Ghost

"Forty dollars. That's all the inhaler I needed to breathe cost. But in our house, nothing comes easy. 'Fairness first. Roll the dice — highest number wins.' I've rolled my whole life. I've never won. Not once. Tonight, lungs burning, vision blurring, I rolled for my medicine money against my sister. She got a six. I got a two. 'You lost, Hazel. Now go to the attic and think about your selfishness...

I died in an abandoned cabin in the pack's old lumberyard.
Wolfsbane burned through my veins. Pure silver chains bit into my wrists, charring the flesh down to the bone.
The news alarmed my husband, Alistair, the Alpha of the Riven Pack. Standing over my corpse, he couldn't fathom who would torture a woman so ruthlessly on his territory. Enraged, he swore to slaughter the killer himself.
He didn't...

On the night before my sister's bone marrow transplant, my parents confiscated my EpiPen and locked me in the attic.

Their "genetic consultant" warned them that the medication would contaminate the stem cells meant for my sister.

I had eaten the meal they provided—one secretly laced with lethal traces of nuts.

The resulting anaphylactic swelling was suffocating me completely.

I fra...

"Olivia, get back here and apologize to Mia RIGHT NOW, or we're through!" My fiancé Arthur screamed into his phone in the ER hallway, his face twisted in disgust.

My parents fussed over their adopted daughter Mia's red eyes. All this drama over a scratch on her finger.

My phone lay shattered in blood at the abandoned chemical plant downtown, screen flickering weakly.

I was already dead. The kid...

They left me to freeze to death in our basement freezer.

The night before prom, my foster sister Leila came crying that I'd burned her Ivy League recommendation letter. My birth parents didn't even listen to one word of explanation—they threw me into that frozen hell in forty-five below.

I beat on that door until my fingers were shredded, screamed until my throat tore apart, but all I could hear...

I was diagnosed with hemophilia when I was ten years old.
At first, my parents were terrified. They watched me closely, rushed me to the hospital over every bruise, every nosebleed. I was the fragile one—the child who needed saving.

Then years passed.
They got used to it.
They got tired.

By the time my twin sister was graduating and my family was finally breathing again, I was about to turn eigh...

After Nicholas got engaged, his assistant handed me a plane ticket.

"Leave. Don’t ever show your face in Silverlight City again."

"Otherwise, Mr. Jackson has more than enough ways to ruin you."

All those years I spent by his side, I was admired by everyone, living in the spotlight.

Yet when I finally left, I was reduced to a pitiful, laughable sight.

I said, "Fine."

But that very night, the ...

While I was being kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in the horse stable of our own family farm, my all-powerful chaebol fiancée was helping my green tea younger brother try on wedding attire.
Before dying, with my broken, blood-stained finger, I dialed the last desperate call for help.
On the other end of the phone, her tone was filled with scorn and impatience: "Vincent, can't you even tolerate a...

The last thing I did before I died was lick dew off a rusted pipe.
Ninety days earlier, my fiancé Bastien promised he'd come back for me. He said three months in the Sahara would teach me not to be jealous of Posey—the girl I'd pulled from a refugee camp and raised as my own sister.
He didn't know the water ran out in the first week. He didn't know bandits broke my bones. He didn't care enough to ...

"Knock on this door over the noise one more time, and you're dead!"
Calling the cops was useless, and I was too broke to move.
Driven practically insane, I recklessly tore open the black box from the dark web—the seller promised that if I just followed the instructions, it would "eliminate the noise at the source."
Less than half an hour later, the deafening rager upstairs completely stopped.
Thr...

I was once the daughter of the Alpha of Dawn Pack.
After my parents were killed and I was kicked out of the Pack, I was left with nothing.
I was brought back to William’s Pack and became the one he treasured in the palm of his hand.
When the car accident happened, he shielded me with his body, saying he couldn’t live without me.

But after I was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, all I wanted...

I was once the daughter of the Alpha of Dawn Pack.
After my parents were killed and I was kicked out of the Pack, I was left with nothing.
I was brought back to William’s Pack and became the one he treasured in the palm of his hand.
When the car accident happened, he shielded me with his body, saying he couldn’t live without me.

But after I was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, all I wanted...

My boyfriend pulled off a drone-sky proposal that lit up the entire city.
Crowds cheered, “Congratulations to Mr. Gunson and Mrs. Gunson—at last, true lovers become family.”
But the woman curled in his arms was his secretary.
The “me” in their mouths had long since turned to white bones beneath a mound of earth.

The day I died, my sister wore the wedding dress I had always dreamed of, and married my boyfriend.
My family felt no sorrow over my disappearance.
My brother suspected I deliberately avoided blessing my sister.
My silent father believed I was malicious, unwilling to see my sister surpass me.
My mother called me ungrateful and demanded I apologize to my sister.
They didn't care if I was alive.
The...

“Dad… please… help me…” I pleaded, my shattered ribs piercing my lungs, blood soaking the stretcher.
But Richard, the hospital's top surgeon and my biological father, didn't even glance at me. Instead, he rushed to the next bed.
“Don't be afraid, Chloe. I'm here,” he cooed to his stepdaughter, who merely had a tiny scratch on her arm. “Get the best equipment over here now!” he roared.
As the heart...

I am the wife of a mafia boss.

When a rival family raids our estate, I take the fatal bullets meant for my sister-in-law.

When my husband, Vittorio, arrives, I give him a weak, relieved smile.

Instead of helping me, he points the muzzle of his gun right between my eyes.

"The perimeter alarms didn't trip," his consigliere, Lorenzo, says. "Only an inside job. Boss, this marriage was a tr...

“Mr. Hale, step away from the chest.”

The officer’s hand stayed on the latch beneath my brother’s portrait.

My mother clutched the donation envelopes to her chest. “Lena is doing this for attention.”

Dad gave the room his lawyer smile. “My daughter hides when she wants sympathy.”

The volunteer pointed at the broken white ribbon. “Then why is there blood on it?”

The room went quiet.

I stood b...