8884 Book(s) Related to a story exterior narrative is the

Adele Mayfield has spent her entire adult life chasing perfection on the ice as a figure skater. She's closer than ever to qualifying for Nationals, the one competition that could finally launch the career she has always dreamed about.

But when the man she thought she was building a future with squanders the money meant for their lease, her life begins to fall apart.

Evicted and out of options, Adele and her boyfriend Jayden have only one place left to turn: the penthouse belonging to his older stepbrother.

Vaughn Livingston. Hockey captain of the Stallions, one of the league's biggest teams, temporarily relocated to her city after a hazard left their arena unsafe for practice. Now Adele has to live with the very man she already shares a rink with.

He's supposed to feel like family. He doesn't. Every time she catches him watching her, she feels it everywhere she shouldn't, like the moment the apartment is empty, the moments when he doesn't care that she's off limits

It's entirely worng but her body doesn't seem to care. Every time Jayden walks out the door, Adele finds herself counting the hours until he's gone, and dreading the second Vaughn is alone with her, brother's girlfriend or not, she can feel exactly how madly he wants her

With Nationals closing in and his championship on the line, neither of them can afford this. Every stolen hour under his roof is a risk neither of their careers will survive if it comes out

One wrong move could cost Adele everything she's worked for. One more night could cost her the ability to stop.

Isabella Vaughn was poisoned by her husband Marcus and his lover Serena, dying in his arms for her pharma empire.
She awakens on her funeral day, reborn in the body of Lila Harrington, the dazzling heiress engaged to Julian Blackwood, heir to her family’s fiercest rival.
With a new face and enemy access, Isabella vows revenge. But Julian notices the change: sharper eyes, hidden secrets.
Trapped pretending to love the man who might see through her, her vengeance could destroy them both.

On the eve of the World Championship, my head coach's wife drugged me.
She personally destroyed my throwing arm and gave my starting jersey to her new substitute lover.
Even to "maintain the body" for that cheater, she disregarded my life and forcibly drained 1200 ml of my rare blood type.
She confidently declared, "In less than three days, he'll be crawling back to me like a dog."
I didn't make a scene; I calmly signed the divorce papers and dialed the number of that billionaire heiress.
Later, her cheating lover was disgraced and kicked out of the team.
She traveled halfway around the world, knelt at my wedding, and plunged a knife into her chest, begging me to come back.
I just coldly watched the security guards drag her away:
"Hurry up, don't dirty my wife's estate."

My mate walked out of our son’s birthday party for his old flame.
Then he gave her child the protection charm he had made for ours.
So I gave my son thirty days to stop waiting for a father who never came.
On day twenty-eight, Eli looked Gavin in the eye and called him Alpha.
On day thirty, our mate bond would be gone.
Gavin thought we would always be there when he came home.
He didn’t start chasing us until our plane was already in the sky.

When I was injured and hospitalized, my husband, Adrian Hale, was still giving me the silent treatment over his ex-girlfriend.
 
During our worst fight, he told me, "If Vanessa and I wanted to be together, you never would have become Mrs. Hale."
 
After that, I became the kind of wife he'd always claimed to want. I stopped asking questions. I stopped checking when he would be home. I stopped arguing when Vanessa called.
 
Yet, that was when Adrian began reporting every detail of his day, avoiding Vanessa, and trying to come home early. On my birthday, he canceled a trip to Europe and flew back overnight to surprise me.
 
I should have been moved.
 
Instead, I hid in the kitchen and whispered to my best friend, "We're getting divorced. Why is he going to all this trouble?"
 
She laughed. "Adrian Hale is rich, gorgeous, and finally acting like a husband. Are you sure you won't regret leaving him?"
 
I thought about it.
 
"No," I said. "I think I'll finally be able to breathe."
 
Something dropped to the floor behind me.
 
I turned. Adrian was standing in the doorway, looking completely ashen.

During the SATs, someone in the exam room went completely mad, screaming about a freezing apocalypse and ghouls eating everyone in the world. Everyone laughed at him, but I was the only one frozen in shock.
Because the pendant on my chest, which could warn me of danger, was emitting an unprecedented, blazing alarm...

On a storm-stranded island villa, Clara Hayes wakes after a vicious bachelorette party to find four women dead—among them her former best friend, bride-to-be Vivian Sterling. Branded the obvious killer, the discarded ex must fight a locked-room mystery, class prejudice, and a carefully staged narrative as buried trauma, betrayal, and revenge surface through rain-soaked glass, shattered flutes, burned letters, and one untouched bottle of soda.

Ever since Her Majesty the Queen fell gravely ill, the entire dragon realm had been teetering on the brink of collapse.
In that precarious moment, it was I who held the throne together, heartbroken yet unyielding.
I depleted my magic without reservation to repair the realm's protective barriers, working through endless nights to brew life-sustaining elixirs for the Queen.
Yet when the Dragon Legion finally drove back the abyssal demons, what awaited me wasn't victory—it was a fatal blade.
My magic was shredded apart. The soul core in my chest was ripped out by a pair of familiar hands.
In my final moments, I saw the face of the one holding the knife.
My newly wedded husband, Drystan.
And beside him, pulled tight against his chest, was my half-sister Vespera.
"You're brilliant, Vespera." Drystan turned the faintly glowing core over in his palm. "A single forged love letter, and this fool willingly died defending our dying realm. Now even her core is mine."
Vespera nestled against him, emerald eyes glittering with greed. "Once you absorb this power, we'll return to the throne together. You'll still be the Empire's Crown Prince, and I'll wear the Crown Princess's coronet. As is only right."
Amid this sickening pledge of betrayal, I drew my last breath.
When I opened my eyes again, cold gray stone vaulting stared back at me.
I had returned to the day news of Drystan's death in battle reached the capital.
One glance toward the corner of the great hall told me everything.
That man stood there wearing a cold iron mask, posing as my dear sister Vespera's sworn personal knight.
You want to drain me dry? Steal my soul core?
Dream on.

Our mother died broke. Three months later Camilla Castellano drove down to Atlantic City and offered to take my sister and me into her family.
One of us she would adopt. Her name, her money, her protection for life.
The other would marry her only son, the man who runs that family after her.
We had to pick that night, before either of us had laid eyes on him.
My sister picked first, and she picked daughter. The wife's the one they shoot at, she said. And a woman that rich doesn't come shopping in a place like this unless something is badly wrong with her boy.
Nothing was wrong with her boy.
So I got the son my sister didn't want, and Rafe Castellano spent three years sure I had worked my way to him on purpose. He took the family's accounts off me and handed them to my sister. He told a room full of people that a life with me turned his stomach.
Two weeks before the wedding, I asked his mother to change the bride.
He didn't believe me. He wouldn't come to the church. He signed the license without reading the name above his own.
He lifted the veil that night to tell me he was sorry.
I wasn't the one underneath it.

After five years in a long-distance relationship, I boarded a more than 10-hour flight without telling him, touched down in the city where he lived, all to give him a surprise.
Hardly had my phone connected to the local network when I scrolled across a post pushed to my feed from the same city.
The title read: What’s the thing you’ve done that you’ve never regretted for a single second?
The top comment stared back at me, sharp and unmistakeable:
I got him drunk and slept with him on the day we graduated college. Back then, he promised his girlfriend he’d never see me again, but his heart softens the moment I cry. Now our kid is 4 years old, and I’m pregnant with our second baby!
The comments below were flooded with questions, and someone asked outright: OP, are you the other woman?
She replied with unapologetic audacity: The one who isn’t loved is the real homewrecker. Besides, that woman was abducted and molested before. She’s long been tainted, and she never deserved him in the first place.
My fingers began to shake uncontrollably. Every single detail lined up perfectly with my own life.
Desperate to calm my heart, which felt like it was about to hammer out of my chest, I stepped into a roadside convenience store to buy a bottle of water.
The second I looked up at the checkout counter, the blood in my veins turned to ice in an instant.
The woman standing beside the cash register was none other than Su Miaomiao—the same woman who’d lain in the same hotel bed with Lu Sinian on that night of our college graduation.
My feet felt nailed to the floor as I watched her walk out of the store with a smile on her face.
The very next second, she threw herself into the arms of a man across the street, tilting her head up to kiss him in a sweet, lingering embrace.
That man was Lu Sinian. My husband. The man I’d legally married, the man I’d spent five years in a long-distance relationship with, the man who’d vowed over and over again to love me and protect me.

When I was nine months pregnant, my husband, Torin, forced doctors to extract my baby's cord blood to save his ex-wife's son. My baby died of suffocation ten minutes after birth, right before my eyes.
Instigated by his biological mother, my stepson sneaked into my room late at night and poured silver powder all over me. My skin rotted; the scars would last forever.
Later, the hospital ward caught fire, cutting off my escape. On the brink of life and death, Torin glanced back at me, scooped up his ex-wife, and walked into the safe zone without looking back.
Even later, he knelt in the ruins, hands dripping with blood, digging through the rubble brick by brick.
Until his subordinate stepped up behind him and choked out, "Alpha... we found the Luna's body."

On Thanksgiving, I take an emergency mansion cleaning gig to cover my rent. The second I step into the master bedroom, I freeze. Hanging on the wall is a huge wedding photo. The groom is my husband — but the bride beside him is not me.
Liam has built an entire secret family. Worse still, my own parents and brother happily join his fake perfect life. Even my beloved young son has grown attached to another woman. When my husband finally confronts me and reveals another devastating truth, I leave with a broken heart.
Years later, when my ex-husband and all those traitors come crawling to beg for mercy, I will never soften for them again.

We both married the wrong men. It killed us both.

My past life was hell—my violent temper disgusted gentle Alpha Ashen, his weakness suffocated me. We were toxic together. Meanwhile, my sweet sister Elena married brutal Alpha Karl of Dark Moon Pack, only to get slowly tortured by his manipulative childhood sweetheart until she couldn't take it anymore and jumped.

Now I'm back. Wedding day. White dress. Same disasters waiting.

I tear off the veil and storm to Elena's room: "We're switching places."

She gets the gentle Alpha who'll worship her kindness. I get the ruthless bastard and his scheming little princess.

Let's see how that scheming bitch handles a Luna who fights back.

Here is the English translation, tailored to match the gritty, dramatic, and satisfying tone typical of apocalyptic revenge web novels:

In my previous life, I was drained to the bone by the so-called "Doomsday Evolution System," forced to watch as my best friend and fiancée stepped over my corpse to scavenge my supplies.

When I opened my eyes again, I had regressed to exactly three days before the apocalypse. When that faint blue, glowing "cheat" materialized once more, I decisively took a step back, watching my enemies fanatically claim it for themselves. They thought they had grasped the key to ruling the doomsday. Little did they know, they had just swallowed a parasite that would devour its host.

Then, the extreme cold descended, and toxic spores blotted out the sky.

Using my knowledge of the future, I struck a deal with a female black-market boss, packing an underground bunker with tons of supplies and heavy firepower. Sipping hot coffee in front of the control room monitors, I sat back and enjoyed the show. I watched my enemies be systematically stripped of their sanity, sacrifice their companions, and ultimately degenerate into mindless, mutated lumps of flesh driven only by base instincts.

In this man-eating apocalypse, I refuse to touch any bizarre parasitic "gifts." Thick alloy doors and an endless supply of ammunition—that is the only true law of survival in the wasteland.

Three years ago, my fiancé Asher stole my project achievements for his white moonlight Chloe and abandoned me cruelly.
Three years later, he returned arrogantly, ordering me to tidy up my villa, accept his mistress, and humble myself to apologize. He even humiliated me with a mistress contract.
A vicious supporting female system suddenly bound to me, forcing me to fawn on Asher, yield to Chloe, and end up miserable and jealous according to the fixed script.
But I refused to submit to fate.
I only want a peaceful and free life with my husband and my daughter.
I have never been a side character in anyone’s story. I am my own sole protagonist.

I built my husband Evan's Hollywood acting empire alongside him, and we kept our marriage hidden from the public. I once believed our bond was unbreakable. Until I checked his car's navigation history.
For an entire year, every Wednesday night, my movie-star husband lied about working overnight film shoots. When I followed the GPS route to its destination, I found the apartment of his rival actress, Leah.
Then I found more lies. It was only after I vanished completely that Evan realized what he had lost. But by then, I was no longer the woman he left behind.
Some secrets exposed by GPS can never be erased. Some women can never be found again.

For two years my mother told the whole town that my sister Zoe was in a hospital in Switzerland.
She shut the heat off in my room with a wrench, because Zoe's ward is kept at sixty-five degrees. My dinner was always cold, because Zoe can't keep solid food down. I never got a birthday cake, because Zoe hasn't had one since she was seventeen.
The day I won the state 1600, she pulled the medal off my neck in the parking lot and didn't say one word the whole drive home. Then she walked me down to the basement, dropped it on the floor, and ground it under her heel until the ribbon came apart. She took a picture of it lying there. I'll send this to your sister. So she knows her little sister is keeping her company.
She came back down that night with a pair of garden shears. I fought her. She got a fistful of my hair, put my head over her knee, and cut it all off, because chemo took Zoe's.
Then I found something down there my mother never meant me to see.
My sister isn't where she said. And she isn't sick.

I was once known as "The Divine Hand," the youngest Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery in history.

I didn't just perform surgeries, I invented them. However, after a high-profile operation on my own mentor went tragically wrong, leaving him in a vegetative state, my mother made me swear a blood oath.

“Your hands bring both life and ruin. Never touch a scalpel again, or the guilt will consume you forever.”

I traded my surgical scrubs for a floral apron. I married Lucian, a famous business tycoon my mother had selected.

For five years, I spent my days in the kitchen, meticulously preparing meals that were precisely calibrated medicinal formulas that cured his heart murmur and made him the top-performing executive in the city.

However, on our fifth anniversary, Lucian didn't bring flowers or gifts. Instead, he threw the divorce papers on my face with Leslie, the glamorous "Star Surgeon" of the year, by his side, her hands wrapped around his arms like she owned him.

Lucian sneered, "Lesley operates on kings and CEOs. You? You can't even look at a drop of blood without fainting. You’re a liability to my social standing."

“Sign the papers and I'll give you two hundred dollars every month as your monthly allowance. Considering your lifestyle, that's more than you ever need.” He mocked.

I stared at the divorce papers in my hands. This was what he was paying me for being a submissive wife.

"I’ll sign," I said, "and I’ll let you keep the house and the stocks. But only if Lesley can correctly identify the three hidden toxins I’ve neutralized in your body over the last five years using only the meals you mocked me for cooking.”

“If she’s the 'genius' you claim, surely she can diagnose the man she's sleeping with.”

Becky and I had been best friends since elementary school—inseparable until we both got into this top university and became roommates.
We used to lie in our dorm beds, staring at the ceiling, and swear an oath: when we got married, the gap between our weddings would never exceed one week.
I waited for Steven for four full years.
From freshman year to senior spring, I ghostwrote his papers, nursed his drunk stomach, and endured the rotating cast of girls who always seemed to need him.
Until the night Becky got proposed to—when the whole crowd egged Steven on to drop a knee too, he flung my hand away without a second thought, all because Claire, some sophomore, let out a shriek.
"Not now, Rachel. Claire's hurt. Can you not make this about you for once?"
That was all he left me with before he scooped her up and melted into the crowd.
What he didn't know was that there would never be a "not now" again.
In seven days, I'd be walking down the aisle in a wedding dress, just as promised.
Only the groom—wouldn't be him.

Every herb in Moonspring, I had coaxed to life myself, drop by drop, with a healer's touch.
But to my mate, Rourke, the place was just a backyard for his best friend Boone to use and wreck however he pleased.
I had put up with it for a long time.
I put up with it until Boone, planning his own mating ceremony, trampled half a year of my work into the mud right in front of me. I put up with it until Rourke forced me to my knees through our mate mark, just so his friends wouldn't see him lose face.
In three days, Boone would hold the grandest mating ceremony the pack had ever seen, right here in Moonspring.
And I looked at the land transfer I had just agreed to, and said a single word.

On my wedding day, I ran, still in my wedding dress not because I wanted to, but because my mother had a car accident.
By the time I got to the hospital, Lucia Vitale, Finn’s mother, threw a five-million-dollar check at me and told me to leave her son.
Before I could even respond, the door was kicked open.
Finn stood in the doorway.
He raised his phone and played a forged recording.
“My mom needs the money… I know I’m not good enough for him… I’ll leave him…”
He didn’t listen to my explanation.
He dragged me out of the hospital room, shoved me into a car, and took me to the Vitale estate on Long Island.
The room he locked me in had bars on the windows.
There were listening devices hidden in the walls.
“You’re my wife,” he said coldly.
“What’s the difference between a wife and a prisoner?”
For six months, I endured his imprisonment and endured him bringing women to the room next to mine.
The women he brought home.
Every night, their moans echoed through the walls.
Meanwhile, Finn was on a private island, celebrating his mistress Isabella Moretti’s birthday.
A forty-million-dollar island.
A heart lit up in the sky by drones.
Isabella said,“he never loved you. You were just a mistake.”
I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold on.
But I knew one thing: escape, or face death.

During routine rounds, I never gave Linus Crewe a second thought. Nineteen years old, diagnosed with persistent hallucinatory disorder, just another trust fund kid tossed into the psych ward like garbage by his own family.
But that day, he locked eyes with me and claimed that the moment his skin touched someone else's, he could see their deepest, darkest secrets.
I scoffed. As a female doctor who married into money, harbored a thirst for revenge, and kept a secret lover on the side, someone seeing through my facade was my ultimate nightmare.
I thought he was just playing mind games.
Until he recounted, word for word, things even my husband didn't know. He just smiled and said: Then tell me, Dr. Hollister... why is your heart racing when you look at me?

This was the most miserable Christmas I had ever experienced.
On Christmas Eve night, my husband brought his mistress home and demanded that I, his pregnant wife, leave with nothing.
On this day, I lost my husband and also lost the child in my womb...

They pulled my husband Beckett’s car out of the Avery River at four in the morning.
I was sitting in the reception area of the Ardenvale police station, having waited all night. Everyone thought I was just the pathetic wife—the one who had been humiliated at her mother-in-law’s birthday banquet, went home early, and panicked when her husband never returned.
No one knew that from the moment I dialed 911, this was exactly the news I had been waiting for.
He was dead. And I was the one who made it happen.

On the night my grandmother died, my husband Kael came home trailing blood.
His leather motorcycle jacket was soaked dark red, yet he flashed a savage grin: "I wiped the floor with those bastards tonight!"
For three years, he had treated our home as nothing more than a pit stop between reckless street races.
I’d finally had enough. "After the funeral, we're getting a divorce."
Before the words fully left my mouth, my phone rang. It was his riding partner, Lunn, his voice choking with sobs: "Sera... Kael drove off the cliff tonight. They only recovered bloody pieces of his helmet!"
But the "dead man" was standing right in front of me...

I am a princess of the deep sea. For love, I abandoned my crown and used ocean magic to help him rise from a penniless sailor to a duke of immense wealth.

On our tenth wedding anniversary, he slapped me in front of all the guests, tore the Ocean Crown from my head to place it on his mistress, and ripped away my reverse scales: "I'm sick of this freakish marriage to a monster!" Blood flowed down the coral cuts, and my unborn child miscarried in the humiliation.

The moment the first reverse scale fell from my chest, I forgot our first kiss. At the same time, his three gold-laden ships mysteriously sank on the windless sea.

The Abyssal Pact has been activated: seven reverse scales correspond to seven memories. With each scale that falls, I forget him a little more, while he loses all the wealth he gained through me.

I was once the "Abyss Sovereign" who made the entire dark world tremble.

To protect her, I willingly buried my true name and spent five years as a humble mechanic in a wealthy family.

I swallowed countless cold stares and humiliations, seeking only a moment of peace.

But these fools, for the sake of family interests, dared to push her to the brink of destruction!

Since retreat only invites further aggression, I have no choice but to don once more that blood-stained crown.

When my steel torrent crashed through the manor gates, those privileged elites who once trampled me underfoot could only tremble desperately in the mud!

My husband often made me suffer for the sake of my younger sister, even divorcing me because of her.
My parents gave all their love to my sister and neglected me.
My husband and parents even had my sister perform surgery on me.
But they didn't know that my sister had no idea how to perform surgery.
It didn't matter though, because I no longer cared.
On Christmas Day, when they were celebrating, they finally remembered me.
But I was already dead.

For five years, I had turned Preston Tanner from a broke kid who could barely afford tuition into one of Silicon Valley's hottest young founders.
I thought we would do exactly what we had promised back in that garage—take our AI healthcare startup public, ring the opening bell together, and get married.
Until today.
At the product launch that would determine whether we landed our Series A, Preston stood before the press and credited the core algorithm patent I had spent seventy-two sleepless hours developing to a girl who couldn't even write Python.
"Sloane, you're already my fiancée," he said. "Willow needs this patent to strengthen her green-card application."
Staring at his utterly self-righteous face, I felt sick.
I didn't know when it had happened, but somewhere along the way, he had rotted from the inside out.
And if he was rotten, it was time to throw him away.

Seven years of deep affection, expectations with a pregnant belly, and all I got was his betrayal in marriage and false promises. I gambled my youth and sincerity, only to end up with an absurd scam. After waking up, we owe each other nothing and will have no more ties.

I've been to four weddings. I never made it through a single one.
Not because I didn't love enough. Not because they weren't good enough. It was because every time — right at the moment I was supposed to say I do — my parents would appear on cue, fall apart on cue, and burn everything to the ground on cue.
For years I thought they hated me. Thought they'd given all their love to my dead sister, Claudia, and had nothing left. Then my brother-in-law said something that cracked me open: Any one of those three men — if you'd married him, you wouldn't be alive today.
So which is it? Were they protecting me, or destroying me?

Four years ago, Giovanni dumped me in front of everyone at an upscale restaurant. Two weeks later, he was engaged to Rosanna. I made a fool of myself begging on his doorstep, became the laughingstock of Ferro City.
Four years later, he runs into me at Casa Valentino, assumes I'm destitute, and offers me a job as a cleaner for him.
What he doesn't know is that the plainly dressed woman standing before him is the wife of Don Alessandro Valentino—the man the entire underworld bows to.

Since I was ten, he told me to call him brother. But brothers don't look at you like that.
My life had only Daniel Wilson in it. He was my guardian, my savior, my world.
"Call me brother," he said, but he forbade me from dating anyone else. He kept me in his manor like a bird in a gilded cage. He promised that when I turned twenty-one, the title of "sister" would change to "wife."
I waited. I obeyed. I loved him with a devotion that bordered on obsession.
But on my twenty-first birthday, he brought her home.
"Julie, meet Lena. She's... special to me."
He introduced his childhood crush to me, his "sister," while holding her hand. The way he looked at her was soft, gentle—the way he used to look at me before she arrived.
"You're just a foster sister," he reminded me coldly when I cried. "Don't cross the line."
The line? He blurred the lines for twelve years! He made me dependent on him, made me believe we were destined, only to discard me when the "real" owner of his heart returned.
Fine. If I'm just a sister, then I'll leave.
But why is he chasing me now, begging me to come back, saying he can't sleep without me in the house?
"I'm not your sister anymore, Daniel. And I'm certainly not your wife."

"I, Dominic Thorne, hereby reject you as my fated mate." Those words shattered my soul in front of the entire pack. Eighteen years old, and I still couldn't complete a full shift—the "defective reject" everyone loved to mock. But what nobody knew was the monster sleeping inside me. When a stranger with golden eyes found me bleeding in the forest and whispered, "You're not broken. You're something the world hasn't seen in a thousand years," I realized my rejection was only the beginning. Something ancient is waking up inside me. And it's hungry.

For 300 days, Wendy Bailey believed she was building a family. An orphan who finally found love, she swallowed her husband's "pregnancy vitamins" like sacred vows—until she overheard the truth.

She wasn't a wife. She was a womb.

Aaron Hill's real plan: extract his heir, then bury her in a mental institution—clearing the throne of Mrs. Hill for his precious first love, Aria.

"Once she's on the delivery table, she dies after giving birth."

He wanted a son. He wanted her gone.

But Wendy already dialed the clinic. The abortion is scheduled.

Now the bleeding orphan he treats like a dog is about to teach the Hill dynasty a lesson: a vessel can shatter—and take everything down with it.

How much will it cost Aaron when he realizes he destroyed the only woman who ever truly loved him?

Revenge is coming. And it's wearing his ring.

Elroy has severe OCD. In the ten years we've been together, he's never allowed me to eat in his car.
On our tenth anniversary, we made plans to watch the stars together.
But just as I reached the mountaintop, my phone rang—it was him.
"Something came up at work. I can't make it tonight. You go ahead and enjoy the view."
The moment he hung up, I saw his female classmate's post about returning to the country.
Catalina was sitting in his passenger seat, holding a half-eaten piece of cake in her hands.
【Someone was afraid I'd get hungry coming back so late, so he specially brought me this little cake～】
Another picture showed Catalina's shoes—still on—planted firmly on the passenger seat.
【He says I'm the only exception to his OCD～ I can do whatever I want in his car, hehe.】
I looked up at the twinkling stars above me, a bitter smile tugging at my lips.
This was the tenth time he'd abandoned me.
Every single anniversary without fail, this "female classmate" of his would show up.
I once tried to gently tell him: "I don't want to be interrupted like this every time."
Elroy looked at me with displeasure. "Interrupted? Catalina is my friend. Can you not be so petty?"
The cold wind howled across the mountaintop. Catalina's words stuck in my heart like a thorn, stinging until my eyes grew wet.
After ten years, I'm done with this relationship.

I would often find myself staring into my son Leon's eyes, lost in thought.
One, a deep azure blue, was inherited from his father. The other, however, was amber.
I couldn't understand it. While Leon's lineage is indeed mixed, his other eye should have been silver—the mark of my bloodline, the symbol of the royal werewolf lineage.
Yet it wasn't. This question had haunted me for five years.
Then, by chance, I came across an ancient book in my husband Carlisle's study. It detailed the hereditary rules of eye color for the royal werewolf line:
Regardless of which race they intermarry with, the direct descendants of the royal werewolves will always inherit at least one distinctive eye.
This meant that a son I bore would definitely have silver pupils.
My hands began to tremble uncontrollably. I shared my fear—that we might have brought home the wrong child—with Carlisle.
He flew into a rage, snatched the book from my hands, and threw it into the fireplace.
"Selene, are you doubting my fidelity? Or suspecting that our son isn't your own? If Leon knew you doubted him, his heart would be shattered."
Carlisle stormed out, slamming the door behind him. Watching his retreating figure, my heart grew cold, piece by piece.
His reaction confirmed my worst fear, the one I desperately wanted to deny.
With the full moon just seven days away, I decided to abandon the plan of taking Leon back to the royal werewolf clan.

“End the ceremony,” Prince Kael ordered, his cloak wrapped around another woman’s shoulders.

Our six-year-old son stood beneath the moon glass, wings trembling, the royal binding already burning under his skin. If the ritual stopped now, Rowan could be scarred for life.

Kael did not even look at him.

So I picked up the sacred blade and pressed it to the bond mark in my palm.

“You wanted freedom,” I said. “Take it.”

"Stay in the apartment," he said, straightening his tie as I fixed his collar. "I'll be back tonight." Then he walked out the door — straight to his wedding. What he didn't know was that my flight was already booked.
For three years I was his canary: locked in a penthouse, the only woman he let close when he bled, forgotten the moment another woman entered the room. I watched him let her wipe the blood from his face. I lost our child alone on a cold floor. I apologized to the woman who destroyed my mother's watch.
I was done waiting.
When the bells of Saint Patrick's rang out across Manhattan, he was welcoming his bride — and I finally flew out of my cage.

"Brielle, I need money... My bone cancer is worse. Without treatment, I won't make it past next month."

For Cole's words, I gave up everything—my billionaire father, my inheritance, my name. I became a crime scene cleaner, the most degrading job in New York.

Twenty hours a day, I scrubbed blood and rotting flesh off apartment floors. I even sold my own blood. All to save the man I loved.

One million dollars. Finally, I had it.

I rushed to the five-star hotel, clutching the warm check in my trembling hands. Pushed open the presidential suite door.

And froze.

Cole—healthy, glowing, dressed in an expensive suit—knelt before Delilah, New York's newest socialite. A diamond ring glittered between his fingers.

"Babe, that corpse-smelling idiot sent more money today," he laughed. "That bag you wanted? Let's go buy it right now."

The check fell from my hands.

Something inside me shattered.

And something darker took its place.

Terminal. One month, maybe less.
I folded the report and put it in my bag. The doctor asked if there was family I could call. I told him there wasn't.
My husband rang while I was crouched against the hospital wall, waiting for the pain to pass. I could hear waves behind his voice. He didn't ask what the doctor said. He wanted to know why his money hadn't come through yet. His first love needed it for her art show.
So I sent him all of it. My savings, and the last of what my mother left me. Ten years, settled in one transfer.
Then my legs went, and a pair of freezing hands caught me before I hit the ground.
The pain stopped the second he touched me.
"Your kind calls us reapers. Give me your soul, and I'll keep the pain off you until the end."
Weston took one look at him and decided I'd hired an actor to make him jealous.
He thinks I'm trying to win him back.

The last thing I did before I died was lick dew off a rusted pipe.
Ninety days earlier, my fiancé Bastien promised he'd come back for me. He said three months in the Sahara would teach me not to be jealous of Posey—the girl I'd pulled from a refugee camp and raised as my own sister.
He didn't know the water ran out in the first week. He didn't know bandits broke my bones. He didn't care enough to find out.
While I lay dying on a rotting bed with a shattered leg, he was in Manhattan, sliding a pink diamond onto Posey's finger.
I died alone. But I didn't stay gone.
My soul followed a stolen necklace across the ocean, right back to his penthouse—just in time for the engagement party, the champagne toast, and the moment my body arrived at the door.

My name is Charles Cole, a blind lactation therapist.
Of course, apart from pretending to be blind, all my skills are genuine.
Ophelia sat on the bed and slowly took off her top right in front of me, her beautiful figure revealing its spring allure under the golden warm sunlight.
“Mr. Cole, let's begin!”
I nodded, reaching forward with both hands, yet I didn't dare show the slightest unusual expression on my face.
The reason was simple: Ophelia's husband, Russell, was standing coldly right behind me at that moment.

In her past life, she gave everything to her brothers, but all they saw was the fake heiress. They even went as far as turning her life into a living hell for the sake of that imposter, leaving her to die in agony.

Reborn and unyielding, she cut all ties with her family and set her sights on revenge.

Want her to return to the family?

Not a chance! She’s already had a whirlwind marriage and transferred her name to a disabled tycoon’s registry!

Want her to call them "brother"?

As if!

Let them cry, let them regret, let them beg for forgiveness—she’d just laugh in their faces!

Let them suffer, let them kneel, let their world fall apart—she’d be front row, popcorn in hand.

I once believed that my inability to bear children was my original sin.
So I endured my Alpha husband Ethan’s excessive favoritism toward our“old friend,” Lyra,
and swallowed the growing hatred of our adopted son, Lucas.

Until our eighth marking anniversary, when I obtained irrefutable proof—
Confirmed: Lyra is the biological mother of Lucas.

That very night, Lyra sent me a “family portrait” of the three of them.

Letter by letter, I typed my reply:
May the Moon Goddess bless you.

Ethan kicked the door open in fury.
Lucas called me a “bad mom.”

In that moment, my heart died—and with it came a strange calm.

I took out the long-sealed mate bond termination agreement and placed it on the table.

“I’ve already signed the last page,” I said evenly. “If you have any questions, my lawyer will contact you.”

When Alpha Asher’s first love, Daphne, started putting on a show again, I wasn’t surprised.
Instead, I quietly sat beside his best friend, Alpha Lycan.
When they weren’t around, Alpha Lycan and I ended up sleeping together.
As I sank into waves of heated pain, I couldn’t help but think—no wonder people love affairs.
Because of a party game, Alpha Asher was forced to post on Instagram: “I’ll only ever love Daphne.”
I told him I wanted to break the bond.
“All because of a silly post?”
“Yes. Hurry up—I’m getting married to someone else. Don’t waste my time.”

With one week left until the wedding, Henry Jones asked me to reschedule the date—for one simple reason:
“On our wedding day, I’m taking Ann to the hospital for her prenatal checkup.”
Ann is the widow of his brother Ethan. She’s also my half-sister. In that private room, they laughed at me for being “almost thirty and desperate to get married.”
Ann put on an innocent face. “If Rory is really in such a rush… I can reschedule my appointment.”
I wanted to break up, and Henry frowned as he lectured me:
“As her future sister-in-law, why do you have to fight her over this one day?”
I asked him, “Do you even remember what Friday is?”
He coaxed me softly: “One day earlier or later—what’s the difference?” I nodded and said “Fine,” thinking I could still swallow it.
Until I pressed my fingerprint to enter his office and overheard Ann questioning him about inheritance, and Henry answered under his breath, “It won’t come to that—I won’t let Rory get pregnant with my child.”

Sebastion Drakos has been a selfish man all his life. For so long he put his needs above all those who he protects as the Alpha of The Redwood Pack. All for the love of an unworthy woman. Now with her gone, it leaves Sebastion to raise the son she gave him. For Jace, he will do anything.

Irina Belova is a slave. Vicktor is her master and a monster. Irina's daughter is her master's pawn. He uses her child to keep her in line. Vicktor is sending her on a mission. Irina is to spy on Sebastion, then trap him. Vicktor wants the mighty Alpha for his collection.

Fate may have plans for these two. They have children that they will do anything for. Each has a past they want to atone for. Can they survive the storm that is coming? Will Sebastion find his redemption? Will Irina find her freedom? Or will the forces working against all supernatural creatures keep them from achieving what they both want?

Mature Content Warning
18+ Readers
Drama Series

The cover of this book was made by fellow writer KeyKirita
The title of this book was the help of fellow writer Marii Solaria
Both writers have helped me greatly

Gathering Shadows Novels:
Book 1: Her Returned Mate
Book 2: His Redemption

（There is a lot of sexual and stimulating content, minors are not allowed to read!!!）
She prepared for pregnancy and did her best to take care of her drunken husband.
Afterwards, her husband kicked her out, simply because his first love had returned.
After the divorce, she made it to the cover of Time magazine, reaching the peak of her life.
Her ex-husband pursued her all the way to the Civil Affairs Bureau, whispering tenderly, "Will you remarry me?"