Orphan

Seventy-two hours before my wedding, I stood in front of the fitting mirror at a bridal shop.

My best friend sent me a social media post, and the red exclamation mark in the message box stung my eyes sharply.

The post’s title read: Guys, my boyfriend is getting married to his current partner. What should I do?

The comment section had already erupted into chaos.
*“Dude, are you out of your min...

My pack destroyed, I hid in an elite boarding school, a wolf-tooth pendant restraining my white wolf rage. The seal went missing before the full moon. Sneaking into the lab, I found staff dissecting wolfkin alive. The trustee who sheltered me massacred my clan, planning to harvest my glands on my 18th full moon. With my fated Alpha Kai and armed heiress Chloe, we exposed the school and avenged our...

For three years, I loved Liam, a man obsessed with cleanliness. Yet he made endless exceptions for Chloe. Public shame and hurt pushed me to leave. I reclaimed my life, gained a powerful family and a sincere lover, as the selfish man paid dearly for his choices

I'm the orphan the Aldrich family's steward took in. Edric is the heir to the Aldrich Group and the most powerful top-tier Alpha in Chicago.

We grew up together. I'm his fiancée.

The night of the charity gala, the photographer asked the executives and their partners to move in closer.

Edric gripped my shoulder, pushed me to the edge of the crowd, and pulled Valentina in beside him instead.

"Va...

As I sat in the police station with Yvonne Harper, my boyfriend’s childhood sweetheart, waiting for bail arrangements to be made, the decision loomed.
One of us could go home tonight.
My mate, Alpha Jackson, chose to take her.
"Nicole, just wait for me one more night. I’ll come back for you tomorrow," he said.
He was worried about her fragile health, but he didn’t care about my fear of the...

Eighty-eight times.
That was how many times I had put on a white dress, or packed my ID, heading to the registry office to marry Harrison Churchill. And eighty-eight times, I ended up in an ambulance.
The first time, it was a street drive-by. A bullet tore through my shoulder just two blocks from City Hall.
The fifteenth time, a car bomb shattered three of my ribs.
The forty-second time, a stee...

Oak Creek thinks my brother, Cole, is a saint. He saved the family legacy and adopted the orphaned daughter of a killer out of the goodness of his heart.
What they don’t know is the price of his halo: Me.
To keep his 'good guy' image, he sacrificed his real sister. He gave her my bed, my home, and my parents.
When I was driven out of town, sleeping in a vandalized trailer, he left me a note: Com...

Tricked onto a wilderness survival reality show, I was forced to act as my fake sister’s backdrop to protect the elderly woman who raised me. My fake sister constantly staged tricks for clout, and my blood brother threatened me with fatal consequences to sweep the family’s skeletons under the rug. I stopped surrendering and uncovered scam after scam during the live broadcast. The Hart family sough...

I was an orphan, and a rare heart condition ate away at me for twenty years. The night I died in that cold hospital room, a reaper in a black robe came for me.

He told me if I crossed into a world of werewolves, into the Moonheart Pack, and made Estelle's family genuinely love me — Estelle being the real daughter who'd died a horrible death there — and if I rewrote the ending where they all went ...

I catch my husband in bed with the live-in housekeeper.

He shoves her behind him. "She's only twenty. Barely out on her own, doesn't know any better. Can't you be the bigger person here?"

His mother points a finger in my face. "You're an orphan. If we hadn't taken you in, you'd still be out on the street begging."

"Be smart about this. Make room for Kaylee, so we can all live under one roof in ...

Lysa loved Damian for seven years, yet hypnotic manipulation warped his memories, leading him to brand her the killer of his parents. With his own hands, he cut her bones and implanted canine fur, transforming her into a deformed half-human beast and subjecting her to endless humiliation and torture. She watched her mother die a brutal death and was forced to swallow her mother’s cremated ashes. A...

When I was reborn, and my Alpha husband's ward clamped a muzzle around my neck as a joke...
I didn't shift into my wolf and tear her arm off like in my past life.
I ripped off the bloody muzzle and gave Roman a smile.
"If you think this is a joke, keep indulging her."
And I walked away without looking back.
Because my death in my previous life was too miserable.
After our fallout, Roman used his A...

On the eve of the wedding, Dante sold me to Alex, a deranged auto mechanic, for two dollars.
His friend confused.
“You’re going to marry Chole, that adult film actress. Just send Lucia away. You two were betrothed as children, and she’s lived with the Costellos for ten years. You must care about her at least a little.”
“That mechanic’s violent and ugly. She’ll suffer terribly if she marries him.”
...

I nearly died in the freezing ocean at my adopted sister Jane's birthday party.

When the yacht started tilting and alarms shrieked through the corridors, Dad grabbed Jane and bolted for the deck without looking back. Mom clutched Jane's ragdoll cat in her arms, following close behind under the bodyguards' protection.

They saved the cat.

But left their biological daughter to drown.

Three days l...

My father was thrown in the county jail, and my mother collapsed with illness. I went to beg my husband, Elliot Watt, to step in and save him. Instead, he made me choose.
"We've been married four years and you've never gotten pregnant. Now Paige is carrying my child, and the Watt line can't die out. I have to think of her and the baby."
"Either you stay on as Mrs. Watt in name only, move into the ...

For three years, I lived like a bird trapped in the gilded cage of Mafia don Victor Russo. Beneath every kiss and calculated caress, I bided my time. I had grown to love him, lost in the warmth of his affection.

But when I finally learned I was nothing more than a stand-in for his beloved Elaina, I struck back. I drained eighty million dollars from his accounts and fled to Europe. There, I chased...

As the old Don’s adopted daughter, I married the old Don’s son, Luciano.
Luciano also adopted a daughter, and after the old Don died, once he became the new Don, he declared he would marry her.
“When you adopted Sara, how old was she? Now she’s just come of age and you’ve already gotten her pregnant. All these years, was I raising your mistress for you?” My voice was trembling. “And more than that...

At fifteen, my parents died on their way of volunteer teaching in underprivileged areas. I was adopted by the Miller family’s Don, Vincent and was brought up by himself. For ten years, he hauled me out of the mud, gave me a home, gave me favor no one else got and taught me what a “family” was supposed to mean.
On my eighteenth birthday, I climbed onto his bed and kissed him.
He called me disgustin...

Dante once took three bullets for me, laying the entire New York underworld at my feet just to marry me.
I used to think Dante was the god who had pulled me from the abyss of the orphanage, until I discovered he was secretly planning a grand baptism for his illegitimate son with the princess of a rival family.
It turned out that the absolute devotion he gave me could be effortlessly replicated for...

As the last stroke of the New Year bell rang,
I suddenly received a message from eight years ago:

“This is my first New Year with Zhou Guming!”
“I want to be with Zhou Guming forever!”
“I will play the piano for my whole life!”

At the same time, the news on TV was reporting:
On New Year’s Day,
my husband Zhou Guming was attending my best friend’s piano recital.

I looked down at my deformed fing...