4 Book(s) Related to hismell

When Arthur brought his fallen comrade's widow Elena and her son into our knight's estate, I didn't cry or make a scene.

I simply packed our belongings in silence with my daughter Lilith, moving out of the master bedroom.

"Elena is struggling alone with her child," I said calmly to Arthur. "We'll move to the basement so you can better care for them."

On Lilith's seventh birthday, Arthur gave her a magical glider model. Elena's son Damian cried and demanded it for himself.

Lilith expressionlessly handed over the toy: "Father says little brother has no father now, so you'll be his father. As his big sister, I should let him have it."

Arthur was pleased by our tolerance and generosity, but gradually noticed something—I no longer seemed to love him, and our daughter no longer warmed to him either.

He didn't know that in my past life, he had thrown us out of our home for that mother and son. During the winter blizzard, while Lilith and I starved and froze, he gave all our gold and mana stones to Elena's family, leaving us to die of cold and hunger.

After my rebirth, my daughter and I stopped fighting, stopped competing.

But we would never need Arthur again.

When he wanted to carve out my daughter's Star-magic eyes to save Damian, I finally dropped the pretense and called upon my brother—the Abyssal Duke.

Time for this hypocritical holy knight to practice his "Greater Good" with his own Light Core.

The boy I grew up with was this town's star quarterback.

Everyone saw him as the golden boy.

Yet, for a delinquent, he willingly threw away his athletic career and plunged headfirst into the local drug ring.

Desperate to pull him back from the edge, I tipped off the police about the drug den, hoping it would be his wake-up call.

Instead, he hated me to the bone for it.

To prove his loyalty to his "true love"—and to punish me—he gave our home security code to a crew of methed-up thugs.

They broke in and put a bullet through my parents' heads, wiping out my entire family.

It wasn't until I took a bullet to the chest and lay choking on my own blood, staring at a mocking text from him, that I finally woke up.

But fate, it turns out, decided to give me a second chance.

Three years ago, I took a bullet for Damon Kingsley. It came within half an inch of my heart.

He looked me in the eyes, his own red, and swore he'd love me for the rest of his life. So I married into this century-old Italian-American Mafia dynasty.

But on our wedding night, the moment he touched me, he convulsed, coughed up blood, and collapsed.

The second time, an old condition flared up and kept him flat on his back for a month.

The third time, he nearly bled out.

Every time after that, the same thing.

The whole family called me a curse. Marked. Bad luck. The kind of woman who brings death to whoever gets close.

The Godmother gave me an ultimatum: get pregnant within a month, or sign the divorce papers and be shipped off to Chicago to marry the devil himself.

I was carrying a fertility tonic to his study, ready to beg him one more time, when I heard voices through the door.

"Mr. Kingsley, please, you gotta stop. Every time you don't wanna go near her, you shoot yourself up with that stuff. You're gonna kill yourself."

Damon was quiet for a long moment. Then, calm and flat: "Aurora is the only woman I love. I'd take the pain any day over touching her."

All this time, while the whole family called me a curse, the one who actually put it on me was the man I almost died for.

Damon Kingsley. After today, we're done. In this life or the next, don't ever cross my path again.