6847 Book(s) Related to seducing the cowboy

To save my cousin from a car accident, my mother, a medical luminary, used me as a "human guinea pig" for twelve years.
When I was twelve, she made me inject myself with three injections of unproven new drugs every week;
when I was fourteen, she directly shoved toxic compounds into my mouth.
When my organs were irreversibly failing and I was vomiting blood in the ICU, she coldly tossed me a payment order:
"Stop pretending to be dead. Immediately kowtow and apologize to your brother, or no hospital will admit you."
As she wished, I was forced to leave the hospital and died at her glamorous new drug launch.
Later, that high-and-mighty mother, obsessed with fame and fortune, knelt for an entire night in a snow-covered fir forest, holding my crudely made urn.
Sadly, I will never forgive her.

Three years ago, I exhausted everything I had in the Abyss Game to save my critically ill wife.
Three years later, my wife and her lover became an inseparable pair in the Abyss Game. To save their own lives, they used my only sister as a substitute, sending her to a dangerous situation where she was devoured by ghouls.
They thought I had lost everything and could be humiliated at will.
But when I chose to accept becoming the master of the Abyss Game, why did they suddenly kneel down and beg for mercy?

I have been tormented by a strange illness for ten years, with blood draws and surgeries being commonplace.
My mother always encouraged me, saying, "Nian Nian, bear with it a little longer. The pain will be over soon. Mom and Dad are doing this to save your life."
Hoping to be cured as soon as possible, I gritted my teeth and endured ten years of painful treatments, even if it meant living like a lab subject.
That was until I accidentally overheard my parents’ cruel conversation:
“Increase the blood draw even more. It doesn’t matter if she dies—she was only picked up to save Ying Ying. As long as she has a breath left, she owes it to us.”
At that moment, I finally understood: I was never sick at all.
The decade of daily treatments were nothing but a way to use me to extend the life of their biological daughter.

In my previous life, an extreme cold apocalypse descended.

I risked my life nine times over to evolve into a high-tier Ice Plains Wolf, and just to find a piece of meat to keep my fiancée alive, I frantically tore apart wild beasts in the snow. Yet I was betrayed by her and her lover—they cut out my heart with an ice blade!

When I opened my eyes again, I had been reborn half a month before the apocalypse!

Time was running out. To awaken the highest tier of beast-human form, I needed an enormous amount of meat to provide energy.

Sports cars? Ocean-view villas? Billions in assets? I wanted none of it!

I immediately dumped my manipulative fiancée, liquidated all my assets into cash, bought a fully enclosed fortified meat processing plant, and frantically stockpiled hundreds of thousands of tons of high-calorie raw meat!

The extreme cold arrived as expected, turning the entire city into a frozen hellscape.

The scumbag pair who betrayed me in my previous life now knelt outside my impregnable airlock door, crying pitifully and begging me for scraps.

I stepped out of my fortress and looked down at them with claws sharp enough to tear through steel:

"Want meat? Go to hell and eat dirt!"

Not long after I transferred to this school, I became the bullies’ favorite target.
They didn’t like how quiet I was or how pale I looked, so they casually slapped me with a nickname: “vampire.”
It started with shoves in the hallway and jeers in the classroom, escalated to messing with my drink, then stuffing trash into my locker.
They treated my silence as permission and wrapped every provocation in the same excuse: “Just a joke.”
Until that night, when humiliation wasn’t enough. They lured me into a tiny storage room behind the auditorium—locked the door, killed the lights, set up a fixed camera—ready to strap me to a chair and film an “execution” video that would make sure I could never hold my head up at this school again.
What they didn’t know was that the nickname wasn’t a joke. It was the one time they got the truth right.
I really am a vampire.

In my previous life, I chose the werewolf and gave birth to the Arbiter, only to be burned alive by the younger sister I loved most.
When I was reborn, I knelt before the Oath Stone, handed my marriage pact to her, and watched her gloat in triumph before choosing Sylas, the elf everyone else avoided.
Everyone was waiting to see me make a fool of myself—until the day of the wedding, when he came carrying a gown blessed by the Sacred Tree, lowered his eyes to me, and said, "In this life, I will never fail you."

My stepsister and I tumbled down the stairs together. As someone with a blood clotting disorder, my spleen ruptured—I was bleeding internally, desperate for surgery to stop it.
But my mother—the renowned chief of surgery—pulled every specialist from the ER. To consult on my stepsister's condition.
All she had was a sprained ankle. Not even a scratch. Yet mom insisted on running every test in the book. And me? Left alone on that cold floor, bleeding out, half my body already soaked in blood.
I clutched at her pants, begging her to save me. But she kicked my hand away and looked at me with pure disgust.
"Lily, are you really so desperate for a man's attention that you'd pull a cheap stunt like this? Your sister's foot is swollen—and you have the nerve to fake your death here?"
In the end, I died alone in a corner of that ignored ER.
But when they wheeled my cold body out of the morgue—and they finally learned about my clotting disorder—
That mother who claimed to hate me completely lost her mind.

I was once a world-renowned designer, but I retired for love, dedicating six years to my husband and daughter. But on our anniversary, he spent millions on my final masterpiece, only to place it around another woman's neck on live TV. My own daughter then ran on stage, sweetly calling her 'mommy.' My six years of devotion became a joke. When I asked for a divorce, he sneered, thinking I was just a housewife who couldn't survive three days without him. He has no idea that the legendary designer 'Octavia' he's desperately trying to meet is the wife he cast aside. Now, I’m back. And I'm ready to take back everything that is mine.

My biological parents and my fiancé shove me into a sterile room for a forced drug trial. The chemicals completely destroy my cranial nerves.

They lie about my adopted sister Mia having a terminal illness, using my college admission and trust fund as leverage to make me sacrifice myself.

I used to put my life on the line for Liam, staying up all night to finish his homework, draining everything I had to please my family.

But they are putting on an act from the very beginning. Mia isn't sick. The drug trial is just a front for money laundering.

Stripped of all love, hate, and empathy, I am left with only cold logic after enduring imprisonment, beatings, and endless injections.

Afterward, Liam falls to his knees, sobbing and begging to get back together. I dodge his touch with a blank face.

"Don't come near me. The smell of you makes me physically sick."

I'm Jennifer, a stay-at-home mom. I gave up my art career eight years ago to take care of my family. My husband Julian and my son Garry, they're my whole world.

But lately, I've noticed them getting closer to Mia, Julian's secretary. Little things. Garry asking where "Miss Mia" is. Julian mentioning her at dinner. I told myself it was nothing. I kept quiet. I put up with it.

Until last week, when Garry broke his arm playing hockey. The school called Mia, not me. She was listed as his emergency contact.

That's when I knew I was done.

From a young age, I understood that my asthma was a shackle for my entire family. My parents took turns caring for me, their hearts gripped by the fear of any sign of respiratory distress. In their fervent concern for my health, they even compelled my sister, Sophie, freshly accepted into university, to postpone her studies and return home to assist in my care.
At Sophie's eighteenth birthday celebration, I lingered at the edge of the crowd, my chest constricted, and my throat felt as if it were ensnared by invisible hands. I gently tugged at my mother's sleeve, my voice barely a whisper: "Mom, I... can't breathe. I want to go back to my room..."
In an instant, my mother whirled around, her eyes ablaze with fury, as though she had awaited this moment of eruption. She seized my inhaler and hurled it into the farthest corner of the room.
"If it's this painful, then go die!" she shrieked, her words cutting like a knife. "Stop using your illness to hold us hostage!"
The inhaler tumbled to the floor, rolling away like a forgotten piece of trash. I stared at it blankly, a sudden laugh escaping my lips.
And then, I truly died. Yet, in the wake of my passing, those who once found me a burden descended into madness.

There are too many ways of taking revenge on a woman. But he chose marriage. In the past three years, he acted like a ruthless husband, treating her coldly, and even more worse, humiliating her. Even when she was pregnant, he tried to force her to give it up, to retire from film field, to expel her from her country.

When the apocalypse came, I became one of the military's failed experiments—defective, useless, a waste of space who only knew how to fix machines.
My so-called brother Kane used the camp leader access I got for him to trade away the comms gear I nearly died to secure for a bottle of whiskey. He drained my bone marrow dry to keep me in the dark, then dumped me out in the wasteland to die.
After that, he pinned every bit of luxury and waste on me—
while my little sister didn't even have the medicine she needed to stay alive.
That night, dragging my crippled body behind me, I reached into the substation.
Kane, do you remember what kind of genes were in those five hundred milliliters of bone marrow?

I'm a folklorist. Folk traditions are my field.
At first, I thought it was just an ordinary rhyme, a scrap of oral history set to a tune.
"A rag doll in the mire, swinging high up to the sky..."
We all thought it was just a prank.
Until the first person drowned in the bog. Then the second fell from a tower crane. Then the third somehow drowned in a bathtub.
I stared at the black symbol surfacing on the back of my hand.
And then I saw the dean—the one who was supposed to be dead—standing outside my dorm window in a long black dress, smiling at me with impossible tenderness...

“The perfect romance or beach read, with a difference: its enthusiasm and beautiful descriptions offer an unexpected attention to the complexity of not just evolving love, but evolving psyches. It's a delightful recommendation for romance readers looking for a touch more complexity from their romance reads.”--Midwest Book Review (For Now and Forever)THE WITCHING PLACE: A FATAL FOLIO is the debut novel in a charming new cozy mystery series by bestselling author Sophie Love, author of The Inn at Sunset Harbor series, a #1 Bestseller with over 200 five-star reviews.When Alexis Blair, 29, is fired from her book publishing job and breaks up with her boyfriend on the same day, she wonders if life is urging her to make a fresh start. She decides it’s time to pursue her lifelong dream of opening a bookstore of her own—even if that means leaving Boston and accepting a job in a curious bookstore in a small seaside town an hour away.But the odd shop, Alexis soon learns, is from more than just a rare, occult bookstore. Something strange is going on in the shop’s secret back room, with its eccentric owner, and in the small town itself.And when a dead body appears, Alexis, with her beloved newfound cat, may find herself right in the middle of it all.A page-turning cozy, rife with the supernatural, mystery, secrets and love—and centered around a small town as odd and endearing as its shop—A CURIOUS BOOKSTORE will make you fall in love and keep you laughing out loud as you turn pages late into the night.“The romance is there, but not overdosed. Kudos to the author for this amazing start of a series that promises to be very entertaining.”--Books and Movies Reviews (For Now and Forever)Books #2 and #3 in the series—MURDER BY MANUSCRIPT and A PERILOUS PAGE—are now also available!

“The perfect romance or beach read, with a difference: its enthusiasm and beautiful descriptions offer an unexpected attention to the complexity of not just evolving love, but evolving psyches. It's a delightful recommendation for romance readers looking for a touch more complexity from their romance reads.”--Midwest Book Review (For Now and Forever)THE GHOSTLY GROUNDS: DISASTER AND DESSERT is Book #6—and the finale!—in a charming new cozy mystery series by bestselling author Sophie Love, author of The Inn at Sunset Harbor series, a #1 Bestseller with over 200 five-star reviews!Marie Fortune, 39, a successful dog groomer in Boston, leaves the stressful life behind and heads to a small town in coastal Maine to create a new life. She remains intent on renovating the old, historic house her great-aunt left her and giving it a new life as a B&B. Yet there was one thing she couldn’t plan for: the house is haunted. Two things, actually: her great-aunt also left her a dog—and he is far from a typical dog.In the series finale, Marie finds her own future on the line as a murder occurs near her premises, and she is forced to solve it or else be implicated. With her rival innkeeper involved, it could hardly get any worse.As if that is not enough, this series finale brings to a head many questions: will Marie finally find her mother and what will happen between them? Will Marie end up with Robbie? With Brendan? Will she finally be able to claim her gifts, without Boo's help? And will she decide to stay and run the B&B—or be forced to leave this small town that has become her life?A page-turning cozy, packed with mystery, love, hauntings, travel, pets and food—anchored around a small town and a B&B in need of renovation that will capture your heart—THE GHOSTLY GROUNDS is an un-putdownable cozy series that will keep you turning pages (and laughing out loud) late into the night.“The romance is there, but not overdosed. Kudos to the author for this amazing start of a series that promises to be very entertaining.”--Books and Movies Reviews (For Now and Forever)Don’t forget to check out Sophie Love’s other cozy mystery series, A CURIOUS BOOKSTORE, which begins with A FATAL FOLIO (Book #1), a bestseller with over 50 five-star reviews!

“The perfect romance or beach read, with a difference: its enthusiasm and beautiful descriptions offer an unexpected attention to the complexity of not just evolving love, but evolving psyches. It's a delightful recommendation for romance readers looking for a touch more complexity from their romance reads.”--Midwest Book Review (For Now and Forever)THE GHOSTLY GROUNDS: DEATH AND BRUNCH is Book #2 in a charming new cozy mystery series by bestselling author Sophie Love, author of The Inn at Sunset Harbor series, a #1 Bestseller with over 200 five-star reviews! Marie Fortune, 39, a successful dog groomer in Boston, leaves the stressful life behind and heads to a small town in coastal Maine to create a new life. She remains intent on renovating the old, historic house her great-aunt left her and giving it a new life as a B&B. Yet there was one thing she couldn’t plan for: the house is haunted. Two things, actually: her great-aunt also left her a dog—and he is far from a typical dog.Other B&B owners have heard of Marie’s ability to expel ghosts, and she finds herself, to her own surprise, in demand for her “services” from neighboring towns. It seems there are many B&Bs that need to have their ghosts cleansed. With her B&B failing, Marie, her trusted dog as her sidekick, has nothing to lose.But when she arrives to her first client—and someone unexpectedly dies—Marie realizes she may be in for more than she bargained for. Once again, she may have to solve the crime to save her own future.A page-turning cozy, packed with mystery, love, hauntings, travel, pets and food—anchored around a small town and a B&B in need of renovation that will capture your heart—THE GHOSTLY GROUNDS: DEATH AND BRUNCH is an un-putdownable cozy that will keep you turning pages (and laughing out loud) late into the night.“The romance is there, but not overdosed. Kudos to the author for this amazing start of a series that promises to be very entertaining.”--Books and Movies Reviews (For Now and Forever)Book #3 in the series—MALICE AND LUNCH—is now also available!

“The perfect romance or beach read, with a difference: its enthusiasm and beautiful descriptions offer an unexpected attention to the complexity of not just evolving love, but evolving psyches. It's a delightful recommendation for romance readers looking for a touch more complexity from their romance reads.”--Midwest Book Review (For Now and Forever)THE GHOSTLY GROUNDS: MALICE AND LUNCH is Book #3 in a charming new cozy mystery series by bestselling author Sophie Love, author of The Inn at Sunset Harbor series, a #1 Bestseller with over 200 five-star reviews!Marie Fortune, 39, a successful dog groomer in Boston, leaves the stressful life behind and heads to a small town in coastal Maine to create a new life. She remains intent on renovating the old, historic house her great-aunt left her and giving it a new life as a B&B. Yet there was one thing she couldn’t plan for: the house is haunted. Two things, actually: her great-aunt also left her a dog—and he is far from a typical dog.When Marie, her reputation for ghost-cleansing growing, is summoned to exorcise an old manor house, she finds more than she bargained for: an unexpected death occurs.Worse, her trusted dog gets so sick, he is sent to the vet indefinitely.Marie, on her own, must solve the murder and expel the ghosts all by herself.Is she up to the task?A page-turning cozy, packed with mystery, love, hauntings, travel, pets and food—anchored around a small town and a B&B in need of renovation that will capture your heart—THE GHOSTLY GROUNDS: MALICE AND LUNCH is an un-putdownable cozy that will keep you turning pages (and laughing out loud) late into the night.“The romance is there, but not overdosed. Kudos to the author for this amazing start of a series that promises to be very entertaining.”--Books and Movies Reviews (For Now and Forever)

“The perfect romance or beach read, with a difference: its enthusiasm and beautiful descriptions offer an unexpected attention to the complexity of not just evolving love, but evolving psyches. It's a delightful recommendation for romance readers looking for a touch more complexity from their romance reads.”--Midwest Book Review (For Now and Forever)THE GHOSTLY GROUNDS: VENGEANCE AND DINNER is Book #4 in a charming new cozy mystery series by bestselling author Sophie Love, author of The Inn at Sunset Harbor series, a #1 Bestseller with over 200 five-star reviews!Marie Fortune, 39, a successful dog groomer in Boston, leaves the stressful life behind and heads to a small town in coastal Maine to create a new life. She remains intent on renovating the old, historic house her great-aunt left her and giving it a new life as a B&B. Yet there was one thing she couldn’t plan for: the house is haunted. Two things, actually: her great-aunt also left her a dog—and he is far from a typical dog.When Marie is invited to exorcise a supposedly haunted house, she encounters a twist she never could have anticipated. But before she can wrap her mind around the situation, a man turns up dead—forcing her to solve the case and to clear her own name.A page-turning cozy, packed with mystery, love, hauntings, travel, pets and food—anchored around a small town and a B&B in need of renovation that will capture your heart—THE GHOSTLY GROUNDS is an un-putdownable cozy series that will keep you turning pages (and laughing out loud) late into the night.“The romance is there, but not overdosed. Kudos to the author for this amazing start of a series that promises to be very entertaining.”--Books and Movies Reviews (For Now and Forever)

“The perfect romance or beach read, with a difference: its enthusiasm and beautiful descriptions offer an unexpected attention to the complexity of not just evolving love, but evolving psyches. It's a delightful recommendation for romance readers looking for a touch more complexity from their romance reads.”--Midwest Book Review (For Now and Forever)THE WITCHING PLACE: MURDER BY MANUSCRIPT is book #2 in a charming new cozy mystery series by bestselling author Sophie Love, author of The Inn at Sunset Harbor series, a #1 Bestseller with over 200 five-star reviews.When Alexis Blair, 29, is fired from her book publishing job and breaks up with her boyfriend on the same day, she wonders if life is urging her to make a fresh start. She decides it’s time to pursue her lifelong dream of opening a bookstore of her own—even if that means leaving Boston and accepting a job in a curious bookstore in a small seaside town an hour away.When Alexis is dispatched to scout out some books in an estate sale in a gothic mansion, she finds something she does not expect: one book is incredibly rare, the only one of its kind in existence, worth millions of dollars.She also soon finds something else she does not expect: a dead body.Thrust in the middle of the crime, will Alexis be able to clear her name?And will she discover the mystery at the heart of her very own store?A page-turning cozy, rife with the supernatural, mystery, secrets and love—and centered around a small town as odd and endearing as its shop—A CURIOUS BOOKSTORE will make you fall in love and keep you laughing out loud as you turn pages late into the night.“The romance is there, but not overdosed. Kudos to the author for this amazing start of a series that promises to be very entertaining.”--Books and Movies Reviews (For Now and Forever)Book #3 in the series—A PERILOUS PAGE—is now also available!

Seventy-two hours before my wedding, I stood in front of the fitting mirror at a bridal shop.

My best friend sent me a social media post, and the red exclamation mark in the message box stung my eyes sharply.

The post’s title read: Guys, my boyfriend is getting married to his current partner. What should I do?

The comment section had already erupted into chaos.
“Dude, are you out of your mind? You’re the other woman here!”
“You’re the homewrecker and you dare post this to get roasted? Where’s your shame?”

The poster was firing back furiously, every word oozing unapologetic madness:
“We’ve been inseparable since we were kids! His first love, first kiss, first time—all mine!”
“He doesn’t even like that old hag; he’s only marrying her out of obligation!”
“Who’s the real mistress, anyway?”

I should have swiped past it like a silly joke, but my gaze was locked onto the poster’s profile picture.

It showed two hands laced together. Peeking out from the man’s wrist was a dark green watch dial—a Richard Mille Valentine’s Day limited edition. It was the seven-figure engagement gift I’d bought him by selling my mother’s last precious heirloom, the only one of its kind in the world.

My heart was squeezed tight by an icy hand, plummeting to the bottom in an instant.

I tapped into the account’s homepage. The second my finger swiped open the photo album, a dizzying, world-spinning sensation crashed over me.

In the photos, the man holding the girl closely was none other than Lu Yanchen—my fiancé, who was supposed to marry me in three days.

I stared at the screen. All the wedding hopes and love I’d saved up over three years shattered into nothing but dust at this moment.

I couldn’t believe it, yet I had to. The man who’d loved me for three years and sworn to protect me forever had been lying to me from start to finish.

My daughter has been blind since birth. On her eighteenth birthday, she finally received news of a matching cornea donor.
Our whole family was so excited we couldn't sleep that night. My husband and daughter eagerly prepared for the surgery, their hearts filled with hope that she would soon see the light.
But I suddenly slammed my hand on the table and, amidst the family's stunned gazes, proposed a divorce on the spot.
My husband's face turned ashen as he demanded harshly, "You want a divorce just because I'm going through with our daughter's surgery?"
I curled the corner of my mouth and enunciated every word: "That's right. Because you're going through with her surgery—this marriage is over."

Violet loses her parents as a young child and is brought up by an elderly aunt. As she approaches her 17th birthday her life is turned upside down when her Aunt tells her that the life she has built with her must end - she has to go and learn about the background of her father. Secrets have been kept and those secrets turn Violet's life on it's head!

Not only does she have to accept that her father wasn't who she thought he was, but she too, is something she didn't even realise existed! It seems a whole plan had been in place for if something happened to her parents, including learning of her heritage and all it means.
So, Violet is sent to Autumn Moon Pack, where an elderly relative of her father's still lives to give Violet chance to be surrounded by others like her. In truth, she plans to learn what she needs to learn what she needs to and leave to live alone like her father before her.
But will meeting the handsome Beta, who seems quite taken with her, change her mind? And could there be yet more secrets to be revealed?

“Go find one of those perfect little she-wolves lined up to mate you. Play your Alpha card on them. I’m sure they’ll beg to be marked..maybe they’ll even let you f—”

“Seliene!” he snapped, his voice a roar as he grabbed my wrist.

“Stop touching me!” I shoved at his chest, voice rising despite the sting in my throat. “Stop acting like you care when all you've ever done is hate me!”

Tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. “There are plenty of men who would take me to bed without second-guessing it. Maybe I should let them. Maybe I should—”

His hand tangled in my hair so fast I gasped, and the next thing I knew, my back was against the wall.

Ronan’s eyes were glowing now—not just anger, but something else. Something deeper. His wolf was there, right under the surface, growling low and dangerous.

“Oh?” I taunted, my body betraying me with a subtle tremble of arousal. “What is this? You don’t want me, but no one else should touch me either?”

His growl deepened, vibrating between us, and then his mouth crashed down on mine.

I moaned before I could stop myself, and that only seemed to provoke him further. He pressed harder, his body pinning mine, every inch of him demanding, claiming.

He groaned into my mouth, his thigh sliding between mine and pressing upward. I gasped, my head hitting the wall as pleasure sparked through me.

“Don’t want to touch you?” he growled against my lips. “I want you with every damn breath.”


Seliene, a fierce half-breed hiding heartbreak behind a defiant tongue, and Ronan, the brooding Alpha who once rejected her, ignite in a moment of raw passion and buried longing. Bound by a mate bond they both try to resist, their chemistry is undeniable, dangerous, explosive, and edged with the pain of a love neither dares to admit.

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.

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.

On Day 100 of the global heat collapse, surface temperature climbed to a hopeless 70°C.

To keep my girlfriend from being roasted alive, I drove my ice ability past the limit and became her personal human air conditioner.

But when my ability core was on the verge of shattering and I collapsed coughing blood, she stole the last two bottles of water from my pack and climbed into someone else’s temperature-controlled car without looking back.

Before she left, she tossed the life-saving lump of ice I’d condensed with half my life onto the blistering asphalt like garbage.

“Jack, I’m sick of your cooling cutting out any second. I’m not staying here to die with you.”

She didn’t know—

The moment that ice turned into white vapor, the broken ability core in my chest—the one ruined because of her—evolved in the abyss.

They thought he was dead.

They were wrong.

After years of war, bloodshed, and survival, Ares McKay returns to Chicago only to find his sister buried in the ground.

The people responsible are untouchable.

Political dynasties.

Billionaire families.

Criminal empires hidden behind luxury and power.

But Ares has spent five years becoming something far more dangerous than they could imagine.

One wedding turns into a massacre.

One city is pushed to the edge of chaos.

And one man begins a campaign of vengeance that will shake the foundations of every powerful family in Chicago.

Because when they murdered his sister...

They declared war on the wrong man.

When Leo Ross came home, his daughter was dying.

His wife was gone.

And every door to the truth was guarded by armed men.

Most people would call the police.

Leo declared war.

A former Delta Force legend, Leo tears through gangs, mercenaries, and criminal empires in a desperate race to save his family.

But the deeper he digs, the darker the truth becomes.

Someone has been planning this for years.

Someone powerful.

Someone who wants him dead.

They stole his wife.

Now he's coming for everything they own.

I spent ten years following Ashton around like it was my job. He said jump, I jumped. He said he was hungry, I went and made him a sandwich. His homework, his fights, his messes — I handled all of it. I thought that's what being close to someone meant.
Then at the fall pep rally, in front of two thousand people, he strapped me to a platform, blasted me with paint, and let his girlfriend laugh at me through a megaphone.
I was the punchline. I threw up on camera. The video went viral before I even hit the ground.
So I did the one thing nobody expected — I vanished. New school, new city, new number. Every trace of him, gone.
I thought that was the end of it.
But Ashton doesn't let go of what he thinks is his. And what he's willing to do to drag me back? I wasn't even close to ready for that.

I gave up MIT for them in my last life.
They paid me back by stealing my lab notes, framing me for misconduct, and choosing her over me when I drowned.
I watched them choose her over me a hundred times
Now I’m 17 again. I block all three and fly to MIT.
They think I’m throwing a tantrum.
Wait till they find out who saved them out of that cave—

I got dragged online by one of my lead devs.

He claimed my "Incubation Project" was a gilded cage—a trap to exploit the team and steal their personal IPs.

The truth?

I funded it out of my own pocket.

Selected candidates would get a $50,000 no-strings-attached seed fund, plus full Ivy League tuition reimbursement. It was 100% voluntary, with zero penalties for opting out.

Since the internet decided I was a toxic capitalist monopolizing their creativity, I gave him exactly what he wanted. I fired off a company-wide memo:

[To protect your creative freedom from capitalist exploitation, the $50,000 Incubation Fund is permanently abolished, effective immediately.]

[As an alternative, the monthly education allowance for all employees is now a $15 reimbursement for basic coding courses.]

The moment the memo dropped, the employees who were counting on that $50k to pay off student loans or change their lives completely lost it.

Now, they're swarming right outside my glass office door, eyes red, begging me to reinstate the program.

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!

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 am a hero. The saint's husband.
A country boy chosen by the temple.
I fight, I fight, I fight.
All for the saint, for the temple.
But it wasn't until I was drained of blood and dying on the altar that I finally heard clearly what the saint and her childhood sweetheart were saying:
"If you become a hero and marry the saint, you'll have to surrender your soul to the temple. I don't want you to lose your soul."
"Then let's just find some country boy to be the hero. It won't matter if he dies."
Oh, so that's how it is.
You should have said so earlier.
I can defeat the Demon Lord just fine without the saint.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the wedding ceremony.
This time, someone else should be on the altar.

The chieftainess returned from the poisonous fog with a swollen belly.
She announced that she carried the child of a god—a child who would bring hope to the entire base.
Only I knew that what she bore was no divine offspring, but a demon that would devour every soul in the base.
Because in my previous life, I was the one it had gnawed to death, alive...

I once believed that if I was obedient enough, my birth family would finally love me. Instead, they gave everything to Anna, the fake heiress—my competition spot, my reputation, even my kidney.
Then I opened my eyes and returned to the year it all began.
This time, I won’t beg. I won’t yield. My achievements, my dignity, and my life belong to me.
When everyone called me vicious, Damian Sterling draped his jacket over my shoulders and asked in a low voice, “Am I an outsider?”
I leaned into him and smiled. “Of course not.”
But soon I discovered he was being slowly poisoned—and the culprit might be someone closest to him. Worse, the truth behind my death in my previous life may be darker than I ever imagined…

1

At 17, I saved William from the black market.
At 22, he crossed half the globe to marry me with two million dollars.
I built his empire for him, turning him into the biggest arms dealer in the Americas.
Then Karen appeared, and our seven years turned to ashes.
I finally saw the truth:
The roses he gave me were the ones Karen had rejected.
His so-called love was nothing but a hypocritical act for money.
To him, I was just a prop for show, a tool for his business, and a machine for sex.

Three torturous years hauling bodies on the mortuary night shift, and I'd finally scraped together the cash for my brother Charles's heart transplant.
He just waved it off.
"My heart is fine. Mom and Dad didn't die in that gang war, either. I orchestrated the hit. You were the only casualty."
Nearby, my husband, Gerald, casually lit a cigar to deliver his own confession. "I never went bankrupt. 'Laying low' was just my excuse to avoid squeezing into that dingy funeral home dorm with you. I've been at the Long Island estate."
"I was going to punish you for another three years," Charles added, "but the stench of formaldehyde on you is nauseating. We couldn't take it anymore."
I froze, still clutching the credit card. Charles plucked the plastic from my numb fingers and shoved his phone screen in my face. A banking app stared back at me.
Balance: exactly zero.
"My name is still on the joint account," he sneered, tossing the card into the trash. "I drained it this morning. That blood money you made bagging stiffs is being handed out to street junkies as we speak. We'd never touch that filth."
Before the sheer absurdity of it could suffocate me, my parents walked in. Flanked by bodyguards, they kept their distance, eyeing me like a plague rat.
"You thought being the biological daughter gave you the right to ruthlessly bully Violet. We simply wanted to put you in your place."
"Swear you'll never cross Violet again, and you can remain a Falcone," my mother added coolly. "Otherwise, you're dead to us."
In the stifling silence that followed, my phone buzzed. A text from my oncologist.
[Mrs. Castello, the results are back. It's terminal. Do you consent to initiating the hospice and DNR protocols we discussed?]

The day my mother succumbed to complications during childbirth, her younger sister, Vanessa, wed my father.

Fifteen years later, I beheld my husband accompanying Vanessa as she tried on seductive lingerie.

In that moment, I understood—what she truly coveted was never my father, but rather all that my mother and I shared.

My mother perished during childbirth, a casualty of an illicit affair.

I vowed not to repeat that tragic cycle.

Then I returned home, removed my wedding ring, and left behind the divorce papers.

I was dead, and the whole world was celebrating for my sister.

For twenty-two years, I had been the hardest-working but most invisible daughter in the Sterling family, forever living in the shadow of my gymnastics prodigy sister.

Running a high fever, I begged my family to take me to the hospital, only to hear: "Don't you DARE ruin Bella's award ceremony!"

When I was tricked into the abandoned equipment room and used my last breath to call my boyfriend while lying in a pool of blood, all I heard was: "Grace, quit the drama! Bella's accepting her award on stage!"

On stage, thunderous applause erupted as Bella lifted the "Young Gymnast of the Year" trophy.

And I drew my final breath.

When they returned home triumphant, thinking I had run away in a tantrum, they had no idea I was already dead right under their noses.

There are no unmated males in our pack.
Every she-wolf in Hollowfen is promised to someone when she turns eighteen. We just don't get to know who until we walk into the Choosing Hall.
Girls go in wearing white. They come out flushed, shaking, barely able to stand. Some laugh. Some cry. None of them talk about what happens inside.
My sister Thessaly turned eighteen this spring. Gran told her she couldn't attend the Choosing.
She went anyway. She came back on shaking legs, with blood between her thighs and a smile she couldn't wipe off her face.

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 from upstairs was their laughter celebrating Leila. Even Justin—the boy I'd loved since we were kids—texted calling me a fucking psycho.

As I drew my last breath, I heard Leila's soft voice outside the door: "Rest in peace, sister."

Now I'm a ghost, watching them lose their minds when the truth comes out.

When I was rushed to the ER with food poisoning, I heard the doctor shout, "We need to pump her stomach, now!"
But my mother, Catherine, calmly stopped the doctor's hand.
"No hurry," she said coldly. "Give her a sedative first."
My brother Austin panicked. "Mom! If you don't detox her, she could die!"
But my mother's voice was ruthless, low and sharp:
"If she dies, she dies. As long as her uterus is still warm, that's all that matters."
"Did you forget our plan? Sarah's transplant surgery is scheduled for tomorrow. If Elena wakes up now, what if she runs away?"
"Our priority is keeping her uterus safe for Sarah—not saving her life."
In that moment, the burn in my stomach was nothing compared to the chill in my heart.
I forced my eyes open and saw my brother—the one who'd always protected me—hesitate for a moment, then slowly let go of my hand.
"...Okay. You're right, Mom. Saving Sarah comes first."
The moment I closed my eyes, I made a decision: If I survived, this life would never belong to this family again.

My adopted sister, Cordelia, conspired with her biological mother to harvest my organs alive, yet she had the audacity to claim I paid thugs to rape her.
My biological parents didn't bother to ask for the truth. They cursed me, calling me a vicious bastard, and threatened to break my legs.
My fiancé, Caspian, coldly announced the cancellation of our engagement, declaring he would marry the very murderer who killed me.
I had been dead for exactly three days. No one cared. My body was rotting back in a moldy storage room.
Through it all, my soul was trapped in the manor, forced to witness this absurd farce.
But what they didn't expect was that when they finally learned of my death—
Everyone went completely insane.

I spent seven years being Preston Maddox's personal errand girl.

Did his homework, took his father's belt for him, cut off every friend I had because he said he didn't like me talking to other guys.

I told myself that if I was good enough, patient enough, he'd eventually see me.

Then came the school's centennial gala. In front of everyone, he locked me, a girl with severe aquaphobia, inside a water tank filled to the brim with ice-cold water, so Vanessa Sinclair could have a pretty backdrop for her ballet number.

The audience roared. He watched Vanessa take her bow with this soft, adoring smile on his face. The only time he glanced at me was when he noticed I'd made a mess, and all he did was wrinkle his nose.

The water rose over my head, and something in me finally understood.

To Preston Maddox, I wasn't even worth as much as a dog.

If a dog was drowning, its owner would at least care.

Me? I just disgusted him.

I was their real daughter.

The lost princess they found, brought home, and promised to protect.

But every time she cried, I was the one punished.

Every time she bled, I was the one accused.

When she disappeared, they said it was my fault. They tore my memories apart to prove it.

Fine , only if they stand where I stood, feel what I felt, will they ever know my pain.