8465 Book(s) Related to i became the mad emperor novel

Liya built her world around Marcus.
She trusted him with everything, her heart, her life, her children.

But on the day she buried her babies, Liya walked into a truth she was never meant to believe.

Her husband pressed against his step sister, moaning her name.
His hands gripped around her waist. Their bodies so close together as they enjoyed the moment, moaning and whispering.
She learned they murdered her twins for an experiment.
Used them as living in-vivo subjects for Clarissa’s failed research. Lied about COVID complications.
And now, they planned to destroy her, steal her company shares……and harvest her unconscious mother’s kidney.

Betrayed. Broken. She collapsed. Only to wake up in a hospital bed with Marcus suddenly acting like the perfect husband and Clarissa pretending to be the grieving sister-in-law.

But Liya remembers everything.

She remembers the lies.The betrayal.
The murder.

And she remembers one more thing, she’s done being their victim.

But when she calls her father for help, someone else answers the phone.

Benjamin Marino. A mafia Don.
Her father’s oldest enemy… and the man she has been running from.

Now Liya has a plan. A 99 + 1 revenge gifts.

I thought telling Alpha Kane I was pregnant would be the hardest part of my day.

That was before I found my step-sister naked on his mahogany desk.
I remained committed to my role of Luna for three years while I suffered through his distant behavior because I viewed our mate bond as a holy connection. The moment he wiped her lipstick from his mouth, the bond that connected us to each other shattered in my heart because he had treated me as someone who lacked excitement.

He wanted me to weep while I accepted my lower-status position. I used my mother’s billion-dollar tech patents to lock him out, then I denied him on the pack intercom, before I entered the advanced security facilities of his most dangerous competitor.

Alpha Kaelen, the Lycan King, doesn't function as an uncontrollable animal. He possesses dangerous charisma which combines with his exceptional intelligence. I didn't request his protection; I established the terms for it. I presented him with the blueprints which would lead to our shared enemy's financial ruin. We are currently dismantling Kane's business empire together. Our formal agreement starts to dissolve into an irresistible attraction which develops during our nighttime strategy meetings and our executive boardroom business takeovers.

Kaelen discovers my hidden pregnancy secret, but he does not exile me from his presence. He displays a wicked grin while making his intention to take ownership of his opponent's offspring permanent. Kane will initiate a violent conflict to reclaim me as his possessions disappear and his remorse transforms into a primal fixation.

Will my charming, deadly protector permit me to handle my own conflicts or will we destroy everything my ex left behind?

Thalia has always been in love with Cassian but he never noticed her. She was never the woman Cassian wanted, he wanted someone else.

Drunken and heartbroken, Cassian bumped into Thalia and that one reckless night changed her life forever, binding her to this man who will never chose her.

Forced into marriage and banished from the GoldenMoon Pack, she spends seven years trying to earn the heart of her husband only to discover it has always belonged to another woman; his brother's wife.

No matter the years they’ve shared or the son they’ve raised together. His love remains locked on a forbidden past, and now, he wants out.

But Thalia has a persistent heart and has vowed to win his love over, no matter the consequences.

For five years, my husband claimed he could not understand emotion.

I believed him, excused every broken promise, and taught myself to survive on scraps of attention.

Then I went to his office with news of our unborn child and heard him laughing with the woman who had helped him deceive me.

He had married me for a pureblood heir. Once the baby was born, he planned to throw me away.

He wanted an heir from a devoted wife. Instead, I gave him a funeral.

A week before our wedding, I discovered my girlfriend wearing the wedding dress I bought her, having sex with her step-brother.
I decisively chose to abandon her and instead accepted a marriage proposal from a true wealthy heiress.
But when I married the heiress, my ex-girlfriend knelt on the ground crying and begging me to come back.
What a pity - I no longer want her.

I suffered a head injury when I was little, so I’m a bit slow at everything I do.
My brother is the greatest hero in my heart, so I copy whatever he does—including being a simp.
He simped for a witch, so I did the same for her younger sister. But just as I was being relentlessly humiliated by the sister, and even dragged to the brink of death, my brother quit.

I found my husband's vasectomy certificate while sorting medical bills. The procedure was done a year ago. But I was six months pregnant now.

I stared at the date on the paper and my hand just... stopped. I kept checking it again and again, but it was still the same. I was freaking out. I looked down at my bump showing through this baggy sweater, and my hands started shaking.

I got in my car and drove straight to my husband's private club. I needed answers about this, now.

In my final moments in the ICU, the cruel truth crashed over me. My husband had colluded with a hypocritical single mother to steal everything meant for my daughter. For years, they manipulated and gaslit the girl, and even plotted to bar us from seeing each other one last time. Reborn right before the tragedy unfolded, the very first thing I set out to do is safeguard everything that belongs to my daughter and mend our broken bond. Faced with my husband’s fake display of devotion, all I have for him is…

I am the top algorithm genius on Wall Street.
When my wife's first love got into serious trouble, she didn't hesitate to cut off my daughter's medical expenses and force me to go to jail for that scumbag.
But she didn't know that without me, her multi-billion dollar empire was just an empty shell that could explode at any moment.
She could never have known that the little girl she cursed as a "bastard" and who was driven to her death by her own hands was actually her own flesh and blood, whom she thought had died at birth.
When, a few days later, I, who should have been dying in prison, suddenly arrived with short-selling capital and a top-secret paternity test... I wonder if this high and mighty queen will still be able to laugh.

My sister Vivian dated men the way other people taste champagne — a bright sip, then set the glass down before anyone could ask her to finish it.
Never enough to satisfy anyone. Never long enough to be held responsible for the empty glass.
When those men discovered one another, they did not punish her.
They chose me.
Attention I had never received became flowers, invitations, and late-night calls. For a while, I let myself believe it.
Vivian only smiled. "They must have finally noticed how much kinder you are than me." She said it like a compliment. It wasn't.
Then the floating words appeared in front of my eyes.
[Poor thing. She actually thinks this is about her.]
[They're not courting her. They're using her.]
[Break her, and Vivian will feel it. That's the plan.]
And from the other side of a half-open door, I heard a man say, with perfect calm, "If Vivian hadn't been so cruel to me, I wouldn't have to use her sister."
That was the night I stopped mistaking attention for love.

I overheard my husband tell his business partner, “I let Aria get pregnant for fun, not like I ever planned on letting them live, the babies make perfect specimens for Vivian’s research.”
The same day I discovered I was pregnant for the fifth time.
I used to believe he was my protector.
This time, I gathered proof of everything he’d done and made sure the truth destroyed him before I started my new life.

"Margaret has face blindness—she won't even recognize the groom. Tomorrow's ceremony? Just stick any random guy up there with her. Isabelle, I'll marry YOU in the rose garden. Our real wedding."

I stood outside my bedroom door the night before my wedding, listening to my fiancé Theodore plot with my adopted sister, my own parents nodding along.

They thought I was broken. A defective bride too blind to know she was being played.

They wanted a stand-in groom? Fine. I'd give them one.

So I gave them their fake wedding. With one little change.

The "random stand-in" they're expecting? He's Theodore's worst enemy. He's Sebastian Kingsley.

Oh, and according to the marriage certificate we signed three hours ago—he's also my husband.

Jonathan’s way of loving was always paying in silence. After we broke up, he cleared my shopping cart, stocked up enough makeup remover to last me three years, trying his best to make up for it. But during those three years when I willingly waited for him to propose, he never said a word. Until one day, he found a small note I’d written in pencil three years ago in that wedding planning book: “It’s okay, I can wait.” He cried all night staring at that line, and the next day, he bought 17 copies of the same book. On the title page of each one, he wrote neatly: “Wait for me.” It turns out, the stupidest person takes three years just to learn to say “I love you.”

Six hundred years into our marriage, I found out my husband had a son.

I had ended my border patrol three days early, wanting to surprise Valerius.

Not far away, Valerius was channeling his exclusive magic, teaching a boy how to weave the darkness.

"Dad! I did it!" The boy looked up. His bright eyes were a near-perfect reflection of Valerius's.

My mind instantly went blank.

Dad?

A woman walked over.

She draped a small cloak over the boy's shoulders, her hand brushing against Valerius's chest with practiced familiarity. "Valeri, the wind is picking up. He'll catch a cold now that he's sweating."

Valerius naturally wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "My fault."

The image of them huddled together like a picture-perfect family was an ice-tipped needle driven straight into my eyes.

The sharp sting made my breath hitch in my throat.

The man who had sworn before the Senate to love me for all eternity—the man bound to me by a Soul Blood Pact—had already betrayed me!

A sudden, agonizing cramp seized my lower abdomen.

It was an old wound from six centuries ago.

When the Sunfire Curse nearly reduced Valerius to ashes, I had offered my high-born pure blood and my womb as a sacrifice to forcibly block the hex for him.

The price was permanent infertility, along with an excruciating backlash of pain I had to endure every single month.

Back then, Valerius had held me, his eyes red and tear-filled. "I don't want any children! I would rather lose my seat in the Senate than ever betray you!"

Yet the scene before me crushed those words into fine dust.

I stumbled backward, my chest feeling as though it had been ripped open by bare hands.

I was terrified I'd lose control and rush over to scream at him.

Worse yet, in the face of this cozy, happy family of three, I was afraid I'd look like a pathetic, unwanted outsider.

Suffocation gripped my throat. I turned and fled.

As the tyrant ruling the underworld, Victor was ruthless and bloodthirsty, showing no mercy to anyone.

Women who tried to climb into his bed usually didn’t even get a whole corpse, yet I was the only one he kept by his side.

I’d taken a poisoned bullet for him, and nearly bled to death on the rotting floor of a safe house giving birth to his son.

He once kissed the bullet scar on my shoulder and promised me that when he sat on the godfather’s throne, I would be his only family matriarch.

But the moment he slipped on that black onyx ring symbolizing power, he carried another woman into the master bedroom of the manor.

I burst for the door, and he ordered his bodyguards to pin me outside, forcing me to listen to their sounds of passion all night long.

I banged on the door like a madwoman, so he slammed my paintbrush-wielding right hand in the heavy oak doorframe and crushed it mercilessly.

I finally caved when he threatened to cut off my mother’s hospital treatment.

We'd agreed to spend summer break in the Hamptons. Right before break started, my boyfriend suggested we hit the water park out in the suburbs first, just to blow off some steam.

I thought it was a date. Just the two of us. But when I get to the gate, my best friend Sienna is standing there in a string bikini.

I tell her that's not safe to swim in. Her face goes cold and she tells me to mind my own business.

Colton frowns too and dumps his phone, a towel, and Sienna's makeup bag into my arms. "Vivienne, do you have to kill the mood? Sienna's scared to go alone. What's the big deal if I keep her company?"

In the wave pool, he holds her against his chest and the two of them roll around in the spray, laughing.

When they come out, Sienna takes the ice water I haven't even opened and takes a big swig, then hands it to Colton, and he drinks half the bottle right from where her lips were.

I stand there feeling like the hired help.

Two years of killing myself to be the understanding, easygoing girlfriend, and all it got me was a boyfriend who walks all over me without thinking twice.

If he's that close with my best friend, he can't blame me for calling up his best friend since they were kids.

"Julian, can you come get me?"

My daughter helped my husband cheat.

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

I thought I was the luckiest mom alive.

Then I checked the pet camera from overseas.

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

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

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

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

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

They thought I was still that stupid, trusting wife.

What they didn't know?

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

Nineteen times. That's how many times Lucas promised to marry me, only to leave me standing alone because of her.
Today was supposed to be our day. But as I stood in the biting cold outside the restaurant, watching him carefully help Selena into his Maybach, the marriage application still tucked in my purse, I finally understood—that "someday" would never come.
"Let's reschedule the registration, okay?" he'd said without even looking at me.
I walked straight to HR and submitted my resignation. Then I accepted the offer from the Morinetti family—his sworn enemies.
As I boarded my flight to the West Coast, my phone exploded with messages.
"We agreed to go to City Hall today. Where are you?"
I glanced at the screen one last time, then powered it off.
"We're done."

“Why is Elara dying on my stream?”

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

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

So I opened the live build.

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

Created by Maya Reed.

My husband's childhood sweetheart lost her entry for the competition,
so he gave mine to her.
It was I who saved him all those years ago,
and that's why he married me.
But he turned his back on me right after our wedding.
I've been childhood sweetheart all these years.
But this time,
I suddenly feel like this marriage has lost all its meaning.
After handing in the transfer request I had prepared long ago to the factory director,
I rejected his offer to stay.
I can't bear to stay in this place for another day.
I want to go to New York,
start a new chapter in my life,
and let everything that happened before just drift away. all its meaning.
After handing in the transfer request I had prepared long ago to the factory director,
I rejected his offer to stay.
I can't bear to stay in this place for another day.
I want to go to New York,
start a new chapter in my life,
and let everything that happened before just drift away.

In a world where magic and Dragons are real, where magic is taught at a school's and kingdom's rule over the land. Why are dragons so scarce and why is magic not so widely used if it's available for everyone to learn and use. History is told by the victor and that often leads to a miss telling in the tale, leaving those who read it to miss out of the true story. But when Young Nova discovers her past and goes on quest to discover her true self, she will meet friend's she will come to hold as family and they will discover the truth behind magic. As everything comes to light, and the truth comes to light, their resolve will be tested.

Isabella’s world shatters when her longtime boyfriend, Damon Sanchez, publicly proposes to her best friend. Humiliated and heartbroken, she drowns her sorrows in a bar—only to wake up on the bed of Matteo Moretti, the city’s most powerful billionaire.
Their one-night stand should have been the end of it.
But when her brother Alan's illness and Damon's vengeance leave her jobless, fate delivers Isabella straight into the jaws of her most dangerous mistake—Matteo Moretti, now her ruthless new boss.
Caught between Damon’s vindictive games and Moretti’s dangerous allure, Isabella must decide—is survival worth the cost of her heart?
Especially when Matteo’s seven-year-old son, Noah, starts calling her "Mom."

"You took my wedding dress for my stepsister?"
My voice was ice as I stared at the man I had loved for six years—the man I had saved with my own blood, drop by drop, through years of his illness.
Atlas Brooks couldn't meet my eyes.
"She's dying, Mandy. Susie's last wish is to marry me."
Six years of devotion. Endless blood donations. And this is what I get in return?
The man I saved wants to trade me for the sister who destroyed my family.
Let him. I'm done fighting for someone who never fought for me.
But when I tried to walk away, Atlas caught my wrist.
"After she's gone," he whispered, "we can still be together. Just... let her have this."
The dress. The wedding. The man. Let her have everything.
I'm not waiting around as anyone's second choice. Not anymore.
I'm ready to say goodbye to everything.
I thought I was leaving love behind forever.
I didn't know that at my stolen wedding, I was about to find it.

Luna Chen wanted a quiet life. Instead, she got a 1940s architect in a tailored suit who appeared in her bedroom at 3 a.m. and calmly announced:

“You’re my wife now.”

Rhen Blackwood has been trapped in her grandmother’s apartment for eighty years, bound by a supernatural contract.

The final condition? Fall in love for real… or the Spirit Broker drags his soul into eternal nothingness.

Luna doesn’t believe in ghosts. She definitely doesn’t believe in love. But Ren is infuriatingly perceptive, dryly funny, and the only person who sees straight through her walls.

As the deadline closes in, the lines between annoyance and aching want begin to blur. Lights flicker. Secrets surface.

And every time Ren’s form starts to fade, Luna realizes she might lose the one man who finally makes her feel alive.

She was supposed to fix his unfinished business.
She never expected him to become hers.

A slow-burn paranormal romance full of dark humor, haunted hearts, and one very stubborn ghost who refuses to stay dead.

In my past life, they drained my blood, kicked me off the rooftop, and said, "Waste doesn't deserve to live."

Reborn into the apocalypse, I opened my palm, and seven beams of primal energy pierced the sky. The woman who cried out "the best in the world" to me just ten minutes ago couldn't even produce a spark now. The brother who wore the boots I sewed and called me trash was being chased and bitten by mutants like a stray dog, his leg broken.

They came to me with memories of their past lives, demanding, "Why did you steal our special abilities?"

In front of thousands of people, I unleashed a net of lightning, scorching those who came to block my way. They knelt in the mud, their heads bleeding from kowtowing; Elena covered her mouth, which had been slapped clean, and David trembled on his single leg, leaning on a rusty steel pipe—yet they couldn't even climb over the iron thorns surrounding my tower.

Later, they rotted into a pile of mud in the arena and among the hordes of corpses, and I didn't even look back.

Until a horde of millions of zombies besieged the city, I went out alone with my sword and shattered the zombie king with a single strike.

The entire ruins knelt down.

They thought I had stolen the light.
No. I was just a fire that burned away what should have been garbage.

Woke up with the power to command endless zombies. I guarded the fortress for my sister, only to find her tortured, drained of blood, and used as live bait. A fake hologram fooled me for two years. Now I unleash my million undead army to burn all traitors to ashes.

Eight years ago, I was the heir to a powerful dynasty—the man set to inherit an empire.

On the way home from a business deal, our convoy was ambushed and I was taken. My fiancée arrived with the ransom, and the kidnappers gave her a choice: save one man. She saved my closest friend—and left me bleeding in the ruins.

They thought I was dead. They went on camera, announced my “tragic death,” took my company, split my legacy, and lived on my name for eight long years.

But I didn’t die. A gray-zone mercenary unit pulled me out of a pile of bodies. I changed my name and climbed from the bottom of their world—training, bleeding, killing, leading—until I became one of their commanders.

Today, my fiancée is marrying my best friend. The invitation arrived with my name on it. I board a first-class flight under a new identity and head straight for their wedding.

Halfway through the ceremony, the priest asks if anyone objects.

I stand up. “I object.”

I didn’t come back to give my blessing. I came back to collect.

My name is Michael Carson. On the surface, I'm a small-time analyst in Dallas, but nobody knows that I'm the sole heir to a multi-billion dollar financial empire.

The father's factory was on the verge of bankruptcy, but his wife transferred the money to her mother to open a beauty clinic, saying, "Your dad's lousy factory should have gone out of business long ago."

Her father suffered a heart attack and urgently needed surgery. She then said, "He's over sixty years old, is it worth it?"

I tolerated it. Until she discovered my true identity, she immediately turned on me, threatening divorce and taking half of my assets.

At that moment, I understood—some people don't deserve kindness.

I dialed the family number I hadn't contacted in five years.

They will never forget what happened next.

For four years, I tolerated Grayson’s blatant favoritism. He spoiled my roommate Mia with exquisite breakfasts every day, while leaving me with plain biscuits and bitter black coffee. I swallowed every unfair slight, hoping for true love. Yet he finally humiliated me thoroughly by choosing Mia over me for the elite corporate event, sneering that I was unworthy of high society. Hiding my identity as the university’s secret heiress, I stopped my father from ruining his career on impulse. I will let them attend the glamorous party—not out of mercy, but to deliver my quiet, devastating revenge. Now I only need time to decide my next move, and whether to accept my arranged engagement.

In my previous life, I ran a barbecue restaurant to support my family for ten years, but my parents secretly sold the restaurant to a gang because of my younger brother's vanity in wanting him to study abroad.
An hour later, the apocalypse began, and my little shop became a god-level safe house—
Those with superpowers who enter the store have their abilities automatically copied to the store owner; the store is absolutely safe; the store owner decides who enters and who leaves.
My family ruined my amazing little shop, and they scolded me, saying, "Who told you to be unable to keep the shop?"
I was heartbroken and torn to pieces in the mouth of a zombie.
In this life, I was reborn back to an hour before the shop was taken away.
I must protect my shop!
As for those so-called family members—let them fend for themselves in the apocalypse!

I thought I'd signed up for an immersive dating show.

Turns out it was a 99.9% death rate, globally livestreamed horror game.

And me? Half-blind without my contacts, desperate to go viral, I somehow talk my way through a death game like it's a romance.

I mistook blood for ketchup, human eyeballs for sashimi, a murderous child ghost for a kid who just needed some love.

Worst part? I fell for the guy running the place, the one who could kill you without blinking, and tried to get his number within the hour.

My teammate hissed at me, shaking. "You wanna die, fine, just don't take us with you!"

I just waved him off. It's a dating show. Relax.

On the eve of the apocalypse, I awakened a survival system: send me $5,000, and the sender can unlock a safehouse and awaken a life-saving ability.
The first person I told was Chloe, my girlfriend of three years. In return, she humiliated me in public and cheated on me without a shred of remorse.
That was the moment I finally gave up. The "nice guy" she had drained dry was dead for good.
One month later, the zombie horde arrived right on schedule. For old times' sake, I saved her one last time. And she repaid me by shoving me straight into the jaws of the mutated dead so she could save herself.
What she didn't know... was that I wasn't the only one who had awakened powers.

I pursued Kaelzen, Alpha of the Frostfang Tribe, for four years and was about to marry him, only to expose his deception shortly before the wedding. A serious head injury erased all my memories of him. My family arranged a new marriage with the Duskthorn Tribe heir, and I agreed, planning to leave once the Ash Gate opens in seven days. Unaware of my memory loss, Kaelzen still treats me arrogantly, yet he is just a stranger to me now.

In my previous life, on the very day of our marking ceremony, my Alpha fiancé met his fated mate at the banquet.
He didn’t break off our engagement. Instead, he chose silence and completed the ceremony with me. He chose to trap me with a twenty-year mate bond.
For twenty years, I fought wars for the Pack, bore him an heir, and ruled the main hall alone as Luna.
Meanwhile, in another Pack’s territory, he spent his entire life with that woman.
Before I died, he told me he was sorry.
But he also blamed me—saying that if I hadn’t insisted on taking the Luna seat, he could have left more completely.
Only then did I realize something cruel. Not only was I never the one he loved, I was also the obstacle to his freedom.
When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day of the marking ceremony.
This time, the mate bond had not yet formed, and the mate mark had not yet been sealed.
Whether he would abandon me for his fated mate no longer mattered.
Because this time—
I would never step aside for any Alpha again.

To fulfill a dying comrade's final request, I spent twelve years living in the shadows to protect his daughter. I took bullets for her, laundered her black-market assets, and eventually handed over my entire stake in the security empire. In her eyes, I am her father’s murderer; in mine, she is a mission—the only flicker of light left in my life. Until that fateful banquet, when she personally shoved me into the sights of mercenaries. Watching my blood bloom across her dress, she hooked her arm around my nemesis and ordered coldly, "Clean it up." In that moment, twelve years of devotion collapsed, and a heart that beat only for her finally learned to freeze. This time, I’ve decided to personally destroy the monster I raised.

I once loved Ryan deeply and helped him become the Alpha, only to be rewarded with chains in a dungeon and the mocking laughter of him and his mistress.

Fate gave me a second chance—I woke up reborn on the morning of the mate selection ceremony. There he was, still ordering me around in front of everyone, expecting me to play the obedient servant.

Everyone tried to convince me that Ryan, the man who killed me, is the "right choice."

Yet I chose Connor—the man feared by the entire clan, the one who will bring ruin to the clan for the sake of his one true love.

This time, I refuse to be the stepping stone on Ryan's climb to power.

I'm going to make everyone see who truly holds the reins.

Forty-eight hours before my wedding, I was kidnapped and gang-raped, surviving by only a thread in the depths of despair.   When my mafia boss fiancé and my police detective best friend stood guard by my hospital bed with bloodshot eyes, I heard him suddenly switch to Navajo and ask her, "The death row inmates from the dark web—were they dealt with cleanly?"   My best friend chuckled, replying in the same language. "Don't worry. The guys who put their hands on Maya have been wiped out. Dead men tell no tales."   "Sacrificing Maya alone gave you the perfect excuse to wipe out the rival family and swallow the southern smuggling network, while earning me a high-level promotion. It was a damn good deal."   Amidst tearing, agonizing pain, it felt as if I had been plunged into an ice cliff.   They thought I could never understand this obscure tribal language, so they brazenly feasted on the spoils of victory built upon my very flesh and blood. But what they didn't know was that, to surprise my fiancé during our wedding vows... I had been secretly studying Navajo for an entire year.

I am the sole heir to the Hartwell fortune.
But this birthday dinner — the one meant to sign the family trust into my hands on my twenty-second year — was being ruined by the housekeeper's daughter.
Brianna had done it on purpose. She'd stolen the archival couture gown my late mother left behind, then thrown herself into the champagne tower and pinned it on me.
"Oh God, Audrey, why did you push me?" She was already crying, her voice pitched for the crowd. "I know you hate seeing me in this dress, but your father was the one who insisted I wear it. Please don't make me leave."
In my last life, I'd stood there sobbing, waving my hands, trying to explain.
For that, I'd been stripped of my inheritance on the spot, committed to a psychiatric ward, and in the end, every fingernail torn out one by one, I'd died in agony.
But I'd been reborn.
Now I looked down at Brianna crumpled among the shattered crystal, playing the victim, and I didn't waste a word.
I crossed the floor, stood over her, drew my arm back, and slapped her across the face as hard as I could.
"Shut your mouth."

To save enough for a summer trip with my boyfriend, Tripp, and his friends, I worked late every night after school as a food runner at the upscale French restaurant in town.

Tripp told me his family didn't have much money. He wore old thrift-store T-shirts and always ordered the cheapest lunch in the cafeteria.

I felt bad for him. During the year we were together, I quietly paid for most of our dates.

Until one night, when I carried a bottle of wine to a private dining room and heard voices coming from inside.

"Tripp, how long are you going to keep pretending you're broke?" It was Chase, Tripp's best friend.

Then I heard Bitsy's sugary-sweet voice. She and Tripp had grown up together. "Thanks for the limited-edition bag, Tripp. Eighty grand, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I love it!"

I froze. An eighty-thousand-dollar bag? He wouldn't even spend twelve dollars on a burger.

Then Tripp spoke in a lazy drawl. "Girls like Nora are low-maintenance. She's easy to fool. Buy her an iced latte, and she'll act like it means the world to her. She barely costs me anything."

He had never really cared about me.

My mate, Rhys, brought his dead brother's pregnant widow into our house.
He swore up and down I'd never have to lift a finger for her.
The next morning he stood by the door with a packed bag and a grin.
"Babe. Big news. The pack called me up. Border post out east, two years. I ship out tonight."
He looked at me like he was waiting for me to promise I'd take good care of his brother's widow.
So I pulled my own bag out of the closet, right there in front of him and the woman in the back room.
"Funny. The alliance called me up too. Medic rotation. Two years."
"We can leave together. Lock up on the way out. Colette can rest easy with the whole house to herself."

Betrayal has never struck so hard until that day I caught my fiancée and best friend cheating on me.

My world came crashing down beneath my feet, and I felt hopeless.

However, luck was on my side and I ended up having a one-night stand with a mysterious man.

Two months later, he showed up at my house with our marriage agreement and he turned out to be my ex-fiancée’s father.

Heartbroken and enraged with revenge, I acknowledged the marriage, desiring to make my ex-fiancée and my best friend pay for what they did to me.

Luckily, my ex-fiancée and best friend lives in the same house with us and revenge took a tremendous turn.

I was a herbalist, a healer who saved lives, but I was falsely accused of spreading plague and hanged on the gallows, awaiting the flames. Then I heard them—a swarm of rats emerging from the earth, gnawing through the noose and dragging me back to the world of the living. But this was not salvation, but the beginning of a curse. Plague swept across the land, the church peddled counterfeit medicines, and lords squeezed every last grain from the farmers. The rats looked at me and whispered to me — the end has come, and you will become the calamity.

Ten years into my marriage, I'd traded my paintbrush for a spatula and turned into Mrs. Holloway.

Ever since my sister Brooke moved in, my husband Bennett and my daughter Lucy had picked up a habit. Anytime Brooke and I disagreed, they put it to a vote.

On my birthday I wanted steak. Two hands went up for the salad bar Brooke liked. When I hadn't slept in weeks and wanted to see a therapist, they sided with Brooke, who said I just had too much time on my hands.

We'd decided long ago that for our tenth anniversary, we'd go back to Jenny Lake, where Bennett had proposed. Then Brooke mentioned she wanted to surf in Maui. Another vote. Two to one, again.

Bennett finished booking the tickets before it even occurred to him to look at me.

"There were only three business-class seats left, so we grabbed them. Just book yourself an economy seat, okay?"

I nodded and bought a one-way ticket to Wyoming.

This time, I wasn't going with them.

For my fiancée’s career, I was willing to be the ghost designer behind her for five years.

Until the day of the key bid, she stole the blueprint I had spent two sleepless years perfecting and signed it with the name of her useless first love.

The drawings are gone You can draw them again He needs this project to survive Be sensible she said, impatient when I confronted her

I did not argue My heart went cold I calmly left my engagement ring and my resignation letter and went to Europe

In just three months, without me, she became disgraced and buried in debt While I won Europe’s highest architectural gold award

I watched the once proud her soak in icy water for five hours just to earn a trace of my sympathy

I handed her a basic junior interview form with indifference Want to start over Report to the front desk Start with errands and work your way up

On Valentine's Day, the Rogue King came to slaughter my mate, the Alpha of the Silvercrest pack, Adrian Barrett. But he wasn't home. He was busy celebrating with his childhood love, Celeste, leaving our five-year-old daughter at the assassin's mercy. To save her, I swallowed deadly wolfsbane.

"Daddy, please come home! Mommy is coughing blood!" Sophie sobbed into the phone.
"Stop lying just to ruin my night," Adrian snapped.
Before the line went dead, another little girl's voice chimed in. "Daddy Adrian, which dress should my mommy wear?"
"The red one, sweetheart," he cooed softly, and hung up.
I bled to death on our bed while he played perfect father to another woman's child.

But death wasn't the end. My spirit rose from my cooling corpse, forced to watch as my little girl learned a cruel truth: her father would always choose someone else.

Dante Ashford is my stepbrother, and the one person I should never have fallen in love with.

When I was ten, my parents died saving his family. The Ashfords took me in. He was good to me back then. Somewhere along the way, I fell for him.

When I was eighteen, he nearly died in an ambush. I donated blood, then a kidney to save him. I was unconscious for three days. When I woke up, Vivian Ross sat by his bed—and he believed she was his savior.

After that, he pushed me away. Vivian became his fiancée.

In my past life, Vivian's crimes brought disaster to our family. Dante got on his knees and begged me to take her punishment. I refused. She died anyway. Then he pretended to love me, planned our wedding—and on that day, his assistant announced to everyone: "This wedding was a lesson to show Miss Elena Hayes what it feels like to be abandoned by the whole world."

I jumped from the church balcony.

When I opened my eyes, I was back at that moment—him on his knees, begging.

This time, I said yes.

Dante, from now on, we're done.

The day before Thanksgiving, my husband, David, dragged his suitcase to the airport, claiming he was flying to Seattle to meet an important client.
My parents took my younger brother to Miami for a vacation and conveniently took my six-year-old daughter with them.
With the house empty, I picked up a last-minute catering shift that paid double the usual hourly rate. I needed the extra money to cover next month's rent and buy David a gift. So I temporarily filled in as a dinner server at a mansion in Beverly Hills.
After changing into a black-and-white uniform, I entered the employer's home through the service entrance.
The person in charge was the lady of the house—a young, beautiful blonde.
She had barely led me through the hallway toward the main room when I saw several workers hanging a massive engagement portrait on the central wall.
The man in the photograph, dressed in a perfectly tailored suit, was my husband of six years.
David.
I froze where I stood, my mind going completely blank.
"Move it a little to the left. Yes, that's it. Straighten it!" the blonde girl called out to the workers.
Then she turned toward me.
"What? Can't take your eyes off it? That's my fiancé."
She looked me up and down, her voice dripping with condescending, fake sympathy.
"Working on a major holiday? I guess you're not married yet."
I closed my eyes and took a slow, deep breath. "I am. But I'll be a widow very soon."

"What if she finds out the baby she suffered so much to conceive is actually ours? Will she lose her mind?"

My stepsister giggled, snuggling into my husband’s embrace.

I stood outside the cracked door, completely frozen.

My husband was holding her tight, enthusiastically picking out names for the baby growing in my belly.

My own mother scoffed from the side. "Relax. That idiot will never figure out she’s carrying your baby."

A bone-deep chill shot down my spine.

For years, I had endured endless blood tests and painful injections, leaving my stomach bruised with needle marks—all just to give him a child.

Instead, they had bribed the doctors. Using IVF, they secretly turned me into a surrogate for my husband and my stepsister.

My husband was certain I was too soft-hearted. He knew that even if the plot was exposed, I could never bring myself to destroy an innocent life.

He was absolutely right.

But I could destroy myself.

In the dead of night, I walked out to the edge of the bridge, climbed over the freezing metal railing, and plummeted into the icy, pitch-black water below.

Two years later. An elite gala.

Under the dazzling spotlight, I stood completely reborn.

My ex-husband dropped his wine glass, letting it shatter against the floor as he collapsed softly to his knees, desperately clutching the hem of my gown.

I coldly pulled my dress from his trembling grasp.

"Excuse me, sir," I said, staring down at him. "You have the wrong person."

I was reborn.
In my past life, for the sake of my childhood sweetheart Chiara, I rushed into a sea of fire to save her lover, but I was disfigured by strong acid. In return, I was rejected and abandoned by her, and ultimately died tragically on the street.
Reborn before the narcotics factory explosion, I coldly turned away from Chiara's pleas for help: "If it's true love, go in and die with her."
This time, I'm not a sycophant anymore; I'm going to make all those who betrayed me pay a bloody price.