice was ice. "If you don't show up tonight, don't ever come back to the Sinclair house. Better yet—don't bother."
Then she hung up.
They didn't know this time I was really dying.
Thea's POV
Rain mixed with gasoline and blood spread across the cliffside of Route 1.
I was trapped in the twisted wreckage of my Porsche Cayenne, unable to move. A jagged piece of broken guardrail had pierced through my left ribcage, skewering straight through my chest cavity.
Christ, it hurt like hell.
I coughed up blood, each breath accompanied by the wet, hissing sound of punctured lungs. The windshield had shattered into a spiderweb of cracks. Freezing rain slapped against my face. Everything was tinted red.
Before my vision blurred completely, I fumbled through the pool of blood with my fractured right hand until my fingers closed around my phone.
The screen lit up. My wallpaper showed me and my ex-fiancé Damien in Central Park. Back then, his eyes had held only me—before Aria got to him.
I pressed the speed dial.
Ring... ring... ring...
The wait felt eternal. My life was draining away, second by second.
"Thea, what the hell? I'm in the middle of my speech." Damien's voice was sharp with irritation when he finally picked up.
In the background, a cello sang—the exclusive orchestra at the Waldorf Astoria's penthouse ballroom. Crystal champagne flutes clinked. Fake laughter rippled through the crowd.
"Damien... help me..." I forced the words out, my voice barely a rasp. "Route 1... car accident... I'm dying... please..."
"Oh, are you SERIOUS right now?" Pure disgust in his voice. "When are you gonna stop pulling this crap? Tonight is Aria's engagement party! Her Stanford acceptance celebration! You didn't get in, she did—so now you're faking a goddamn car accident? Are you KIDDING me?"
"I'm not... she STOLE it from me..." I tried to explain, but the pain sent darkness creeping across my vision. I couldn't finish the sentence.
"Jesus Christ, just STOP. You're out of your mind!"
Commotion erupted on the other end of the line. Then Diana's voice came through. My mother.
"Thea." She said my name like I was something distasteful she'd stepped in. "You're such a disappointment."
Flat. Like I was an inconvenience.
"Aria covered for you. She protected you. And THIS is how you repay her? Making up some accident story? God, Thea." She exhaled. "Some things just don't change. No matter how hard we tried with you."
"Mom... there's so much blood... I'm really dying..."
I was crying now. Tears mixed with blood, streaming down my face. I didn't want to die. I was only twenty-two. My life had barely started.
"Then go ahead." Diana's voice didn't even waver. "And don't you DARE come back here after this. You're done, Thea. We're done."
In the background, Aria's sugar-sweet voice drifted through: "Thea, stop. You're making a scene. Just—come, alright? There's cake here for you."
Damien's voice followed, low and gentle—for HER: "Don't waste your breath on her, babe. She's a snake who can't stand seeing you happy."
Click. Beep. Beep. Beep.
They'd hung up.
The screen flickered a few times, then went dark.
Only the rain remained, and the distant wail of sirens that would arrive too late.
I stared up at the pitch-black sky, and suddenly, everything felt absurd.
I was the Sinclair family's biological daughter who'd gone missing fifteen years ago. Seven years ago, when they'd finally found me—covered in bruises from my foster home—I thought I finally had a family.
I was wrong.
This family already had a perfect replacement—Aria. Graceful, sweet, knew exactly how to work a room. And me? Rough around the edges. Sensitive. Defensive.
No matter how hard I'd studied etiquette, no matter how desperately I'd worked for straight A's, in their eyes I was always the jealous one. The vicious one. The problem.
Even Damien—who'd been engaged to me since we were children—had gradually fallen for Aria's tears, until all he had left for me was contempt.
This afternoon, I'd found the secret buried in Aria's drawer. My Stanford acceptance letter, torn to shreds. She'd stolen my thesis, my credentials, my SPOT—and claimed it all as her own.
I'd grabbed the evidence and rushed out to confront Damien and my mother.
Then a truck ran me off a cliff.
Now, none of it mattered anymore.
My breathing grew weaker. My vision faded to gray.
"I should've—" The words dissolved into blood. God, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I ever believed any of you.
Then—a final spasm.
My heart stopped.
But I didn't sink into darkness.
Instead, my body felt weightless, drifting upward like a feather. I looked down and saw the mangled Porsche, and inside it, a blood-soaked girl with wide, vacant eyes.
My corpse.
I was dead.
Strangely, the pain was gone. So was the rage, and the grief. A strange calm settled over me. Just... quiet.
I lifted my gaze toward downtown Manhattan. The Waldorf Astoria gleamed through the night, all gold and glitter.
"Well then," I murmured. "Let's see how long the party lasts without me to blame."
Something cold curled inside me as I drifted toward the ballroom.
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Moreover, in this life, they would discover that her identity was far more than just the eldest daughter of the Oberon family.
The Pack: Rule Number 1 - No Mates
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I fall forward onto the bed then turn around to stare at him. The dark tattoos of Domonic's chiseled shoulders, quiver and and expand with the heave of his chest. His deep dimpled smile is full of arrogance as he reaches behind himself to lock the door.
Biting his lip, he stalks toward me, his hand going to the seam of his pants and the thickening bulge there.
"Are you sure you don't want me to touch you?" He whispers, untying the knot and slipping a hand inside. "Because I swear to God, that is all I have been wanting to do. Every single day from the moment you stepped in our bar and I smelled your perfect flavor from across the room."
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Especially - Rule Number One - No Mates
When Draven meets Domonic, he knows that she is his mate, but Draven has no idea what a mate is, only that she has fallen in love with a shifter. An Alpha that will break her heart to make her leave. Promising herself, she will never forgive him, she disappears.
But she doesn’t know about the child she’s carrying or that the moment she left, Domonic decided rules were made to be broken - and now will he ever find her again? Will she forgive him?
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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.
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The Spy Who Left
"I still can't believe she actually did it. Aria Hart, filing for divorce. Who saw that coming?"
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Three years later, the world is rocked when Dr. Aria Vale, CEO of a revolutionary cybersecurity empire, steps into the spotlight. The mysterious genius who built a billion-dollar company from nothing is none other than Leon's discarded wife, the woman everyone thought was just a pretty ornament.
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A story of love, betrayal, and power where the king must kneel before the queen who never needed saving.
Wearing Her Face, Claiming His Bed
What he never knew was that she survived.
After a fire destroyed her family, Fionna lost everything—her face, her name, and the life she once dreamed of. Now, after years of hiding behind a surgically altered identity, she returns to the Scottish mafia heir's mansion as nothing more than a maid.
He doesn't recognize her.
Instead, he drags her into his bed because she reminds him of the dead girl he can never forget.
Every kiss is meant for someone else.
Every cruel word cuts deeper because she knows the truth he doesn't.
While Alastair prepares to marry the perfect mafia princess, Fionna secretly searches for the people who murdered her family. But the closer she gets to revenge, the more dangerous the truth becomes.
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was never an accident.
And when Alastair finally discovers the woman he's been loving and destroying is the very girl he mourned for ten years—
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Mated To My Ruin: A Dragon's Debt
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.
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Bella and Her Beast
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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.
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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."
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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."
Let Them Kneel
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.
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