7981 Book(s) Related to the broken ring this marriage will fail anyway novel

"I want a divorce. "
The day before her third wedding anniversary, Fiona sees her husband walking to the obstetrics wing with his arm around his ex-girlfriend, Rowena. Rowena is pregnant.
Heartbroken, Fiona rejects Micah, her husband, her mate, the Lycan Prince of the Alastair Kingdom, and leaves the pack.

However, to Fiona’s surprise, after being rejected, Micah goes crazy looking for her all over the world.
Until one day, when he sees her walking down the street holding a little girl, he pins her against the wall.
“Is she my daughter?” Micah hisses.

"I'm pregnant," I whispered to the empty room, clutching the positive test while my husband zipped up his brother's widow's dress in the next room.

It was our one-year anniversary. I had spent weeks stitching a shirt for Alaric, hoping he’d remember me. Instead, I found him with Tazira. He didn't just ignore me; he looked at me with cold disgust, as if I were the dirt beneath his boots.

"I want her," he had claimed a year ago. Now, he only wanted to hurt me. He forced himself on me, using my body like a vessel for his rage, then left me bleeding on the couch to comfort her.

When the fire started—lit by Tazira’s own hand—I was tied up, suffocating in smoke. I screamed for him. I begged him to save our unborn pup. He burst through the door, looked me dead in the eyes... and turned away. He scooped Tazira up and carried her to safety, leaving me to burn.

That was the moment I died. Not physically, but my heart turned to ash. Through the roaring flames, I forced the bond to snap. "I, Elowen, reject you, Alaric Veylor."

He thinks I’m dead. He thinks he’s free to marry her. But I survived. And when I return, carrying the blood of a Queen he never knew existed, he will kneel in the ashes of his regret.

"Kiera Scott is a 21 years old single lady, she Lives alone since she graduated from high school. Sometimes her friends come around to visit her. Luckily enough for her, she's the only daughter of her family and very pampered. She's pretty... The perfect definition of beauty can be told alone by looking at her. She's loved by everyone in her neighborhood, works in a very good company and paying one loved by her colleagues. But! The only problem is her Boss.

He's Tibby Wilf. He is a sex freak, crazy, mean, extra arrogant. He hates being corrected. But Kiera keeps crushing on him.

He was a sex addict. He'd always scold her when she's wrong and not...till she got used to it.

Now she accidentally found him in the shower.

"you!!" he called as she turned back shocked to see her boss half naked.

"argh!" she screamed and shut her eyes closed

"what you doing here?"" she asked

"I should ask you that!" he fired back as she opened her eyes

'gosh...so hot' she gasped in her thoughts

"I'm hiding... please" she whispered as she walked closer to him

"hey... stay back" he hurriedly said as she staggered back

"argh!" she screamed as he pushed her back but unfortunately... his towels fell off his waist."

Korey Wilson is a ruthless alpha, an alpha with no emotions, no heart, damn arrogant, just so cold gets his Luna... Bentley Janice. Bentley Janice, a pretty young lady gets chosen by the moon Goddess to be Korey's Luna. Korey gets annoyed because he would be having a human as his mate and there is nothing he could do, his weakness is her weakness, he became super arrogant towards her, but that never stopped her from loving him.

"Ever since the night, I kissed you... I find it hard to concentrate at work I tried my best but all I could find myself doing was thinking of you, craving to hold you, to touch you, to feel your lips once more... But I don't know what's stopping me" he rushed taking his last statement calmly

"if anyone ever told me I'd fall in love with you... I'd disbelieve, but now I think I am" he said breathlessly

"what are you going to do about it? "Jan asked

"Jan please.. please...stop oppressing me!" he said as she walked closer to him, his eyes fixed on the floor avoiding her eyes.

"Korey... I Love you, and I'd keep loving you no matter what"

Cara is out to get revenge on her parents murder and their stolen legacy. She uses Quinn to get her vengeance in a booty call agreement. Will she be able to win him over? Will she succeed in her plan? Will her plan go accordingly?

I gave up five years of my marriage for nothing.

My son is dead. He died on his fifth birthday, waiting for his father to come home. But instead of his dad, a car accident took him. And his father? He was a thousand miles away, with another woman.

For five years, I put up with my husband's coldness and his family's constant humiliation. I thought having a child would melt his icy heart. I was wrong—so terribly, laughably wrong.

He couldn't even focus at our son's funeral—his eyes were only for his old flame, his "true love." It wasn't until I was on my deathbed that he finally shed those fake tears of regret. But it was too late. My child was gone. My love had died. And soon, I would be gone too.

This marriage, this whole life—it's all been one big joke. I just want to find my son as soon as I can. To tell him that his mother never gave up on him. To promise him that in another world, we'll never be apart again.

I used to be the nation's top lock-picking expert. I saved countless lives.

But I couldn't save my own daughter.

At the dock, two children were strapped to bombs.

The girl had less time—I should've saved her first.

But my husband Damien held a knife to his throat, forcing me to save the other one first.

His illegitimate son.

I compromised.

The moment I opened the lock, the kidnapper ripped off the girl's hood.

I never expected her to be Rosie.

My five-year-old daughter.

She looked at me.

Her lips moved, forming the word "Mommy."

Then the explosion tore through everything...

I’ve had the Sight for as long as I can remember.
Born into a matrilineal line of Salem witches, I can pierce the veil of the dead. I see the wandering souls and the lingering traces of magic left behind in the mortal world.
I always assumed this gift was nothing more than my own harmless little secret.
Until the night of our fifth wedding anniversary.
I lit the final taper candle on the long dining table. As the flame flickered, my Sight instinctively slipped open, my gaze drifting toward the deep shadows by the fireplace.
A spirit was huddled there in the dark.
It was my husband—Silas Blackwood.
Ice flooded my veins. What the hell is going on? Is Silas... dead?!
My hands shook as I fumbled for my phone, stumbling back in a frantic rush to dial his number.
But before my thumb could hit the call button—before my lips could even form the words of a banishing spell—
Click.
The front door opened.
Silas strode in, bringing the damp, fresh scent of the rain with him.
"Sorry I'm late, Evie."
My breath caught. If Silas was dead... then who the hell was standing right in front of me, wearing his skin?

The day our parents remarried, my entire life descended into unrelenting hell.
Jace, my stepbrother, hated me on sight the second he walked through the front door.
Like a relentless ghost that haunted my every waking moment, he stole every girl I ever cared about, one by one.
I hated him for seven long years, convinced he only got off on grinding me into the dirt. Until that drugged night at the hotel...

On the day I got engaged to the heir of an elite old-money family, my own birth mother spread vicious lies about me in front of the entire crowd. She claimed I’d lived a wildly promiscuous life while studying abroad, and had even secretly given birth to a stillborn child with no known father.
Afterwards, she took my hand and sobbed out an apology, saying she’d only wanted to test whether my fiancé truly loved me enough to stand by me. I was foolish enough to believe her, and drank the calming tea she’d personally handed me.
When I opened my eyes the next morning, everything was destroyed. I lay in my bedroom, disheveled and half-dressed, and the man beside me was none other than my younger sister’s boyfriend.
In the end, my fiancé married my sister. And I was mercilessly disowned and cast out by my own family.
But twenty years later, every single one of them would come to regret what they’d done.

I woke up, and my world collapsed.

Lying next to me was Sebastian—the golden boy, the heir to the Rhodes empire, and the nemesis who has tormented me for twenty years.

I fled. I swore to take that night to my grave. If I kept my mouth shut, no one would know.

But Fate has a twisted sense of humor. Five weeks later, two red lines on a pregnancy test slapped me in the face. I’m pregnant. And the father isn’t just my childhood nightmare. He’s the man who just bought my company. My new boss.

I tried to hide. He hunted me down. He scares off my dates. He tramples my pride. He invades my life like a tyrant. He mocks me in public, yet destroys anyone who touches me in private.

"Nancy, did you really think you could escape?" He pins me against the wall, his eyes dark, that familiar scent of cedar suffocating me. "Admit it. You hate me, but you need me."

Have you ever been treated like a stand-in for your dead sibling by your own mother? I have.

Have you ever been murdered by your own mother? I have.

My name is Aira, and today is my sister Lily's birthday. It's also the anniversary of my death—the day the washing machine became my coffin.

"Why couldn't it have been you who died?"

After four long years, my mom finally got her wish.

I've been married to my husband Jake for three years. In that time, I've been pregnant twice.

But each time, I lost the baby.

What took my children wasn't a medical condition, but a painting.

A black bird, painted by Jake's ten-year-old blind brother, Billy.

My in-laws claimed he had the gift—a psychic born with sight beyond sight. And the black bird was an omen. It marked my baby as cursed, a threat to the family.

To save my second child, I got the best amniocentesis report money could buy, proving the baby had no genetic defects.

It happened again anyway.

At three in the morning, I woke to the agony of another miscarriage and stumbled to the studio door.

That's when I found out the truth.

I once thought marriage was redemption.

I hid that I was a billionaire heiress, threw on an apron and played the perfect housewife. For three years, I pawned my jewelry to bail him out, stayed up all night fixing his business proposals, only for him to parade his mistress around our house.

She wore my limited-edition cashmere sweater, smashed my expensive china, his mother called me worthless for not popping out kids, and he called me cheap trash he couldn't stand anymore.

Fifty thousand dollars—that's what he thought three years of my life was worth.

When I got pregnant, I thought things would change, only to get shoved down the stairs and lose everything.

While I was still bleeding in that hospital bed, he forced me to sign divorce papers, threatening to destroy me completely.

In the La Perla private room, he made me crawl like a dog, trying to pimp me out to some random guy.

He had no idea I wasn't just hiding my identity—I was hiding my claws.

I died once.

In my last life, someone posted my photo on the company's anonymous forum, claiming I slept my way to the top.

The comment section exploded.

Colleagues whispered behind my back and pointed fingers.

A blurry video convinced everyone the woman in it was me.

I explained. I cried. I begged.

No one believed me.

The company forced me out. My parents kicked me out.

I walked to my death, condemned by everyone.

Then I opened my eyes.

Everything went back to the beginning.

The same post, the same accusation, the same man swearing in the comments he'd seen it all himself.

This time, I'm getting my revenge.

On my due date, my husband Russell locked me in an underground freezer at minus ten degrees.

The Pembroke family's unbreakable rule: the first-born male inherits the entire mafia empire. My sister-in-law Natasha and I were both pregnant, our due dates only one day apart. To ensure his brother's child was born first, Russell made this insane decision.

"My brother and Natasha's baby has to come first—this is what you owe them!" He ignored my desperate pleas and violent contractions, coldly shoving me into the freezer.

But that wasn't enough. They forcibly injected me with labor-delaying drugs. I curled up in agony on the freezing concrete floor, feeling my baby slowly slipping away, tears of despair streaming down my face.

My baby, Mommy is so sorry...

My husband and I've been married for three years, and he's been messing around with her the entire time.

Hugging and kissing her on set, whispering flirty lines in interviews.

Everyone online calls me a pathetic stand-in.

I never get mad. I just smile and help him smooth over every rumor.

That is, until I accidentally got pregnant and secretly had an abortion.

He was furious, his heart shattered, demanding to know why.

I cupped his face and said calmly: "Because I don't love you."

The one I truly love is his dead brother.

I had been married for seven years, thinking I had the perfect family.

Until Christmas Eve, when I saw a delivery order for apartment 702. The note read: severe mango allergy.

My husband's allergy. The one that could kill him.

I flew downstairs and pounded on the door.

My husband opened it. The same man who was supposed to be "out of town on business."

A pregnant woman appeared behind him.

And my six-year-old son stood behind her, glaring at me with cold eyes:

"Make her leave, Mom. She's crazy."

My world shattered.

My sister walked onstage wearing the medal for my stolen research.
Ethan stood beside her and mouthed, Don’t ruin this.
Last time, I listened. I lost my scholarship, my housing, my lab, and the only archive my mother left behind.

This time, I held up the U drive with the original files.
“If Sophie built it,” I said, “let her run the raw data.”

My Sister Wore My Medal

My daughter helped my husband cheat.

My ten-year-old begged me to take her to a summer camp in Italy. My husband looked at her like she hung the moon. Booked the tickets right there.

I thought I was the luckiest mom alive.

Then I checked the pet camera from overseas.

There he was, fucking my daughter's riding instructor on our couch.

But what really killed me? What he said, "Don't worry. Nina wants that horse bad enough, she'll keep her mom in Europe as long as we need."

Back home, my husband dropped a receipt. Two identical limited edition watches.

He froze. My sweet daughter didn't miss a beat, "Dad used the other one to bribe someone so I could get my horse!"

They lied in perfect sync. That's when something in me broke.

They thought I was still that stupid, trusting wife.

What they didn't know?

I'd already signed a contract. Going back to my art career in New York.

After Nicholas got engaged, his assistant handed me a plane ticket.

"Leave. Don’t ever show your face in Silverlight City again."

"Otherwise, Mr. Jackson has more than enough ways to ruin you."

All those years I spent by his side, I was admired by everyone, living in the spotlight.

Yet when I finally left, I was reduced to a pitiful, laughable sight.

I said, "Fine."

But that very night, the flight plunged from over thirty thousand feet in the air.

I gave five years to my husband's ambition—and got betrayal in return.

Forty-three days without a break on the Imperial City project. I collapsed from exhaustion and woke up in the hospital. He never picked up the phone.

He was too busy celebrating his mistress's birthday.

The blonde hair wrapped around his jacket was like a slap to the face. I'd cut my own hair short years ago because he said long hair wasn't "professional." He just meant it wasn't professional on me.

He promised we'd move to Imperial City together once he succeeded. But he was always too busy—except when it came to touring my project sites with her.

I'd had enough.

I froze the accounts. Pulled the funding. Took back everything I'd built.

He tried to push me out of my own position, so I reclaimed the patents and withdrew my support.

He called a press conference to save face. I attended—as an executive at his largest competitor.

I watched him crumble.

For five years, I held him up. And for five years, he treated me like something disposable.

He forgot that the empire he thought he built was never his.

It was always mine.

"Miss Smith, I think I can smell your scent... it's so womanly..."

I looked down at the boy hiding under the lectern, watching helplessly as he had his way with me right there in the classroom, while I had to pretend everything was normal...

My name is Catherine, the university math teacher. With my husband always away on business trips, at thirty years old, I was like a nun guarding that double bed, never satisfied. Slowly, I developed some strange habits... and became bolder...

The bell for the end of class had just rung, and teachers and students were flocking to the bathrooms in groups, chattering noisily outside.

In one of the bathroom stalls, I was panting, squatting... my black lace panties down around my ankles, my face flushed with ecstasy as I indulged...

“Why is Elara dying on my stream?”

Sienna Vale laughed in front of half a million viewers while my heroine glitched on-screen, wearing the ring I designed and speaking the line I wrote.

Caleb didn’t ask if I was okay. He shoved the emergency laptop toward me and said, “Fix it before the investors panic.”

So I opened the live build.

But instead of saving his launch, I patched one line into the game credits:

Created by Maya Reed.

Fate chose her.
Power made him refuse.
Ruby was never the Luna Troy wanted.
The girl with silver eyes and no wolf the pack whispered about behind her back. The girl he rejected publicly on the day that was supposed to be their wedding and mating ceremony, choosing pride and power over the bond that tied them together.
Humiliated before the entire pack, Ruby walked away from the man destined to love her.
And when Troy realized too late that rejecting her had been the biggest mistake of his life, Ruby refused to come back.
So on the day Ruby was supposed to marry another and finally start over, he stole her from her own wedding and forced her back into his world—back into a marriage she never wanted.
Now trapped beside the man who broke her heart, Ruby is no longer the weak girl Troy remembers. The years apart changed her. Hardened her. And the power inside her has grown into something the entire werewolf world fears.
A power strong enough to stop wars.
Strong enough to make kings kneel.
Suddenly, everyone wants a piece of her.
The council sees her as a weapon. Rival Alphas see her as a prize. Enemies lurking in the shadows want her power for themselves. And Troy, the man who once shattered her, will burn down the world before he lets anyone take her again.
But forced proximity only reopens old wounds.
Because beneath Ruby’s anger still lingers the bond neither of them escaped. Beneath Troy’s cruelty hides obsession, regret, and a dangerous love that has only grown more possessive with time.
Now caught between revenge and desire, freedom and fate, Ruby must decide if Troy deserves a second chance…
—or if the Alpha who ruined her should finally lose everything.

Three torturous years hauling bodies on the mortuary night shift, and I'd finally scraped together the cash for my brother Charles's heart transplant.
He just waved it off.
"My heart is fine. Mom and Dad didn't die in that gang war, either. I orchestrated the hit. You were the only casualty."
Nearby, my husband, Gerald, casually lit a cigar to deliver his own confession. "I never went bankrupt. 'Laying low' was just my excuse to avoid squeezing into that dingy funeral home dorm with you. I've been at the Long Island estate."
"I was going to punish you for another three years," Charles added, "but the stench of formaldehyde on you is nauseating. We couldn't take it anymore."
I froze, still clutching the credit card. Charles plucked the plastic from my numb fingers and shoved his phone screen in my face. A banking app stared back at me.
Balance: exactly zero.
"My name is still on the joint account," he sneered, tossing the card into the trash. "I drained it this morning. That blood money you made bagging stiffs is being handed out to street junkies as we speak. We'd never touch that filth."
Before the sheer absurdity of it could suffocate me, my parents walked in. Flanked by bodyguards, they kept their distance, eyeing me like a plague rat.
"You thought being the biological daughter gave you the right to ruthlessly bully Violet. We simply wanted to put you in your place."
"Swear you'll never cross Violet again, and you can remain a Falcone," my mother added coolly. "Otherwise, you're dead to us."
In the stifling silence that followed, my phone buzzed. A text from my oncologist.
[Mrs. Castello, the results are back. It's terminal. Do you consent to initiating the hospice and DNR protocols we discussed?]

The day my mother succumbed to complications during childbirth, her younger sister, Vanessa, wed my father.

Fifteen years later, I beheld my husband accompanying Vanessa as she tried on seductive lingerie.

In that moment, I understood—what she truly coveted was never my father, but rather all that my mother and I shared.

My mother perished during childbirth, a casualty of an illicit affair.

I vowed not to repeat that tragic cycle.

Then I returned home, removed my wedding ring, and left behind the divorce papers.

A 250-pound girl stole my body.

Over the phone, she cackled triumphantly, "Your flawless face, your wealth... it's all mine now!"

I stood in front of the mirror, staring at the heavy layers of fat that used to be hers. I didn't scream. I didn't beg for it back.

Instead, I hung up the phone, let out a long breath of relief, and just started laughing.

She thought she had stolen the glamorous, perfect life of a Hollywood socialite.

But she had no idea that in just a few hours, the severe drug withdrawals in that body would hit. She didn’t know that my cold-blooded mother would soon be standing over her with a loaded syringe, and a greasy, powerful producer was waiting in a penthouse bed to pin her down.

Since she wanted my life so desperately...

Let her walk through the gates of hell herself.

In a sleek design world split between polished appearances and buried cruelty, Mara Ellison has spent years trapped behind a voice no one wanted to hear. While her family rewrites her illness and her fiancé speaks over her in the name of love, stolen records, public humiliation, and old betrayals force her to reclaim her life. Quiet but cutting, this is a story of emotional abuse, identity theft, and hard-won selfhood—framed by rain-soaked streets, hospital corridors, cold glass conference rooms, and a woman finally stepping into the light with her own voice.

The day college decisions came out, my parents bought my twin sister a Porsche.
It was my eighteenth birthday too. Nobody brought it up. I stood in the doorway in my diner uniform while the whole room sang her name.
That night the four of them went out to dinner to celebrate her. The car only sat four, so my father handed me a hundred dollars and told me to order myself something at home.
Four days later, six thousand four hundred dollars vanished from my account. Two years of washing dishes, gone to her sorority dues. My mother's name was on the account, so it wasn't even illegal.
I didn't scream and I didn't beg. I went upstairs and clicked Accept on the full ride to MIT that had been sitting in my inbox for three days.
Nobody in that house ever wanted me. So I booked a one-way ticket, cut myself out of the family photo, and left my key on the shoe rack.
I wasn't coming back. Not for graduation. Not for any of them.

A horrific car crash left me paralyzed.
The doctors said I'd never walk again. With no family left, my Aunt Martha and Uncle Thomas took me to their isolated farmhouse.
They cared for me, promising their treatments would help me walk again. After everything I'd been through, I thought I'd finally found safety.
Until today, when the feeling in my legs suddenly came back—but something told me not to tell them.

They left me to freeze to death in our basement freezer.

The night before prom, my foster sister Leila came crying that I'd burned her Ivy League recommendation letter. My birth parents didn't even listen to one word of explanation—they threw me into that frozen hell in forty-five below.

I beat on that door until my fingers were shredded, screamed until my throat tore apart, but all I could hear from upstairs was their laughter celebrating Leila. Even Justin—the boy I'd loved since we were kids—texted calling me a fucking psycho.

As I drew my last breath, I heard Leila's soft voice outside the door: "Rest in peace, sister."

Now I'm a ghost, watching them lose their minds when the truth comes out.

When I was rushed to the ER with food poisoning, I heard the doctor shout, "We need to pump her stomach, now!"
But my mother, Catherine, calmly stopped the doctor's hand.
"No hurry," she said coldly. "Give her a sedative first."
My brother Austin panicked. "Mom! If you don't detox her, she could die!"
But my mother's voice was ruthless, low and sharp:
"If she dies, she dies. As long as her uterus is still warm, that's all that matters."
"Did you forget our plan? Sarah's transplant surgery is scheduled for tomorrow. If Elena wakes up now, what if she runs away?"
"Our priority is keeping her uterus safe for Sarah—not saving her life."
In that moment, the burn in my stomach was nothing compared to the chill in my heart.
I forced my eyes open and saw my brother—the one who'd always protected me—hesitate for a moment, then slowly let go of my hand.
"...Okay. You're right, Mom. Saving Sarah comes first."
The moment I closed my eyes, I made a decision: If I survived, this life would never belong to this family again.

My parents and twin sister faked their own deaths so she could steal my college acceptance.

I believed it. Sobbed until I couldn't breathe when the cops showed me photos of the burnt yacht. Thought my words—"I hope you all die"—had somehow made it happen.

Two weeks later, I found my sister's backup Instagram: "Finally ditched the boring sister! Bahamas is paradise 🏖"

Something inside me snapped.

Wanna play dead? Stay dead.

I took their death certificates. Canceled their social security numbers. Drained every joint account—every last cent. Sold the house to John, the kind of guy even cops don't mess with.

One month later, they came home tanned and loaded with designer bags, expecting to find me broken on the streets.

What greeted them instead were cold gun barrels pointed at their heads.

“Dad… please… help me…” I pleaded, my shattered ribs piercing my lungs, blood soaking the stretcher.
But Richard, the hospital's top surgeon and my biological father, didn't even glance at me. Instead, he rushed to the next bed.
“Don't be afraid, Chloe. I'm here,” he cooed to his stepdaughter, who merely had a tiny scratch on her arm. “Get the best equipment over here now!” he roared.
As the heart monitor flatlined and my soul left my broken body, I realized the chilling truth: in the choice between life and death, my father gladly let me die.

Not long after I transferred to this school, I became the bullies’ favorite target.
They didn’t like how quiet I was or how pale I looked, so they casually slapped me with a nickname: “vampire.”
It started with shoves in the hallway and jeers in the classroom, escalated to messing with my drink, then stuffing trash into my locker.
They treated my silence as permission and wrapped every provocation in the same excuse: “Just a joke.”
Until that night, when humiliation wasn’t enough. They lured me into a tiny storage room behind the auditorium—locked the door, killed the lights, set up a fixed camera—ready to strap me to a chair and film an “execution” video that would make sure I could never hold my head up at this school again.
What they didn’t know was that the nickname wasn’t a joke. It was the one time they got the truth right.
I really am a vampire.

I thought love was enough.
I thought saving the Ember Claw Pack with everything I had—my heart, my loyalty, even my body—meant something. It led to a Moon Ceremony… and a marriage to Alpha William, the man I gave my soul to.
But love doesn’t protect you from betrayal.
Especially not when the one he truly wanted was never me.
I was glowing with the joy of carrying our pup when I walked in on him—holding her.
Quinn.
The fated mate everyone believed to be dead. Alive. Back. In his arms.
And me? Just the mistake he settled for.
"I only married you out of gratitude," he said, barely meeting my eyes.
Then, turning to Quinn with a softness I never got, he added, "If she hadn’t sold her ancestral land to save the pack, I would’ve never completed the Moon Ceremony with her."
And the final blow?
"So what if she found out? I’ll just say I thought she was you that night we slept together."
That night—The one I thought meant everything.
But it didn’t end with him.

BLURB

My breath hitched, my chest heaving as Salvatore's finger thrust into my pussy. I clenched my teeth, my fingers squeezing the bedsheets as I shamelessly parted my legs even wider.

“Do you want me to stop?” His voice was a low growl.

“No,” I breathed. “Faster…please,” I moaned loudly.

I knew Salvatore's and my attraction to each other was forbidden; he was the heir to a wealthy family, and I was just a maid in his house. But I have had an attraction to him since I met him and couldn't control it.

We both couldn't.


Lyra Whitman is from a poor home and has faced constant bullying in school. She and her mother finally moved away to a new city, where they her mother works as a maid for the Sinclair's, one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the county.

Lyra cannot help but fall for their son, and she is surprised to see that he feels the same. Knowing the dangers of being together due to their different backgrounds, they are forced to navigate their relationship in secret.

For the three years since I returned to the Hart family, I had always been the wildly out-of-place “burden.”

Vivienne, the family’s beloved fake heiress, broke a contract on her own and provoked a local gang. She was taken hostage and tortured in an abandoned auto repair shop.

To save his precious sister, my brother, Ryan, did not hesitate to trade me to the gang in exchange for Vivienne.
“She’s a movie star, and you’re just a useless nobody. It’s only natural for you to take her place and suffer a little.”
He looked coldly at the gang members who were eyeing me like hungry wolves, and violently shoved me toward them.
“Tonight, she belongs to you.”

Right before they dragged me away, I managed to call my husband, Alex, begging for help. But he rejected me ruthlessly, acting as if my plea was some cheap scam:
“Stop playing the victim. Why would they ever hurt you? Hurry up and clean up this mess. Don't let a girl like Vivienne face those thugs all by herself.”

Bang.
The heavy iron doors of the gang’s hideout slammed shut.
There were no negotiations. What greeted me was a merciless rain of fists, my clothes brutally torn to shreds, and the blinding flashes of cameras.
Amidst the ultimate degradation, they took photos of me, pinched my jaw, and violated my dignity over and over again.

At 4:00 AM, I was tossed out onto the street in front of my own house like a piece of discarded trash.
Upon dragging myself inside, Vivienne immediately began dropping hints to the family, implying that I was the one who tricked her into signing the illegal gang contract.
My family cursed me, telling me to drop dead.
My heart plummeted into a bottomless abyss of darkness. Numbly swallowing the bloody foam pooling in my mouth, I let out a hoarse, broken laugh.

“Since my return was a mistake from the very beginning…”
“Then why didn’t they just let me die?”

At 17, I saved William from the black market.
At 22, he crossed half the globe to marry me with two million dollars.
I built his empire for him, turning him into the biggest arms dealer in the Americas.
Then Karen appeared, and our seven years turned to ashes.
I finally saw the truth:
The roses he gave me were the ones Karen had rejected.
His so-called love was nothing but a hypocritical act for money.
To him, I was just a prop for show, a tool for his business, and a machine for sex.

Six months ago, my parents started fostering a girl named Lila Mercer.
Six months ago, Mom repainted the guest room and strung fairy lights over the bed. My room still has the same furniture I've had since I was twelve.
Six months ago, Dad started coming home for Sunday dinner. Not for me. I'd been eating alone at the counter for years by then.
Six months ago, Mom posted a photo of the two of them at the farmers market. Caption: our family is growing. I saw it during third period and locked my phone hard enough to crack the case.
So when I picked up the family iPad tonight and a notification popped up from an app I didn't recognize, I wasn't shocked. Just tired of being right.
The app was called Beacon.

My family ignored my calls while I was dying in our basement. They thought I was trying to ruin my younger sister's graduation.
That night, my brother finally came looking for me. My sister wanted the cookies I used to bake for her.
I was right beside him when he demanded that I come home.
He couldn't hear me. My body was still downstairs.

I was dead, and the whole world was celebrating for my sister.

For twenty-two years, I had been the hardest-working but most invisible daughter in the Sterling family, forever living in the shadow of my gymnastics prodigy sister.

Running a high fever, I begged my family to take me to the hospital, only to hear: "Don't you DARE ruin Bella's award ceremony!"

When I was tricked into the abandoned equipment room and used my last breath to call my boyfriend while lying in a pool of blood, all I heard was: "Grace, quit the drama! Bella's accepting her award on stage!"

On stage, thunderous applause erupted as Bella lifted the "Young Gymnast of the Year" trophy.

And I drew my final breath.

When they returned home triumphant, thinking I had run away in a tantrum, they had no idea I was already dead right under their noses.

There are no unmated males in our pack.
Every she-wolf in Hollowfen is promised to someone when she turns eighteen. We just don't get to know who until we walk into the Choosing Hall.
Girls go in wearing white. They come out flushed, shaking, barely able to stand. Some laugh. Some cry. None of them talk about what happens inside.
My sister Thessaly turned eighteen this spring. Gran told her she couldn't attend the Choosing.
She went anyway. She came back on shaking legs, with blood between her thighs and a smile she couldn't wipe off her face.

My stepsister and I tumbled down the stairs together. As someone with a blood clotting disorder, my spleen ruptured—I was bleeding internally, desperate for surgery to stop it.
But my mother—the renowned chief of surgery—pulled every specialist from the ER. To consult on my stepsister's condition.
All she had was a sprained ankle. Not even a scratch. Yet mom insisted on running every test in the book. And me? Left alone on that cold floor, bleeding out, half my body already soaked in blood.
I clutched at her pants, begging her to save me. But she kicked my hand away and looked at me with pure disgust.
"Lily, are you really so desperate for a man's attention that you'd pull a cheap stunt like this? Your sister's foot is swollen—and you have the nerve to fake your death here?"
In the end, I died alone in a corner of that ignored ER.
But when they wheeled my cold body out of the morgue—and they finally learned about my clotting disorder—
That mother who claimed to hate me completely lost her mind.

I once believed that if I was obedient enough, my birth family would finally love me. Instead, they gave everything to Anna, the fake heiress—my competition spot, my reputation, even my kidney.
Then I opened my eyes and returned to the year it all began.
This time, I won’t beg. I won’t yield. My achievements, my dignity, and my life belong to me.
When everyone called me vicious, Damian Sterling draped his jacket over my shoulders and asked in a low voice, “Am I an outsider?”
I leaned into him and smiled. “Of course not.”
But soon I discovered he was being slowly poisoned—and the culprit might be someone closest to him. Worse, the truth behind my death in my previous life may be darker than I ever imagined…

1

The day he proposed, Atticus knelt before me, holding the Hale family's heirloom necklace.
I thought I had finally survived the ordeal.
After eight years of unrequited love, being humiliated by his sister, nitpicked by his mother, and mocked by the city's socialites for being unworthy of the Hales... Until this very moment, when he personally fastened the heirloom around my neck. Everyone saw it. I, Clara, was finally accepted by the Hale family.
Tears in my eyes, I said yes, thinking it was the happiest moment of my life.
But just days after putting on that necklace, bizarre red rashes crawled up my neck. My pale skin rotted away piece by piece, and my internal organs went into irreversible failure.
The most absurd part? The exact same day I started rotting, his dying mother miraculously cured her terminal illness, and his sister's half-destroyed face was restored to flawless perfection.
Disfigured and barely looking human, I threw myself off the Harbour Bridge—
I opened my eyes, and I was back on the day of the proposal.

Five years into living with my stepbrother Gideon, the scholarship girl he sponsored moved into our house.
To repay his "generosity," she made a habit of slipping into his bed at night. By day, she took it upon herself to "fix" my antisocial, withdrawn personality.
Three days before St. George Prep's graduation ceremony, she brought me a glass of juice wearing that nauseating sugar-sweet smile.
"You know, Charlotte, your peanut allergy is probably psychosomatic. You just need some exposure therapy. Let me help you get over it."
That night, my throat closed completely. She'd deliberately laced my drink with concentrated peanut extract.
I convulsed on the cold hardwood floor, vision tunneling as oxygen fled my lungs.
In the last second before darkness swallowed me whole, I clawed desperately toward the half-open door.
Standing in the hallway were my boyfriend Dylan and my stepbrother Gideon.
They simply watched me suffocate. Then Gideon calmly reached out and shut the door.
I died from anaphylactic shock.
Three months later, as a ghost tethered to this world, I watched her stride onto Stanford's campus. Wearing my clothes. Carrying my acceptance letter. Burning through my trust fund.
Through the crowd, I saw Gideon—my ice-cold, unreachable stepbrother—gently cradle her face and press his lips to hers.
Then I gasped awake.
I was back. Three days before graduation.