8517 Book(s) Related to i have become the heros rival novel

Isadora Bellini spent her entire life living in the shadow of her twin sister, Giulia—but nothing hurt more than the moment their childhood best friend and her fated mate, Capo Lorenzo, chose Giulia over her. Shattered and humiliated, Isadora disappeared from the Luna Nera Clan, carving out a quiet life among humans. Eight years later, she’s dragged back to the one place she promised never to return—for Giulia’s funeral. What begins as a painful farewell quickly spirals into a storm of secrets, guilt, and dangerously unresolved emotions.
Lorenzo isn’t the same confident Capo who once broke her heart—he’s grieving, broken, and searching for answers. But so is Isadora. As truths begin to unravel—about Giulia’s betrayal, Lorenzo’s rejection, and a past that refuses to stay buried—Isadora finds herself caught between the scars of yesterday and the pull of a bond she tried to erase.
In a world where fate is sealed by blood and moonlight, and love can be the sharpest weapon of all… will Isadora risk everything to uncover the truth, or let her pain write the ending for her?
When love feels like betrayal, how do you trust what your heart still wants?

"Aspen" I hear someone whisper from faraway. I ignore it and just pass it off as the wind since I left my window open last night.

"Aspen" I hear again except it's louder this time. I ignore it again.

A couple of minutes later a sweet smell fills my nostrils. It reminds me of pineapples and vanilla.

"If you don't wake up, I'm going to burn your favorite book" I hear a familiar voice say which causes my eyes to snap open as I jolt up in bed so that I'm facing my best friend

“Let’s get a divorce.”
After three years of marriage, my husband’s first love came back. With his own lips, he ended our three-year mating bond.
Just like that, I was thrown away and became the pack’s favorite joke—the unmarked, unacknowledged “temporary mate.”
I hid the fact that I was already carrying his pup and disappeared from his world completely. I thought that as long as I stepped aside, he and his fated mate would finally get the happiness they wanted.
I never imagined that when we met again, his eyes would be bloodshot as he demanded:
“Whose child is this?”
It was only later that I found out: from the moment I vanished, that aloof, untouchable Alpha went completely off the rails, tearing through every pack’s territory, searching for me like a madman.

After I found out about the secret admirer he’s been talking to for the past two months the, he throws divorce papers at my face after being married for six months. He claims that his admirer would give him half of the Williamson cooperation. He thinks I’m the naive middle class woman he married but what he doesn’t know is I’m the owner of the Williamson Cooperation, the company I inherited from my father’s as his only child just before he died. Throws out of the house, I decided to reclaim my power and move back to my estate. I hosted a convention where the secret admirer would be handing him the properties and I put everyone in shock when I show up and they find out it’s me. Richard begs at my feet for mercy but I totally ignore him and choose his personal assistant who has always been good to me from the very day I stepped into Richard’s mansion as his wife

Warning: This novel have matured contents +18

Me and you. Come on let's play. "She said".

Um, okay, sure," I said, "but what do we do if one of us refuses to answer truth, or do a dare?"

"Then," smiled vicky, "A different truth or dare is given, and that one has to be done, no matter what."

"Ok Deal," I said.

"Truth or Dare?" she asked.

"Truth," I said.

"What's your honest opinion of those pics you saw, of me?" She gave me a look of pure curiosity, which only made me laugh a little.

"They were very hot," I said. "Truth or Dare?"

"Truth," she said, smiling at my comment.

"Is it just me, or are you not wearing panties?" I said, more to tease her about it, than I was curious.

"Yeah, I'm not," she said. "Actually, I'm surprised you noticed. Truth or Dare?"

"Dare," I said.

"I dare you to take off your shirt," she said.

So, thats how it started. I don't know why, but her mission is to find any means to have me for herself not minding what it will result to. Though she later had me and even got pregnant for me., but what happened after that is was you won't expect.

My magic has always been a little unpredictable.
Singing cinnamon rolls? Normal.
A judgmental broom? Happens all the time.
Accidentally turning my fated mate into a fox five minutes before opening my bakery for the Harvest Festival?
That's a first.
As if that wasn't bad enough, my fated mate turns out to be the impossibly handsome Lord of the Autumn Court. Before I can figure out how to change him back, half the village decides I cursed him on purpose to settle an old family grudge, and suddenly the Autumn Court guards are hunting me.
Now my bakery has been abandoned, my reputation is in ruins, and I'm fleeing across the realm with one very sarcastic fox tucked beneath my cloak.
Unfortunately, sharing a journey with my grumpy little fox is becoming far more dangerous than the guards chasing us. Because every mile we travel, every campfire we share, and every impossible moment we survive together makes one thing painfully clear...
Falling in love with my fated mate was never supposed to happen while he still had four paws and a tail.

The Mass Awakening resulted in transforming the entire Earth into a server of a cosmic game. Which was taking place on October 27, 2026. Even as humanity was scrambling to be Level 1 Warriors and Mages, Alex, a burnt-out cybersecurity expert that was based in Lagos, was witnessing something different: The Source Code.

The Twist:
Alex is presented with the [Admin Interface] aka system screen, which is a glitched class that enables him to see the reality in the form of Python and C++ lines. He does not go out and hunt monsters to get XP; instead he debugs them. He does not domesticate animals; but instead he brings them together.

Alex combines organic flesh and salvaged technology to produce Chimeras- monstrosities of metal and magic that do not obey the rules of the System. A rat is turned into a surveillance drone. And then A raptor becomes a railgun. Even A dragon is transformed into something worse.

"Your Game is broken. And I am the Admin.”

Last time, the world ended.

My fallen comrade left me the fortress he spent his life building. I hesitated, let his niece’s boyfriend inside, and that mercy killed everyone. They took the warehouse, cut the power, and put a knife in my gut. I crawled into the underground control room and triggered the self-destruct protocol he’d hidden for the worst day. The entire fortress went up in flames.

Then I opened my eyes—one month before disaster.

The gate was still closed. They were still outside. Everything could still be fixed.

This time, I set one rule at the door: anyone who opens it without approval is a traitor.

She cried like before, begged me to let her boyfriend in, called him the man she loved—and when I refused, she reached for the controls anyway.

So I grabbed her wrist and threw her out with them.

For three years, I loved my brother's best friend in secret. Ethan Blake promised that on his twenty-eighth birthday, he would finally tell everyone I was his girlfriend. Instead, he leaned close at dinner and joked that he was tired of me.
In my first life, I fought for him, married him, and died waiting for a husband who never came. In this life, I smiled and gave him exactly what he asked for.

I killed myself because I couldn't survive another day inside Adrian Vale's hatred.

At the funeral home, he took my urn, smiled and said I didn't deserve a grave, or a headstone, or a single person standing over me pretending I'd been worth something.

Then he opened his hand and let me fall. He walked through my ashes without looking back.

Less than a week later, the same man would return to that funeral home in tears and demand that they give me back.

To give my twelve-year-old daughter a peaceful and ordinary childhood, I sealed away the "Eagle" badge that represented the highest military authority in the Federation, willingly becoming a repairman with an oily phone in a remote town.
I suppressed my murderous intent, swallowed my humiliation, and even remained silent about the injustice of the referee.
But my concessions to the powerful and wealthy resulted in the richest man leading a group of professional thugs to smash my home to ruins.
to fight in front of my daughter , until his reckless son smashed my "Eagle Badge," hidden deep inside.
They had no idea that the instant the badge broke—
the SSS-level emergency beacon hidden at its core—had been triggered !

For the sake of my marriage, I turned down a promotion and became the perfect wife and mother.
When my six-year-old son was rushed to the ER with an asthma attack in the dead of night, I sat vigil until dawn.
What I didn't expect was to hear my husband, just outside the emergency room doors, bragging to a friend about his mistress — and sneering that I was "bland and boring."
What hurt worse: my own son had been bought off by the other woman, and was now faking illness with practiced ease to cover for his father's affair.
My husband's scheming, my son's betrayal — seven years of devotion, ground into the dirt.
In that moment, something inside me died for good.
If this family is a filthy, lie-riddled con, then I'm taking back every ounce of love and sacrifice I ever poured into it. And I'm not looking back.

I died on the second Sunday of May.
Mother’s Day.
My biological mother, the top neurologist in the United States, was standing in front of my corpse.
She looked at the bedsores all over my body, at the ribs that had been stomped broken, and explained coldly to hundreds of cameras:
“Trash from the bottom of society, covered in needle marks like this, doesn’t deserve to dirty my dissection table.”
She didn’t know that the “social garbage” she called a pill-seeking self-harmer was the son she had abandoned ten years ago.
When the cold scalpel cut open my chest, an old photograph stained with black blood slipped out.
The moment she saw it, the woman who had stood above everyone else—
went completely insane…

I once believed his oath wholeheartedly. I sacrificed all my power to lift him onto the Alpha King’s throne. What a cruel twist: the man who swore to die for me became my executioner.
He cast me aside for another female, and my past life ended in endless sorrow and destruction.
Now I am reborn, and I am no longer the naive girl who loved blindly.
I shatter the token of our blood oath in public, ending our bond forever.
To the shock of all onlookers, I do not seek another chance with him. I turn and pledge myself to the new Alpha King.

My family's company went bankrupt, and my father was critically ill.

I dropped out of school and worked multiple jobs every day.

Debt collectors beat me and broke my ribs, but I couldn't afford painkillers.

Every penny I earned went to expensive medicine, all to save my father.

Until I saw my father, who should have been bedridden on oxygen, holding a champagne glass at a hotel banquet hall.

His words pierced through, "Five years, the punishment she earned."

The bankruptcy was fiction. The illness, theater.

All orchestrated because his stepdaughter suffered from depression, and I was her entertainment.

When the doctor finally spoke to me, "Days. You have only days."

I laughed.

The dying one had never been my father.

It had always been me.

On Christmas Eve, a mysterious virus swept the globe, and my own father mutated into a bloodthirsty monster right before my eyes.

Retreating to a Texas ranch, I thought it would be a desperate fight for survival—until a monster tore my arm open during a brutal melee. There was no high fever, no mutation. Instead, the moment those frenzied infected caught the scent of my blood, they trembled and backed away, as if encountering their natural predator.

Before I could even catch my breath, an armored convoy bearing a cryptic insignia surrounded the ranch, using sonic weapons to herd the infected horde.

From a distance, a red laser locked precisely between my eyes. The memories forcibly erased during my military service two years ago came crashing back: this apocalypse was never a natural disaster, and I was the "perfect specimen" they were absolutely determined to claim.

Want to turn me into a lab rat? Then let's see how many of you this modified body can drag down to hell with me!

Six years of marriage, and I thought that if I tried hard enough, she would see me someday.
Yet she never gave me a hug, never called our son "sweetheart" once, and couldn't even stand him calling her "Mom."
She said I was calculating, that I was shameless.
I laughed. So, in her eyes, my love was a scam from the very beginning.
So, I signed the divorce papers and left town with our son.
I thought it was all over.
But then she said,
"I'm not leaving you."

Wearing a plain black velvet dress and zero jewelry, I sat quietly in the back row of the Royal Charity, completely invisible among London’s glittering elite.
My only goal tonight? Winning an 1890 Victorian pink diamond for my engagement ring. My family in the Scottish Highlands had just arranged my marriage to Phil Graham, London’s hottest real estate heir.
"Starting at £8,000," the auctioneer announced. I raised my paddle.
Instantly, a flashy woman behind me sneered and raised hers. "Are they letting just anyone into charity galas now?" she loudly mocked to her friends. "Dressed like a department store clerk, and she thinks she can bid on antique jewelry?"
I ignored her, calmly raising my paddle again: "£15,000."
Furious, the woman stood up, her voice echoing across the silent ballroom. "£20,000! I suggest you back off, poor girl. My brother is Phil Graham, CEO of Graham Real Estate. This necklace is mine."
I slowly looked up at her. "Graham Real Estate? What a coincidence. ”
I calmly pulled out my phone and dialed my so-called fiancé right in front of her.
“Phil?” I said lightly. “It seems your little pet sister is trying to hijack my engagement diamond. How exactly do you want to explain this to me? Should we cancel the wedding?”

Lysander’s ex-girlfriend, Evangeline, suggested a hiking trip. Out of obligation to me as his fiancée, he brought me along.
We got lost in the woods and trespassed onto the territory of his half-brother, Orion.
When Orion pointed a gun at us and forced him to choose—
In my past life, he chose me.
As a result, Evangeline was sold to a rival, Matthias, and was tortured to death. I spent the rest of my life bearing the full weight of Lysander’s hatred.
In the third year of our marriage, I lay in a hospital bed after a miscarriage. He stood coldly beside me and said, "Now you know how it feels to lose the love of your life."
Reborn into this life, as Orion’s gun points at me and Evangeline once again, I make the choice for him.
I’m leaving the chance to survive to his true love.

"I was bonded with an alien system that issued nothing but 'benevolence' missions.
Supply food to violent thugs, shelter the mutants, embrace the Zombie King, and share our planetary defense technology with the entire world.
It claimed that as long as we were merciful, the civilization could survive.
I nodded, then promptly tweaked the task annotations.
I laced the food with neuro-suppressants, turned the shelter into a bio-sample bank, and activated kinetic overload when I 'embraced' the monster king.
Sharing the tech? Sure—though every defensive line I shared came with a backdoor that I could trigger remotely.
When the system eventually tried to purge me, Professor Sarah retaliated by locking it inside the national supercomputer.
I rewrote its underlying code, replacing 'mercy' with 'absolute order.'
Earth remains a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but the global satellite network is entirely in my hands.
The system’s most crushing defeat wasn't being destroyed; it was staying alive, only to become my tool."

For six years, I wore Pack silver. I sold my blood. I scrubbed silver out of Pack den floors. I slept on a basement floor — all to pay off my mate's Pack debt and buy my brother's wolfsbane antidote.
Today, with the receipt finally signed, my brother looked at me and said:
"Seren, I was never poisoned. Our parents aren't dead either. The Rogue raid six years ago — I arranged it. The only wolf hurt that night was you."
My mate stepped up behind him: "I never lost my Pack rank either. I've been at the estate the whole time."
Then my parents — the ones I'd buried seven years ago — walked through the door.
The Pack physician had given me forty-eight hours left to live.
They were going to remember every single one.

I was drugged with an aphrodisiac by my competitors, and Pierce Pei dumped me in his older brother's room.
Pretending to be delirious from the drug's effects, I seduced his older brother all night long.
The moment I opened my eyes the next morning, I blushed and complained to Pierce, "You were way too rough last night. I can barely get out of bed."
"But you were so amazing last night. I really, really liked it."
Pierce froze. He threw away every gift I had ever given him.
Later, after all his black cards were canceled, he stormed furiously into his brother's office.
There, he saw the cold and aloof eldest son of the Pei family kneeling on one knee, putting shoes on my feet.

Thirty thousand feet in the air, inside the sealed cabin of a commercial airliner, my five-year-old daughter vanished into thin air while I took a thirty-minute nap.
I tore through the lavatories, the galleys, and every overhead bin. The only thing I found was her stuffed bunny, the one she never let out of her sight.
What was even more terrifying was the crew and the passengers. As if perfectly rehearsed, they all insisted I had boarded the plane alone. They even gaslit me in front of everyone, claiming I was mentally unstable and had hallucinated a daughter.
They took turns pushing me, trying to force me into self-doubt and submission. Not a single person offered to help me look. The entire plane was covering up a sinister crime.
If this plane was going to hide my child and protect the guilty, then I would tear this hypocritical aircraft apart with my bare hands.

After being lost for ten years, I was finally brought home by my biological parents.
They stood in the cramped basement and asked me, "The family went bankrupt a month ago. You won't hold it against us for being poor, will you?"
Overcome with emotion, I hugged them tightly and shook my head fervently.
Later, my father was diagnosed with uremia and needed a large sum of money for surgery. To earn money, I worked three jobs a day, eventually collapsing from exhaustion and being diagnosed with a brain tumor. With no time for treatment, I rushed to deliver food orders.
Unexpectedly, I ran into my father—who should have been in the hospital undergoing dialysis—having booked an entire shopping mall to celebrate the adopted daughter's birthday. My mother, wearing an gorgeous gown I'd never seen before, smiled as she embraced the girl.
"Lily, our precious, Mommy and Daddy will give you everything you want."
My brother, who they said had died in an accident while searching for me, was dotingly putting a diamond necklace on the girl.
It turned out the family hadn't gone bankrupt at all—I just wasn't worthy.

My best friend Tiffany was obsessed with those novels where a mafia don spoils his woman rotten.

She was convinced she was the type of girl who could make a ruthless boss go soft, so she went after Vincent, the heir of a crime family, and got him.

His bodyguards, his dirty money, even the way he told her not to ask questions and just sit tight. She read all of it as devotion. And of course she had to drag me into it too, always with the same excuse: it was for my own good.

Last time around, her mess got me killed. Vincent's enemies mistook me for one of his people, and I died in a shootout that had nothing to do with me.

The second the blade opened my throat, all I could think about was her holding up a bloody knife, grinning, showing it off to me like a trophy.

"Margot, look. He gave me this. It means we're official now."

I remember feeling disgusted. I never thought that same knife would end up slitting my throat.

Blood pooled across the street while she hid in Vincent's arms, screaming, hands over her eyes. Later I heard her crying to someone, saying it wasn't her fault, that I just had bad luck.

I died inside her little romance fantasy. A nobody side character, wiped off the page without a second thought.

Then I opened my eyes, and I was back. Back to the afternoon it all started.

The day my all-powerful wife personally handed me over to the mob's basement, she was shielding my identical twin brother, furiously accusing me of destroying his ability to carry on the family line.
To compensate for my brother's "trauma," my parents stood by and did nothing. Using her influence, my wife pressured me to take his place at a black-market clinic, testing a lethal drug.
They thought I was just going to suffer some physical hardship, that after enduring these two weeks, everything would be happily resolved.
But they didn't know I had already been poisoned by my brother. I was dying.
I died in agony on the cold operating table. As my body was being gnawed and rotted by rats, they were happily vacationing by the sea.
Only when the lies were exposed did my wife kick down the hidden door. Holding my maggot-infested, decaying flesh, she wept until she vomited blood, then went mad and swallowed a bullet. My parents watched their family shattered and wept on their knees.

My marriage to Lucas was nothing but a cold-blooded mafia alliance. There was never any love between us.
His heart had always belonged to my best friend, Chloe. From the beginning to the end, I was never in his eyes.
And me? All I ever wanted was a sweet, honest love story of my own.
With his silent permission, I went looking for love online. But on the day I met my so-called online boyfriend for the first time, I was shoved into a lake and rescued by Chloe’s fiancé, Damon.
No one could have predicted that a man rumored to have no interest in women at all would react to me and me alone.
From that moment on, he caged me at his side and forced me to become his secret lover.
But this was never the kind of love I wanted. I still kept searching for something sweet, real, and truly mine.

Leon Sterling — the cold, calculating heir to a powerful corporate empire — doesn’t believe in love, nor does he care for marriage. In a world where everything can be measured, traded, or bought, he chooses a different path: fatherhood through science, with no strings attached.

Anna Monroe — a gentle, ordinary woman — unexpectedly becomes the surrogate chosen for Leon’s child. But beneath the layers of a sterile contract, what begins as a purely transactional relationship slowly unravels into something far more fragile… and dangerously real.

An old accident.
A handkerchief once dropped.
A forgotten memory that refuses to stay buried.

As fate tightens its grip, they find themselves caught in a game of heart and consequence — where emotions grow in the most unexpected places, and nothing goes according to plan.

When the contract ends and the lines blur, will Leon still choose solitude… or will he fight to keep Anna — not as a surrogate, but as the one woman he can’t let go?

I begged my mom for ten dollars, but she smashed my head with a frying pan instead.

The next day, my mother posted on a forum asking:
"Hi everyone. My eldest son lied about the end of the world just to get ten dollars. I want to ask, how can I sell him on the underground black market to pay off his younger brother's $20,000 debt?"

The moment I saw that post, any remaining love I had for them died instantly. I snapped my phone's SIM card in half.

What she didn’t know was that a world-ending acid flood would descend upon New York tomorrow.

I had begged so bitterly for that ten dollars just to trigger the Ten-Million-Fold Return System to build a three-billion-dollar Doomsday Ark.

Since she didn’t want it, I gave the throne of the Ark Queen to the female classmate who casually tossed me some charity.

Warning: This novel have matured contents +18

"A different truth or dare is given, and that one has to be done, no matter what." Vicky said.

"Ok Deal," I said.

"Truth or Dare?" she asked.

"Truth," I said.

"What's your honest opinion of those pics you saw, of me?" She threw me a look of pure curiosity, which only made me laugh a little.

"I can say they were very hot," I said.

"Truth or Dare?"

"Truth," she answered, smiling at my comment.

"Is it just me, or are you not wearing panties?" I said, more to tease her about it, than I was curious.

"Yeah, I'm not," she said. "Actually, I'm surprised you noticed. Truth or Dare?"

"Dare," I said.

"I dare you to take off your shirt," she said.
.
.
So, thats how it started. I don't know why, but her mission is to find any means to have me for herself not minding what it will result to. Though she later had me and even got pregnant for me., but what happened after that is what you won't expect.

The very day she came back into her home country, she heard the most absurd news. "Your sister is getting married with Mr. Stephenson".
"What did you say?" She couldn't believe it. At the engagement party, she was shocked to see her sister getting engaged to her fiancé.
"Daniel, remember this, I dumped you! Did you hear that? I dumped you, not the other way round."
.....
Who could have guessed that after being betrayed by her fiancé and sister and being labelled as a home wrecker, someone would still want to marry her?
"Don't you want to get revenge on your fiancé for what he did?" Nathan Clemon asked Hilda.
"What has that got to do with you?" She snapped back.
"It has got everything to do with me. I am the only person who could help you achieve that whiles giving you the happiness that any woman would wish in this world."

The night her sister steals her fiancé, Calista makes a bold, reckless move:
seduce her ex's father, marry into the family-and make them kneel and call her "Mom."
But when she wakes up, it's not her ex's father beside her.
It's Lancelot.
A construction worker by appearance-
in truth, a powerful CEO and the shadowy head of a family no one dares to cross.
"You seduced me," he says, pinning her to the wall. "Now you're mine."
But Calista isn't just a scorned socialite with a revenge plan.
Behind her quiet retreat from high society hides:
the true heiress of the richest family,
a world-class hacker,
a legendary thief,
and a gaming champion feared across continents.
They clash. They scheme.
But the more they fight, the harder they fall.

I felt my heart tighten in my chest as I watched with horror, my fiancé and my best friend having sex in the hotel. They were so engrossed and couldn’t even care less that they were half naked and anyone who cared, could see them from the glass wall of the building’s fourth floor. Sonia was pressed to the wall while Dennis worked her insides from behind. I couldn’t hear her moans but with every second that I imagined it, my heart sank the more.
Tears flooded my face as I flashed into the last two years of my life when I met Dennis. He was everything I wanted and more. Tall, handsome, broad shoulders and chest, I couldn’t stop drooling as he pulled me into a hug. For a moment there, my heart forgot how to beat, and the moment he smiled and introduced himself, I knew I was going to marry him. I had fallen hard in love with him.
Freya decided to try love again after several heartbreaks, she thought Dennis was different but reality dawned on her when she caught him cheating with her best friend, Sonia, the same person who matchmade them in the first place.
Actually, Dennis wasn’t cheating on her with Sonia, he was cheating on Sonia with her! The two have been dating over five years, and she never knew. She was the third wheel in their relationship…
What will happen now that Freya has found out? Find out in the story!

"Sign the papers, Gadreel. Consider it my anniversary gift to you—our divorce."
For five years, Ivory Remington played the perfect wife. She nursed her comatose husband back to health, endured his family’s disdain, and smiled through the rumors that she was just a placeholder for his beloved stepsister. But when Gadreel awakens—only to coldly declare their marriage a business arrangement—Ivory’s last shred of hope shatters.
On the night of their anniversary, a vicious video arrives: Gadreel and her stepsister, tangled in sheets that should’ve been theirs.
Enough.
Ivory files for divorce with a parting shot that strikes his ego where it hurts most.


"You dare call me impotent?" He drags her against him, his breath hot on her lips.
"Let me remind you exactly what your husband is capable of."

I dragged Theodore out of the car seconds before it exploded. Ever since that day, my fingers have never been the same—a permanent injury I'll carry for life.
Three years into our marriage, Scarlett came back. His foster sister. The one he'd secretly loved all along.
He indulged her every whim. Let her wear my wedding ring. Move into our marital home. Even kiss him in public.
Everyone mocked me—said I was clinging to the title of "wife" and refused to let go. Scarlett told me to my face to get out.
That day, Theodore abandoned me on the highway.
That was when I finally gave up on him completely.
I left the divorce papers behind and vanished.
Theodore found the journal I'd left. He went crazy searching for me all over the world. When he finally found me, he dropped to his knees, eyes red with desperation.
"Don't leave. You're the one I've always loved."
I smiled and took my new boyfriend's hand.
"Too bad. I don't love you anymore."

Today is the day I marry Lucian.

The woman in the mirror wore a gown of pristine white — but Joanna Ashford's eyes held nothing of a bride's joy. Her best friend Sia's whisper brushed her ear: Everything is ready. After the wedding, we'll meet at the tree-lined path behind the estate.

This was no wedding. It was a transaction between two wolf packs. And Joanna was the bargaining chip.


Joanna had once been loved by her fated mate, Sebastian Lockwood — a border patrol Beta with nothing to his name but his integrity and the warmth in his eyes. Then her father, Roger Ashford, Alpha of the Shadow Pack, gave her a choice that was no choice at all: stand in that courtroom and destroy the man she loved, or watch her mother die on an operating table without a signed consent form.

She lied. Every word out of her mouth was a blade she drove into Sebastian herself.

He severed their bond in front of the entire clan before the gavel fell. He didn't look at her once.

She didn't know, as she watched him be led away in silver cuffs, that she was already carrying his child.


Sebastian survived the exile grounds the way only the most furious do — by refusing to die. He emerged harder, colder, and burning with a single purpose. When he walked into the Northern Pack's challenge circle and took down the old Alpha in under three minutes, no one was surprised. When he announced his chosen Luna — Sophia Carter, who had nursed him back from the edge of death — the crowd cheered.

He had built himself a life with no room for the past.

And then a chef in a flour-dusted uniform looked up from across a banquet hall, and his wolf went absolutely feral.


Joanna had spent three years building something small and stubborn out of the rubble of everything she had destroyed. A kitchen job. A tiny apartment. A son named Theo, with deep brown hair that curled at the nape just like his father's, and gray-blue eyes that saw everything.

Theo's ears hadn't developed properly. The bills were staggering. Every restaurant in the Northern Territory had been warned not to hire her.

She kept going anyway. Because Theo needed her to.


Sebastian paid off her debts without being asked. He transferred her a restaurant. He found her in his office on a full-moon night with his silver cuffs already snapped, and she stayed — and in the dark afterward he said: Move into my apartment. She said: Let's pretend this never happened.

Her wolf Nana came back at last, in a forest surrounded by rogues Sophia had sent to kill her, red fur erupting through torn skin. Go find Sebastian, Nana whispered before going quiet again. Tell him about Theo. He'll love Theo.


Tomorrow is the Moon Festival. Tomorrow is the marking ceremony that will bind Sebastian to Sophia forever.

Joanna has one chance left — and one question she cannot answer.

When Sebastian learns the truth about the courtroom, about the child he never knew existed — will he look at Theo and see his son?

Or will he only see her betrayal?

He married me because I look like her.
For three years, I played the role. I cooked his meals. I warmed his bed. I smiled when he forgot my birthday. I stayed quiet when he left in the middle of the night to hold her hand.
I told myself it was enough. I told myself I didn't need his love.
Then I got pregnant.
He said he hated children. So I didn't tell him. I was going to keep it. Our baby. The only thing that was truly mine.
But my body had other plans.
When I called him from the hospital floor, bleeding out, begging for help—he didn't come. He said I was lying. He was too busy with her.
That night, I lost everything.
The baby. The hope. The lie I'd been living.
Now he's calling me. Again and again.
But the substitute wife? She's not picking up.

"Everyone in Cedar Hollow can tell you exactly what I did. I just can't."

Twelve years ago, Vanessa Dalton walked out of Larkspur Quarry alone, covered in her best friend Jo Calloway's blood. Jo's body was never found. Vanessa never remembered what happened. The evidence disappeared with the storm, but the town reached its own verdict long ago: she was guilty.

Now a renowned forensic genealogist who solves decades-old cold cases using DNA, Vanessa is forced to return home when her dying mother leaves her no choice. She's spent years helping strangers uncover the truth, while refusing to investigate the one mystery that destroyed her own life.

Sheriff Scott Bradley wants her gone. His father ruined his career trying to prove Vanessa murdered Jo, and Scott inherited both the badge and the hatred. But when someone steals a hidden box of evidence from the Calloway case, and Vanessa begins remembering fragments that contradict everything Cedar Hollow believes, a second car at the quarry, another voice calling her name, and Jo alive long after the moment she was supposed to have died, they're forced into an uneasy alliance.

As Vanessa and Scott reopen the town's darkest secret, every new clue exposes another lie. Someone has spent twelve years protecting the truth, and they'll kill to keep it buried.

Because Jo Calloway wasn't the only person who disappeared that night.

He may have been her number one fan, but he wasn't just annoying; he was a piece of shit she couldn't stop thinking about...

Bukunmi, a struggling writer, takes her mother's advice and goes in search of a better job, which she immediately regrets after coming in contact with the ever daring, seductive and extravagant Tade, whom she detests being fully aware of his past.

Tade Wellington, a sexy lucrative billionaire that beds anything in skirts, gets to meet the writer he has been following up, but asides being her fan, he knows she's the only witness to a crime he was involved in many years ago.

He will do anything to silence her,

She will do everything to get justice;

But will she really do what is right when love stands in the way???

FROM THE AUTHOR OF "THE CHILD'S FATHER" AND "FEELS LIKE YESTERDAY."

"I don't know who moved first. But suddenly my mouth was on his and I was kissing him like I was oxygen and he'd been drowning...I didn't even know his name."
I'm Harper, and my life exploded the day I caught my husband with my best friend.
He handed me divorce papers like I was disposable.
So I ran to LA, got drunk, and let a stranger make me forget I was ever a wife.
One night. No names. No rules.
Just the kind of heat that sears itself into your bones.
I thought I escaped it when I slipped out of his bed before sunrise.
I was wrong.
Because at my next job interview, he's sitting across from me, the stranger from that night.
Hardin Wolfe. Billionaire. Cold. Dangerous.
"I've been searching for you," he tells me, and my entire body remembers him.
I need this job to rebuild my life.
I need revenge on the people who destroyed me.
But working for Hardin means late nights, closed doors, one hotel room on business trips...and a man who doesn't understand the word no when it comes to me.
I try to keep my distance.
He gets closer.
Too close.
Until one night on a work trip, I stop fighting it—and everything between us ignites again.
Then I miss my period. The baby could be his. Or it could be my ex-husband's from our final, toxic goodbye.
Now my ex wants me back. Hardin is hiding a secret that could break me all over again. And I'm carrying a child who might belong to the wrong man.
Revenge tastes sweet. Desire burns deep. And loving either of them might destroy me.

Eva Fransis had everything—until the people she loved most took it all away.

Drugged and betrayed on her 18th birthday by her best friend, Eva's perfect life crumbled in a single night. A desperate escape led her into the arms of a stranger, and one forbidden night left her pregnant and alone.

Forced into a marriage she never wanted, Eva endured years of abuse, humiliation, and heartbreak—all while her husband lived off her family's wealth. The final blow? Catching him in bed with the very woman who destroyed her life.

Now, Eva is done being a victim.

She wants a divorce. She wants her freedom. She wants to give her children the life they deserve.

But her husband refuses to let her go—not out of love, but greed.

And just when she thinks things can't get more complicated, a powerful stranger appears, claiming to be the real father of her children.

He wants them back.

He wants her back.

She spent years protecting her heart. Now she must protect her children—even if it means facing the man from that unforgettable night.

Can she break free from her past? Or will she be stolen by the man who already owns a piece of her?

While others seek survival, I engage in flirtation

Marilyn had one simple goal: ace her job interview, get her dream career, and finally put her miserable week behind her. Then she made one careless wish.

After complaining that she could do a better job than the helpless heroine of the fantasy romance novel she was reading, Marilyn wakes up inside the story—except she is no longer Marilyn.

She is Effie, the abused stepdaughter destined for a miserable life.

Luckily, Marilyn knows the entire plot. She knows which people will betray her, which choices will ruin her future, and most importantly, she knows the three men she is supposed to avoid.

So she does the unthinkable.

She rejects her destined mates.

But nothing goes according to the book.

Instead of escaping them, Marilyn somehow ends up attracting three powerful men who were never supposed to fall for Effie: a grumpy wolf shifter with a secret talent for baking, a mysterious mage who communicates through enchanted gifts, and a dangerously charming dragon shifter who keeps dragging her into magical adventures.

When her sister discovers that Effie's life has suddenly taken an unexpected turn, she tries every means to sabotage everything.

But when the moment of truth comes, Marilyn finds it difficult not to fall in love with her mates. She also struggles to tell them she doesn't belong in their world. And now she has to pay a price to return to her real life.

I thought I was the happiest woman in the city.

My husband would gently help me into my shoes, rest his hand on my belly and whisper to our baby. My father would tie on an apron and cook dinner just for me.

Then a video from an unknown number shattered everything.

Inside a chapel, the four of them stood side by side.

My husband holding the hand of my father's mistress's daughter. My father arm in arm with the woman who once knelt before my mother begging for mercy.

And my wedding — the one the whole city had witnessed — had been nothing but a lie from the very beginning.

That evening.

He picked the bones from my fish, tucked a cushion behind my back, kissed my forehead — same as always.

I didn't confront him. I simply handed him a document to sign.

He thought I was still the naive little lamb he'd been deceiving all along. What he didn't realize was that he had just signed away his last card.

I came across a viral local post while scrolling through my phone.

LIVE: My fiancée is cheating on me. I’m in her house right now. Should I end her for good?

When I tapped into the post, what I read made the blood in my veins turn to ice in an instant.

I put a monitoring app on her phone. I’ve been listening for almost two weeks, and every single day she’s on the line with some random guy, flirting and talking dirty. She says yes to marrying me to my face, but she’s been cuckolding me behind my back. Tell me, bros—does this bitch deserve to die?

The comment section below had completely spiraled out of control. Hundreds of replies were all outright egging him on, not a single person telling him to stop. Every line oozed with the vicious glee of people who lived for drama and cared nothing for the consequences.

Hell yeah she does. You got cucked this hard, why keep her around?
Bro, stop all talk and no action. Go live, we’ll send you gifts. Rape her first, then kill her if you’ve got the balls.
You in Haicheng? Drop the address. Me and the boys will come over and help you out. My fists are itching for a fight anyway.
Pfft, and I thought you were tough. You’re already in her house and still dragging your feet? I bet you don’t even have the guts to kill a dog.

My fingers were shaking violently. Driven by a sick, twisting dread, I tapped into the poster’s profile—and with just one glance, every hair on my body stood on end.

This account belonged to Xiao Ming, the blind date my relatives had forced on me when I went home for the Lunar New Year.

His entire profile was filled with posts about me, spanning a full two weeks, starting the very day we’d met for that blind date.

He’d taken secret photos of me, paired with captions full of disgusting, delusional ramblings:

My fiancée went on a date with me today. She wore a white blouse with the neckline open so low, it’s obvious she was trying to seduce me.
She told me she works the front desk at a hotel. That’s her way of hinting I should take her to a room for the night. All women say one thing and mean another.
She says she has a boyfriend, but it’s just playing hard to get. She’s been dying to marry me this whole time.

But I’d said it loud and clear, right in front of the matchmaker, on the very day of that blind date: I’d been in a committed relationship with my boyfriend for three years.

That blind date was nothing more than a way to appease my family. I’d been polite but distant the entire time, and I hadn’t even accepted a single glass of water from him.

As for that nonsense about a hotel room? It was complete and utter garbage. I’d only casually mentioned that my job was working the front desk at a hotel, nothing more.

Just as a bone-deep chill washed over me, the post refreshed. A new line had been added to the main post, timestamped just three seconds earlier:

Truth is, I’m hiding in her house right now. She’s lying in bed scrolling through her phone, and she has no idea she’s already dead meat.

The very second that line finished loading, a clear, soft rustle of fabric came from the wardrobe right behind me.

My biggest regret? Trusting my husband with my mother's life.

The day the mudslide hit, I was on my knees. Begging him to send a helicopter.

He told me to wait. Twenty minutes. But when the helicopter came, it went for his adoptive sister Vivian instead.

I held my mother in the ruins. Her body was shutting down. I waited. Waited until she went cold in my arms.

When he finally showed up at the hospital, the first thing he said? Accused me of faking it. Said I just wanted attention.

In that moment, my heart died too.

Later, I found out Vivian wasn't even sick.

She said "I don't feel well"—that's all it took. And he left my mother and me to die.

Called me a lunatic. In front of everyone. All for her.

I was ready to leave. For good. Then someone shattered my mother's ashes.

The first birthday after we finally made up.

Shen Linze sent me a menu and told me to cook everything myself.

He invited all his close friends, plus the girl he was chasing, saying it was a birthday party for me.

On the long dining table were the stir-fried dishes I’d spent three hours rushing to make.

Shen Linze picked up a piece of sweet and sour spareribs and carefully held it to the girl’s mouth.

“Yaoyao, have a taste. I asked Su Qingyan to make them specially—they’re all your favorite dishes.”

The girl sitting in the main seat didn’t react at all.

Shen Linze put down his chopsticks and told the servants to wheel out a custom-made multi-layer cake.

“Do you like it? I designed this just for you. It has the place where we first met, your prettiest smile,
your favorite flowers, your favorite color purple, the wedding you’ve always wanted, and the initials of your name: ZY…”

Three months ago, I’d seen that exact cake design in Shen Linze’s office.

After he finished the design, he brought in several top pastry chefs from abroad and spent three months making it.

My birthday was coming soon, and I’d thought the “ZY” on the cake stood for the last characters of both our names.

I never knew it was just my own foolish wishful thinking.

A childhood engagement, two decades in the making. I crossed an ocean for the sole purpose of marrying the heir to the Russell family.

But they led me to an abandoned construction site—where a blood-soaked man was swinging a steel pipe, fighting off ten attackers at once. This, they told me, was "my fiancé."

Bankrupt. Drowning in debt. Scraping by in underground fighting pits. They said he was living like a dog.

Meanwhile, the real heir had his arm around another woman, sneering at me from across the room. "Some gold-digging country girl thinks she deserves me? Find a nobody with the same last name—that's the best she'll ever get."

They made us into a joke—the washed-up loser paired with the clueless village hick.

What they didn't know was that I held several championship belts.

What they also didn't know was that this little "con" of theirs had already begun to unravel the moment I set foot in this city.

He said, "I don't know you. Mind your own business."

Too bad. I'd already made it mine.

This marriage? I was locking it down.

Everyone in this city knows that the king of the underworld, my husband Vincent, is crazy about me.

Three years ago, when that bullet tore through my abdomen, it took away my chance of ever being a mother. He held my blood-soaked body and swore to God he'd make the shooter's entire family pay. A month later, that family was wiped off the map in this city. No one dares speak their name anymore.

He sat by my hospital bed, holding my hand. "I don't need kids. I only need you."

I believed him.

Until six months ago, when his brother died in an accident, leaving behind his wife Serena. The family pressure came like a tidal wave. An heir. A bloodline. That's all they cared about. And that woman became everyone's golden ticket to keeping the Caruso name alive.

That's when my husband stopped coming home at night. Every night, I hear them through the wall. Sounds that used to be mine.

But today, the doctor told me my body is healing. The chances are slim, but there's hope.

I clutch the medical report and rush home, imagining Vincent's face when he sees the results. Maybe everything can go back to how it was. Maybe he'll realize he doesn't need her.

Until I stand outside our mansion and hear laughter pouring out.

"Serena's pregnant! Can you believe it? The family finally has an heir!"

"Finally. The family's saved."