1207 Book(s) Related to Her Paper Marriage

Three years ago, a private plane crash took my father, my mother, my brother Carter, and Grayson, the man I'd loved for seven years and was about to marry.

To hold onto everything they left behind, I cried until my eyes were raw, destroyed my stomach, and fought my way through boardrooms and Wall Street vultures.

On countless nights, I held their photographs and cried until I passed out.

What I never understood was why Willow, the foster sister we'd taken in, vanished without a trace after the crash.

Until today, three years later, when I drive back to the family estate with a diagnosis in my bag telling me I have three months to live.

I push open the heavy door and hear laughter. I see my family—the family that's supposed to be dead—gathered around Willow and her three-year-old son, singing happy birthday.

Turns out no one in this world ever loved me at all.

Why do they all get to live while I'm the only one who have to die?

Everyone thinks that after ten years engaged to Alpha Grayson, I'll end up as Frostpeak's Luna. Then one night at a gala, in front of the whole pack, he hands me over to the lowest rogue he can find.

Someone speaks up for me.

"Alpha Grayson, if you're done with her, just let her go. Why humiliate her like this? She dragged you through three days and nights in a blizzard ten years ago. She froze her body half to death saving you. She can't even shift anymore."

"That rogue can barely feed himself. She'll go with him and suffer for it."

Grayson just pulls the crying Omega closer, disgust all over his face.

"She saved me because she wanted the Luna title, that's all. I'm sick of her acting like I owe her something."

"Watch. Give it a few days and she'll come crawling back, begging me on her knees to change my mind."

I don't cry. I don't beg. I unclasp the engagement necklace, drop it at his feet, and walk out with the rogue.

Three days later, Grayson will show up at the Fringe with a hundred guards to drag me back, screaming that I'm heartless.

Everyone says I married an iceberg.

Three years of contract marriage. He's never touched me once.

On our wedding night, I tried to move into his bedroom. He refused. I stood in front of him wearing lingerie. He just said, calm as ever, "You should get some rest."

I'm a healthy woman with a normal sex drive. Every day I'm burning up with my own desire.

I thought he didn't love me. So for both our sakes, I signed the divorce papers. Today, I'm telling him.

Then that afternoon, I suddenly heard his thoughts.

When I walked up to him in just a towel, he looked calm, staring at his laptop. But his mind was screaming: Holy shit. She's not wearing anything under that. Look at that skin. Her tits are huge. I can't take this anymore... no, I'll scare her. Fuck. I'm hard again.

Turns out under the ice, there's a volcano that's been buried for just as long.

I slip the divorce papers back into hiding and pour him a coffee.

New plan: make that volcano blow.

I don't realize how badly I've been wronged until they're strapping me to the gurney.

My name is Camille Brooks. I'm one of the best cardiothoracic surgeons in the city, and I have never lost a patient on my table.

My fiancé, Adrian Vance, is the golden boy of the entire hospital. We're supposed to get married next month.

It's a stormy night when he calls, telling me to get to the hospital right now. There's a patient bleeding out, and only I can save them.

I race through the rain, but I get stuck in traffic halfway there. By the time I push through the OR doors, the patient has no pulse.

The family points at me. They say I botched the procedure and killed him. And Adrian Vance, my own fiancé, takes the stand and shows up with "ironclad evidence" against me.

I have nothing to fight back with. I go to prison. My parents can't handle it. It destroys them both. They take their own lives.

It's only after I die that I learn who really held the scalpel that night: Daisy Whitman, the woman Adrian never got over.

I was just the fall guy.

Then I open my eyes.

I'm back. One hour before everything falls apart, riding through the rain toward the hospital.

This time, I'm going to survive.

And I'm going to watch both of you burn.

My husband's foster sister, Delilah, gets poisoned and ends up paralyzed. My husband, Grayson, the Don of this whole crime family, doesn't even bother checking the security cameras. He just throws me, two months pregnant, into the cistern where they punish traitors.

"Tessa, hand over the antidote, or die."

I kneel in the freezing swamp water and beg him. I didn't poison her.

He answers with a kick to the stomach.

For three straight days, I suffer down there. Leeches tear into my skin. My baby turns into a pool of black blood and dissolves into the filthy water. By the end, my vocal cords tear to shreds, my body goes cold, and I stop breathing.

His men get on their knees and beg him to spare me. He just sneers.

"That woman's always been good at playing the victim. No food, no medicine. Let her keep soaking."

Three days later, he finally walks into the cistern, and it's only to give me an ultimatum.

"Crawl out and apologize to Delilah on your knees. Otherwise I'll strip you of your title and sell you off to a trafficking ring. You'll wish you were dead."

No one answers him.

He has no idea. I already am.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The day I closed another major deal, my fiancé, the CEO, smiles and tells me the credit and the bonus are going to the new intern.

I watch him lean in close to her, laughing, and something in me just stops caring enough to fight for it.

I sign the transfer request and ship myself off to the most useless department in the company.

What I don't expect is that a few days later, the same man who never looked twice at anyone beneath him is going to be on his knees begging me to come back.

I gave Arthur a thousand years. A thousand years to secure his throne as God-King.

And on the day of our engagement ceremony, he announced he was marrying someone else.

In my past life, I bled myself dry for him.

He told me Lilith needed Seraphim blood to live. I believed him. He bound me to the Divine Punishment Pillar and carved open my chest, one cut at a time.

He massacred my entire clan, calling it "treason."

I only learned the truth as I was dying. That pitiful "saint" was a demon from the Abyss all along.

Now that I'm reborn, watching him sit on that throne makes my skin crawl.

I destroy our engagement in front of everyone and take the entire Seraphim clan with me.

This time, I'm only here to watch him destroy himself.

I loved Damien for ten years. Ten years, right up until the moment he took the heart that was supposed to save our daughter and gave it to someone else's child.

Lily was only seven. She was terrified of the dark, terrified of pain. She never got that heart. She just faded, right there in that hospital bed.

And Damien was down the hall, celebrating someone else's miracle.

He had no idea what I was holding when he finally came home. He had no idea my stomach cancer had already hit the final stage.

There was nothing left in this world worth staying for.

So this time, I didn't yell. I didn't cry.

I just slid the divorce papers across the table.

He thought I was bluffing.

But this time, I had nothing left to lose.

In the dark underworld, Matthias Sterling is a feared mob boss and the only family I had left after my parents died. I used to be the girl he cherished, until I turned eighteen and confessed my feelings to him.

From that day on, the tenderness in his eyes turned to disgust. He brought home Rose Hartley and threw me away like trash.

In my past life, someone drugged him with a powerful aphrodisiac. I gave myself to him as the cure, only for him to call me a shameless whore. But when I got pregnant, he married me anyway.

On our wedding day, Rose ran to rival territory heartbroken and ended up dead. When he heard the news, he said nothing. Just finished the ceremony.

When I went into labor, he locked me in the house and said coldly, "If it weren't for you, I would've married her. She wouldn't have run to enemy territory and died."

He blamed everything on me. In the end, I died in childbirth. He wouldn't even let anyone call a doctor.

When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the night that changed everything.

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.

Elliot Knox and I were in court fighting over custody of our daughter.

In my first life, when the judge asked who she wanted to live with, I heard her thoughts.

Mom looks so sad. Cordelia wants to stay with Mom...

My eyes welled up right there. I signed away half of everything we owned and walked away with nothing else, just to keep her with me.

Three months after I got custody, my sweet, obedient daughter handed the FBI a forged tax fraud document herself.

I spent years in prison with everyone in there gunning for me, and I died coughing up blood on a snowy winter night.

In my second life, I wasn't about to risk it again. I gave custody to Elliot instead.

A few years later, he ended up in the hospital, gravely ill. By the time I got there, he was barely hanging on. He told me:

"It was Cordelia... she's been poisoning my medication..."

I opened my eyes again and found myself back in that courtroom.

That same childish voice went off in my head right on cue, word for word identical to the last two times.

But this time, I looked up and saw Elliot across from me, clearly reborn too, his face full of the same shock and confusion.

So which one of us does she actually want?

Connor Mitchell and I are the golden couple of our industry. Everyone sees him as the devoted husband, always bringing me soup when I work late into the night.

On our fifth wedding anniversary, he gave me an expensive diamond necklace and posted something sweet on Instagram. The comments were all variations of the same thing: jealousy.

I used to believe it too.

Until I cut my trip to Europe short and got into that SUV. The passenger seat was set at the wrong angle, too far forward for my height. A contact lens case fell out of the sun visor, and neither of us wears contacts.

When I had my cousin pull the dashcam footage and saw him with his arm around some petite girl getting into the car, the truth hit me. My attentive husband, the one who called me every night I was away, had been using my connections and resources to play successful mentor to a twenty-two-year-old intern.

The irony is, he thinks he's gotten away with it. He has no idea I can see right through every move he makes.

Once rot sets into a perfect marriage, no amount of perfume can hide the stench.

I was the Sinclair family's lost daughter, missing for fifteen years. The day they found me, I thought I'd finally found the home I'd always dreamed of.

I didn't know they only brought me back to keep their other daughter alive. The one with the rare blood disease.

For three years, they drained my blood over and over. Took my bone marrow once.

My birth parents told me, "Eloise is fragile. You're the older sister. Take care of her."

My fiancé said, "You have such a good heart. You wouldn't want to see her suffer, would you?"

Today, I just gave six hundred milliliters of blood. I'm lying here weak in this hospital bed, and I hear them talking outside my door.

"Eloise is getting worse. We should take Aria's kidney now. Give it to her. We can't wait any longer."

That's when I finally understood. I was never their found daughter.

I was inventory. A blood bag. Spare parts waiting to be harvested.

If that's what their love is, I don't want it.

The Enforcement Corps hauled me out of my apartment in the middle of the night and dumped me at the Southside Precinct.

The subordinate I'd trained myself had scratch marks all over her neck and collarbone, and she was shaking so hard she could barely stay on her feet.

The second she saw me, she pointed and started screaming that my mate had raped her.

"Director Cordelia, I've always looked up to you. You can't sic your mate on me just because I disagreed with you in a meeting!"

My brain just went blank. Because I don't have a mate.

The night before the SAT, I brought homemade pastries from our bakery to share with the whole class.

The next day, over thirty students collapsed at the testing center. The exam was voided.

I became the target of everyone's rage. My family fell apart. I ended up in a detention cell.

The internet tore me apart. My classmate Lainey Prescott went on camera sobbing, saying all she wanted was for me to own up to what I did.

While I was in detention, I found out my mom had a mental breakdown and jumped off the overpass outside of town.

That same night, I went into the river too. The water was freezing.

When I open my eyes, Lainey is right there. She's holding that same sheet of paper with everyone's signatures, smiling like nothing's wrong, eyes just as calculating as I remember.

I'm back.

And this time, I'm not making anything for anyone.

The day college applications were due, Fern Whitmore wouldn't stop crying — and my two childhood best friends were completely wrapped around her finger.

They actually threatened to give up their Ivy League spots to follow her to community college.

I tried everything to talk them out of it. Nothing worked. So I went behind their backs and called both their parents.

Their parents showed up that same night and put a stop to it. Applications corrected, crisis averted, everyone back on track.

Or so I thought.

Fern lost her two personal ATMs, and one night she posted a goodbye message on social media and swallowed a bottle of pills.

Nash and Declan didn't blame her for it. They blamed me.

They lured me up to the roof. Both of them shoved their hands against my chest.

"Maren." Declan's voice was ice. "You ruined Fern's future. Go apologize to her in hell."

I fell twelve stories.

When I opened my eyes, I was back at the beginning.

This time, I'm not saving anyone.

"You are absolutely my fucking woman, Dani. Got me?"
I squeezed my eyes shut.
"Dani," he pressed. "Do you get me?"
"No, Austin, I don't," I admitted as I pulled my robe closed again and sat up. "You confuse me."
He dragged his hands down his face. "Tell me what's on your mind."
I sighed. "You're everything my parents warned me against. You're secretive, but you're also honest. I feel wholly protected by you, but then you scare me more than anyone I've ever known. You're a bad boy, but when I dated a so-called good one, he turned out to be the devil, so, yeah, I don't get you because you're not what I expected. You drive me crazier than anyone I've ever met, but then you make me feel complete. I'm feeling things I don't quite know how to process and that makes me want to run. I don't want to give up something that might be really, really good, but I also don't want to be stupid and fall for a boy just because he's super pretty and makes me come."
Danielle Harris is the daughter of an overprotective police chief and has led a sheltered life. As a kindergarten teacher, she's as far removed from the world of Harleys and bikers as you could get, but when she's rescued by the sexy and dangerous Austin Carver, her life is changed forever.
Although Austin 'Booker' Carver is enamored by the innocent Dani, he tries to keep the police chief's daughter at arm's length. But when a threat is made from an unexpected source, he finds himself falling hard and fast for the only woman who can tame his wild heart.
Will Booker be able to find the source of the threat before it's too late?
Will Dani finally give her heart to a man who's everything she's been warned about?

I thought ten years of childhood sweethearts could weather any storm.

Until that night when Charles rushed out after her call, leaving me alone in bed with his child growing inside me, not knowing how to tell him.

Seraphina Blackwood, tech dynasty heiress, threatened Charles with her father's billion-dollar empire to marry her. And me? Just an orphan girl who seemed to mean nothing in Silicon Valley's power games.

When I watched him remove our wedding ring, when I saw their sweet photos at the hospital, when I lay bleeding on the floor and he chose her... I finally understood that maybe love really can't survive against money.

But what I didn't know was that while I started my new life in Switzerland, there was a man secretly protecting me with his kidney, his heart, his everything...

Until his assistant appeared at my little bakery, desperation in his eyes: "Ms. Thorne, please, you have to save him!"

At the board meeting, he voted to dilute my equity.

"This is business, Elena. Not personal."

Three years of hidden marriage. I thought we were partners. But in that moment, I finally understood—I was just his technical supplier on the road to success.

What Ryan didn't know: that Technology Contribution Agreement he signed three years ago contained one clause. 70% of NexTech's core algorithm IP belongs to me. Personally.

Product launch day. Two hundred investors watching. I took the microphone.

He thought I'd present the tech specs like always.

He was wrong.

My father died owing the Callahan family a blood debt. His payment? Me and my sister—married off to their sons.

I woke up reborn on the night they buried him.

Standing in that funeral chamber, watching the lawyer crack open the sealed will, I discovered I could suddenly hear thoughts. My sister Vivienne's voice ripped through my head: Not marrying that butcher. No way in hell.

She lunged forward and grabbed Adrian—the refined bastard son who looked like a lawyer instead of a mobster. The same "perfect gentleman" I married in my past life.

Which left me with Dominic Callahan. The scarred heir. The Executioner.

Last time around, Vivienne married Dominic and got beaten down for years. I married Adrian and lived like a queen.

I almost laughed out loud.

Because she has no idea—this time, she's the one who grabbed the monster.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One hundred years married to Everett, and I've learned one thing: whenever he wants to push me into a corner, he throws the mate bond dissolution agreement in my face. Whenever my parents want me to cave, they hold the family name over my head.

They've always wanted the same thing — for me to hand over everything I have to my twin sister Rosalie, who's been sick her whole life.

I've fought it. I've grieved over it.

But when the doctor slid the diagnosis across the desk — Blood Depletion Syndrome, late stage, less than two weeks left — something in me just went quiet.

What's the point of fighting when you're already dead?

The alliance between the Human Empire and the Wolf Empire has stood for centuries. The treaty requires the Human Empire to send a princess to the Wolf Empire every so often, to become the Wolf King's mate and strengthen the bond between our kingdoms. Now, it's time to honor that pact again.

Father is old now, ready to step down. My sister and I have to choose.

In my past life, Adelaide chose the throne. She thought power meant she could do whatever she wanted. Within three years, the Human Empire crumbled in her hands. At home, she bled the people dry, filling her own coffers while they starved. Abroad, her arrogance drove away our allies. The Dwarven Empire, the Serpent Empire, they all cut ties. In the end, the surrounding kingdoms banded together and attacked. The Human Empire fell in the war. Our parents died by enemy blades, and Adelaide had to flee.

And me? I went to the Wolf Empire, just like the treaty said.

On the surface, I was the Wolf Queen, worshipped by every wolf, living in the grand Wolf Court, attending state banquets. In reality, I was his prisoner. Forced to run as prey in the hunting ritual, slapped to the ground in front of the council, shoved forward as a hostage when conflicts arose.

At one banquet, Adelaide appeared in front of me, gripping a dagger, madness burning in her eyes. "This is your fault! If you hadn't been so useless in the Wolf Empire, we wouldn't have lost everything!"

The blade sank into my chest. I collapsed in a pool of blood.

When I open my eyes again, I'm back in the throne room with Father watching us.

Adelaide barely hesitates before speaking up. "I'll go to the Wolf Empire. Let Brynn take the throne."

I smile.

Foolish Adelaide. She has no idea that beneath the Queen's crown lies nothing but chains and blood.

One snide comment from my worst enemy, and I dropped eighty million gold coins on a custom golem built to look exactly like him.

My requirements were simple: same face, same body, and a personality that's submissive, obedient, and takes whatever I dish out without fighting back.

I've had that insufferable face fetching me coffee, rubbing my feet, massaging my shoulders, even wearing a maid outfit.

Watching him bow and scrape for me finally lets out most of the resentment I've been carrying.

Then tonight, the workshop sends a message out of nowhere:

[Due to a shortage of high-purity mithril, your custom golem needs another month to complete. Thank you for your patience.]

I look over at the man kneeling by the couch, rubbing my legs.

So who exactly have I been treating like a dog for the past two months?

My beast companions are in the middle of my medicinal soak when a soft, dramatic little "ow" drifts in from outside.

Vex, my wolfkin companion, drops my leg. Brom, the bearkin, jerks his hand and a fortune's worth of elixir spills into the water.

They crash through the floor-to-ceiling window and bolt outside without a single glance back — all for some ordinary girl.

I'm still staring at the broken glass when a stream of glowing blue text pops up out of nowhere.

[The main character Ivy literally fake-tripped in the garden and these two idiots jumped out a window for her!]
[Honestly, the original side character Lillia had it so rough. Backstabbed by her own companions, dies a miserable death, and they end up in Ivy's entourage…]
[And she never even figures out what's happening. Just suffers through the whole thing without a clue.]

I read through all of it, and one thought slowly rises: seriously?

If my companions won't behave, just get new ones. Simple.

I go straight to my mom, and before I've even finished talking, she's already pulling me toward the door.

"Any beast that turns on its master isn't worth keeping. Come on, baby — let's go pick you out some new ones. Mom's paying, so make it the most expensive ones they've got."

Everyone in our circle knows I'm Adrian's caged bird, and the "bad woman" his son Miles hates most.

For Miles, I gave up my fellowship in Zurich and spent seven years playing housewife.

What did I get in return? Adrian took Sophie to gallery openings on our anniversary. Miles smashed cake in my face in front of everyone, calling me a frumpy housewife.

Adrian was certain I couldn't leave him. Certain I couldn't leave our son.

He threw the divorce papers on the table with a cold smile. "Sign this, and you lose everything. Including Miles."

He expected me to beg on my knees.

I didn't.

I picked up the pen and signed without hesitation.

"Fine, Adrian. You keep Miles. And I get to keep myself."

For just a moment, I saw shock flash in his eyes.

I heard later that Adrian searched for me like a madman, and the son he doted on cried and screamed for his mommy.

Too bad. I'd already burned it all down myself.

My brother's first day on the job, and the new intern, Ashley Pratt, accuses him of trying something with her in the break room.

In my last life, I panicked under all those judging stares and my father screaming at me over the phone. I grabbed my brother by the shoulder and forced him to bow and apologize to her, tried to pay her off to make it go away.

She turned around and leaked the wire transfer online instead, twisted it into a story about rich people paying to buy back their good name. The backlash spiraled out of control. My brother couldn't take the flood of hate anymore and jumped from the roof. He hit the ground and there was nothing left of him to recognize.

My father used my failure to handle it as an excuse to push me off the board. I ended up watching the woman responsible climb over my brother's grave and take the CEO seat at Merritt Industries.

Fate is giving me a second shot.

My brother reaches for me, eyes rimmed red. "Camille, I swear I didn't do anything."

I pull him behind me and look down at the woman crying on the floor.

"She's saying you assaulted her? Fine. Let's call the cops."

I helped him claw his way up from nothing—from the family's bastard to king of the underworld.

I saved him when he got jumped in the streets. Took bullets for him when his father beat him half dead. We fought our way up from nothing, survived assassination attempts, built an empire that made people fear our name.

I thought we'd always stand together.

Until the day I nearly died giving birth, and all I found in the bassinet was a stack of cash.

I asked him where our baby was. He couldn't look me in the eye. His stepmother walked out holding my son. Smiled and said she deserved this, a child of her own, since she couldn't have one herself. He'd given my baby to another woman.

Turns out he'd been sleeping with her the whole time.

I threw the money in his face. I spent the next six years trying to get my son back.

Last week, when some small-time gang grabbed him, I went in alone with a gun. Bullets flew past my ears, kicked up concrete dust. I fought my way to the back and pulled him out. At the hospital, he pushed me away, crying, "Why'd you have to come?! We could've been a real family by now! Just leave! Leave me alone!"

I stared at his small face for a long time.

Finally, I said, "Call me mom one last time. Then I'll let you go."

I'm the top account director at my firm, always on the road, running myself ragged on golf courses and client dinners. Some months I barely make it back to the office at all.

Right after I land a $300 million contract for the company, my boss decides to hand the whole thing over to a new intern.

My manager says I'm wasting company resources, that my attitude's a problem. My boss tells me to give the new hire a chance. The intern thinks she can just take over my job without breaking a sweat.

None of them get it. Without me, this project never gets off the ground.

I don't bother telling them that.

Once the handoff is done, I walk straight into our biggest rival.

And watch them beg me to come back.

A hundred years ago, old Duke Rowland saved me with a bowl of hot soup when I was dying. To repay him, I swore myself, as the Silver Wolf Goddess, to a hundred-year covenant protecting House Rowland.

I taught Garrett how to hold a sword. I turned Caleb into a prodigy at the Mages' Guild. I saved Preston's family from ruin.

But Lillian took a potion to fake being sick, and all it took was her claiming only my heart could save her to turn three men's knives on me.

In my last life, I begged them to listen, told them that cutting out my heart would tear down the foundation of House Rowland itself. They finally backed off.

Then Lillian, trying to keep the lie going, secretly upped her dose and poisoned herself to death in her own bed.

The three of them lost their minds and blamed me for her death.

"A beast doesn't get to call itself the guardian of House Rowland. Die."

They cut my heart out. I died on that altar.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day they took my heart.

This time, I didn't waste my breath. I handed it over myself and let them have what they wanted.

The goddess's heart fell. The covenant ended.

They just didn't know yet how badly House Rowland would fall apart without me.

First day back after the long weekend. I get a few artisan gift baskets shipped in from my family's farm: maple syrup, raw honey, smoked beef jerky, handmade jams. Top-shelf stuff, every single one. Shipping alone runs me a few hundred dollars.

After the morning meeting, I hand them out one by one. The team crowds around me, all smiles, falling over themselves saying things like "You're literally the best, Ms. Bennett" and "Oh my god, you're such an amazing boss."

They're barely out the door when I notice the conference room projector is still mirroring someone's phone. Up on the screen: a private group chat. Fifteen members.

Everyone on the team is in it.

Everyone except me.

A new message pops up: [Farm junk? Really? Preston Vance's team got $200 gift cards AND black truffle. Sloane's such a cheap ass lol]

Replies flood in. Someone photoshops a picture of me. Someone else hopes I drop dead at my desk.

To them, I'm just another boss squeezing her people dry.

Last quarter, I handed every single one of them a three-thousand-dollar cash bonus out of my own pocket. Plus a brand-new phone. Each.

Fine. If they think I'm not giving enough, I'll give them exactly what they're asking for.

Though later, when they come crawling back one by one, I find myself wondering what exactly they think begging is going to get them.

Our engagement has gone unfulfilled for ten years.

My parents saved his family in that yacht accident. With their dying breath, they asked his family to look after me. In return, we go to city hall every year, trying to fulfill this obligation.

Ten attempts. Ten failures.

Elevator malfunctions, food poisoning, home invasions, car crashes... Every single time, I get hurt at the worst possible moment while he walks away without a scratch.

This makes ten. A truck slams into the passenger side, my head smashes against the window, and he's already running across the street, pulling that woman into his arms.

On my way to find him after they stitch me up, I hear his assistant's voice in the hospital corridor:

"Mr. Ashford, the truck driver's been taken care of. Money'll hit his account like we agreed... but is this really fair to Miss Bennett? It's been ten years, every single year—"

William's voice comes out low and tired. "I don't have a choice. Her parents saved me, but I'm in love with Emma."

I look down at the diagnosis. ALS. Late stage.

Turns out I've been trying to marry a lie this whole time.

My name is Junie. I'm six years old, a half-werewolf. My mom Juliet is a human witch, the gentlest woman alive.

A month ago, Mom was eight months pregnant. We were walking by the river when Dad's childhood friend Melody shoved her straight into the rushing current. The cold water took my unborn brother. When they pulled Mom out, she was covered in blood, her magic all but gone.

Dad, Maxwell, is the youngest Alpha of the Silver Wolf pack and runs a family conglomerate. That day in the hospital hallway, his eyes went red and he swore through gritted teeth that whoever did this would pay for it, hard, in front of the Tribunal.

Mom believed him.

Then came the trial. The second Dad saw that the woman sitting in the defendant's seat was Melody, he went quiet.

Right there in front of the judge, he took it back. He said Melody never meant to push her, that Mom's magic had gone haywire from the pregnancy and she'd slipped into the river on her own.

Melody walked free. Mom got community service.

The day we left the courthouse, Melody buried her face in Dad's chest and sobbed, but the second no one else could see, she shot Mom a cold little smirk. Dad kissed her forehead like her tears were breaking his heart.

Mom just watched them, one hand over her empty belly. Those eyes that used to be so full of love were calm now.

She let out a slow breath. "Maxwell, let's break the mate bond."

Landon Rhodes and I grew up together, both dreaming of becoming top chefs. But I knew he was the one with a palate kissed by God.

So when Rowan Stone, this street-rat punk, got her claws into him, I took the drinks, the smoke, the slaps for him. When he wanted to skip the National Young Chefs Competition to stay with her drunk ass, I dragged him back to the culinary lab.

He won the championship, got recruited by a three-star Michelin restaurant, graduated and made millions. I became the most invisible prep cook in his kitchen.

Until Rowan wrapped her car around a pole during one of her episodes, and he lured me into a basement.

"This is all your fault! If you'd minded your own damn business, she'd still be alive!"

His foot came down on my right hand. Bones cracking. My fingers ground to pulp.

All those 5 AM trips to the fish market for him. All those nights watching stock simmer for forty-eight hours straight. All the praise he soaked up at final practicals. My sacrifices, and all I got in return was his hatred.

"These worthless hands that can only cut vegetables deserve to rot in the ground with her."

The pain swallowed me whole.

When I wake up again, I'm back to that afternoon when he said he was going to the bar to find her.

This time, I won't stop him.

Three years ago, on a night when it wouldn't stop raining, I carried Victor Caster out of a pile of bodies.

He'd taken two bullets. He grabbed my ankle and said: when I get back, I'll give you the world.

But when he came back, it was my sister Sabrina on his arm.

After that she was the woman who ran the Caster house, and I was the crazy one they locked away upstate.

Three years later, at the engagement party, Sabrina opened up her own wrist and screamed that I did it.

I tried to explain.

But the man I'd given half my life to save wouldn't even look at me. He just flicked his hand.

"Her hands don't know their place. Take them. And I don't want that face in front of me."

He never once looked up.

So why is it that the next time he sees me, the moment he really looks at my face, he goes down on his knees?

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.

I promised Ethan Caldwell, the boy I grew up with, I'd give up the top schools to attend some mediocre college with him.

On the final day of application submission, I brought homemade soup to his studio.

Outside the door, I heard him bragging to his friends: "Claire Bennett's like a damn puppy. I tell her to come to NYU with me, and boom, she changes her whole application to NYU. Lily's grades are shit. If Claire doesn't go for that full scholarship, Lily's got it in the bag. And Claire's so whipped, even when she finds out, she'll just suck it up like always."

The thermos in my hands feels cold now.

My boyfriend Tyler, his childhood sweetheart Chelsea, and I went on a road trip through the Australian Outback in the Northern Territory.

A few scrawny, yellow-coated dogs lingered by the roadside. Chelsea insisted on getting out to feed them.

I warned her they were dingoes, vicious predators that ruled this desert.

Her eyes welled up and she called me heartless. Tyler jumped in too, saying I grew up with a silver spoon in my mouth, that I didn't get what it was like for regular people, that I couldn't even spare a couple of hot dogs.

She forced the door open and ran out. The pack lunged at her. Her screams tore through the air. Tyler cowered in the car, shaking.

I was the only one who got out to help her.

Chelsea scrambled back into the car, but Tyler slammed the door shut and locked it.

I never forgot his face pressed against the window, terrified and selfish. I never forgot the despair of feeling fangs rip through my throat.

After I died, the two of them flew back to the States and posted a sobbing video, claiming I was the one who'd insisted on getting out to take pictures and set the dogs off.

The online hate came for my family, all of it, all at once. My parents, both with weak hearts, collapsed under the stress. Neither one made it.

My whole family, destroyed because I couldn't stop caring for one second.

When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the day the trip started.

As the only daughter of a mafia family, I learned early that trust doesn't come cheap. When my father got sick, he gave me an ultimatum: if I want to take over the family, I have to get married first.

Everyone assumed I'd pick my childhood friend, Vincent Moretti—son of my father's right-hand man. Hell, even I thought so. Until my last life, when he left me to burn.

Father died in an ambush. I was trapped in a metal cage at an abandoned dock warehouse while flames swallowed everything. I begged Vincent for help. He stood thirty feet away, the cage key right by his feet.

"Cat, as long as your father's alive, he'll never give me the family. This isn't personal. It's business."

Sophia was wrapped around him—my so-called best friend. She smiled at me and said she'd take good care of everything.

Before I lost consciousness, I saw a figure in black charging into the flames—Elijah, the bodyguard I'd called "trash" and "a dog."

Then I opened my eyes and woke up a month before my birthday party. This time, I'm giving that position to someone who actually deserves it.

But why is Vincent on his knees at my engagement party, crying and begging me to marry him?

I've been able to see clocks above people's heads since the day I was born. As long as the hands keep moving, the bond between us is still alive.

Once the hands spin backward and stop at zero, that bond is finished.

When I was seven, the clock over my best friend's head just stopped one day. She drowned in the reservoir the next morning.

When I was fifteen, my grandfather's clock started ticking backward, slower and slower, until it stopped completely. He died peacefully in his sleep that same night.

When I was eighteen, my father, a drunk who lied about everything, slammed the door on his way out. I watched his clock vanish completely and knew right then he was never coming back.

Ever since, clocks scare me. I'm always afraid of watching someone I love get taken away from me.

So I keep my head down, holding on tight to the quiet, stable life I've fought so hard for.

Then tonight, I watch the clock above Marcus Hargrove's head start spinning backward.

What scares me even more is Willow's clock doing the same thing.

While I'm still trying to figure out why, the storm hits that night. He walks out on his daughter while she's burning up with fever and having convulsions, and runs straight to another woman.

His clock jumps back another notch.

My boyfriend looks at me like I'm trash. Too fat. Too plain. My clothes are ugly. He never misses a chance to tear me down.

I thought he was just mean. Then his "good friend" Sophie spilled coffee all over our ten-thousand-dollar control board.

That board was three months of work. Three months of all-nighters, twice I passed out from low blood sugar. It was our entry for the National Robotics Competition. The deadline's tomorrow. Now it's gone.

I confronted Sophie, and he stormed in, pulled her into his arms, and pointed his finger in my face. "It's just a stupid competition. Did you really need to come at Sophie like that?"

Turns out he's not just mean. He genuinely can't stand me.

As a regular student, I never expected to fit into the world of trust fund kids. But this real estate heiress reached out to me, said she'd show me how the other half lives, even promised to introduce me to New England's most powerful heir.

I thought she'd be my friend. Thought she actually cared. I even fell for him.

Until she framed me for stealing confidential school files. Until he said, "Just a scholarship kid. No one's gonna miss her." That's when I understood. I was never more than their toy.

They tore up my textbooks, stuffed dead rats in my locker, spent six months tormenting me online and off. My mother couldn't take the vicious comments. Her heart gave out. And me? After I completely broke down, they drove me to the coastal cliffs.

Ice-cold water flooded my nose and mouth. Suffocation dragged me down into despair. I hate myself for being weak. Hate them for their arrogance. Hate this rotten system that treats people like me as disposable.

But when I opened my eyes again, I was back. Back to the night she pushed me toward him.

This time, I won't be fooled.

I'm the youngest lead surgeon in our hospital's cardiothoracic department. My fiancé, Adrian Wexford, runs the whole department.

His first love, Bella Hartley, is a mediocre surgeon, but she wants to take over the surgery that should be mine before her promotion review.

In my last life, I fought for it. I told them she didn't have the skill to handle it alone, that it was gambling with a patient's life. I threatened to quit and saved the patient.

But Bella couldn't handle the gossip going around the department. She got depressed and jumped off the hospital roof.

Adrian never said a word about it. He kept treating me the same, picked out wedding rings with me, smiled and told me we'd go on our honeymoon right after the wedding.

I thought he'd let it go.

Then on our wedding day, one glass of wine in, I woke up in a freezing basement, strapped down to an operating table.

He held a scalpel and cut into me, inch by inch, his eyes bloodshot.

"If you hadn't fought so hard for that surgery, Bella wouldn't have jumped. You owe her. Pay with your life."

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the afternoon he first suggested giving Bella the surgery.

This time, I didn't argue. I just smiled. "Sure. Let Bella take the lead on this one."

They have no idea that next Tuesday, the Chief of Surgery is bringing the board and a visiting specialist to observe, unannounced.

We'll see how they explain this one.

Three years after my pilot husband "died" in a plane crash, I walk in on him cutting a birthday cake for his three-year-old son backstage at the company memorial gala.

Luke freezes in the lounge, his hand still on the knife, staring at me.

His parents rush over to shield him. The same couple who screamed at me in the funeral home, wishing I'd died instead of him.

"Nora, just calm down. There's an explanation..."

Claire covers her slightly rounded belly, tears streaming down her face. "I'm so sorry, Nora. My baby needs his father. Please, I'm begging you. I couldn't help myself—I love him."

I thought I'd break down. Thought I'd scream.

But all that guilt, all that self-blame, three years of missing him burns away the second I see the truth.

Nothing's left.

For three years of marriage, I played the perfect, obedient wife.
I married him only because my family once saved his from bankruptcy, and because I had loved him since college.
I thought time would soften his heart.
Then his ex returned, and everything fell apart.
He threw a welcome party for her himself, called me to the office under the pretense of work, then turned around and dismissed me as an eyesore. The whispers in the company cut into me like needles.
That same day, the hospital called. I was eight weeks pregnant with his child. Before the joy could settle, the word divorce fell lightly from his lips.
I asked for three months, just enough time to leave with what little dignity I had left. He agreed without emotion.
Yet after I moved out, he secretly placed me in a luxury apartment and stationed people to watch me day and night.
When I finally hid my pregnancy and resolved to raise the child alone, ready to confront his scheming ex, he cornered me against the wall, eyes red, voice shaking.
“Who gave you permission to walk away with my child?”

What if your husband lived a double life and you are the fake wife?

I woke up to my husband celebrating our baby's death. He had poisoned me with abortion pills so he could marry Catherine Morrison-the rich woman he thinks is better than me and pregnant with what he thinks is his child.

I overheard him laughing; 'if she shows up somewhere demanding answers, I'll just say I've never seen her before in my life, Who are people going to believe? Me or some random girl from nowhere?'

David thought I had no evidence. He thought he had covered his tracks perfectly. He thought he was untouchable.

But when I'm done, he'll wish he never met me.

"Starting price for my wife—one dollar!" James announced, pointing at the dog cage where I lay curled up like a dying animal.

The crowd at the wedding erupted in laughter. "Five dollars!" "Ten!" They threw bids like trash, mocking the woman who used to be Mrs. Windsor. Lillian, wearing my stolen necklace, poked me through the bars with a metal rod. "Look at you, Aurora. You're nothing but filth." I closed my eyes, accepting my fate. My husband had sold me. My dignity was gone.

Suddenly, a cold, authoritative voice cut through the noise.

"Two hundred million."

Silence fell over the hall. Every head turned. Walking through the doors was a man radiating power—Louis Smith, the newly found heir to the Smith empire. The man I had pushed away ten years ago. James turned pale. "Mr. Smith... this is a joke..."

Louis didn't even look at him. He walked straight to the cage, his eyes burning with a terrifying mix of rage and tenderness. He ripped the lock off with his bare hands and pulled me into his arms. James tried to block him. "She's my wife! You can't just take her!"

Louis smirked, his voice dripping with ice. "Your wife? I just bought her. She's mine now."

A zombie outbreak occurred, and my brother and I were both reborn ten minutes before the disaster struck.
This time, he seized the initiative, stealing the two high-level god-tier abilities, [Flame] and [Hardening], and casually pushed me out of the security door, locking me in the zombie-infested corridor.
Through the security door, he arrogantly declared, "In my past life, you always stood in front of me; in this life, I'll take the mark of survival."
In his eyes, the [Tracking] and [Preset] abilities the system assigned me were nothing but useless pieces of paper.
He thought I would die a horde of zombies.
But he didn't know that in the hands of a top hunter, seemingly useless skills could weave a hellish web that made life unbearable and death unthinkable.