3205 Book(s) Related to from a knight to a lady read online

For three whole years, as the "partner" of the bourgeois empress Victoria, I remained the most docile shadow of her business empire. Everyone thought I was a beautifully kept ornament, but only I knew that beneath this glittering facade, every shadow was a chaotic situation I had quelled with my own blood and flesh. It wasn't
until she used her daughter's final resting place as leverage to appease her lover that I realized that marriage was nothing more than a deceptive hunt.
Now, I'm going to recoup the costs.

A falling planter knocked me out after a fight with my lifelong rival. When I woke up, I remembered everything. But I decided to play dumb and fake amnesia—figured it was the perfect excuse to fleece him for some cash.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Nathan Cole looked shocked for a second, then lied through his teeth“Your boyfriend. We've been together for eight years.”
Wait, what?!
He glanced at my mouth. “Want a kiss? Might jog your memory.”
The audacity of this man.
I'd been after his money. Apparently, he was after my lips.

"Olivia, the Wentworth family has no use for a pathetic excuse-maker like you."
My stepbrother, Dorian, watched with dead eyes as I tumbled down the second-floor stairs.
The agonizing pain of my shattered legs sent cold sweat pouring down my body.
"Dorian... save me..." I reached out to him in complete despair.
He just frowned in disgust, turned his back, and shut the door.
From inside, I could hear Mia's smug giggles.
Three days later, Mia stole my name and triumphantly took my guaranteed admission spot at Juilliard.
As for me, Dorian told the public I had "committed suicide from a mental breakdown after failing the audition."
In excruciating pain and sheer hopelessness, I took my last breath.
When I opened my eyes again, I shot up from the sofa.
I was reborn.
Back to exactly three days before the tragedy struck.

Dante once took three bullets for me, laying the entire New York underworld at my feet just to marry me.
I used to think Dante was the god who had pulled me from the abyss of the orphanage, until I discovered he was secretly planning a grand baptism for his illegitimate son with the princess of a rival family.
It turned out that the absolute devotion he gave me could be effortlessly replicated for another woman.
In that moment, I decided to die.
Of course, the one dying would be the Sera who had loved him.
The one surviving would stand in the shadows, watching him spiral step by step into madness and ruin within the wreckage of this so-called love.

Hearing my sister Vanessa’s tearful pleas over the phone, a chill ran down my spine.
In my past life, my soft heart led me to take in my niece, Skylar. I gave her everything, only to have my family destroyed—my daughter died of anaphylactic shock, my in-laws perished, and I was killed in a car crash.
Reborn, I refused to make the same mistakes. I immediately moved my kind-hearted in-laws into my home and firmly shut the door on Skylar.
Yet my husband, Ethan, sympathized with the "poor girl" and constantly accused me of being cold and selfish.
My sister schemed at every turn, trying to force the burden of raising Skylar onto my shoulders, while Skylar's own behavior felt deeply unsettling.
Everyone urged me to be generous and kind, but only I knew that the price of mercy this time would once again be my entire family.

I gave thirty years to the son I raised.
He pulled out my oxygen tube and called me an old hag.
As I lay dying, my mate’s mistress leaned over my bed and told me the truth. The boy I raised was hers. My real son—my Alpha heir—was buried before his wolf ever woke.
Then the Moon Goddess sent me back to the day he was born.
That night, I switched the babies back.
Now she’s raising her own pup, convinced she’s raising my weak, worthless heir. And I’m going to watch her find out whose child she’s been hurting.

The day I woke from the coma, the man I'd loved for seven years handed me to someone else.
I could have exposed him with one sentence. I didn't.
Dorian and I had been together since college. His best friend Silas had never once pretended to like me.
But that day, Dorian stood at my bedside, pointed at Silas, and said, "He's your boyfriend."
And nobody in that room thought there was anything wrong with that.
I believed him. At least, I made it look that way.
That night, I moved into Silas's villa — and then I heard the phone call.

My daughter was murdered on her eleventh birthday during a brutal snuff livestream on the dark web.

The chat was flooded with the sick revelry and obscene tips of twisted buyers.

"Break her legs a little more."
"I want to hear her cry out."

Lying in a pool of blood, my daughter cried out in sheer despair: "Mom... save me... it hurts so much..."

Watching my daughter take her last breath amid violent convulsions, I clawed at my own fingers until they were torn and bloody.

The police told me it was her elegant ballet instructor, Serena, who had sent her to hell. And the one who helped Serena cover her tracks was my husband, David.

In my utter despair, I swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills.

When I opened my eyes again, I had been thrown back to the very day I was supposed to take my daughter to her ballet class.

Sitting in the passenger seat, dressed in her ballet tutu, my daughter looked at me with eyes full of anticipation.

"Hurry up, Mom. Ms. Serena said we're rehearsing the solo for Swan Lake today."

The blood in my veins instantly ran cold.

The night before graduation, a confession post blew up the school forum:
“Daphne, I’m gonna rip up my Harvard offer onstage during commencement to confess to you—my whole college future as my love token.”
The OP bragged nonstop in the comments that he’d locked down the state’s only full-ride Harvard scholarship, his admission was a done deal, and graduation was nothing but a meaningless formality anyway.
The attached photo showed their interlaced hands. That old burn scar on his forearm—the one he’d claimed he got saving me—stared back like a chain that’s trapped me for ten years straight.
I poured every cent, every spare hour and all my academic resource just to get him into Harvard. I even voluntarily stepped down from the scholarship race and passed the spot to him.
This childhood sweetheart who’d sworn we’d go to Harvard together only hours ago threw every promise out the window for a rich transfer student, willing to gamble both our futures just for a dramatic grand gesture.
I shut the forum tab, pulled up my email to the scholarship committee.
I’m formally taking back the scholarship spot I gave up！

My daughter died on her fifth birthday.
Her first real wish—the first one she was old enough to make herself—was to go to the beach with Daddy.
Gideon promised he would take her.
She waited for him all day. She was still asking for him when she took her last breath.
He never came.
I brought her ashes to the beach she'd always dreamed of. Let her finally see the ocean.
That's when I heard it—a woman's moan, low and breathy, coming from behind the rocks.
Then his voice. Then his name on her lips.
"Between me and Lily, who do you love more?"
"You. Obviously."
He was fucking his mistress on our daughter's dream beach—while I stood there holding her ashes.
When I finally confronted them, I didn't get an apology. I got a slap across the face.
And when his mistress caught my eye and smiled, I realized something.
She knew exactly when my daughter would die.

When the dismissal bell rings, the night resets.
I'm Zoe, a high school sophomore living on campus, isolated by my entire family and the whole school. My "crime"? I reported my own little brother for campus violence.
The first time, I died in the dark by the track. The second time, shut inside the equipment room. But every time I opened my eyes, I was dragged back to the exact same starting point. Only the number on my arm—the countdown of how many lives I had left—dropped by one.
The man in the black mask always seemed to know exactly where I’d run and where I’d hide. But what truly sent shivers down my spine was this: every single time, my mother stood just a few steps away, quietly watching me take my last breath.
Once the number hits zero, there is no coming back. What do I have to do to survive this night?

Every time the clock hits 11:10 PM, I am brutally slaughtered in my apartment. And every time, I gasp awake ten minutes earlier to fight for my life. The deadbolts are secure. The windows are sealed. Outside my door, nothing but silence. Yet, the killer strikes precisely on time. Who is watching me from the dark?

My mother only ever made the bedtime tea for me. Never my brother—just me, every night, because I was the gifted one, the daughter she "worried about."
The night before the scholarship exam, my one shot at college, she brought me a cup like always.
The next day I collapsed in the middle of the test. I'd never been sick a day in my life. I failed.
Don't worry, she said. We'll try again next year. And every single night, she kept making me that tea.
Second year, I went down again. Third year, again. Three times I sat that exam, three times my body quit at the worst possible moment.
The whole town started calling me the girl who faints. The genius who cracks. The family joke.
And my brother—who copied my homework and never read a book to the end—somehow walked away with everything.
I never understood why my body fell apart every time it mattered.
This was my last chance. For days I barely ate, terrified it would happen again.
Then, the night before the exam, my mother walked in with a cup of tea…

I was carrying his baby when he threw me into the sea. My husband locked me in an iron cage and dropped me to the ocean floor, convinced I’d killed the woman he truly loved. I held up my pregnancy test with shaking hands. I begged him to look. He walked away. I died alone in the dark, my arms wrapped around our child. Then she came back. Alive. Perfect. Crying in his arms. And I could only watch, a ghost he couldn’t see, as he swore to marry her and leave me to rot. He thinks I’m still trapped down there, hating him. He’s about to find out what he really did.

I came back to New York for one reason: to meet the man my mother arranged for me to marry.
I never made it to dinner.
His "sister"—the woman he'd been protecting since childhood, the one he clearly loved more than he'd ever love a fiancée he'd never met—snatched a twelve-thousand-dollar dress out of my hands at a Fifth Avenue boutique and had me thrown out. When I called him about it, he told me I should be grateful to be marrying into his family at all. Then he hung up.
An hour later, she accused me of stealing her ring. Had me pinned against the wall. Told his men to strip me down and film it for "evidence."
Nico laughed when I told him the whole Ferrante family would answer for this.
"With what? You?"
My name is Sera Vitti.
That's all I'll say.

My boyfriend, Don Liam, took a bullet meant for his stepsister Violet when her ex-husband opened fire on her.
After waking from a coma, he remembered everyone in the world—except me.
Yet under the pretext of responsibility, he continued our seven-year secret relationship.
I thought he was trying to remember me.
Until my twenty-fifth birthday turned into his wedding to his stepsister.
“I’m not related to her by blood. Our marriage is perfectly reasonable.”
So it turned out he just didn’t know how to get rid of me.

"You were meant to be my death. Instead, you've become my damnation."
Aria Thornwell has spent three years as a healer in her town, attempting to forget the night her former fiancé publically humiliated her by selecting her affluent stepsister instead—taking Aria's family fortune with him. Now, she lives quietly, utilizing her skill to aid the underprivileged while her stepfamily flaunts their stolen fortune.

But on the winter solstice, everything changes. She's chosen as the ceremonial bride for the vampires' holy Winter Feast—a "honor" that guarantees death at daybreak following the Christmas Eve rite. Dragged to the Crimson Vale with five other human tributes, Aria is prepared to meet her fate with dignity.

Until she meets him.

Lord Sebastian Thorne, the ancient vampire who has presided over the Winter Feast for eight centuries, is meant to drain her at dawn following the binding ritual. It's tradition. It's law. It's survival—the ceremonial blood maintains the vampire realm for another year.

But as Sebastian's lips brush her throat in the ceremonial hall, something unbelievable happens. Her blood doesn't simply sustain him—it wakes something in him that's been dead for generations. And in a move that shocks the whole vampire court, he refuses to complete the rite.
"This one is mine," he proclaims, his old strength sweeping the hall. "Anyone who touches her answers to me."

Trapped in the Obsidian Palace as Sebastian's "protected bride," Aria discovers three frightening truths: Sebastian isn't protecting her out of mercy—he's dying from an ancient curse, and her blood is the only thing keeping him alive past Christmas; the vampire court will do anything to kill her and reinstate the ritual; and her "ordinary" healer's gift is actually a rare and dangerous power that vampire nobility has been hunting for generations.

When Carol Bennett caught her long-time boyfriend cheating, she didn't cry or beg. Instead, she exposed the scandal online, turning him into a viral disgrace overnight. Then, without looking back, she agreed to a marriage of convenience with Ethan Mitchell, a powerful billionaire suffering from a terminal illness—her estranged father's carefully arranged match.
On their wedding night, Ethan handed her a cold-hearted prenup and warned her not to expect love, money, or a future. Fine by Carol. She played her role perfectly, calling him "husband" with a sweet smile while keeping her heart locked away.
But the aloof CEO who once wanted nothing to do with her is now the one chasing her. One kiss, one glance, and suddenly he's breaking his own rules.
"Carol, kiss me."
She smirks, her fingers trailing along his collarbone. "Falling for me already, Mr. CEO? Looks like you're the one breaking the contract."
Who would've thought the dying billionaire would end up begging for a second chance?

Lorraine never expected to lose her virginity to her cold, unreadable CEO Tristan—let alone five times in one night. Even more shocking? He keeps showing up to save her, stepping in not once, but twice, to protect her from a toxic ex. After several heartfelt proposals, she finally agrees to a contract marriage—thinking it's a practical solution to a messy life.

Tristan has had his eyes on Lorraine for years—the brilliant top designer working quietly under his nose. The contract is just the beginning of his plan to claim her completely. He's ready to offer her everything: protection, devotion, and a love she's never dared to hope for.

But when jealous exes and relentless suitors re-enter the picture, threatening to tear them apart, their fragile arrangement is put to the test. Can a marriage built on strategy survive long enough to become something real?

Eight years ago, I left him bleeding in a hospital bed and disappeared without a trace.
It was the hardest thing I had ever done.
It was also the only way to protect the secret growing inside me.
For eight years, I built a quiet life for myself and my daughter, far away from the Trevanti name and the dangerous family that nearly destroyed us. I had one rule.
Never let them find me.
Then I made a mistake.
One bad decision landed me in debt to the wrong people, and before I knew it, I was being sold to the highest bidder.
I expected a stranger.
Instead, Fabian Trevanti walked through the door.
The boy I abandoned.
The man I never forgot.
The only man I’ve ever loved.
Eight years should have been enough to forget him.
It wasn’t.
Not his smile.
Not the way he looked at me.
Not the way my heart still betrayed me whenever I heard his name.
The worst part wasn’t that Fabian found me.
The worst part was realizing I still wanted him.
Because Fabian isn’t the sweet boy I left behind anymore.
He’s powerful.
Dangerous.
Possessive.
And after spending eight years searching for me, he’s no longer willing to accept my excuses or my distance.
He’s never letting us go again.
But Fabian finding me is only the beginning.
A ghost from our past has returned.
A man we thought was dead.
A monster who stole years of our lives and left scars neither of us ever truly escaped.
And this time, he wants more than revenge.
Caught between old secrets, deadly enemies, and a love neither of us managed to bury, Fabian and I are forced back into each other’s lives just as the past comes crashing through the door.
The problem?
The more danger closes in around us, the harder it becomes to remember why I ran in the first place.
And when the truth finally comes out, I might lose far more than my secret.
I might lose my heart all over again.

"We should be doing this," I mumbled, yet I bent my neck for him, giving him better access to it.
"Yes we shouldn't," he answered, but his hands were sliding under my skirt and pulling my panties down.
"If we get caught," I muttered, moaning as his fingers found my slick entrance and he rubbed. My knees shook but he held me against himself with his other hand.
"If we get caught," he repeated. It was as if this had become some sort of game between him and I. Repeating each other's words like this.
"I could be expelled and your job would be taken from you," I completed.
"Yes, that could happen," he answered with a nod of his head. He moved away from me and stared into my eyes. "But it won't happen. We won't get caught. I won't tell, if won't tell."
"I'd be crazy to tell someone," I answered, my eyes searching his.


Vampire x Human. Professor x Student. Steamy x Forbidden love
When your one night stand turns out to be your professor, there's only one thing to do- continue to sleep with him. And that was exactly what Sophia is going to do.
She's faced with a forbidden attraction that's hard to resist until she finds out his dark secret; he's a vampire.
Will her passion overcome the secrets he had been hiding from her or will the shadows tear them apart?

The craziest thing I've ever done? Agreeing to Mason's idea—sex in the middle of nowhere.
But then his first love called, and he left me stranded out there. Alone. In the dead of night.

Mara Bell writes cozy fantasy romances.

Unfortunately, she is very good at writing men no sensible woman should ever date.

Her most popular creation is Lord Soren Ravelle, the terrifying Duke of Duskryn. Obscenely wealthy, capable of shadow magic, feared by half the kingdom, and responsible for enough fictional murders that Mara stopped counting.

Readers adore him.

Then, while trying to finish the book at three in the morning;

Her laptop sparks.

The lights go out.

And Mara wakes up face-down in a flower bed.

In Duskryn.

Her own fictional kingdom.

At first, she is thrilled.

She knows which paths through the enchanted forest are safe. She knows where the castle's secret passages lead. She knows who the villain is, who gets the happy ending, and exactly which chapter everything goes horribly wrong.

There is only one problem.

Mara isn't supposed to be here.

She never wrote herself into the story.

And Duskryn seems to know it.

The plot begins changing around her. Characters make choices she never gave them. Events happen too early. And Soren, who is supposed to be falling in love with somebody else, becomes far more interested in the strange woman who knows things about him she couldn't possibly know.

Because Mara knows something Soren doesn't.

She didn't give him a happy ending.

She killed him.

Now the closer the story creeps toward the final chapter, the more desperately Mara tries to change the ending she wrote.

Which would be easier if Soren would stop looking at her like that.

Mara created Lord Soren Ravelle to be dangerous, impossible, and devastatingly romantic.

She just never expected him to become real.

She definitely never expected him to fall for his author.

And she really should have known better than to fall for the villain she created.

In her past life, Arabella Oberon was the lowest-ranking member of the Oberon family.

She genuinely took in Regina, the butler's daughter, only to be constantly manipulated by this cunning and manipulative woman.

Regina gradually stole the love from her three brothers.

Arabella was forced to give Regina blood transfusions time and again, her weight plummeting to a mere eighty-eight pounds.

Ultimately, under the relentless pressure from her brothers, she jumped out of a window in despair and died. Her last words were,

"What about Regina's blood transfusions?"

When she opened her eyes again, Arabella found herself reborn three years earlier—the very day Regina appeared at her doorstep crying, begging for help.

Looking at the pitiful, tearful girl before her, Arabella smiled.

No more soft-heartedness.

No more groveling.

Instead, she "kindly" arranged for Regina to move into the servants' quarters, to earn her own living through honest labor.

Faced with her brothers who sided with her, she no longer bothered to please them.

And towards her former fiancé, Theodore, whom she had once fawned over, she remained cold, distant, and indifferent.

Moreover, in this life, they would discover that her identity was far more than just the eldest daughter of the Oberon family.

"Bite me." Chase Sterling's whisper was a blade against my skin.

I should pull away.
I should hate him.
But my wolf is howling yes while my heart screams no.

"Say stop," he breathes against my pulse, "and I'll stop."

Liar.

We both know he can't stop.
The bond won't let him.

And neither can I.


Ten years ago, they found my father with his throat torn out
on Silvermoon land.

The Sterlings called it "trespassing."
I called it murder.

They gave us hush money and a warning:
Keep quiet, or the Beta's daughter is next.

So I learned to be invisible.
To swallow my rage.
To survive.

Until someone slipped a note into my locker:
They lied about how your father died.


Chase Sterling.

Future Alpha. Golden boy. Untouchable.

The moment our eyes met, the bond snapped into place—
a collar I never asked for, a chain I can't break.

He says he didn't know.
He says his father is innocent.
He says he'll help me find the truth.

But every time he touches me,
I feel my father's blood on his hands.


Now I'm trapped between two impossible choices:

Accept the bond and betray everything I am.
Or break it—and lose the partner who can prove
my father's killer walks free.

The worst part?

When Chase whispers "mine" against my skin—
I want to believe him.

Isla Spencer stopped believing in home after her mother died.
Living in a house where her father adored another daughter more, she learned to make herself small, quiet, forgettable—until the day fate gave her something of her own.
Coel Reese, her mate, and a future she could finally belong to.
She loved him. When a rogue attack left him in a coma, she gave everything to keep his bloodline alive, only to end up catching him cheating with her stepsister.
And the child growing inside her? Not his.
A clinic error had implanted her with the sperm of Logan Vale—the most powerful, most feared Alpha in the territory.
One mistake. One contract marriage. One man who now owns her future.
Logan Vale wanted his heir, while Isla wanted a chance to build her own life.
When Cole and her family tried to destroy her again, she was no longer the old Isla Spencer.
She is a Genius doctor with a formula that could change everything.
And now, everyone who ever underestimated her will regret it.
Including that untouchable Alpha.

Elena Hayes never expected that finishing a novel would somehow make her part of it.

She wakes up inside the billionaire romance she's been obsessively reading, only to discover that she's become the male lead Adrian Cole's beautiful, gold-digging ex-girlfriend.

And she knows exactly how her story ends.

Adrian is destined to fall for Victoria Sterling, the heiress of the city's most powerful financial dynasty. With her wealth, intelligence, and influence, Victoria quickly wins Adrian's heart.

As for Elena?

She's the annoying ex who refuses to let go.

After Adrian finally dumps her, Victoria's devoted admirers will hunt Elena down, break her legs, and throw her into a river.

That's how the original story ends.

But Elena has already read it.

She knows what's coming.

And this time, she's not going to play the role written for her.

If the story wants her dead, she'll fight her way out of it.

She's got nothing to lose.

So why not risk everything?

This time, Elena is betting on herself.

BLURB

Ravenna Damon was banished for existing.

Darius Pike crossed the border anyway.

They built something in the wilderness. A home from nothing, a child on the way, something almost close to peace. The Moon Goddess let them have three months before she took it back.

Now Darius is dead. Her child is gone. And the man responsible for both is apparently her second fated mate.

The bond does not care what Caleb Nightshade did. It does not care that Ravenna has nothing left to lose, or that the war outside the dungeon walls is burning everything she ever loved to the ground. It simply exists, pulling at her like a tide, patient and merciless and completely indifferent to her feelings about it.

She has a choice. Survive Caleb or die rejecting him.

Ravenna Damon has never been good at dying.

Mated to the Enemy is the second book in the Blood and Ice series. It contains mature themes, grief, and emotional intensity.

"I married you only to destroy you."

That was the only reason FBI agent Sophia Carter accepted a new identity as Evelyn Russo and married Lorenzo Moretti, the most dangerous mafia boss in Italy.

Her mission was to infiltrate, gather evidence, drag Lorenzo to prison, and save the children and women that Lorenzo Moretti had kidnapped for trafficking.

But life as a Don's wife was never as simple as she had imagined. Behind the luxurious mansion, the armed men, and the secrets of the Moretti family, Sophia found herself trapped in a game she did not understand.
The closer she got to Lorenzo, the harder it became to distinguish lies from reality.
But one thing never changed. If her identity as an FBI agent was exposed, then at that very moment, she would die at her own husband's hands.

He's the golden boy of Kansas City hockey. He has the trophies, fortune, women, and a life where he always gets what he wants.

She's the Special Agent who has spent ten years hunting the monster that murdered her father, waiting for the day its signature appears again.

Zane Chandler's perfect life shatters when he comes home to find his younger sister brutally murdered, her eyes gouged out and a five-pointed star carved between them.

For Island Meyers, that star isn't just a killer's signature. It's the ghost that has haunted her for a decade.

Determined to solve the case that destroyed her, Island takes charge of the investigation, only to face the victim's furious brother.

Zane dismisses her as a rookie, demands she's removed from the case, and insists she isn't capable of finding his sister's killer.

What he doesn't know is that Island isn't a stranger. Their families are connected by a betrayal neither of them has forgotten, and a secret buried for ten years.

Island refuses to walk away. This investigation is her only chance to uncover the truth she's spent a decade chasing, and no grieving hockey superstar is going to stop her.

But when another body appears and the killer's twisted game grows deadlier, Zane and Island are forced into an uneasy partnership where every clue exposes another lie, every discovery brings them closer to the monster, and every argument makes their attraction harder to ignore.

Because Zane's sister wasn't chosen by chance…She was a message.

Now Zane and Island must trust the one person they swore they'd never need before the next victim wears the star.

Because whatever murdered the people they loved isn't finished.

And this time, it's watching them fall for each other.

I'm screwed.

If I want to keep my dream job, my new (and way-too-attractive-for-his-own-good) boss says I have to score an interview with one of the legendary Fontaine brothers of Hollywood.

I know three things about the Fontaine brothers:

that they're Hollywood royalty,
that all four of them are ridiculously, mind-numbingly sexy,
and
that they never, ever give interviews.

My only chance is to seduce one of them. The only problem? Historically speaking, I'm way more likely to put my foot in my mouth (or generally make a fool of myself) than charm the pants off anyone.

That's where my way-too-sexy boss comes in. He might hold the fate of my job in his hands, but he's also totally willing to teach me the art of seduction. I only hope I can survive his lessons. . .

Due to explicit scenes, this steamy romantic comedy is rated 18+.

The Secret to Seduction is created by Ember Casey, an eGlobal Creative Publishing signed author.

“A dynamic story line that grips from the first chapter and doesn't let go.” --Midwest Book Review, Diane Donovan (regarding Once Gone) From #1 bestselling author Blake Pierce comes a new masterpiece of psychological suspense—the AVERY BLACK SERIES—which continues here with CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6), also a standalone novel. The series begins with CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)—a free download with over 200 five star reviews!A woman turns up dead in her own apartment, locked in her closet, her body crawling with poisonous spiders, and the Boston police are stumped. As all of their leads collapse, they are dreading the killer will strike again. Desperate, the police have no choice but to turn to Boston’s most brilliant and controversial homicide detective—Avery Black. Now retired, Avery, in a low point in her own life, reluctantly agrees to help with the case. But when other bodies start turning up, murdered in grotesque and unusual ways, Avery can’t help but wonder: is there a serial killer on the loose?With the intense media pressure and the stress of having a new, inexperienced partner, Avery is pushed to her limit as she struggles to crack the bizarre cases—and to keep herself from falling into the abyss. Avery finds herself falling deeper and deeper into the twisted mind of the killer, who holds more secrets than Avery could imagine.The most riveting and shocking book of the series, a psychological thriller with heart-pounding suspense, CAUSE TO DREAD will leave you turning pages late into the night. “A masterpiece of thriller and mystery. Pierce did a magnificent job developing characters with a psychological side, so well described that we feel inside their minds, follow their fears and cheer for their success. The plot is very intelligent and will keep you entertained throughout the book. Full of twists, this book will keep you awake until the turn of the last page.” --Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (re Once Gone)

My wife never knew what I really did. She only knew I was gone most of the year and money hit our account every month.

The day she cheated, she rummaged through my drawer, found an eagle-shaped brooch, and gifted it to her lover like a flashy accessory. “It’s worthless,” she said. “Perfect with a suit.” I warned her again and again to bring it back. She called me annoying, powered off her phone, and blocked me everywhere.

She didn’t know I’m a cleaner—the kind who handles quiet jobs—and that brooch isn’t jewelry. It’s an organization badge, a mark that turns you into a target the moment it appears in public.

That night, the killers came. The ballroom was sealed. She trembled under a table while her lover shoved her out to take the bullets.

When a cold gun barrel pressed to her temple and someone asked, “Who does the brooch belong to?”

My father said an honest man can't run a farm. My brother called me nothing but a burden. My ex-girlfriend dropped her engagement ring into a glass of champagne and handed it back to me. They all thought I was worthless. None of them knew I'd been reborn, and had stockpiled five years' worth of supplies in the cold storage. When the blizzard hit, the walkie-talkie crackled to life. I heard their cries and the unspoken thoughts swirling inside their heads. Really? You're still trying to scheme against me right now?

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.

I am the chief architect of a quantum computing system valued at hundreds of billions in the real world.
For an AI test subject that I wrote myself, I was willing to conceal my identity as the creator and become her unseen, low-level assistant, even at the cost of taking a fatal blow for her.
Just as she was about to go public and reach the top of the conglomerate pyramid, she unhesitatingly pushed an "Organ Donation Agreement" in front of me, forcing me to remove a kidney to save the newly spawned "old money" NPC new love.
She thought that as long as I died on the operating table, she could kick me aside, this useless stepping stone, without any moral burden, and embrace the perfect capitalist marriage.
But she didn't know—
The entire world she exists in is just a sandbox test server on my desk.

I was born the true heiress of the powerful Voss family, but after being swapped at birth and failing to awaken my wolf, I was branded as worthless trash.
For six years, I worked as a "Scavenger" in the underground slums. I hauled mutant corpses, endured silver poisoning, and swallowed cheap suppressants—all to pay off my husband’s massive debts and buy the cure for my brother’s fatal blood disease.
Today, I finally handed my brother the life-saving medicine. 
He casually tossed it into the trash. "I'm not sick, Isolde. Oh, and Mom and Dad aren't dead either. I orchestrated that highway explosion six years ago. You were the only one meant to be crippled."
My blood ran cold. 
Jaxson, my supposedly bankrupt Alpha husband, adjusted his Rolex. "I never lost my company, either. Whenever I said I was working late at the docks, I was actually sleeping in my Manhattan penthouse. Honestly, the corpse stench on you was making me gag. We just wanted to end this little game."
I stared at the men I had sacrificed my soul for. Why?
My parents stepped out from the shadows, holding Violet—the fake daughter who stole my life—protectively in their arms. "Because you were too arrogant! We had to break your spirit so you'd stop bullying Violet. This 'trial' was for your own good!"
They thought this ultimate betrayal would finally force me to submit and beg for their forgiveness. 
But as my heart shattered into dust, the legendary Silver Wolf bloodline—dormant for 24 years—finally tasted the extreme despair it needed to awaken.
My eyes bled from amber to piercing silver. 
Fine, my inner wolf whispered. Let's show them what a true monster looks like.

My husband doesn't love me. He cares even less for the boy who carries his blood.
 
On the day I gave birth to his heir, Rhys Calloway didn't even glance at the bassinet. The ruthless Don of the Calloway Syndicate simply had a soldier place the child in my arms before walking out, eager to return to the violence of his empire.
 
But tonight, the ice finally broke. His former fiancée—the woman he had actually intended to crown—was returning from Europe.
 
Rhys came home reeking of aged bourbon, his dark eyes glassy with a terrifying euphoria. For the very first time, he actually scooped our son into his arms, a rare, chilling laugh vibrating in his chest.
 
Startled, Leo clung to the broad shoulders of the man he was forbidden to claim as a father.
 
He looked down at me, his voice a terrified whisper in the cavernous foyer.
 
"Mama, what's wrong with him? Why is Sir acting like this?"
 
I knelt, gently pulling my son from Rhys's slackening grip.
 
"The woman he truly loves is coming home, baby," I whispered, fighting the sting of tears. "Which means our time here is up. We have to pack."

They told me the baby was gone, but they didn't tell me my heart was being carved out, too.

I woke up on the operating table, paralyzed. Through my blurred vision, I saw my beloved husband, Marco, trembling with excitement as he held my medical chart.

"Her blood is perfect," he whispered. "It is a perfect match for Isabella. We can proceed with the transplant now."

"Finally. It wasn't in vain that I brought her back." My revered father let out a sigh of relief. "If it weren't for this day, how would someone who wandered outside for so many years be qualified to step into this house again?"

When my husband said "I love you," he actually meant "Your heart is perfect for the woman I truly love."

I couldn't scream; I couldn't move.

I could only watch helplessly as the silver scalpel pierced toward my chest, while my sister, Isabella, lay on the operating table next to me, smiling in her sleep.

I was never a long-lost daughter, nor was I a beloved wife.

I was just a mobile blood bank waiting to be slaughtered.

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.

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.

My boyfriend entered our village shrine to ask for a blessing before our wedding.

Ten minutes later, he came out, wrapped his hands around my throat, and promised my father he would kill me himself.

He wasn't the first.

Every man who offered to take me away went into that shrine and came back disgusted, violent, or both.

My father called it a curse. Then he beat me for bringing it upon myself.

When my grandmother saw my bruises, she came with my uncles to take me home.

I thought she was the one person my father could never turn against me.

Then my uncles entered the shrine.

The apocalyptic deluge came, and I rescued the entire village onto a cruise ship.

The villagers were deeply grateful to us.

But somehow a rumor spread—that I had a warehouse full of food and was refusing to feed them properly.

The villagers turned on me, hurling accusations left and right.

Helpless, I opened the warehouse to show them. There was barely anything left. But they still refused to believe me.

"Yu Lei! You must have hidden the food somewhere else!"

"That's right! He never really wanted to save us!"

They beat me with fists and feet, cursing me with every foul word they knew.

Then a gang of thugs stormed the ship.

Under their brutal rule, the entire village was enslaved. Young women became playthings. The children—their fate was even worse.

I tried to rally the villagers to fight back. But someone sold me out to the thugs, trading that information for a single full meal.

In the end, they beat me to death and tossed my body into the sea for the fish.

When I opened my eyes again, time had rewound to three days before the apocalypse. I immediately started packing, ready to get as far away from these ungrateful bastards as possible.

But the villagers were already crowded at my door, demanding I hand over the keys to the cruise ship.

It turned out I wasn't the only one who'd been reborn. The entire village had come back too.

I handed over the keys without a fuss.

After all, the System told me this time it would be a zombie apocalypse. What good was a ship?

In the delivery room, my husband Ronan fumed that having a male doctor was a disgrace. My mother-in-law Coralie griped about the hospital bill. His sister Ophelia clung to his arm, pinching her nose and mocking the smell of the room.
In my previous life, today was the day the doctor ordered an extra blood test due to my in-laws' history of blood disorders. Two Type-O parents had somehow produced a Type-B daughter.
Coralie pointed at my nose, calling me a whore. Ophelia fueled the fire, sneering, "Just admit it, Sabine." Ronan slapped me off the delivery bed, demanding the name of my "lover."
I died having no way to prove my innocence, losing both my life and my daughter, Sorrel.
It wasn't until moments before my death, when I pushed open the master bedroom door, that I finally understood: the two people tangled naked in my marital bed were my husband and his own sister.
I opened my eyes. I was back to the morning after giving birth to my daughter.

My younger sister, Freya, was preparing for her advanced training in New York the following week, so she dragged me to the dance studio to help her correct her movements. I put on my dance shoes as usual and stood in the center of the floor, ready to demonstrate a turn.

The moment my foot slipped, I didn't even have time to react.

My body hit the ground hard, and the sharp pain from the back of my head nearly made me lose consciousness. I lay on the cold floor, my throat tight, unable to even cry out for help.

When Mother rushed in, she didn't spare me a glance.

She immediately helped Freya up and took her to the hospital. I missed the critical window for treatment and died on the way to the hospital.

I'm sixty years old. My husband Marcus just whipped me with his belt — for burning an egg. My face is bruised, my hair is gray, and I gave up a full ride to Stanford for this man over forty years ago.
Then the phone rings.
The voice on the other end is mine — my eighteen-year-old self, calling on her birthday, gushing about how Marcus is out buying her a cake, how they're running away to Nashville together tomorrow.
She asks if I'm happy.
I tell her the truth: her boyfriend is in a cheap motel right now, in bed with her best friend. And those pretty promises about Nashville? He's planning to use her up and throw her away.
She doesn't believe me. Of course she doesn't.
But I know the motel. I know the room number. And I know what's behind that door.
If she walks away from him tonight, everything changes — for both of us.

In her past life, Summer was tragically killed by a scumbag and her scheming stepsister, and they also caused the death of the husband who loved her most. After being reborn, Summer takes the initiative to marry in the place of another, becoming the bride of a disabled husband.
In this new life, she plans to tear apart those who wronged her and fiercely punish the scum.
They say she's plain and unlucky for her husband?
Until one day, when all her divine-level disguises are revealed, everyone who underestimated her is blinded by her brilliance.
But what about the supposedly impotent, disabled big shot?
By day, he is so gentle, pampering her to the bone; by night, he turns into a ravenous wolf and devours her completely!
[Foolish Bride Substitute + Hidden Talents + Rebirth + Strong Couple + Sweet Romance]