8607 Book(s) Related to kiss of the rabbit god

Magdalena was a slave to her pack, a discarded lover, and a pawn in a game played by people who thought her life was worth less than their own.

When the Alpha who promised her forever left her to marry her mistress's daughter, she thought betrayal couldn't hurt any worse.

She was wrong.

To save their precious daughter from the most feared Alpha King in the realm, the pack sent Magdalena in her place.

But the Alpha King was expecting someone else.

Believing Magdalena was the woman who had deceived him, he made her pay for a crime she knew nothing about. Every humiliation cut deeper, and every cruelty hardened her vow.

She would destroy him, even if it cost her everything.

Then a dangerous stranger found her in the dark.

Seductive. Commanding. Impossible to resist. His hands knew exactly where to touch. His voice made her forget her own name. In his arms, she burned, and for the first time in her life, she was wanted for more than her usefulness.

She surrendered. Completely.

Until she learned the truth.

The stranger was her husband in disguise. The Alpha King himself.

He had watched her hate him, and he used that disguise to claim what she swore he'd never touch. Now the man she despises knows every desire she tried to bury, and he has no intention of letting her go.

As bloodline secrets surface and pack politics turn deadly, his obsession only grows.

She wanted revenge.

But what happens when the man she vowed to destroy is the one who owns her, body and soul?

Jessica Remington wanted fun for one night, but if she had known that her mate was looking at her the moment she walked into the club, and instantly put a target for her for auction, she would have stayed home with a bag of chips, binge watching Netflix.
She has to prove herself worthy of being an Alpha's mate, with her alpha constantly watching her, constantly ready to pounce and control her life, will it be easily for her or will a ball of fur be ready to control her life that much, even when he can twist that life away with a small snap.

Excerpt
I fixed my gaze on his crimson red lips, dying to have a taste of them, my mind overwhelmed with lust as I watched water droplets drip from his sexy black locks of hair, down to his pale face. His wet shirt hugged his body in all the right places highlighting his abs and biceps.
Frustrated, I stood on my tiptoes and brought my lips to his, refusing to deny the feelings I harbored for Carlisle anymore. Just as our lips were about to crash, he placed his index finger on my lips.
"You shouldn't..." He said, killing the mood.
"But why?"
"You don't know what you're getting into with me Peyton, you don't know me or what I'm capable of." He turned to leave, but I followed, determined to get an answer.
"Then show me." I stood in front of him, too involved to back out now.

Olivia

Sold to pay off a debt, sinfully hot Matteo has thrown me into his dark mansion, with no intention of letting me go. He's dominant, ruthless, cold… And he's also something wicked—a sexy as hell alpha male.

I should run the second he puts his rough hands all over my innocent body. I shouldn't let him tear my panties off. But I do. He's going to break me, turning me into his slave. He demands complete obedience, and I want to resist. I do. But my dark, rebellious heart won't let me.

Matteo

I've never wanted to ruin someone as much as I want to ruin her. She's the picture of innocence. Soft skin free from the toil of real work, pretty lips for sucking and the defiance in her eyes. I can't wait to break her. To make her beg for mercy. To cry out my name when I steal the one thing she's never given to another man.

She thinks she can charm me into letting her go. But she doesn't recognize the way the devil dances in my soul. I never expected her to become my obsession. But she is. And now I need to get rid of her before she consumes me.

Vera was the perfect girlfriend.
She cooked his meals, learned his schedule, and told herself the hesitation before he said I love you was just his personality.
Then she overheard him in a bar.
"She was always just the placeholder. I found her because she looks like Lena."
Three years. And she was nothing but a substitute for a woman who hadn't bothered to stay.
Vera walks out with one phone call and one decision: go home, accept the arrangement she spent three years running from, and face the Lycan King who has apparently been wearing a ring with her initial for nine years.
Caelan Blackwood doesn't explain himself. He doesn't beg. He just looks at her across her father's dinner table and says: "I've been waiting. Take whatever time you need."
She thought she was running toward safety.
She didn't know she was running toward the one person who had never stopped looking for her.
Marked By The Wrong Alpha is a werewolf romance about betrayal, identity, and the difference between someone who uses your name and someone who has been carrying it for nine years.

Four years ago, Lena Hartley made the most embarrassing mistake of her life. On a stupid dare from her friends, she tries to seduce Adrian Cole—the sexy teaching assistant every girl at the university had a crush on.

Lena discovered, far too late, that Adrian wasn’t alone. His girlfriend was there. And Lena was standing in front of them… naked.

Now Lena works quietly at a coffee shop, keeping her life simple and drama-free, until the bell above the café door rings and Adrian Cole walks in.

Three years ago, I signed the Silver Vow for her, sealing away my supreme Alpha bloodline. I swallowed my pride in a greasy auto shop, living as a pathetic loser anyone could step on.
Three years later, arm-in-arm with a New York billionaire, she threw the divorce papers in my face and called me the only stain on her perfect life.
In a dark, rain-swept alley, three elite Lycans carried out their orders to shatter my limbs and dump me into the Hudson River.
As I lay dying, the Silver Vow finally shattered. The moment my eyes snapped open, every supernatural creature in Manhattan dropped to their knees—because the First Alpha, the king who united the European underworld a thousand years ago, had returned.

Dr. Mara Venn had survived twelve years in trauma medicine by trusting what she could prove: blood pressure, pupil response, scan results, time of death.

Then blue letters appeared in the air outside Mercy Gate Medical Center, warning her not to enter an operating room.

The patient was already dead.

The surgery was a trap.

And if Mara went back inside, a powerful hospital family would bury a man's death under her name.

Three years ago, I took off the ring and became a mechanic, just to keep a promise to my brother — to protect his widow and daughter.

Three years later, Connor from Brooklyn tried to force my brother's daughter into marriage, blacklisted me from every job, and had the hospital turn away my sister-in-law.

They thought I was just some grease monkey.

They didn't know the ring had a lion carved on it.

When I put it back on...

The entire underworld of New York would tremble.

In my past life, my best friend Isla was the one sacrificed to Blackstone Island. She was sent to fulfill the ancient covenant between humans and Shifters—to marry that cold-blooded Black Dragon Guard Captain, Sebastian.

The result? A tragedy.

Isla was tormented by Valerie, Sebastian’s childhood friend, who used the most despicable schemes to break her. And Sebastian? He remained an oblivious, arrogant statue for thirty years, watching Isla wither away like a rose drained of life. She spent her entire existence wilting in the shadows of his palace.

As for me, I followed my family’s orders and married an accountant named Ryan. But the warrior's blood of a martial arts clan runs through my veins, while Ryan was a spineless coward who loathed my "wildness." I found him calculating; he found me untameable. We divorced within two years, and I died alone and forgotten.

But the heavens have given me a second chance. I’ve been reborn!

The covenant between our races only demands a daughter of my family—it never specified which one. This time, I'm not letting Isla go to that hellhole. If a dragon needs a bride, he's getting me.

I died betrayed on my wedding altar.
The silver blade in my sister's hand felt colder than our shared childhood. My "fated mate" Kaelen held me down as she carved out my heart—a sacrifice for his ambition.
In my final breath, I saw him: Fenrir, the half-blood guard I'd scorned, breaking through a wall of spears to reach me. Silver arrows pierced his chest mid-leap, but his dying eyes held no blame—only a loyalty that followed me into darkness.
The Moon Goddess heard my dying vow.
Now I'm back, standing where it all began—the mate choosing ceremony. Kaelen expects me to declare him again. My sister waits to play her victim.
But this time, I walk past the golden Alpha and kneel before the broken slave.
"Rise," I whisper, lifting his chin. "The real Luna has come home."
And when they laugh at my choice, they don't see what I do: the ancient power stirring beneath his skin, the king waiting to be awakened.
Let them call him monster. Let them call me mad.
We'll show them what happens when a betrayed Luna and a fallen king unite.
The altar awaits its true sacrifice—and it won't be me this time.

She saved her husband with scorched flesh, raised her son with dying breath, yet was abandoned, insulted, and left to freeze in the snow. When she vanished into the deep sea, all the liars finally got their cruel karma.

After a forbidden night, maid Elara conceives twins for ruthless mafia Don Asher. To shield her from deadly power struggles, he fakes cruelty and puts a bounty on her head. Trapped in the murderous manor, she hides her pregnancy to survive. Cornered and hunted, she leaps into the frozen river to save her babies. After narrowly surviving childbirth, she becomes Asher’s lifelong obsession. The cold-blooded king burns all enemies, drops every pride, and kneels to atone for his sins forever.

For twenty years, Belle Sloan believed she had the perfect life, a loving husband, a devoted son, and a powerful business empire. But one shocking revelation shatters everything. The son she raised isn't hers. Her husband and stepsister have secretly loved each other for years. And the family she sacrificed everything for was nothing more than a carefully crafted lie.

For six years, Mara gave Elias her time, her labor, and her love. After a miscarriage, a broken heirloom, and one betrayal too many, she stopped asking him to see her pain. When he came begging for another chance, all he found was the woman she had become without him.

The year Caleb loved me more than anything, he cut all ties with the entire Donovan mafia family, gave up his heir title, and ran away from New York with me to live on the lam out of state.
But one day, after hauling contraband and working three side jobs till his heart flared up and he coughed up blood, I took the six-million-dollar check his mom handed me and watched as his family’s guards dragged him onto a private helicopter.
He clung tight to the cabin frame, begging me not to leave like a man losing his mind.
I tossed every last dollar he’d scraped and saved for me right into the freezing pool, sneering that the tiny amount he’d managed to earn would never buy me a Steinway grand—not in a million years.
A dead-broke wreck like him had no right to talk about a future together.
Five years later, we crossed paths at an upscale charity gala.
I swallowed every ounce of my pride and begged him to lend me a sum of cash.
He said yes—on one condition. I’d be the private pianist for his engagement party, forced to sit there and watch him live out his perfect engagement for everyone to see.
I agreed without a second thought.
He’d never have the slightest clue why I was desperate for that money.
It was all to save a little girl.
A little girl who shared his blood.

At 2:00 AM, I lay in bed with my eyes closed, my fingers digging desperately into the flesh of my inner thigh.

Crack... Crunch... A stomach-churning sound of dislocating bones drifted from the foot of the bed. Immediately after, a cloying stench of dead fish rolled over the mattress.

A cold, stiff finger traced my jawline and pressed down hard on my carotid artery. It was feeling for a pulse.

"Darling..."

A bizarre, dual-layered echo came from directly above my head. A cold, bloody drop of meat juice smacked right onto my eyelid.

But I didn't dare let my breathing falter for even a fraction of a beat.

Because I knew—the thing currently staring dead at me, hanging upside down from the ceiling like a spider with its limbs bent backward, was absolutely not the wife I had spent the last ten years with.

After our son died in a fire, I lost my voice for half a year due to extreme trauma.
In order to "cure" me, my husband listened to the instigations of a manipulative woman. He became convinced our son wasn't his, publicly dumped our son's ashes down the drain, and threw me to five drunk men to do as they pleased.
He sneered and locked the front door: "Do whatever you want with her. She is already dead to me."
He thought this extreme "exposure therapy" would force me to kneel and beg for his forgiveness.
Little did he know, when that door opened again, the one who took me away was a Wall Street tycoon he could never afford to offend in this lifetime.
Half a month later, when he finally learned that everything was the other woman's scam, he knelt in the rain like a madman, begging me to come home.
But I just hid in the arms of my immensely powerful new husband and calmly handed him a court summons.

Five years ago, I pulled a dying man from the depths of the ocean.
His name was Silas. When he woke up, he looked me in the eye and swore he'd marry me, that he'd protect me for the rest of his life.
I believed him.
I hid it from my clan, shed my tail, and followed him to land. I bore him a daughter—Winnie. I kept myself locked away in a villa, out of sight from the world. No wedding. No ring. Even the mermaid scales on Winnie's legs had to be covered up with layers and layers of concealer.
Until that night at the banquet. Zoe and her goons pinned us both to the tile by the pool, scraping the scales off Winnie's legs with a knife, sneering that this "filth" was such an eyesore.
I stroked her mangled calf, desperate for Silas to come save us. But Zoe said Silas was her fiancé.
Silas? Her fiancé?
Then what the hell am I?

I was always a clingy girlfriend, something my online boyfriend seemed to eat right up. That is, until my brother's birthday dinner. I noticed his pretty-boy roommate's phone lit up the exact second I sent a text.

My brother chuckled. "She's been texting you non-stop all night. Doesn't it annoy you?"

The roommate barely looked at his screen. "Annoying," he muttered.

My thumbs froze over the keyboard.

You're right. I expanded your line without being asked — that was my mistake.

Here's the corrected version, keeping your line tight and matched in length:

I died for the mate bond.

In my past life, I choked on my own blood in the snow, taking a silver bullet for Kael. My reward? He married Seraphina over my fresh grave.

Never again.

Now, standing alive in the packhouse, I stared at the man I once died for.

"I reject you, Elara. You're a pathetic Omega," Kael spat, his lip curling in front of the entire pack. "You will never be my Luna."

He wanted tears. He expected me to break. Instead, I wiped a smear of blood from my split lip and gave him a razor-sharp smile. "I accept your rejection."

The crowd froze. But the silence didn't last.

A suffocating aura slammed into the room, dropping wolves to their knees. The heavy oak doors splintered open. Silas. The bloodthirsty Alpha King of the North.

He ignored the bowing elites and walked straight up to me. His burning gaze pinned me in place.

"Since the guy threw you away," Silas rumbled, a grin splitting his face, "From this second on, you are mine."

I spent five years living as a benevolent saint and healer, beloved and praised across the realm. But a sudden summons from the Rose Duke pulled me into the cruel, scheming world of the nobility. Plagued by my fake sister’s malice, ridiculed by arrogant nobles, and exploited by the royal family, my peaceful pretense finally shattered. The moment my mentor’s seal broke, my dormant, demonic curse powers awakened at last. Holiness is only my mask; curses are my deadliest secret. Standing side by side with the forbearing, hidden cursed prince, I tore apart the royal family’s hypocritical lies and taught every soul who dared to underestimate me: the gentlest saint can wield the darkest, most unforgiving power.

Before I died, I married mob boss Dante in my sister's place.

Five years of marriage, and I was nothing but her replacement. He hated me for stealing her spot. My parents were ashamed I couldn't make him love me. Everyone just waited for her to come back.

Christmas Eve—fire tore through the mountain estate. Dante's first move? Sprint straight to my sister, fresh off the plane. My parents escaped right behind him. Nobody remembered the pregnant wife locked in the dressing room. Smoke and flames took me and my baby while they held each other outside, celebrating they'd made it out alive.

I opened my eyes on the day they cornered me with divorce papers.

My parents threw the documents at me. My sister stood there smirking, ready to slide into my place. This time? I didn't cry. Didn't beg. I picked up the pen and signed.

They wanted me gone? Done.

The apocalypse has arrived, but I am merely the villainous master in a doomsday novel.

The mission given to me by the system is to humiliate my kind-hearted fiancée, Avery.

Looking at the only dry rations left before us, I stomped them into pieces right in front of all the wasteland refugees, grinding them into the muddy ice and snow with the sole of my shoe, and commanded condescendingly:

"Bitch, lick it clean."

Instead of running away, she trembled and knelt before me submissively, lifting her head with a look of near-morbid attachment burning in her eyes.

Wait a minute, didn't the original script say she would become my mortal enemy?

Why is she kissing me?

For five years, my crime boss husband made me take off my wedding ring nine times—all for his precious damsel in distress.
When we first married, he promised me: "From now on, you're my queen, the queen of New Orleans."
But whenever Odette came crying for help, he'd change his tune: "Mr. Laurent saved my life, Cordelia. I owe his family everything."
And like a fool, I believed him eight times.
Eight times I watched from the shadows as he took another woman to our favorite restaurants.
Eight times I explained to the crew that our "separation" was just giving each other space.
Eight times I watched her move into my bedroom, use my dishes, sleep in my bed.
All for a man who kept making me slip off my ring, then slide it back on, over and over again.
Until the ninth time, when he said he needed to provide sperm for her fertility treatment, and I offered to leave.
He still thinks this is just another temporary break, expecting me to come crawling back in a month like always.
He'll never know I've already booked my ticket out of here.

Twenty-five years of being overlooked.
My husband Steven prefers my best friend Liliana, and my son Terry and grandson Roy treat me like a maid.
I thought I could endure this life forever, but when Steven gave my dream trip to Liliana, I couldn't take it anymore.
I decided to leave and stop wanting their love.

The day I won the competition, my sister's heart "failed," and she could never stand again.

From that moment, she claimed all the favoritism.

Looking at my wall of honors, she sat in her wheelchair, heartbroken: "Chloe is so amazing, unlike me—just a burden who could die any moment."

My brother's heart ached for her. He grabbed a baseball bat and smashed all my trophies to pieces, defending her honor.

When I was selected as dance troupe captain, tears streamed down her face: "If I hadn't gotten sick, could I have shined on the Lincoln Center stage too?"

My parents turned to scold me for showing off, drugging me before the audition and ruining my chances.

Later, she had a breakdown and went live on Instagram, swallowing pills while sobbing that she didn't deserve love.

My childhood sweetheart, my fiancé, rushed to her side immediately. He dropped to one knee and slipped my diamond engagement ring onto her finger.

Later, I was killed by an armed robber. As I lay dying, I made one last desperate call for help.

He hung up impatiently:

"Mia needs me to hold her hand during her IV treatment. Stop being so fucking unreasonable!"

When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day my sister's heart "failed."

As the New Year's Eve bells were about to toll, my fiancé, Tristan, slid an annulment agreement in front of me.
 
"Blair's New Year's wish is to experience an engagement. Just play along. After tonight, we'll reinstate our engagement."
 
Wearing my custom engagement gown, Blair looked at me with red-rimmed eyes and a pout.
 
"Sienna, if you really mind, let's just forget it. With my failing health, who knows if I'll even live to see next year..."
 
Tristan immediately grasped her hand with heartache, then turned to glare at me. "Could you stop being so selfish for once?"
 
Throughout our three-year relationship, I had compromised time and time again, all because of his favorite excuse: "She's been sickly since childhood. As her childhood friend, I promised to grant her one New Year's wish every year."
 
My fingers brushed against the ultrasound photo in my pocket—the pregnancy confirmation I hadn't yet had the chance to show him. Looking at the face of the man I had loved for three years, I felt like an absolute joke.
 
"Fine, you both have my blessing."
 
I took the pen and signed my name without a hint of hesitation.
 
The stolen dress, along with my fiancé—I didn't want either of them anymore.

When I opened my eyes once more and beheld the familiar glint of scheming in my sister's gaze, I knew—she had also been reborn.

In my past life, she shattered the souls of my child and me with a forbidden moonlight ritual, driven solely by envy of my perfect partner and healthy heir. In my dying moments, I saw no remorse in her eyes, only a twisted satisfaction.

In this life, she still seeks to seize everything from me—my fiancé, my child.

This time, I have chosen the one whom everyone scorns as the "exile."

They call him a monster, curse him, and claim that any woman who unites with him will bear only deformed beasts.

What they fail to comprehend is that as I lay on the brink of death, it was he whose golden eyes reflected the anguish of despair. What they know even less is the secret I harbor—one that even I scarcely believe.

My dear sister, do you desire the perfect heir? Do you yearn for supreme power?

Come, then.

Let us see how long your hypocritical facade can endure when the blood moon rises again, and all discover the true "monster."

Caspian kept me locked in the basement as a living blood bank.
This mafia don was also my husband. Ever since he discovered I could heal instantly, I became nothing more than a consumable—kept alive to sustain another woman.
That woman in the hospital bed was his stepmother in name, his forbidden obsession in reality—the desire he could never speak aloud.
Unable to claim her, he went mad. He tried to fill her dying body with my life.
When she was poisoned, he forced toxins down my throat to test antidotes, watching coldly as I convulsed on the floor, vomiting black blood.
When assassins came for her, he yanked me in front as a human shield, letting bullets turn my body into a sieve.
Covered in blood, I clutched his pant leg, begging through tears for him to just kill me.
But to protect his precious stepmother, he kicked me away without hesitation, his voice utterly cold: "Stop playing dead, Aria. You're a monster. You can't die anyway."
What he didn't know was that every time a mermaid heals, she burns through her soul's essence.
Through each shattering and mending, he was draining my very source of life.
Today, he strapped me to the operating table again, ready to drain more blood for his forbidden love.
He had no idea this would be the last time.

For five years, Alpha Ethan hid Maya—the mate he had marked and the Luna his pack never knew existed.
Whenever he abandoned her for another woman, he gave Maya a blood-signed token promising her anything she desired.
After his hundredth broken promise, Maya finally used them.
Not for wealth. Not for revenge.
She asked to dissolve their mate bond and leave his pack forever.
Only when the bond shattered did Ethan realize what he had lost. But beyond his borders, the feared Rogue Alpha was already waiting to offer Maya everything Ethan never did:
A home. A family. And the chance to become someone’s first choice.

In that luxury cruise ship fire that shocked the world, my husband Gordon Mercer—the ship's captain—pried open my bloodied fingers and fastened the last intact life vest onto his first love.
In my past life, he locked me inside the blazing cabin. First, the flames devoured me. Then, as the ship broke apart, the icy ocean swallowed me whole. I drowned in the depths.
When I opened my eyes again, I'd returned to that life-or-death moment—the ship about to sink, alarms tearing through the night.
Watching Gordon clutch that trembling woman in his arms, I didn't break down sobbing like before. I didn't beg.
Instead, I laughed coldly and threw the life vest at their feet.
"Since you two are so desperate to die together, go right ahead."

Five years ago, on my wedding day, my fiancé Vincent fucked my best friend in the bridal suite.

Five years later, I returned to New York with my husband—the most powerful Mafia boss in Naples. At Atelier Milano, my former best friend Bianca circled my custom gown like a vulture, pestering the staff about meeting the legendary Mrs. Salvatore.

She had no idea the woman she pitied as a pathetic nobody was the very person she was dying to impress.

I saved a dying mobster three years ago. Vincent Ricci—New York's most feared Godfather.

He decided I was his. Private jets, five-million-dollar proposals, the whole nine yards. I fell for it.

The night before our wedding, his enemies took me. Three days of torture left me blind. Everyone said he'd never marry damaged goods. He married me anyway and spent three years treating me like a queen.

Yesterday I fell down the stairs and my sight came back.

But that's when I found out about my perfect husband's dirty secret.

Because of his grandfather's dying wish, Supreme Court Chief Justice Garrick Vance—the most powerful beast-shifter in the city—was forced to marry me, a human court clerk who had secretly loved him for years.

For six years we pretended to be strangers at work while he remained ice-cold toward me and our daughter Wren at home. When his celebrity ex-girlfriend Seraphina returned from overseas, I watched him come alive for another woman—attending her parties, rushing to her side at midnight.

Meanwhile, our five-year-old daughter waited every night for a father who never came home.

The day Wren nearly died from his careless gift, I finally signed the mate bond dissolution papers.

This time, he's lost us forever.

The loan sharks who kidnapped us wanted payment for my twin sister's gambling debts—in blood.

When my FBI negotiator father showed up with his tactical team, he found Lily with a paper cut, crying her heart out. I was dying from a gunshot wound in a basement below.

I called him with my dying breath: "Dad, please send help. I'm bleeding out."

"Are you kidding me right now, Emily? Your sister just went through hell, and you're pulling this pathetic stunt for attention? How sick are you?"

He hung up. I died alone, dismissed as a liar.

Three days later, they found my body. And the truth that came with it burned their perfect world to ash.

I thought I was marrying the New York Godfather out of love. I didn't know I was just a walking blood bank for his fake 'savior'—my illegitimate half-sister.

My father, my brother, my husband... they bled me dry, framed me, and even demanded my unborn baby's cord blood to keep a murderer alive.

When I finally learned the truth, I didn't cry. I didn't scream.
I simply locked the doors, scheduled the emails that would shatter their reality, and left them a charred corpse in a towering sea of fire.

They thought they watched me burn. I let them descent into absolute madness.

"Stop—Daniel, the fk are you doing! I came here to learn to swim, not get fked!"
In the pool, because my kicks were all wrong, Daniel—my husband's cousin—told me to wrap my legs around his waist to "feel the rhythm."
Except I was wearing that scarlet bikini Vincent shoved me into—practically nothing. Even worse, Daniel's rk-hard ck in those thin trunks was jammed right up against my py.
Every time he kicked, that thing dragged right over my ct, like it was about to shove straight inside.

The morning of our wedding, Dante Russo led the hit that wiped out my family.
Branded a traitor, stripped of my name, I spent three years scrubbing blood from dog kennels at the docks. I lost my hands, my music, and three babies I never got to hold.
Then I learned the truth: there was no hit. My parents and the man I loved staged it all—to teach me a lesson, because my adopted sister Isabella cried that I’d hurt her.
Now Dante is marrying Isabella. And he wants me there on my knees, pouring her champagne.
I said yes.
But I bled out on the concrete the night before.
They think I’m sulking. They smash everything I ever gave them to punish me for not showing up.
And when my body is finally wheeled into their wedding in a black bag, the most dangerous men in Gotham City will learn what they’ve done.
Too late.

"You sure dispatch called this... natural causes?" I gripped the steering wheel, staring at the perfect suburban house.
"That's what they said," Gates muttered. The victim's father, Arthur, stood at the door in pressed khakis, weeping.
He swore his daughter, Grace, died in her sleep last night after eating vanilla pudding.
But the moment we stepped inside, a suffocating cocktail of cheap lavender spray and rotting meat punched me in the sinuses.
In the living room, SpongeBob SquarePants was blasting at maximum volume. Grace was slumped in a recliner. When Gates gently pinched her wrist to lift her arm, a sickeningly soft, tearing rip echoed in the room.
Her grayish skin completely degloved, fused to the leather armrest. Beneath the liquefied muscle tissue, frantic rows of tiny white maggots wriggled into the exposed bone.
A body that died "last night" doesn't breed maggots.

"Whoever left that wild strawberry scent on my bed is dead," the severely germaphobic captain posted.
I froze. It was me.
Now, my idiot brother just locked me in Ronan's room to pay off a debt. Ronan ignored my boyish disguise. Leaning in, his nose brushed my hood.
"Wild strawberry," he whispered, a dangerous smirk forming. "It WAS you."

My mother-in-law, Dorothy, sneered that I dressed like a janitor. My husband, Adrian, called my design sketches "a waste of fabric." Even the son I carried for nine months called me an embarrassment, saying he wished his dad’s secretary, Madison, was his mother.
For eight long years, I was nothing but an unpaid maid in this house.
Until today, when the doctor told me severe exhaustion was causing my heart to fail. And my eight-year-old son just pointed at the bag of medicine in my hand, shrieking, "You just have a headache! Why are you wasting money on medicine?"
I didn't argue. I didn't cry. I went home, opened the bottom drawer of Adrian’s desk, and signed the divorce papers he had been secretly preparing.
In their wildest dreams, they could never imagine that the sole trigger condition for my late mother's $50 million trust fund was for me to leave this man.

Chase Harrington hadn't willingly spoken to me since I hit puberty and got fat.

So, when my childhood best friend actually handed me a Diet Coke on the morning of our Yale alumni interviews, I should've known it was a trap. Instead, my stupid heart fluttered. I thought he still cared.

I drank it.

When I woke up, my hair covered the hardwood floor.

Sloane Kensington, the undisputed queen bee of our school, stood over me holding scissors. "Damn, Chase. Those sleeping pills worked like a charm. Homegirl is practically bald."

I looked at Chase in disbelief.

The boy who used to promise we'd get married just checked his phone.

"Sloane lost a game of Truth or Dare," he said, sounding completely bored. "If she didn't cut your hair, she'd have to go hit on some freak on the street. Besides, it's not like you've got an image to maintain, Gwen. You're fat. It's just hair. Deal with it."

That was the exact moment the boy I loved died to me.

I didn't yell or cry. I just opened my laptop and changed my college application from Yale to Stanford—three thousand miles away on the West Coast.

My husband suffered a massive heart attack mid-thrust inside my best friend.

Now, the ER doctors are clutching his surgical consent forms, waiting for me—the legal wife—to sign.

Over the phone, my mother-in-law shrieked in absolute despair while my best friend sobbed in terror.

I turned a deaf ear to them, taking my time to admire my makeup in the mirror.

There was absolutely no rush. Waiting until I changed into this pitch-black mourning dress to slowly watch his countdown to death wouldn't be too late.

After all, when my parents and my son, Noah, were lying in the morgue, I survived a dead-silent night exactly like this one, shedding tears until my eyes literally bled dry.

Now, it is finally my husband's turn to go to hell and atone for my family.

I was the long-lost Whitmore heiress, finally brought home after eighteen years in the system.

I'd been home for exactly two days when my adopted sister brought me a cake, and my mother urged me to eat it, her smile dripping with fake warmth.

[Don't eat it.]

The words flashed in red across my vision.

[It's a soul-swap curse. Your mother knows. She wants you to trade bodies with the fake heiress so you'll take the fall for Camille's enemies and die, while Camille keeps your healthy body to live in luxury.]

My hands trembled, but not from fear. I burst into tears, sobbing that I wanted to save it for my birthday tomorrow.

Later that night, I snuck back to the group home. I fed the cake to my best friend in the wheelchair—the only person in this world who actually deserved a miracle.

Now? Camille is screaming, trapped in my friend's broken, disabled body. And my mother is scrambling to undo a spell that's permanent.

They thought I was easy prey. But they forgot—I grew up in a place where you fight to survive.

My ex-boyfriend told me to divorce my "nobody" husband to become his secret mistress, completely unaware that my husband is the Supreme Mafia Godfather.
"Divorce that loser, Valeria. I'm a Capo now. I can give you the world," Gideon smirked, tossing a cheap gala pass at my feet.
I looked at the coward who abandoned me in a shootout three years ago and actually laughed. Give up my throne as the Donna of North America’s most powerful syndicate to be a street thug's dirty secret?
At the Blood Oath Gala, I'll show him that I am no longer the woman I was three years ago.

When my best friend’s biological father found her, she became the heiress to a crime family.

I was the extra baggage she insisted on bringing home. My greatest talent? Making one penny do the work of eight.

She handed me $450 million and put me in charge of the family’s new project.

I couldn’t bear to spend it. I paid out just $7,500.

Then the project collapsed. The family’s captains turned against her, and a rival boss showed up with his men waiting downstairs.

The girl who’d been raised in her place slid a transfer agreement across the table.

“Give me your shares. Walk away from the family. And I’ll make sure your gold-digging little friend gets out alive.”

With tears in her eyes, my best friend pressed her last bank card into my hand.

But I couldn’t stop staring at two words in the agreement:

Without compensation.

Before she could sign, I lunged forward and tore it to pieces.

“Hold on.”

“For seventy-five hundred dollars, you get the docks, the house—and her?”

When my parents forced me to donate my organs to my sister, I didn't refuse or run away. I just quietly signed the surgical consent forms, willingly giving my kidney to Vivienne, their beloved daughter.

A few months ago, my sister was hospitalized with kidney failure. The doctor said she needed a transplant. My family's first thought was me—the backup daughter they'd kept around all these years.

When my husband Allen took my hand with tears in his eyes and said, "Only you can save her," I agreed without hesitation.

When the doctor explained the surgical risks and potential complications, I smiled and nodded my understanding.

My parents said I'd finally learned what sisterly love meant.

Even Allen, who'd always been cold to me, held my hand gently and said, "The surgery's safe. You're so healthy, nothing will go wrong. When you recover, I'll take you to Hawaii."

But they don't know that no matter how the surgery goes, I won't be around to celebrate.

Because I just got my own test results—I have terminal brain cancer. I'm going to die anyway.

To marry Vincent Romano, I survived twenty-eight near-death experiences over five years.
The first: city hall's foundation collapsed — three broken ribs. The second: a truck rollover — my right leg nearly amputated. The twenty-seventh: a chandelier in the bridal shop, three days unconscious.
All of Seren City laughed at me. Romano's most cursed bride-to-be. Yet I loved him still.
Until the twenty-eighth time.
When the bomb detonated outside city hall, I threw myself over Vincent on instinct. The blast shifted my organs and shredded my back. The day my stitches came out, I felt no relief at having survived.
Because I stood outside the study and heard his voice.
"Her organs were badly damaged. She almost actually died." Antonio's horror was audible. "Vincent, you used to treat her so well—"
"People change." A pause, then quieter: "I did want to marry her once. But before Amelia, I had no idea what it meant to truly want someone. I acknowledge the debt — I just can't spend my life repaying it." Another pause. "Father won't agree, and she won't let go easily."
"So." His voice turned to ice. "The only clean way out is to make her give up on her own. As long as Cassandra refuses to break the engagement, the accidents must continue. Until she walks away."

After Ava lost her voice in a car crash, my brother fled the country overnight.
My parents begged me to take his place and honor the engagement.
For three years, I stayed by her side. I took care of her, helped her through rehab, and waited for the day she could finally speak again.
But at our wedding, my brother came back to stop it.
In front of everyone, my parents pressured me to step aside. "You were only filling in for Ethan in the first place. Now that he's back, it's time to give his fiancée back."
Ava stopped walking toward me and, without a second thought, ran straight into my brother's arms.
Later, she tried to smooth things over in private. She said it was only to test my brother's intentions, and promised that in the end, she would still marry me.
She thought I'd stay right where I was, like I had for the past three years, waiting for scraps.
What she didn't know was that I had already accepted the Godfather's secret appointment. That very night, I boarded a helicopter bound for the North District.
Now that the man she never got over was back, it was time for me to claim the underground empire that belonged to me.