1473 Book(s) Related to i feel pretty west side story lyrics

Every July, my husband left for a business trip to France—so for seven full years of marriage, we never once got to celebrate our wedding anniversary.
This time, I flew all the way to France to surprise him, and mid-flight, I stumbled across a social media post.
My dream girl finally agreed to be with me. How do I make the frumpy, worn-out wife back home file for divorce on her own?
The OP poured out his grievances in the comment section:
When my dream girl suddenly moved abroad, I married her former best friend to keep me company through the hard times, just so I wouldn’t lose touch with her completely.
Now she’s finally said yes to being with me, and I’ve made enough to give her the lavish, privileged life she deserves.
I want my wife to find out about my affair herself so I can get a clean divorce without a fight, but she’s so painfully oblivious. I’ve come home reeking of my dream girl’s perfume on purpose, and every single July I fly here to France for our private time together, watching the lavender bloom in Provence with her. She never noticed a thing.
Perfume. July. France.
Those matching details made my fingers go numb. A deafening buzz exploded in my skull. A bone-deep chill washed over me, and I prayed with everything I had that it was all just a terrible coincidence.
Until I read the final line.
Just got a spending alert from her supplementary credit card—she bought a flight to France. I’m heading to pick up my dream girl now, might as well keep an eye out for her, just in case.
The plane touched down. When I stepped into the arrivals hall, I lifted my head almost instinctively.
There stood Shen Sinian, the man I hadn’t seen in two weeks, in a crisp, tailored suit, a bouquet of roses in his hand, locked in a passionate kiss with a woman with a stunning, willowy figure, her back to me.
He opened his eyes by chance, and through the crowd of travelers, his gaze locked directly with mine.

"I need an accident—one that looks fatal," I said calmly into the encrypted phone. "It's the only way to escape him."
Rumors swirl that this man—the underworld boss who controls half of Europe’s shadow economy—loves me beyond reason.
They say he defied his entire family for me. That this ruthless killer laid down his weapons just to cook me a meal.
For years, he made the world believe I was his one weakness—and even I almost believed it.
But instinct in a life-or-death moment doesn’t lie.
When bullets shattered the car window, he yanked the steering wheel on reflex—shielding my adopted sister in the passenger seat while leaving me, his wife, fully exposed to the hail of gunfire.
As I lay bleeding, desperately trying to protect our unborn child… he was busy cradling her in his arms.
While I endured everything for our future, he signed over the estate—the one he promised would be our retire place—to that lying sister.
That’s when I knew: some loves are just performances for the living.
So I gave him exactly what he wanted.
I left behind a positive pregnancy test—six weeks along—and drove straight into the deep ocean, staging the most brutal finale right before his eyes.

I’d spent six years working under an alias for the High Council.
The day I came home, I happened to see my daughter being slapped by a woman and forced to kneel down.
I slapped the woman back and called my husband, Derek.
The call connected. In the background, I heard his newlywed wife giggling.
In a voice so cold I barely recognized it, he said, “No one can save you.”
Then he hung up.

That woman sneered, “Here, even the air you breathe belongs to Alpha Derek!”
She had no idea Derek only went from an ordinary Gamma to a Pack king because I’d been laying the road for him from behind the curtain.
Now he had his precious wife and son in his arms, and he still let them treat my daughter like a dog.

I smiled.
If he’d forgotten who lifted him onto the throne.
Then I wouldn’t mind dragging him down with my own hands.

“I’m the one deciding your fate, Derek.”
I took my daughter’s hand and looked straight at the man in front of me.
“Game over. Your Alpha era ends here.”

For three years of marriage, I played the perfect, obedient wife.
I married him only because my family once saved his from bankruptcy, and because I had loved him since college.
I thought time would soften his heart.
Then his ex returned, and everything fell apart.
He threw a welcome party for her himself, called me to the office under the pretense of work, then turned around and dismissed me as an eyesore. The whispers in the company cut into me like needles.
That same day, the hospital called. I was eight weeks pregnant with his child. Before the joy could settle, the word divorce fell lightly from his lips.
I asked for three months, just enough time to leave with what little dignity I had left. He agreed without emotion.
Yet after I moved out, he secretly placed me in a luxury apartment and stationed people to watch me day and night.
When I finally hid my pregnancy and resolved to raise the child alone, ready to confront his scheming ex, he cornered me against the wall, eyes red, voice shaking.
“Who gave you permission to walk away with my child?”

In my past life, I signed a marriage agreement, served as a live-in son-in-law for five years, and died in a hospital. Meanwhile, my "wife," Grace, was on the moon, embracing her lover and watching the star rings.
Given a second chance, she threw the agreement in my face at the marriage summit: "Sign it. After the wedding, I'll go find Karl. You'd better act like the legal wife."
I didn't refuse; I just tossed the agreement to my emotional nemesis .
The whole city laughed at my madness.
Until Grace flaunted her "pure-blood heir" at the 100-day celebration, I publicly projected her sterilization report—
the bastard in her arms was the product of her lover and a downtown prostitute.
And her lover was being mutilated in the downtown area.
In this life, I'm not a live-in son-in-law; I'm her gravedigger.

Victoria discovered that I hadn't submitted any supplemental medical expense claims for two weeks.
She assumed I had finally been disciplined and had given up what she called "the exploitative nature of the lower class."
Little did she know, my backpack held the signed divorce papers and my mother's death certificate.
As I turned to leave, I was still wearing the discounted trench coat she'd casually given me three years ago when we got married.
What she didn't know was that I, a deep-sea geology genius from MIT, willingly endured three years of her humiliation and ridiculous rules, just so my mother could stay in her conglomerate's private hospital to prolong her life.
Now, my mother has died because of unpaid bills , and even her ashes are carried by me in a cheap canvas bag.
Now that my loved one is dead, there's no need for me to continue being her obstructive dog on Wall Street. The lives she owed with those approval forms, I will settle with the collapse of her entire conglomerate empire.

I’m the CEO of a tech company—and the creator of our bionic human project.

Three years ago, my wife was dying after a car crash. She begged me to “save” her with my technology. I said yes.

I poured over a hundred million into R&D and built her a bionic body that could last for decades. I covered every checkup, every calibration, every outrageous repair bill.

What I got back was her contempt, her affair, and her reckless abuse of the body I gave her.

I warned her again and again to protect it. She called it control—and called another man freedom.

She even slammed my head into a coffee table to shield him.

That was the moment I decided: no more repairs, no more payments.

She chose her path. She pays for it.

To pay off my father’s debt, I married a wheelchair-bound vampire duke’s heir.
He couldn’t hear me or answer, so I told him everything—my heartbreaks, humiliations, and deepest secrets.
I thought no one would ever know.
Then one morning, he regained his hearing and asked, “Who did you say you had a crush on last night? Say it again.”

My wife brought her first love back to my cloud penthouse for an affair, and even attempted to steal the corporation's core code. Caught red-handed, she showed no remorse, instead scolding me condescendingly: "He is my guest! How dare you touch him?!"

Without even raising an eyelid, I snapped my fingers. Heavy combat robots instantly ripped apart the first love's cybernetic spine, and a beam of energy burned the man into a cripple. I then threw down a disownment agreement, cutting off her elite privileges with one click, and tossed the two of them like garbage into the lower-class slums drenched in acid rain.

"Trash belongs in the trash can." I swirled my wine glass, sneering.

After three years together, Adrian had never truly remembered my name.
But I never expected him to open a ring box at his family’s dinner, propose to me in front of everyone—and call another woman’s name.
Everyone assumed Serena was his fiancée, while I was nothing more than a secret he kept in the shadows.
He asked me to play along and promised he would explain everything later. He gave her my promotion, my ring, and my dignity, then told me he would make it up to me next month.
Until I decided to leave New York and fly to London alone.
This time, I would no longer wait for him to remember who I was.

I have been tormented by a strange illness for ten years, with blood draws and surgeries being commonplace.
My mother always encouraged me, saying, "Nian Nian, bear with it a little longer. The pain will be over soon. Mom and Dad are doing this to save your life."
Hoping to be cured as soon as possible, I gritted my teeth and endured ten years of painful treatments, even if it meant living like a lab subject.
That was until I accidentally overheard my parents’ cruel conversation:
“Increase the blood draw even more. It doesn’t matter if she dies—she was only picked up to save Ying Ying. As long as she has a breath left, she owes it to us.”
At that moment, I finally understood: I was never sick at all.
The decade of daily treatments were nothing but a way to use me to extend the life of their biological daughter.

I spent three years chasing the most popular guy on campus, only to be humiliated in front of the entire school.
My foster family treats me like a live-in maid. My biological father wants to drag me back into the gutter. And the loan sharks have made it clear that in three days, I'll be the one paying for my father's debt.
Everyone is waiting to see me fall apart.
What no one knows is that I already dreamed of the worst future waiting for me.

After sleeping for a thousand years, I returned to the ancestral castle that was supposed to be mine.
Only to find my throne torn down and turned into an auction block for the black market, my territory carved up clean by traitors.
And my only pureblood descendant in this world was actually being auctioned off like livestock—covered in blood, chained up with a cheap dog collar around his neck.
The entire room of nobles and elites mistook me for the lowest kind of half-blood trash, mocking me as a rat too stupid to know when he was dead.
The usurper, eager to curry favor with the Abyss, shouted that he would drain me dry and offer my blood as a tribute to the three pureblood princes deep within the Abyss.
Then the void split open, and those three supreme princes—the untouchable monsters the world worshiped—truly descended.
Under the horrified gaze of more than a thousand nobles and elites, those three ancient monsters threw themselves at my feet, scrambling and crawling, wailing in terror without even daring to raise their heads:
"Your unworthy descendants... welcome the Ancestor's return!!!"

In my past life, I threw myself in front of the black panther alpha when his rut drove him into a frenzy—only to have him toss me into a pack of beasts and watch me get torn to pieces.
After being reborn, the first thing I did was rip off the royal crest pinned to my chest and swallow a suppressant, cutting off his control over me for good.
Everyone waited for me to come crawling back and beg for peace.
Instead, I turned and walked straight into the frozen Northlands, where the death rate was eighty percent.
There, through a severed arm, a ruined face, and the thin line between life and death, I awakened as the Platinum Lion King.
He dropped to his knees in the snow, crying and begging for forgiveness.
I only had one question for him: "What makes you think you're anything to me?"

A hundred years ago, I was the strongest Delta the Silver Moon Pack had ever produced.

Born with the God Bone, unmatched in power, I had Royal Guard recruiters showing up at my door three times, waiting for me to say yes. The whole pack assumed I'd lead them to glory.

Then came that night. My own family dragged me to the altar in the frozen vault.

My mother cried and said, "Lacey was born broken. Without the God Bone, she'll die."

"You're the older sister. You're strong. You'll survive without it."

I refused.

Grant, my fiancé, pulled the knife on me. Brandon, my brother, pinned down my arms and legs. My parents watched from the shadows, saying nothing.

"Don't be so selfish."

They carved the God Bone out of my body, drained every drop of my heart's blood, and threw me into a vault fifty degrees below zero.

My sister took everything that was mine and became the golden girl everyone adored.

A hundred years passed. I became the Supreme Commander of the Royal Guard.

This year, during recruitment, my adjutant handed me the candidate list. I saw a familiar name and smiled. I picked up my pen and crossed it out.

"Doesn't meet the requirements. Denied."

“Sheridan, Link gave me hope to live this past year. I’m pregnant with his child now. He’s been malnourished since he was a baby. Could you be a little more generous and give him half of your food?”

"To quell the rumors, give him the commander's authority as well! Consider it proof of your tolerance, and that way everyone will accept our family of three!"

Looking at my fiancée, who was heavily pregnant and had a saintly glow on her face, I felt a wave of nausea wash over me.

Five years of entrusting each other with life and death have resulted in this scene.

Alright, I'll grant your wish.

Without arguing or making a scene, I readily signed the power transfer agreement, removed my epaulets, and walked without looking back into the underground forbidden zone that everyone feared.

There, a crazy witch with a morbid possessiveness toward me is imprisoned.

Sylvia thought that after I relinquished power, I would only be able to kneel in the mud like a stray dog and watch them be affectionate.

But she had no idea that I was the one who had the safety net for her throughout the entire city!

After losing my protection, the system completely crashed within a few days.

That freeloader completely dropped his pretense, not only beating her half to death with domestic violence, but also attempting to invade her private space.

When she crawled to the gate of the restricted area covered in blood, crying and begging me for forgiveness and to save her life.

I was being held in the arms of that aloof witch, watching the pretty boy who had come looking for me:

"The experiment actually spoke, darling..."

Once, I was the Golden Dragon Princess, loved by my family and cherished by the man I would have died for. Then one accusation shattered everything. My dragon core was sealed, and I was cast into the frozen abyss to repent for a crime I never committed. Three years later, I died alone beneath the endless snow—on the very day my fiancé was set to marry my sister, the one who framed me. He stared at my lifeless face, trembling. “Seraphina… please wake up.”

Last time, she chased the “true love” a corporate spy sold her—publicly branded me controlling, stole my core tech, and helped him shove me off a rooftop.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back before it all began.

This time I didn’t expose her, didn’t confront her, and didn’t beg her to stay. I set the trap—watched her come close again, test my limits, and steal the “core technology”…

Until the stolen code blew up the rival company, until she was unmasked in front of the cameras and taken away in handcuffs.

Through tears, she demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner he was a corporate spy?”

I answered only, “I did. Last life.”

My name is Damian Lemaître.

In my past life, I was Serafina Camarilla's lapdog for ten years, being drained of my life, used, and squeezed dry of my last bit of value.

I opened my eyes and found myself back at the scene of the blood pact ceremony. She sat on the high seat, waiting for me to kneel down and swear the oath with the same excitement as in my previous life.

"Damian Flamel, are you willing?"

"No."

My fiancée and best friend, whom I risked my life to protect, sold me to the brutal "Blood Blade Gang . "
They laughed as they watched me being kicked into a pool of radioactive waste like a dog, waiting for me to turn into a pile of bones.
But they didn't know that the deadly radiation not only failed to melt me, but also forcibly ruptured my genetic lock, awakening the [Nuclear Fury].
I rode back to the old camp in her heavily armored vehicle.
Those two scoundrels were still arrogantly bullying me: "I have the Blood Blade Gang backing me! The big shots are coming soon, you're dead!"
I sneered and slapped them away.
Idiots, look back! Your so-called powerful backer is kneeling in the vehicle, lighting my cigarette.

On my son's seventh birthday, he hid behind my husband's first love and shouted at me, "You're a bad woman! She's my real mom!"
My husband was even crueler. He threw me out of the house without a second thought.
"To me, you were nothing but a surrogate."
Heartbroken, I walked away—and later adopted an abandoned little boy.
Years passed, when my husband finally learned the truth about the woman he had always protected, he came to me with our biological son, both of them kneeling before me in tears, begging for forgiveness.
Holding my adopted son's hand, I smiled calmly.
"Sorry. I only have one son."

For three years, I lived across the country to raise our grandson while my husband stayed alone in Chicago—or so I believed.
Two days before Christmas, I came home early to surprise him. My key no longer fit the lock.
When Harold opened the door, he was wearing a silk robe I had never seen. Behind him stood another woman in house slippers. Her toothbrush was beside his. Her clothes were in my closet. And for two years, she had been sleeping in my bed.
Then I checked our bank account.
She hadn’t only taken my place.
Harold had been giving her my retirement, my home—and even my mother’s jewelry.

In my previous life, an extreme cold apocalypse descended.

I risked my life nine times over to evolve into a high-tier Ice Plains Wolf, and just to find a piece of meat to keep my fiancée alive, I frantically tore apart wild beasts in the snow. Yet I was betrayed by her and her lover—they cut out my heart with an ice blade!

When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn half a month before the apocalypse!

Time was running out. To awaken the highest tier of beast-human form, I needed an enormous amount of meat to provide energy.

Sports cars? Ocean-view villas? Billions in assets? I wanted none of it!

I immediately dumped my manipulative fiancée, liquidated all my assets into cash, bought a fully enclosed fortified meat processing plant, and frantically stockpiled hundreds of thousands of tons of high-calorie raw meat!

The extreme cold arrived as expected, turning the entire city into a frozen hellscape.

The scumbag pair who betrayed me in my previous life now knelt outside my impregnable airlock door, crying pitifully and begging me for scraps.

I stepped out of my fortress and looked down at them with claws sharp enough to tear through steel:

"Want meat? Go to hell and eat dirt!"

I was never supposed to exist in the Blood Moon Pack, low-born, no surname, no family to shield me.
Yet the Alpha chose me and called me “his one and only mate for this lifetime”.
He said he loved me.
So I endured. I stepped back. I forgave him again and again.
Until the day I was pushed down the stairs, dragged into the punishment grounds, strapped to an electric restraint bed, and heard them calmly discussing how far they should go this time; what kind of punishment would finally make the “real family” feel at ease?
That was when I understood in their world, I wasn’t a mate. I wasn’t family. I wasn’t even seen as a person. I was just a bargaining chip, but something disposable, something meant to be sacrificed when convenient.
So I learned to stay quiet, to remember everything, and to wait.
They thought I died in that fire.
But when I stepped back into the moonlight, I was no longer an Omega.

The day I signed the divorce papers, Ethan Frost lit up the night sky with thousands of drones spelling out, ‘Vivian Moore, I love you.’ The whole city celebrated his new romance.
On our daughter, Sophie’s birthday, he watched coldly as Vivian’s daughter snatched away her favorite Elsa princess cake—and didn’t even blink when I was shoved down the stairs. Bleeding and trembling, I looked up to see him tenderly massaging Vivian’s feet.
But what truly shattered me was the day Sophie struggled in the pool—Ethan held me back, eyes dark, roaring, “What do you want?”
Later, he scrambled to Sophie’s photo on his knees, crying “Where’s Sophie? Bring her out.” While I only felt absurd, I smiled through my tears “you will never see Sophie again—ever.”

To raise money for my younger brother’s surgery, I forged my degrees, polished my résumé, and forced my way into high society. In everyone’s mouth, I’m that woman—
the scheming bitch, the liar, the “evil bride” clinging to an old rich man.
They all think I’m obsessed with Mr. Grant, the financial shark’s mountain of assets.
Only I know the truth—what I’m really clinging to is my brother’s life.
No one expected that the first man I fell for at first sight…would be his heir, Adrian.
And yet in a blink of eyes, I became his “stepmom in name only.”
On our wedding day, everyone laughed at how shameless I was:
“She marries the dad and still dares to seduce the son?”
“Vicious little con artist—who knows what cheap tricks she pulled to marry in?”
Adrian was no exception.
He called me a liar, a manipulator, dumped all his hatred on me—said I’d do anything for money, that I was a tumor climbing up off their wounds.

Seven years ago, I signed a mate contract as Luna.
For my mother’s dying wish and for the Pack’s stability, I personally pushed a man with nothing to his name onto the Alpha throne.
I held the Pack together for him, expanded our businesses, and handled the filthy negotiations and the deals no one wanted to see in the light.
Everyone said—
I was calm, I was formidable, I was qualified.
Just… not much like a “gentle mate.”
Until that day.
I stood in the bedroom and watched my Alpha husband lay his hand over my paralyzed stepsister’s slightly rounded belly.
They told me it was for the greater good of the Pack.
That child would be registered under my name.
He would call me Mother.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream.
I just waited for the seven-year term to hit its end and activated the trust clause my mother left behind.
Accounts frozen.
Capital withdrawn.
The wolf empire I built with my own hands collapsed overnight.

“No. Mabel, I cannot lose you again. Since you’re back now, there is no need for me to marry her and I have to make sure you stay by my side at all times. I never loved her. I was only using her to grow this company. The vice president position of this company is yet to be filled. If you’re be my woman again, I’ll give it to you. Together, we can run this company. Together, we’ll be inseparable.” These were the words Daphne heard clearly from her soon-to-be husband. She had been stood up at the bridal shop only to watch her fiancé cradling another woman in his arms and professing his undying love for her. Devastated but strong-willed, she chose to move on but having the formidable heir, Marco King all over her wasn’t on her bingo card. Like they say, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

Hiding my identity and marrying an ambitious female celebrity—this is the most boring social experiment I've ever done.
She wants me to leave with nothing.
She gave my family heirloom to that gigolo.
She tweeted that I was "low-class trash".
She didn't know that Hollywood, which she was desperately trying to climb up to, was nothing more than my backyard.
She had no idea that those capitalists she fawned over would all bow down and call me "Mr. Rockwell."
Until that night, she stripped naked, attempting to offer herself to the enigmatic "godfather of capital"—
The leather sofa slowly turned around.
The lights were on.
She saw my face.
“Chloe,” I flicked my cigar ash, “what brings you here?”

"I need to bear my sworn brother a child first."

At our engagement ceremony, my wife took her sworn brother's hand.

"Brother has been so good to me—he even sacrificed his fertility to protect me. This is my way of repaying him."

So they made me wait three years.

When those three years ended, they still thought I'd be the same as before—obeying their every command like a loyal dog.

What she didn't know was this:

I am the Supreme Wolf King.

Everything her family possessed—I gave it to them.

Now, I'm taking it all back.

On our first wedding anniversary, I walked into my husband's office and found him having sex with my best friend.

He didn't even apologize. Instead, claiming he was disgusted that I hadn't produced an heir in a year of marriage, he threw divorce papers in my face.

Five years later, I returned to New York with my new husband—Cassian Vitiello, the Godfather of the North American underworld.

Vincent ran into me at the docks. He handed me a business card, offering me a job as a nanny for his mistress's son.

What he didn't know was that the woman he was mocking was now the Donna—the woman the entire East Coast underground feared.

Seventeen days into our silent standoff, I heard my boyfriend of eight years had slept with his childhood friend. He was telling people we’d already broken up. When I called, he asked if I had anything to say. “I do,”I replied. “When do I get my forty-five thousand dollars back?”

A zombie outbreak occurred, and my brother and I were both reborn ten minutes before the disaster struck.
This time, he seized the initiative, stealing the two high-level god-tier abilities, [Flame] and [Hardening], and casually pushed me out of the security door, locking me in the zombie-infested corridor.
Through the security door, he arrogantly declared, "In my past life, you always stood in front of me; in this life, I'll take the mark of survival."
In his eyes, the [Tracking] and [Preset] abilities the system assigned me were nothing but useless pieces of paper.
He thought I would die a horde of zombies.
But he didn't know that in the hands of a top hunter, seemingly useless skills could weave a hellish web that made life unbearable and death unthinkable.

The day manager Gregg shoved me into the freight elevator shaft, the nuclear winter outside had only just begun. As he slammed the gate shut, he said, "No one will find you dead down there; the insurance payout is enough to cover the shortfall." I died in the darkness at thirty degrees below zero. Then, I woke up. I was back on the afternoon he threw the contract in my face. This time, I didn't sign. I shoved the contract into the paper shredder, snatched the brass key ring from Supervisor Miller, locked every exit of the warehouse, and re-routed the entire building's heating system into my own command bunker. As Gregg licked ice off the frozen floor on the security monitor, I was sitting in the guard room, heating up a can of pork. Outside, the first snowflake fell. And this time, the ones who would be freezing to death were them.

Brent Hale gave me one night to save the company’s worst-performing livestream—or lose my job with everyone else in Studio Three.
I wanted the severance package.
So I ignored the script, exposed every product flaw, and told viewers exactly what not to buy.
By the time my boss tried to cut the feed, the chat was threatening to riot—and half our inventory was already gone.

"Shit! I want her under me."
Alex couldn't take it anymore. He moved her hand to touch Irene's thick, full lips until Irene woke up and opened her eyes. Somewhat surprised, he managed to control her. They teased each other with their gazes.

Alex Matthew was a boss of all kinds of big business, one of which was dangerous narcotics. The police struggled to catch him and hired a spy from a secret agent. She is a female spy with a good reputation. Irene is her name.
Irene uses her psychometric abilities to find out Alex's loopholes. However, for the first time, she fails and gets into a heated relationship with the dealer while Irene is married to a police detective.
Infidelity and psychometry become a demonic circle.
Will Irene be able to get out of the hot relationship and return to her husband? Or is it the other way around?

Zeke and I always said we’d be best friends forever since we were pups. Everyone always assumed we’d end up as mates but we laughed it off. So when we both turned 18 and the string of destiny snapped into place tying us together, I was over the moon. But why is Zeke looking at me like I have two heads? Why is he telling me he’d never mate with a mutt like me? What happened…to best friends forever?

Mara Vale knew how to save ruined things.

Rotten silk. Smoke-stained lace. Wedding gowns torn by jealous hands or careless lovers. In the old brick shop her mother had left her, Mara could lift a century of dirt from a veil and make every hidden stitch disappear.

But on the night of her own wedding, there was nothing she could save.

Her fiance was in the hotel bridal suite with her stepsister. Her father called her ungrateful when she refused to smile through the betrayal. By midnight, Mara had lost her groom, her family, and the deed to the shop that carried her mother's name.

Then rain drove her into a garage on the wrong side of downtown, where a dangerous young mechanic caught her before she hit the concrete.

Dante Cross smelled like motor oil, wore a dirty white tank under his coveralls, and looked at Mara as if he had been waiting eight years to find her.

Everyone thought he was poor.

Everyone was wrong.

And when Mara's enemies dragged her onto a livestream and called her a thief in front of fifty thousand strangers, the man from the garage stepped between her and the slap meant to break her.

He did not ask permission.

He simply said, "Touch her again, and find out who owns this street."

At seventy-two, Richard Hayes finally asked my mother for a divorce.

He thought he was setting himself free.

He did not know Eleanor Hayes had been waiting ten years for him to say the words.

By sunset, his new woman would be calling my mother cruel.

By winter, he would be standing on her porch with two suitcases and nowhere soft to land.

And my mother, who had spent nearly half a century opening doors for him, would finally learn how peaceful a locked door could sound.

Evan Hale had spent three years being invisible.

In the port city of Grayhaven, that meant midnight towing calls, grease under his nails, a cheap apartment above a closed pawnshop, and a daughter who still believed the world could be repaired with pancakes and tape. He let people call him broke. He let his ex-wife call him a failure. He let rich men look through him as if poverty had made him harmless.

Then Lily came to the tow yard with a hospital bracelet on her wrist and terror in her eyes.

The paperwork said Evan had lost his rights. The doctors said it was an emergency. The heir to Grayhaven's largest medical charity smiled like the city already belonged to him.

They were all wrong.

Because before Evan became a night-shift tow driver, he had been the man federal teams called when protected witnesses vanished, sealed evidence moved, and dangerous people needed to be found before sunrise. He had buried that life to keep his daughter safe.

Now the people hunting Lily had put her name on a list he recognized.

And Evan Hale was done hiding.

On my birthday, I went to the hospital hoping for a baby. Instead, I found my husband—the man who swore he never wanted children—cradling his pregnant mistress. He thought I was the one who couldn't give him a child. He forgot I was the one holding his medical reports.

He was dragged onto a debate stage as a replacement.

He could barely order lunch without apologizing to the cashier.

Then he took one wrong sip from the bottle in his bag, stood up in front of six hundred people, and made the national champion forget how to answer.

My wolf was damaged the day I first shifted, when I was ten. I’ve healed slower than other wolves ever since, and a wolf like that can’t inherit a pack.

I grew up mocked and bullied for being the weak one.

My sister, Seraphina, shifted on the same day and came through it perfectly. She became the Alpha heir, the prodigy my parents poured everything into.

I thought they loved her more because she could carry the pack and I couldn’t. I took a rabid bear’s claws for her at thirteen. I was her sparring partner by day and her tutor by night, and I learned not to argue.

When Seraphina was accepted to the Royal Wolf Academy, the whole estate celebrated. My parents were going to escort her there themselves in a bulletproof Cadillac. But nobody cared that I’d been accepted to a college a thousand miles from home.

And today was the day I was leaving for school, too.

When I asked whether I should leave for the airport, my father told me to figure it out myself. My mother told me to clean up after my sister's party first.

I was done waiting for them to care. I decided to let them be the perfect family of three.

I already had a one-way ticket on my phone. By tonight, I would be gone from their lives.

Her daughter lay dying—her only chance at survival resting in a bone marrow transplant from her biological father.
That man, the one Stella Johnson had once loved with all her heart, was nowhere to be found.
While Stella made call after call, hands trembling with desperation, Charles Hart was busy building a crystal castle for the daughter of his beloved white moonlight—lighting up the entire city with fireworks in her honor.
All Stella got in return was a cold, clipped response:
"I'm busy."
And then… silence.
She waited.
And waited.
Until the warmth left her daughter's tiny hand.
He never came.
Cradling the small urn, Stella stepped into the streets—only to be greeted by a cruel spectacle.
Every digital screen on the bustling boulevard played the same scene:
Charles, his white moonlight, and their daughter, smiling under the fireworks as they sang "Happy Birthday," basking in a future built on someone else's grave.
The love Stella once held for Charles didn't just die that night—it was burned to ash.
And from those ashes, something far stronger rose:
Hatred. Cold. Sharp. Unforgiving.

When her marriage comes to an abrupt end, Sparkle tries to channel her pain into saving a dog that has been condemned to die after being involved in a terrible accident, but after a few weeks, she makes the horrible discovery that the dog she saved is, in fact, no dog at all. She saved a badly injured wolf she has mistaken for a husky. He's a powerful alpha who is very ruthless to humans, and Sparkle is no exception, or is she? Find out what becomes of Sparkle when Dalton finally regains his strength and reclaims his pack.


I saved a dying husky from being euthanized, not knowing I was bringing a billionaire Alpha werewolf into my bed. My husband divorced me because he thought I was infertile, kicking me out for a dog he was allergic to. I had nothing left but the injured animal in my backseat. I nursed him, bandaged him, and poured my broken heart out to him. But one morning, the dog was gone. In his place stood Dalton Roux, the most powerful Alpha in the city. He didn't just thank me. He kidnapped me to his mansion, claiming it was for my "protection." "You saved my life," he whispered, his voice dropping an octave as his hands roamed my curves. He pinned me against the wall, his massive erection pressing against my thigh, growling possessively.

She built a quiet life from the wreckage of a marriage that nearly swallowed her whole. A bakery. A hidden talent for art. And a son she loves more than breathing. At forty, Corinna Adler is composed, grounded, but devastatingly unsated, starved and untouched.

One night was supposed to fix that.

One anonymous night at Obscura, the city's most secretive underground club with a man whose hands knew things about her body she had forgotten were possible. Young, commanding, and patient. The kind of man Corinna would unfortunately, never forget.

Because the morning after, he re-introduces himself into her reality in a way she never sees coming.

I hate Beckett Hayes.
I hate his stupidly perfect face.
I hate the arrogant smirk that has sold millions of jerseys.
I hate that half of Chicago seems to worship the ground his skates touch.
But mostly? I hate what he did to my brother.
Eight years ago, Beckett Hayes destroyed my family. I haven't spoken to him since.
So naturally, on the first morning of my dream job with Chicago's hottest professional hockey team, I find him leaning against my office door.
Older. Bigger. Hotter. And wearing the same infuriating smile I remember.
My new job should have nothing to do with Beck. Until another one of the captain's scandals lands him in trouble and management decides I'm exactly the person he needs.
Now I'm traveling with him. Managing him. Arguing with him. Trying very hard not to notice what years of professional hockey have done to his body.
Then a photograph of us nearly kissing goes viral.
Suddenly everyone wants Beckett Hayes and Sloane Mercer together. The team. The sponsors. The fans. Everyone except me.
Because I know exactly who Beck is. At least, I thought I did.
But the closer I get to him, the more the story I've believed for eight years starts falling apart.
Beck didn't destroy my brother. He protected him.
And the man I've spent almost a decade hating? He's spent every one of those years wanting me.

"Evelyn Drake, are you truly set on joining the FBI as an undercover agent?"
The senior officer Garrett stared intently at the elegantly dressed woman before him, his gaze laced with inquiry and faint doubt.
It was his occupational habit, even a special knack, to categorize everyone he met into distinct social ranks—and he was exceptionally good at it, never once misjudging anyone.
In his eyes, Evelyn Drake, with her flawless makeup and platinum-blonde hair all the way down to the roots, was far from cut out to be an agent.
He had seen countless such pampered wealthy wives throwing petty tantrums. Most would make a scene at the front desk, only to be coaxed home meekly by their rich husbands soon after.
If such a delicate lady were admitted into the FBI, he suspected even the Kevlar bulletproof vest alone would chafe her soft skin raw.
Lost in these thoughts, Garrett let out a disdainful chuckle, his tone brimming with scorn. "Are you really sure? You'd give up your lavish lifestyle to become an FBI agent?"
Sensing his contempt, Evelyn took off her expensive wristwatch and slipped it into her handbag, then nodded firmly at him. "I am absolutely certain."

Six years ago, Marlowe Kestrel drowned in the Duskhaven canals, or at least that is what the obituary said, what the empty coffin implied, and what every ruling House in the city has believed ever since.

In reality she swam two streets over, bribed a mortician with a forged signature, and built herself a new, gloriously unremarkable life as a small time magical forger who fixes other people's problems for coin and never, ever asks about bloodlines. It was a good plan.

It worked for six entire years, which is roughly five years and eleven months longer than anyone expected a Kestrel to survive in hiding. Then Jonas, the only man alive who knew her real name, turns up dead in his own workshop with a mark burned into his palm that Marlowe has spent her whole life trying to forget she carries too, and the only lead worth following belongs to Cassian Draven, heir to the most feared criminal House in the city, a man with a smile like a drawn blade and a family reputation built on making problems disappear as thoroughly as Marlowe once did herself.

Cassian recognizes her in under a minute, does not turn her in, and instead offers a deal she has no good reason to accept and every practical reason to take, pose as his fiancée at the season's summit of ruling Houses, help him smoke out whoever is hunting them both, and maybe, if she is very lucky and very careful, walk away with her second fake death arranged before anyone notices the first one was fake too.

The trouble is, the longer she spends pretending to love a Draven, the harder it gets to remember that hating him was ever supposed to be the easy part.