1378 Book(s) Related to broken love

I was six years old when Mom took my brother and me by the hand, leading us into a mansion that looked like a palace. She told us this was our new beginning, after all the hardships we'd been through. But no one warned me that this so-called better life would mean giving up everything I had.

My scholarships, my prom dress, even my Stanford acceptance letter—they all turned into bargaining chips just to keep my stepfather and his daughter Sienna happy. Then, the night before my wedding, they even asked my fiancé to "temporarily" give himself to her as well.

I've always been the one giving everything, pouring myself out until there's nothing left, yet I've never heard the words, "You're enough." If love means endless sacrifice, why am I never the one on the receiving end?

Maybe only when I vanish completely will they remember my name—for the first and last time.

My water broke, and I was rushed into the operating room at Ashgrove Clinic.

Just as the healers prepared to deliver my baby, my husband, Alpha Ronan Hale pulled out his phone and showed them the birth window his trusted Seer, Seraphine Vale, had predicted.

"Sera says our son has to be born within ten minutes," he announced. "If we miss the Naming Window, he'll never be recognized as a Hale heir."

I stared at him in disbelief.

Then Ronan gave me a reassuring smile and strapped a red digital timer around my wrist.

"Ten minutes, Iris. That's all we have."

I fought through contraction after contraction, barely able to breathe.

One of the healers grabbed a pair of surgical scissors and made a desperate cut to get the baby out.

The pain was so unbearable that my vision went black.

My heart stopped.

Outside the operating room, Ronan was practically beaming. "It's a boy! I knew Sera wouldn't get the Naming Window wrong!"

Then, without a second thought, he added, "We'll have to postpone our bonding ceremony again. Sera has read a new date for us."

That made nine times.

For seven years, I'd waited for Ronan to make me his Luna. Nine times, we'd planned our bonding ceremony, and nine times, it had been pushed back. I'd fought with him, cried, and begged him to stop putting Sera's predictions ahead of our future.

But this time, I wouldn't argue.

I wouldn't beg him to choose me.

Because I'd already died on that operating table.

And dead Luna don't need bonding ceremonies.

I am Seraphine Marchwood. For five years, I gave every piece of myself to Alpha Veyron, convinced our mate bond was fated—until the night I accidentally overheard the truth.
He never wanted me as his mate. The entire proposed bond was nothing but a cover, a farce to hide his scandalous affair with Ophelia, the woman he actually loved. She was carrying his pup, and I was just the disposable, respectable shield to keep his reputation untarnished.
I ran that night, blind with grief and rage, until I crashed through the rotting beams of an old, rain-soaked ruin. The last thing I remembered before blacking out was the taste of blood in my mouth, and the sound of his voice calling my name, too late.
When I woke up, I didn’t recognize him.
And for the first time since I’d known him, he looked terrified. The cold, unshakable Alpha who’d cast me aside without a second thought was panicking, desperate, scrambling to bring back the version of me that had loved him more than anything—even as a new, unforeseen path began to unfurl before me.

There's a thread blowing up on Reddit right now.

[What's the most perfect line in all of literature?]

Scrolling through the thousands of replies, I saw a profile picture I knew. A sunflower.

[Probably the hedgehog's dilemma. Get close enough to stay warm and the quills get you. Stay far enough to be safe and you freeze.]

[Nothing describes how I feel about my wife better than that.]

[I love her so much. And she is wearing me down to nothing. I think I'm losing my mind.]

[Three years ago she was diagnosed with severe depression. She has threatened to end her life more than once. I take care of her every minute I can. I check my phone for her messages all day long. And I'm trying to keep a company from collapsing while my board counts every hour I'm not in the room. I am so tired.]

People rushed to comfort him.

[Caring for someone with severe depression is brutal. Of course you're hurting. That's normal.]

[My sister has it. My whole family got ground down by it. I get you, OP.]

He wrote back almost immediately.

[I'm sitting in the parking garage under our building right now. I'm not ready to go up. Just thinking about walking into that apartment, where nobody dares to breathe too loud, and I can't breathe.]

I looked at the steel bars bolted across our window. And I thought of a different line.

[Under the same glass bell jar. The whole world was right outside the window. And on the table in front of me, only death.]

There was nothing I could do.

“Smile, Natalie,” Callum whispered before he walked onstage.

So I smiled while he thanked another woman for the crisis plan I had written. I smiled when he pinned my grandmother’s sapphire brooch to her dress. I even smiled when his message came in, canceling our nineteenth appointment at the county clerk’s office.

Then I walked out with our unsigned marriage license papers in my purse and called the one CEO he hated most.

By the time Callum realized I wasn’t waiting anymore, I had already taken my name, my work, and my future back.

"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."

I loved Finley for two years.
Until 1:00 AM on a Tuesday, when his best friend, Orion, sent me a half-naked photo and a jarring voice note."
If I actually bag her, don't go flipping out on me. A deal's a deal."
I booked the first flight out to confront him, only to catch the boy I loved naked and thrusting into another woman.
But that wasn't even the part that broke me.
When my roommate bypassed the hockey team's private Discord server, I found a channel named: #locker-room-bets.
There was my boyfriend, typing the words that shattered my world: "She's boring... She's like a lost puppy, you can't shake her... Play with her all you want."
My loyalty and two years of my life were nothing but a sick joke.
The entire hockey team had put money down on when I would willingly spread my legs for his best friend.

I put up with my husband's cheating because I needed money for my brother's medical bills.

Until I found the heart donor report he'd been hiding in his study for three months. 98% match. He'd signed it "postpone."

That night, fireworks filled the London sky, his mistress laughing in the background. Standing over my brother's body, I finally got it—he'd been killing my brother all along.

I ripped up his check, sold every piece of jewelry he'd ever given me, and threw the divorce papers in his face.

"Murderer"—that's all I said.

Three years later, I'm getting a standing ovation at the Golden Hall. He shows up in the snow, eyes red, begging for forgiveness.

I just smiled. "Charles, you died three years ago."

I donated a kidney to my adopted sister.

Seven days later, I lay on the cold hospital bed, listening to my fiancé and family laughing down the hall.

They were popping champagne to celebrate my adopted sister's discharge.

No one remembered I had just had surgery. No one remembered my nut allergy.

When someone handed me a plate of almonds, I smiled.

I shoved them into my mouth, handful after handful, and swallowed them down. Then I told them I was done fighting for their love.

My fiancé demanded I postpone our wedding. My brother beat me until I bled and locked me on the rooftop to die.

After being abandoned eighty-eight times, I finally learned how to love myself—by cutting everyone who failed me out of my life.

In my last life, I caught my uncle's family in the act and exposed Blair in front of the whole town. Her family was run out of Linden Falls, and she was forced to marry a cruel millionaire in his fifties who lived on a remote estate. She died there a few years later.

I married Garrett Vance as planned, but the life I got was nothing like the one I'd imagined.

To support his career, I gave up my place at the Aldridge Institute of Regenerative Medicine. I put every one of my research results under his name and built him into the youngest lead researcher in the field with my own hands. In return, he left me alone in an empty house for ten years.

He secretly swapped out the medication treating my poisoning for ordinary vitamins. In the end, he forced a divorce and had me locked away on his private estate in the middle of nowhere.

"I'll pay you every month," Garrett told the guards through the door. "Whatever Blair went through, make her go through ten times worse. Just don't let her die too fast. The more she suffers, the more I'll pay you."

My son tried to save me. The guards broke both his legs, and he died in my arms of a brain hemorrhage.

I only learned the whole truth in my final moments. The woman Garrett had loved was Blair all along.

This time, I'm letting them have each other. I want to see how Garrett becomes the youngest lead researcher in regenerative medicine without me running his experiments, fixing his data, and putting every finished result straight into his hands.

One drunken night. One baby. One Don who married me out of duty.

I was the family doctor, a nobody, when I got pregnant with Don Rafael Salvatore’s child. I thought if I stayed quiet, stayed good, and made myself useful, he would eventually love me and our daughter.

Seven years later, I’m still waiting.

Rafael never let Nina call him “Daddy.” When she was two, she said it by accident in public, and he made her walk home alone. She fell again and again, and he never looked back. When she was four, she slipped in the middle of an amusement park, and he dropped her hand. She was lost in the crowd for hours. She was found shaking in the bushes.

Still, my little girl kept hoping. Every time he tossed her a crumb, she held on to it like treasure.

Then Jasmine Hale, his first love, came home with her daughter, and everything changed. Suddenly Rafael had time. He smiled. He picked Nina up. He even gave her a teddy bear, which, I found out, Jasmine’s daughter had thrown away.

That night, Nina gave him three last chances.

He missed the first when he looked straight past her and chose another woman’s child. He missed the second when he skipped her parent-teacher night to play blocks with Jasmine’s daughter. And the third? He finally showed up, only to stand by while Nina’s class monitor title was handed to someone else.

So I signed the divorce papers, sent them off from the airport, and took our daughter far away.

At my engagement dinner, my fiancé asked me to sign the prenup that killed me once before.

Last time, Adrian smiled, kissed my hand, and promised I would never be alone again. Three weeks later, debt collectors came for money I had never borrowed, black veins crawled under my skin, and his dying mother walked out of hospice in pearls.

This time, I turned to the second page first.

My name was already printed there.

Beside it was a date that had not happened yet.

Under it was another bride’s name.

A woman declared dead twenty-three years ago.

My husband, Callum, had threatened me with divorce more times than I could count, always to guilt me into sacrificing myself for my sister, Sloane.

My parents did their part, too. Give Sloane the good stuff, they'd say, or get cut out of the will.

In the past, I would have cried and made a scene.

But the hundredth time Callum waved divorce in my face and ordered me to test drugs for my sister, I said yes.

I even went out of my way to be kind to Sloane. Everyone said I'd finally grown up.

None of them knew I was dying, or that none of it mattered to me anymore.

My aunt was terrified I'd end up with a human. So she arranged a marriage herself.

The groom? Kael Voss. Alpha heir to the most powerful pack on the East Coast.

I had a Moonstone Mate Necklace custom-made for the occasion. Global commission. A hundred and eighty thousand dollars.

The day I went to pick it up, it was snatched right out of my hands.

The woman who took it? Chloe Hart. Kael's so-called childhood best friend.

She looked me up and down like I was a stray dog that had wandered in off the street.

"A hundred and eighty grand? Sweetheart, you can't even afford the tax."

Then she told me to get on my knees. Right there, in front of the whole store. Scream three times, "I'm a worthless stray Omega and I know my place."

I didn't kneel.

I threw her own words right back in her face and put her on the floor with one kick.

That's when Kael walked in. My fiancé. The man I'd never met until that very moment.

And damn... he was gorgeous.

I'll be honest, I'm shallow. Always have been. That face hit every single thing on my list.

So I walked right up to him, gave him my sweetest smile, and said, "Hi. I'm Judy. Your fiancée."

My husband, Zachary, chose to save his sister-in-law right in front of the kidnappers.

The kidnapper pressed the gun to my temple and asked, "Choose your wife or your sister-in-law?"

Zachary didn't hesitate. "Let Valerie go," he said.

He actually chose to save his sister-in-law! In that moment, even the baby in my belly seemed to stop kicking.

Later, they locked me in the basement. Drugs to delay labor were pumped into my veins over and over. Zachary wanted to save the "firstborn son" status for his sister-in-law's child.

When warm blood finally soaked through my skirt, I dialed the number I knew by heart with shaking hands.

"Zachary," I whispered into the phone, "our child... can't wait any longer."

The seventh time my mate walked out on our daughter for a wolf cub, I finally stopped counting.

His dead Beta’s sister, Savannah, came home with a rescued cub named Duke. She said he’d die without her. She said her wolf was fading too. Damian believed every word.

So Duke tore up my daughter’s sketchbook for a bed, and Damian laughed. Duke chased six-year-old June down the stairs, and Damian arrived after the healers were done. Duke licked my mother’s bowl clean, and Damian told me to be gracious. A Luna should be.

I was gracious when he gave Savannah our bedroom. I was gracious when he took our mating portrait off the wall. I was gracious when I bled out in the healing wing and he told me I was young enough to take it.

He thinks I’m just sulking. That I’ll come around, because where else would a packless omega go?

He’s wrong. My crossing permit is approved. My ticket is booked. In five days, I’ll be nothing to him, and neither will my daughter.

My fiancé and I held twenty-one weddings. I put on my wedding dress twenty-one times, only to crawl out of pools of blood each time.

Car accidents. Shootings. Explosions. Fires.

Everyone said I was cursed, that I was bad luck for my husband.

I was the only fool who believed they were accidents.

Until the twenty-second time.

That day, covered in blood, I escaped from an ambush back to headquarters and heard him say coldly over the walkie-talkie, "She won't die. Save Valerie first."

It turned out all the accidents were personally arranged by him.

He didn't love me—he just owed my parents a debt he could never repay.

So he staged disaster after disaster to get out of marrying me.

At the twenty-second wedding, I didn't wait for him to cancel.

This time, I was the one who called it off.

I never imagined that the most humiliating secret of my life would be laid bare in a flimsy tent in the middle of nowhere.

Even less did I imagine that the person witnessing my unraveling would be Sebastian. He’s the CEO of a top-tier conglomerate, my direct boss, and, most damningly, my ex’s stepfather.

A freak accident left us stranded in the jungle late at night. Inside that cramped, suffocating tent, the air felt scorching, almost unbearable. Worst of all, in my rush to leave, I’d forgotten to bring the medication that suppresses my “craving disorder.”

When that sickening desire surged through me like a tidal wave, when his body heat pressed against my back through his shirt, I could only bite my lip hard, teetering on the edge of shame and instinct.

“Mr. Blackwood, please… stay away from me.”

I wanted a second round in bed with my mate. He turned me down. He said he was tired.

A moment later, I heard what he told his best friend.

"I don't know why, but Tilly's gotten so... dull. It's all duty and routine with her."

"She's only getting older and duller. Honestly? My wolf doesn't even stir around her anymore."

Then he went behind my back and found himself a young girl.

Fresh. Bright.

He thought he'd hidden it perfectly. But before he knew it, I was sliding a Severance Pact across the table.

"Here's the thing about getting older, Cass. It buys you money, time, and the nerve to play, and to lose."

On my due date, my mate Kael locked me in the Frost Vault.
House Veyron's Hatching Law was absolute: the first dragon egg to break shell inherits the entire Emberscale empire. My sister-in-law Celine and I were both due to deliver—our egg dates only one day apart. To ensure his brother Roman's posthumous egg hatched first, Kael made his choice.
"Roman and Celine's egg must break shell first. You owe them that!" He ignored my ruptured water, ignored the agony of the egg already pressing into my birth canal, and shoved me into that dungeon built from ancient ice-dragon bones.
Then they injected me with Frostbind Serum—an ice-magic drug that freezes the life-bond between a mother dragon and her egg. I curled up on the frozen floor carved with suppression runes, feeling my child's pulse fade beat by beat, and wept.
My baby, I'm so sorry... I can't even protect you...

Wait. I was this close to going full caveman on my incubus, and you're telling me the store sent the wrong one?

I'd bought an incubus online, hoping for one really good night with him.

But he said no. Every single time.

I racked my brain trying to tame him. Besides plotting to steamroll him into it, I'd even gone so far as to contact customer service.

The poor little chat rep just kept apologizing.

[I'm so, so sorry, hon! We checked, and we shipped you the wrong item. He's a Household-type incubus. He does NOT provide intimate services!]

[Please, please don't get any closer with him! Under the Supernatural Beings Welfare Act, incubi can't be forced into anything, and if one gets pushed to his breaking point, he can suddenly lose control and put your safety at risk!]

A cold sweat broke out down my back. I grabbed Kane's pillow and comforter and tossed them straight out of my bedroom.

I didn't expect him to do the opposite of what I'd figured. He came and knocked on my door...

Two years ago, a car crash took my sight. The day it finally came back, I couldn't wait to share the news with my husband, Grant.

But outside the door, I overheard Grant talking with his assistant, Owen.

"Mr. Holloway, Mrs. Holloway has been blind for two years. Just so you could be with your first love, you had Mr. Callahan wear your cologne and copy your voice, and lie beside her every night... Aren't you afraid the two of them will actually sleep together?"

Grant took a sip of his drink, his voice smug.

"Miles has the best self-control of anyone I know. Back when we were starting out, he stayed clear-headed even after somebody spiked his drink at a business dinner.

"Besides, since Nora lost her sight, she's had almost no interest in sex. She lives inside her own shame now."

Owen couldn't resist teasing him. "Honestly, I can't decide whether to pity Mrs. Holloway or wonder whether Miles even likes women. She's the most beautiful woman in our circle, and those two just talk and nothing ever happens. What a waste!"

"Then you take Miles's place next time and keep Nora entertained."

The laughter that followed grated in my ears.

I looked at Miles, sitting in the corner. Aloof, sparing with words, his profile clean and sharp. A man that fine, that striking, left to go to waste.

It really was a shame.

I dropped a small fortune online on an incubus.

The listing described him as handsome and aloof, with eight-pack abs and a lean, powerful waist.

Above all, it said he was capable.

That final point sealed it for me. I didn't think twice before paying.

But the moment my order went through, customer service messaged me.

Customer service: [Hi, are you there?]

Me: [Yes, what's up?]

Customer service: [About the incubus you just ordered... He's certainly good-looking, but his temperament is rather cold. He's also fully matured, so his stamina... might be a lot to handle. If you think that could be too much, I'd recommend cancelling so we can suggest a gentler model.]

Me: [Not necessary. Cold and capable is exactly my type.]

Once she read that, the agent sent back something that sounded strangely like a blessing.

Customer service: [Very well. He'll reach your home on schedule. Enjoy yourself!]

Several days later, a cool, impassive incubus with broad shoulders and a narrow waist knocked at my door.

I went stiff the second I saw him.

I'm eight months pregnant, throwing up so violently I can taste bile, three "miracles" growing inside me.

Until that night at their celebration dinner, when I leaned against the wall and heard laughter from inside the private room.

I could hear the amusement in my husband Frank's voice: "Let's up the bet—another million. I'm betting two boys, one girl."

His mistress Ava giggled: "You already know the results."

"Of course," he said casually. "They're my children. Of course I know."

Then I heard it.

They talked about my womb like I was some kind of breeding machine.

They clinked glasses, debating "whose eggs were worth more."

They were even betting on "which baby would come out first."

And there I was, outside the door, my swollen feet barely holding up my aching, stretched body.

Inside, they were laughing and celebrating.

Celebrating their perfect little surrogate, carrying my husband's babies with his mistress.

Right then, the nausea just... stopped.

I just felt cold.

And slowly, a plan started forming in my head.

Look, I'd heard the rumors: Skyward International's flight attendants? You never see 'em anywhere but the airport. Not once. Kinda spooky, but my coworker drops this smirk—"First time? You'll get it"—and I'm boarding Flight 6108, heart pounding.

This chief stewardess, Tiffany? Stunning. Locks eyes, buckles me in, perfume hits like a drug. Later, service cart rolls up. "Airsick? C'mon." Door shuts in the crew lounge. Boom—she's on her knees. "Relaxation service." Zipper down, wipes me clean, then swallows my cock whole. Balls-deep, tongue on my sack, cheeks sucking vacuum. "Big one," she whispers, eyes pleading like she needs my okay.

For eighteen years, no one had my trust the way Adrian Walker did.

Then, on the very night meant to honor my future, he pressed another woman"s hotel key into my hand and asked me to guard her reputation.

I offered him one last chance: meet me at the airport and pick the trip we had promised each other. Instead, he lied about a car accident, and I watched him wind a matching scarf around Sienna Brooks"s neck.

By the time Adrian realized I was truly gone, I had already picked a life in which love would never mean waiting in second place.

I'm a forensic audio specialist. I make a living digging up the truths people deliberately erase from static and noise.
My 19-year-old brother was accused of pushing a billionaire's bride to her death at her wedding.
The police presented their "smoking gun" recording. I heard exactly twelve seconds missing from it.
Those twelve seconds hold the truth about how the bride really died—and the billionaire family's dark secret that will get both me and my brother killed.
They smashed my equipment, threatened my life, bribed the cops, and tried to bury the truth forever.
But what they don't know is—
Some voices refuse to stay silent. Even when they're cut out.

Nicolai Petrovich never wanted to be a hero—he has too much blood on his hands and too many ghosts in his past. The only thing that ever kept him human was his sister. And when Selene dies in a night of gunfire and chaos, something breaks inside him that will never heal again.
But hell has a sense of irony: on the day he buries his sister, Nicolai is forced into a marriage with Alessandro De Luca—the heir of the most ruthless mafia family in the city. The Phantom. The man everyone fears.
What was meant to be a political alliance quickly turns into a battle for dominance and sanity. Alessandro claims Nicolai as if he has every right to—through orders, through touch, through a kiss that feels less like affection and more like a brand burned into skin. And Nicolai hates it… almost as much as he hates that his body doesn’t always agree with him.
Caught between loyalty, guilt, and a man who sees right through him, Nicolai starts to fall. Deeper, darker, more dangerously than he ever should.
Because Alessandro is no legend, no myth—he’s far worse: a man who always gets what he wants.
And he wants Nicolai.
What follows is a war of desire, power, and broken promises. A marriage that isn’t one. A prison without bars. And a man fighting not to lose himself to someone who might bring him back to life… or destroy him completely.
Forced Marriage with the Devil — a story about obsession, pain, unwanted intimacy, and the slow, brutal fight for freedom… or personal ruin.