5099 Book(s) Related to my fake girlfriends are using me as a shield

“Sign the marriage contract, Selena. I’ll give you everything you need to rise again.”

My skating career is hanging by a thread. The man I loved betrayed me, stole from me, and left me with a mountain of debt.

But he made one fatal mistake: he underestimated me.

Now, I’m entering a one-year marriage with Sterling Black, a billionaire who can open every door my ex tried to slam shut. He needs a perfect wife to win over his board. I need his power, his resources, and a second chance at the ice.

Our marriage is supposed to be business. No love. No promises. No crossing the line.

But Sterling’s unexpected tenderness is making those rules harder to follow.

I came here to reclaim my career and destroy the man who betrayed me. I never expected my fake husband to become the one man I might actually lose my heart to.

Kara lives with her mother and is forced to move to Boston. Because of her mom's new job. She leaves her friends and her college plans behind. She decides to make the best of it and continue her dreams of learning Karate and going to medical school. Once there, she gets attacked. A mysterious, handsome older man saves her. She later learns that he is her karate instructor. She falls in love with him and he feels the same about her. He teaches her things both on the mat and in bed. Will their love conquer all or be their doom?


A dream
We were somewhere near a waterfall. I was wearing a bikini, and he was wearing swim shorts. We went swimming. Then, I laid a towel down so I could give it a little bite. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to feel it. At the same time, he is sucking on my left nipple. He is squeezing the right nipple with his fingers. He then leaves a trail of kisses from my left nipple to my right nipple, giving it the same attention, and he squeezes the left nipple like he did the right nipple with his fingers.

At Blackridge University, everyone knew the golden couple.

Taylor Hastings—the fierce, scholarship student who clawed her way to becoming head cheerleader—and Rowan Hayes, the hockey captain who treated her like the center of his universe.

They were campus royalty.

Until the video leaked.

One private night.
One humiliating betrayal.
And suddenly Taylor goes from adored to destroyed overnight.

Rowan swears it was an accident.

But Taylor knows the truth after hearing the whispers from his teammates… the jokes about the bet… the countdown they made over how long it would take him to get her into bed.

Their relationship was never love.

It was a game he won.

So Taylor decides to play one of her own.

Her target?
Hunter D’laurentis—the ruthless bad boy captain of Frostwood hockey and Rowan’s biggest rival.

Hunter wants one thing: the championship that could finally free him from his father’s suffocating control.

Taylor wants revenge brutal enough to make Rowan unravel before the biggest season of his life.

Fake dating should’ve been simple.

A few staged kisses.
A few jealous headlines.
A few public appearances designed to destroy a rival captain’s focus before the championship game.

But Hunter D’laurentis touches her like she’s something worth protecting instead of ruining.

And when the line between fake and real disappears beneath flashing cameras, screaming crowds, and bruised hearts, Taylor realizes revenge was never the dangerous part.

Falling for her rival was.

Elena, "I called her name as I pulled my lips away from hers".
"Let's stop. You're going to regret this tomorrow," I said, breathless.
"No, I won't," she whispered, before kissing me again - harder this time. God knows I was trying my best to control myself.
We kept kissing as she began unbuttoning my white shirt. Her hand slid down to my trousers, fumbling with my belt.
"No... I can't do this," I said, my heart racing. Ryder will kill me if he finds out.

Blake has been secretly in love with his best friend’s sister, Elena,who is five years older than him ,since he was ten. Their families are close, almost like one big family, which only made it harder for him to confess how he felt.
Now Blake is twenty and in college, while Elena, twenty-five, is already a successful CEO. When her boyfriend Aiden proposes, Blake decides it’s finally time to bury his feelings and move on.
But everything changes the night Elena kisses him.
The moment her lips touch his, the walls he built collapse. The feelings he tried so hard to kill surge back to life — fierce, uncontrollable, and impossible to ignore.
And Blake realizes one thing:
He can’t walk away anymore.
He has to fight for her — even if claiming her means risking everything.

I kissed my ex-boyfriend's father. Now they're both obsessed.

For six years, Julian Hawthorne treated me like his dirty little secret—never good enough to claim, always convenient to use. Until I walked away and kissed the one man he can't compete with.

Victor Hawthorne. Billionaire CEO. Julian's adoptive father. Ice-cold control wrapped around something dangerously combustible.

It was supposed to be revenge. One forbidden kiss to prove I'd moved on.

But Victor hired me. Put me in Julian's face every single day. And now Julian wants me back—desperate, possessive, unraveling.

The twist? Victor acts like I don't exist in public. But behind closed doors, the way he looks at me could melt steel.

Julian's begging. Victor's silent. And I'm playing them both.

The problem? I'm starting to want the one I can't afford to lose.


⚠️ Forbidden romance. Adoptive father/son rivalry. She plays the game—until the game plays her.

A shadow moved in the doorway, and my heart sank. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

"Why?" Ace’s voice was low, gravelly, but it sliced through the quiet like a blade.

I exhaled slowly, not wanting to wake Liam. My hands rested on my knees as I stood, deliberately taking my time before facing him. "Why what?" I asked softly, though I already knew the answer.

His form filled the doorway, his presence almost suffocating. His jaw was tight, his shoulders tense. "Why didn’t you tell me about him?" His voice trembled, barely controlled.

My stomach twisted, and I met his piercing gaze. "I tried, Ace. After that night, I called. I searched. I asked everyone who might have known where you went. But you left the city, disappeared like a ghost. What was I supposed to do?"

"You tried?" he hissed, stepping closer, his fists clenching at his sides.

♤

Ace Callahan

The descendant of Xalaria and the rightful heir to the throne, moves like a ghost through the shadows of Earth. Abandoning his war-torn planet to evade his tyrannical father—a ruler thirsty for his blood—Ace hides from the hunters dispatched to track him down. Though adept at blending into the human world, his solitude shatters when someone travels through the threads of time, arriving with a singular purpose: to find him.

Zephyr Vance

A hardened single mother with nothing to lose, is abducted by an unknown faction. They force her into an impossible mission—to locate and capture the one man she swore to hate forever: Ace Callahan. Her assignment is a mystery, but her disdain for Ace burns as fiercely as her will to protect her child.

When their paths finally cross, it’s not the reunion either expected. Mistrust clouds Ace’s judgment, and in a flash of instinct and fury, he knocks Zephyr unconscious, binding her as his captive. Awakening in chains, Zephyr finds herself thrust into Ace’s world—not as his equal, but as his reluctant slave.

“Do you know how sexy you look right now?” His deep voice made my core tingle as his fingers glided between my folds.

He was hot and I was slimy and wet. “Oh, gosh!” I threw my head back in pleasure as he increased his pace.

His magical fingers made me fidget shamelessly, “Please—” aching for a release.

“Do you want to cum for me, Pookie?” A dark smirk glinted at the corner of his lips.

And I…

I just couldn't take it anymore.


They called her ugly and fat, she felt out of place. The only family she had mistreated not until she encountered the billionaire golden boy who is ready to go miles for her.

But not without a storm ahead.

Eli is an omega. She gave five years of her life to Steven, believing he was her forever. But the day he landed a new job, he ended their relationship and told her she was holding him back. Heartbroken and humiliated, Eli returned home for what she thought would be her stepsister’s wedding.

Only it was not her stepsister’s wedding at all. It was hers. Her stepmother had arranged everything, and if Eli refused to marry the powerful stranger waiting for her at the altar, her father’s medical treatment would be cut off. With no choice left, Eli agreed.

She thought marrying a man she did not know was the worst thing that could happen. Then she saw Steven standing in the crowd. He was not just a guest. He worked for her new husband.

Now Eli is trapped in a marriage she never wanted, living in a house with the man who broke her heart, the husband who now owns it and now his twin brother who wants her.

Whose going to win Eli’s heart eventually?

My five-year-old son had never hugged me first.

Whenever I reached for him, Ian stepped back, lowered his eyes, and politely told me I could go.

I thought he didn’t want me.

Then, on the night I was supposed to die, a mysterious reader thread appeared on my phone.

Look at him pretending he doesn’t care.

He wants his mother to stay so badly—but if he gets too emotional, his wolf ears will appear.

I canceled dinner and crouched in front of him.

“I’m staying home tonight.”

Hope lit his face before he could hide it.

Then he asked the question that broke my heart.

“Only tonight?”

The folder slid across the table toward Hannah's husband. Sign here. Family helps family.

What the Whitfields never once thought to wonder was that the quiet daughter-in-law they'd spent four years bleeding had almost three million dollars they couldn't see.

She'd hidden it for one reason: to keep the only good man in that family from being turned into their wallet.

Now they wanted his signature. His house. His name on their debt.

They had spent a lifetime underestimating the quiet one.

They were about to learn what that costs.

Yes, I jumped from that rooftop. Wind screaming in my ears as I fell, thinking it might finally earn me one fucking tear from them. Instead, all I got was "she's so dramatic."
Now I'm staring at fifteen-year-old skin in the mirror. Downstairs, their fake voices call my name—identical to that "welcome home" afternoon three years ago.
Yvette rushes to hug me, sugar-sweet venom dripping from her lips: "Remember who the princess is." I give her the same plastic smile right back.
I hear the voice in my head crystal clear: This time, I'm not fighting for their love—I'm taking back the life that was always mine.

I die a miserable death in the dungeon, drained of three hundred years of pure blood. I owe it all to Elena and my ridiculously biased clan.

In my previous life, I am the Chief Executioner of the Night Abyss clan. During our hunt for the Alpha Wolf, she drops her weapon and throws herself into Lucas's arms, playing the helpless victim.

I take the beast's attack head-on and suffer severe injuries. The other knights just shield her, turning around to accuse me of being petty and jealous.

Prince Marcus blatantly favors his illegitimate daughter, Elena. He snatches my magic core, constantly puts me down, and even rips the core out of my loyal wolf familiar, Fenrir. In the end, he drains my blood dry just to feed her.

Now that I am reborn, I return to the exact night we hunt the high-tier Alpha Wolf.

I thought I was the happiest woman in the city.

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

Then a video from an unknown number shattered everything.

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

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

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

That evening.

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

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

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

At the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, my ex-husband threw champagne all over me, and my wife publicly called me a "gold digger."

I held the tray, silent, like a clown being punished.

Three years ago, I lived in anonymity with her in a basement, cooking and doing laundry for her, all because of the pure stubbornness in her eyes.

In return, she embraced her father's killer and trampled me into the mud.

The divorce agreement was signed quickly, and she got into a Porsche with her enemy.

I laughed.
The next day, a Maybach pulled up in front of the law firm, escorted by eight bodyguards. The sole heir to the oldest conglomerate on the East Coast had returned.

While she was watching the cheap TV in the supermarket, seeing me marry a European princess, she was kneeling in front of a cold shelf, being verbally abused by a homeless man over a moldy potato.

The invincible Dragon Lord Kane returns from the Northern Frontier, only to find his daughter caged and his pianist wife trapped in a luxury lounge. He chains her in pain, summons 10,000 elite soldiers to rush her performance, while hidden demon forces creep in to destroy his family.

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

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

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

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

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

In that moment, my heart died too.

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

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

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

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

I thought my husband was my salvation.
Until I overheard him in the wine cellar, laughing and joking with my "attackers" from that night.
The gang rape that destroyed me was a show he orchestrated himself.

He married me only for inheritance rights.
He humiliated me, branded me, took away my child, and made my life a living hell.
But he forgot one thing—
The ancient blood oath of the Corleone family states clearly:
If a husband betrays his marriage, everything he owns shall belong to his wife.

This time, I'm no longer the rabbit waiting to be slaughtered.
This time, I write the ending.

I was the orphan Hayes Holt pulled from the foster system, the girl he raised for eight years.
In my past life, I drowned in his suffocating tenderness, mistaking his guardianship for love. When he brought Josie Rowe home and announced their engagement, I snapped.
I threw a hysterical fit, screaming my unrequited love until the scandal bled into every gossip rag in New York.
My reward was his cold disgust. Labeled "sick," I was shipped off to a psychiatric ward, where I died strapped to a table, my brain fried by forced ECT.
The very next day, Hayes gave Josie the Manhattan wedding of the century. To the world, I became nothing but a cautionary tale: the delusional slut who tried to seduce her adoptive father.
But fate pulled me back. Back to the exact moment I ruined my life. Back to the fatal question:
"Can't we be more than just father and daughter?"
Across the dining table, the ruthless CEO of Holt Holdings was painstakingly peeling a shrimp for me. At my words, his long fingers froze.
"Excuse me?"
In my past life, I missed the flash of pure disgust in his eyes and just cried, begging for his love.
But now, hearing his icy tone, the phantom stench of my own burning flesh filled my nostrils. A violent shudder ripped through me. Digging my nails into my palms, I forced a flawless smile and pulled my plate away.
"Dad," I said, the word tasting like ash. "Didn't you tell me to grow up? I can peel them myself. I won't bother you anymore."

One month until the SAT.
Staring at my phone screen—at the pulsing number on "Oracle," the mandatory score prediction app that Elite Prep forced every student to install—I couldn't help but think it was all a joke.
In my previous life, every time I finished a practice test, this garbage system would automatically dock twenty points from my predicted score.
But skip class for a day? The number would mysteriously jump up twenty points.
Back then, I actually believed in this bullshit algorithm. I completely gave up for an entire month, watching that predicted score skyrocket all the way to 1550.
But when I finally logged into College Board to check my real results, I'd scored a pathetic 400.
And that brilliant 1550? It appeared on my stepsister Dahlia's score report instead.
Disgusted that I'd embarrassed the Wright family, my father Harold froze my credit card without a second thought and threw me out of the family estate, clearing the path for Dahlia to claim Grandpa's ten-million-dollar trust fund all for herself.
That night, homeless on the streets, I was cornered by some thugs in a filthy Brooklyn alley and beaten to death.
Lying in a pool of my own blood, fading fast, I heard Dahlia's voice.
"Your GPA's been crushing mine since we were kids. I thought you, the so-called 'Straight-A student,' were supposed to be so smart."
She stood over me, mocking. "Turns out you got played by a prediction app. Pathetic."
That's when it finally clicked. My Oracle prediction system had been completely rigged from the source code—by Dahlia.
I shot up in bed, gasping, my shirt soaked through with sweat. I'd actually gone back in time—one month before the test.
Right now, the Oracle widget glowed eerily on my phone's home screen, displaying a single number: 1350.

For three years, everyone at Spire Academy believed Liam loved me. Until I uncovered his secret plan: steal my academy recommendation to save Anna, and keep me waiting on the sidelines. He handed my future to another girl and threw me to a mad duke to be dissected. I escaped death by leaping into the Rift of Silence, only to be pulled from the abyss by Arnold, an ancient night lord. When Liam finally realized his sin, he begged for a second chance. But the girl who waited for him in the dark died in the rift. I have a new life, and I will never look back.

I died on the fourth night after Thanksgiving.
A blizzard had swallowed the entire town, and I was locked in an unheated attic.
My broken leg had turned black with infection. Every breath felt like swallowing broken glass. I tore four fingernails from their beds, but I still couldn’t claw my way through the door.
With the last of my strength, I held my old iPad against the frost-covered window.
On the screen, my twin sister, Lily, stood beneath the Alps, rosy-cheeked and healthy, raising a crystal glass. Our parents stood on either side of her.
My life was beating inside her chest.
The caption read: [Just the three of us. Finally, some peace.]
A single tear slipped into my hair.
I closed my eyes.
I had traded my life for hers.
Now it was time for them to learn how much that life had cost.

My sister and I both married the wrong men in our past lives. I was bound to an overbearing Lycan Duke, who saw me as nothing more than a vessel for his heir. I ultimately lost my life in childbirth. My sister wed a frivolous Fae Prince, hounded and tormented by his countless mistresses until she was driven to take her own life.
Reborn before our weddings, we bravely choose to swap our marriage contracts, determined to break free from our cruel fates. This time, we rewrite our stories and grasp the our happy lives .

I think I'm dead.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself standing in an abandoned amusement park, and my body was sitting on that slowly turning carousel.

I was only ten years old. I don't know how I died.

Detective Sarah, the blonde officer, promised to find the truth. So I followed her, watching her peel away layer after layer of lies—

In my diary, I wrote down all my fears and all my waiting.

On the phone, Mom sent that video of me laughing.

In the autopsy report, evidence of long-term abuse filled every page.

Mom had been saving money for three years, saying she'd take me away. That afternoon she picked me up from school and said, "We're really leaving this time."

Then what happened? Why did I die at the amusement park? Why was Mom's first reaction after my death not to call the police, but to—

I thought Mom came to save me.

Until I saw the text message she sent...

A past generations’ wrongful case makes Julian mistake innocent Sienna for his foe’s daughter. Exploiting her crush, he ruins her Cambridge dream on graduation night, destroying her family. For five years, Sienna works in a sleazy club to fund her sick mother’s care.
Their unexpected reunion leaves Julian torn between disgust and secret affection. When the truth surfaces, consumed by regret, he cancels his wedding and spends all his wealth to atone. Yet Sienna’s love is long gone. After settling her family with his money, she leaves forever.

I catch my husband in bed with the live-in housekeeper.

He shoves her behind him. "She's only twenty. Barely out on her own, doesn't know any better. Can't you be the bigger person here?"

His mother points a finger in my face. "You're an orphan. If we hadn't taken you in, you'd still be out on the street begging."

"Be smart about this. Make room for Kaylee, so we can all live under one roof in peace."

They've both forgotten that back then he couldn't even make rent, and I worked three jobs to build his company for him.

Forgotten the year his company was going under, when I ran to three different banks across the city in a downpour chasing investors, passed out in the street, and lost the baby.

Four whole years of them looking down on me after that.

I say I want a divorce.

Preston just laughs at me. "You're a housewife. Walk out that door and you'll starve on the sidewalk by tomorrow."

I drag my suitcase onto the overnight bus and go home to a place I haven't set foot in for ten years.

It's the middle of the night when I get there. The streets are empty. Three men reeking of liquor block my way.

That hand is about to touch my face when a Harley roars up and stops right beside me.

The muscled guy on it has a cigarette in his mouth. He looks me over. "Need a hand?"

I’m Wren, hidden sole heir of Ravenwood Pack, living as a regular lone wolf at wolf academy. My roommate Brielle steals my exclusive pine pheromone, copies my relics, steals my elite quota and tricks my betrothed Alpha Kane with a fake royal identity. I challenge her to present the unforgeable Lunar Pearl at the ball. When my father, the pack Alpha, exposes her family’s theft, I reject the misled Kane and reclaim everything the imposter stole from me.

For three years, I paid so my sister could rebuild her life — her rent, her lawyers, her hospital bills, the shop she now runs in my name. Lucas, my fiance, always told me it was the right thing to do. I believed him, because believing him was easier than admitting how tired I was. I flew home two days early to surprise him. Instead, I opened my own front door and found my sister in his lap, wearing my robe, laughing in a voice I'd paid to keep happy for years. Ninety-nine empty perfume bottles stood along the wall — quiet witnesses to nights I never knew existed. Lucas didn't apologize. He asked me to be more understanding. My sister cried and called me cruel. I stood in the apartment I bought, surrounded by the people I built a home for, and realized I had never once been the one who got to be loved first.

With five days left before I was to leave the Black-Fig Pack and marry into the Pear Pack, I packed away everything Kael Thorne had ever left behind.
For five years, I had cherished his lost cufflinks, dried wildflowers he casually picked, and even a used handkerchief.
Now, they meant nothing to me.
I remembered every rejection and every scar he gave me, but I had completely lost the feeling of loving him. It was as if the Moon Goddess herself had severed the bond in my soul.
Kael thought I was just playing hard to get. He didn't know I had already chosen a new life—and that I would never return.

"Mom, I don't need a baby brother or sister. I already have a sister."
I happily pulled out a pair of baby shoes, only for my seven-year-old son to violently snatch them and slam them into the trash can.
It was in that exact moment I discovered that the Alpha leader I had deeply loved for eight years had built a lavish underground mansion long ago—housing his mistress and secret daughter!
And my "obedient" son had been joining his father there every single month, playing happy family with them!
When the shock caused me to hemorrhage, leaving me lying alone on a freezing operating table undergoing a miscarriage, my husband was off comforting his mistress and illegitimate daughter.
In that instant, my love shattered completely. I relinquished custody of my son, left a signed divorce agreement, and walked away without looking back.

My husband, Roman, has a bad heart. Five years ago they cut his chest open, and after that I quit my job and stayed home to keep him alive.
That day I got to his office ten minutes early with his lunch.
Through the glass door I watched Brielle Nash, his assistant, pick up his pill box. Twenty-eight compartments. I fill it every Sunday night.
She flipped open Wednesday evening, tipped the pills into her palm, and dropped them in the trash.
"That's the one that makes you feel eighty."
Roman laughed. He didn't stop her.
Then she handed him the can she'd been drinking from, and he took a sip out of her hand.
"That's living," she said. "Don't tell the boss lady, though. She'd have me fired."
He reached over and ruffled her hair. "I'll lock it in my drawer."
My lunchbox was sitting by his elbow. He hadn't opened it.
Later I found the flask in that drawer. Supplement bottles. A keycard for a boxing gym.
And a key I hadn't seen in five years.
I didn't do anything.
I went home and opened the safe and went through fifteen years of marriage one thing at a time.
Then I started working out what would be mine when he died.

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."

I died on the night of my eighteenth graduation party, pushed off a rooftop by the two people I trusted most.

In my past life, I was the ultimate fool.

When my two childhood friends—both heirs to top elite families—decided to throw away their futures, I panicked.

They actually wanted to reject their admission offers from Harvard and Yale.

All to follow Lily, a charity case from the slums, to a literal no-name trade school called Sunny Valley Vocational Academy.

I begged them to stop.

I even used my family's connections to try and get Lily into a legitimate university.

But Lily wept in front of them, claiming my money insulted her dignity, and that I was just jealous of their "pure love."

Liam and Noah completely lost their minds.

That night, they cornered me on the roof.

"Vivian, you killed Lily. Go to hell!"

As it turned out, Lily went to that trash school alone and committed suicide.

They blamed me entirely for her death, nursing that grudge until they finally pushed me into the abyss.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the exact day we were supposed to lock in our college choices.

This time, count me out.

When my husband's eight-year-old "nephew" Noah was diagnosed with acute leukemia, the whole family begged for my help.

They needed my six-year-old daughter, Molly—the only perfect match.

Against my instincts as a head nurse, I agreed.

But the second Molly's stem cells were harvested, their gratitude vanished.

To avoid paying for my daughter’s mandatory sterile recovery room, Noah's mother live-streamed a crying fit in my lobby, accusing me of medical extortion. My husband, Grant, stood by in utter silence.

Without the isolation bed, my baby girl contracted a severe infection and died. My mother-in-law simply sneered outside the ICU, "Dead is dead. Better than wasting more money."

Three months later, Noah relapses.

Now, my phone is blowing up. The same people who watched my daughter suffocate in her own fluids are desperately begging me to use my hospital registry access to save him again.

Standing by Molly’s tiny headstone, I look down at the confidential DNA report I pulled from the hospital database.

They think I don’t know Noah is actually Grant's illegitimate son. They think I'll just hang up and cry.

Instead, I swipe to answer the call. It's time to make them pay.

To protect my older sister's piano championship, my own brother crushed all ten of my fingers.
To win my sister's favor, my fiancé hired someone to kick the baby out of me.
After surviving a fire that nearly killed me, I finally woke up.
And when I returned, I blasted the hard proof of their affair and their schemes all over the internet. As I watched them lose their minds, lose everything, and drop to their knees begging for mercy, I let out a cold laugh, turned around, and claimed the top of the world!

For three years I played the perfect fiancée to the most dangerous Alpha in the city.
I walked on tiptoe because he hated noise. I taught myself to cook meat the way wolves like it. I messaged him every night he didn't come home, and most nights he didn't.
I did it because the Sacred Spring said I was his fated mate, and a human with no magic doesn't survive here without one.
Then the Temple sent me a notice. The old reading was an error. Our true match rating is zero. The bond is void as of today, and they wish me all the best.
Honestly? I was relieved. I dumped his dinner in the trash, dragged my suitcase out from under the bed, and wrote him an IOU for three years of rent.
Then Kael came home early.
He looked at the empty plate. He looked at the suitcase. And the coldest Alpha in the city stepped into the doorway so I couldn't get past him.
"Who told you our match rating was zero?"
"And who told you that you were free to walk out on me?"

On our wedding day, Declan sent me out to Long Island. We'd been together seven years.

He said he'd left his grandmother's lucky cufflinks at the family house.

But when my car died in the storm, I opened my bridesmaid's Instagram live.

Declan was sliding my custom diamond ring onto Phoebe's finger—my adopted sister, the one with the bad heart.

My own parents were crying in the front row. My bridesmaids were cheering.

They'd turned my wedding into a dying wish ceremony for Phoebe.

Hours later, alone in the ER, I called forty-seven times.

No one picked up.

Not until after I lost the baby and disappeared from Manhattan.

That's when Declan finally came apart.

In my last life, my mother-in-law locked me in the attic, and my wife openly cheated on me with the neighbor. Even when I was dying of terminal cancer, they bled me dry until my very last breath! Now that I've been reborn, the extreme-heat apocalypse is just around the corner. In this life, I'm living for myself. I spend every last cent of my savings stockpiling three years' worth of supplies and building a heat-proof survival villa! Now I can sit back and watch my mother-in-law's family struggle to survive in the deadly heat. Beg on their knees for my forgiveness? No! I will never forgive them!

All I wanted was a quiet place to live. I drained my savings and paid eighty thousand extra for the one unit on the row with a private backyard.
On my very first day, I found my neighbor's son beating my new hydrangeas with a stick while his mother stood there filming him and laughing.
Bianca says the yard belongs to everybody. Her husband is vice president of the HOA board, so around here, whatever he says is the law.
I showed them my deed. I called the police. I sent a certified letter. Every single time the answer came back the same. This is a civil matter, ma'am. Maybe try being a better neighbor.
Then her son put a rock through my living room window, and the HOA fined me two hundred and fifty dollars for putting a lock on my own gate.
Fine. They want that gate open? It stays open.
I just made one phone call. A truck is already on its way.

On my birthday, I was dragged up to the attic and assaulted by several men.
I called my parents, brother, and boyfriend for help, but they all thought I was seeking attention and ruining my sister Sophie's celebration.
"Mia, stop it. We're busy preparing for Sophie's party. If you want attention, find another way."
This was the hundredth time they'd let me down.
But there won't be a hundred and first.
Because I'm already dead.

I had been Lucan Ferretti's wife for five years. I had also been the woman who took a bullet meant for him.
Four years of fertility treatments. Four years of empty rooms where a nursery should have been. Then, the day I finally get a positive test, I find something else: two secret sons, funded by my husband's money, waiting in a house I was never supposed to find.
Their names? The ones Lucan and I picked out together, years ago, in a hospital parking lot.
That night, I sat alone with the positive test still in my hand, memorizing the names he'd already given to someone else's sons.
I could have confronted him. I could have screamed, thrown things, demanded a divorce.
Instead, I find a text message. His mistress has already ordered a hit — on me, timed for our anniversary, dressed up to look like enemy retaliation.
She wants me dead before I can tell anyone I'm carrying his child.
Fine.
She can have exactly what she asked for.

My downstairs neighbor tagged me in the building group chat at ten p.m.
His wife just had a pup, he said. Pups need moonlight, he said. So starting tonight, my private moon terrace belongs to his family.
He'd even pay me rent. Ten dollars a month.
For the terrace of a three-million-dollar penthouse.
When I said no, he reminded me he wasn't just my neighbor. He's my supervisor at the Calloway Group, and my probation review sits in his hands. Hand over the door code, or I'd never survive at that company.
He kept saying it. I can crush you at the Calloway Group.
Funny.
My mother owns the Calloway Group.
I was going to let him dig his own grave quietly. Then his family broke into my home, walked up to the one thing on that terrace worth half a million dollars—
And smashed it.

A hormonal condition pushed my weight to two hundred pounds, and for three years, this boarding school made sure I never forgot it.

The ringleader was the guy every girl worshipped.

And beside him stood his girlfriend, the one who always stepped in at my worst moments with a soft voice and a sympathetic look, like she was doing me a favor.

Everyone called her an angel. Only I knew the truth: every time she "helped," things got worse.

One day, she handed me a candy in front of everyone. "Here. Something sweet always helps."

I didn't feel like I had a choice.

That night, a demon showed up at the foot of my bed.

"Congratulations. You ate the pact candy. I'll grant you three wishes — money, beauty, lifespan. You name it, I'll make it happen."

My whole body shook. Three years of humiliation, and finally there was a way out. Wealth, beauty, revenge. All I had to do was ask.

Then the demon's expression shifted, eyes full of cruel amusement.

"There's a catch, though. The real pact-holder is someone else. Whatever you wish for, the one who gave you that candy gets double."

The words I was about to say died in my throat.

Then, slowly, I smiled.

Double?

That's way more interesting than three wishes.

The day before spring break, Cole Bennett asks me, red in the face, if he can borrow my empty place up in the hills for one night.

I figure he's planning a birthday party for me, so I don't think twice about handing over the code to the estate.

I've already decided that night is when I'll tell him who I really am.

Eight o'clock on my birthday, I push open the brass doors of the estate, worth millions by themselves.

Music blasts through the great room. The place is packed with people from school, all of them craning their necks, gushing about how gorgeous the house is.

I hold back a grin, ready to go find him and see what he's got planned.

Then I see her in the middle of the crowd, everyone crowding around her, glasses raised.

Sloane Bishop.

Five years in hell, my beloved and best friend joined hands to push me into the abyss. The savior I trusted was actually a deadly fraud. Reborn from despair, Vito came through the light. I tore apart the scumbag and the evil woman, settled all debts, broke free from the shadow, stepped into the light, and lived the rest of my life only for myself.

My husband's mistress sent me a video to rub it in, claiming she had just beaten my "pathetic, begging mother" bloody and kicked her down the stairs.
I froze, glancing up at my actual mother sitting right across from me, quietly sipping her coffee.
Bewildered, I zoomed in on the video.
When I made out the scar on the wrist of the woman lying in the pool of blood, a cold sweat broke out over my body. I frantically called my husband.
But he interrupted my plea with extreme impatience: "Shut up! Roxy was right to teach her a lesson. She was just taking out the trash for me!"
Since he insisted on indulging his precious mistress's death wish...
I wonder if he'll still be able to say she was right to teach her a lesson when he sees his own grandmother's corpse.

When I was six, my father and his mistress drove my mother to jump to her death. Suicide is a sin, and the Church said her soul could not enter Heaven. So I set out to save her the only way I could: with my Rh-null "golden blood," I worked ninety-nine miracles of life.

Then came the hundredth call. The hospital needed me to save my father's illegitimate son.

One of my employees went online and dragged me, claiming I'm making them sacrifice their health for a paycheck and forcing everyone to work over Thanksgiving.

Here's what actually happened. My company gives nine days off for Thanksgiving. Volunteer to work overtime, get triple pay, with a $500 daily meal stipend and a $5,000 bonus. No one gets penalized for not working.

The whole internet's tearing into me for making employees sell their lives for cash. So I give her exactly what she wants and send out a company-wide notice:

To protect employee mental health, the building gets locked and the power gets cut over Thanksgiving. No one is allowed to work for any reason. Anyone who does gets fired.

The minute that email goes out, the employees who were counting on overtime to pay their mortgages lose it. Now they're all crowded outside the building, begging me to open the doors.

"Happy anniversary, darling. Look what I brought you." My husband's snow-white python once felt like proof of his love—until I remembered dying with it wrapped around my throat. In my past life, I doted on that "gift" for an entire year, never once suspecting its true nature, while my husband and daughter quietly counted down the days until I stopped breathing. Reborn on the very night he presents that same box again, I swear this time will be different.

To win back his one true love, my husband sent me, pregnant and vulnerable, straight into the clutches of a rival mob's dungeon.
I was torn apart by vicious dogs, a brutal end for both me and my unborn child.
After death, my spirit drifted back home, only to hear him coldly chuckle, "Let her learn her lesson; she won't come back until she admits she was wrong."
It wasn't until a mangled, rotting body was dumped at his feet, and he saw the blood-soaked wedding ring on its finger, that this heartless mob boss finally snapped...

"Are you always this damn sensitive?" my husband snapped, his hands lingering on his ex’s waist.
I stood there, holding our 5th-anniversary cake and my pregnancy secret. He canceled our romantic dinner just to comfort her.
So, I threw the cake away. Next, I'll throw him away.