8545 Book(s) Related to Thee And Me

I was frozen for 100 years due to illness.
One hundred years later, the whole world was ravaged by strange phenomena, and humanity was huddled together in a few small places to survive.
I was awakened from my slumber by the investigation team. I thought I would be killed by the monster as soon as I woke up, but I found that the monster here was my good brother from college.
Besides him, the eerie owner of the barbecue restaurant, the matchmaking ghost who likes to harm people through blind dates, the S-class monstrous ghost in the cemetery... they are all my old friends...
The world a hundred years from now feels strangely familiar...

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.

In her past life, Serena stopped her brother's kidney donation and bore the blame for every family heartbreak that followed.
Reborn, she watches him willingly throw away his promising basketball career to save his lover—and she walks away.
When fate abandons her brother and her family tears itself apart, Serena carves out a brilliant, unapologetic life for herself.

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!"

Ugly. Good for nothing. Useless. Disgusting.
These are the words Zara hears every single day.


I was the Alpha's fated mate but my rejection was worse than one thousand needles pierced to my skin.
"I, Weston Bruce Furrow, Alpha of the Shadow Moon Pack reject you, Zara Liam Adolf of the Night Moon Pack. A pathetic runt weakling like you is no match for me."
I could feel my heart breaking, Tuna was howling inside me, and I could feel her pain.
"I, Zara Liam Adolf of the Night Moon Pack, accept your rejection..."


Being the Alpha's daughter doesn't shield Zara from the pack's cruelty. Especially when her own father is her worst tormentor.
Years later, the man she once hated most returns. The same man who rejected her, who humiliated her, and now, she doesn't understand why he's back. Worse still, she's being forced to negotiate with him.
Zara wants nothing more than to forget how he made her feel. But her pack needs protection, and he's the Alpha who can offer it.
Which means she has no choice but to put her pack above her pain.

Over the weekend, Alpha Kennard—my husband—and I were invited to attend a charity auction.
During the bidding, my husband's Beta, Joanna Morton, and I both set our sights on the same ruby necklace.
I was prepared to compete fairly, Until Alpha Kennard made the ceremonial bid for her.
"Queenie, you're nothing more than a dog I keep at home. What right do you have to compete with me?"
Just as everyone else withdrew from the bidding, I snapped my fingers at the auctioneer.
"Whatever Alpha Kennard offers—I'll outbid him by… one dollar."

My target should be terrified of me.
Instead, he's smirking like he already knows I'll never pull the trigger.
My heart races in my chest. This isn't me.
I am born to kill. I am born to take orders.
Yet those eyes, they're killing me.

She was born into power.
Now she chooses revenge.

Valentina Santangelo doesn’t belong in the shadows.
She was raised in them.

Daughter of a legacy built on blood, secrets, and ruthless control, Valentina has spent her life watching empires rise… and enemies fall. She knows the rules of this world. She knows how to survive it.

What she didn’t expect…
was to become its most dangerous player.

When betrayal rips through her family and threatens everything her father built, Valentina is done standing on the side-lines. She steps into the game—cold, calculated, and ready to make them pay.

But revenge has a price.

And the man standing in her way?
He’s not just her enemy…
He’s the one man who sees through every wall she’s built.

Dark. Dangerous. Impossible to resist.

As loyalty turns to obsession and desire collides with vengeance, Valentina must decide how far she’s willing to go—
and whether love is worth the risk of losing everything.

Because in her world…
you don’t fall in love.

You survive it.

“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 PERILOUS PAGE 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.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.A cryptic visitor comes into town, looking for a rare book, and willing to pay anything.But when he ends up dead, Alexis wonders: was the price too high?And did Alexis’s mysterious store owner have anything to do with it?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 PERILOUS PAGE 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)

My wife and in-laws have been acting strange lately.

They've always hated the Texas farm, but now they suddenly care about me and the ranch.

My wife, who used to complain about me spending money on the "doomsday bunker" farmhouse project, is now actually encouraging me to complete it.

They even say I've been working too hard and bought me a plane ticket to Mexico.

Just as I'm about to take the ticket, a barrage comment appears before my eyes—

【Don't go! Your wife has been reborn from the apocalypse—she wants you to die out there!】

“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 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!

Before the zombie outbreak, I was a hardcore doomsday prepper. I hoarded countless supplies, but when the apocalypse actually arrived, I ended up turning into a zombie myself. Just as I was overwhelmed with panic, my girlfriend and the guy she was cheating on me with brought a mob of thugs to smash down my door...

I have guarded the Abyss on the Ashen Plains for a thousand years.

My daily routine: chewing rock-hard rye bread, single-handedly crushing the skulls of trespassing demons, wiping their slime off on a ragged surcoat, and leaning against a bronze pillar to catch the wind.

Today, a dying girl stumbled into the wasteland. Her fingers were locked in a death grip around the bloodstained iron crest I had left behind a millennium ago. Up on the ridge, three hundred heavy cavalrymen of the Alliance drew their lances, forming a wall of steel as they closed in.

I stared at the blood on the ground. I didn't make a sound.

I just brushed the biscuit crumbs off my lap and stretched my stiff neck. Turning around, my fingers hooked onto the hilt of a rust-eaten battleaxe resting beneath the bronze pillar. I dragged it along with casual ease.

"Troublesome."

I muttered that single word, and walked alone toward the formation of steel.

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."

I hate Beckett Hayes.
I hate his stupidly perfect face.
I hate the arrogant smirk that has sold millions of jerseys.
I hate that half of Chicago seems to worship the ground his skates touch.
But mostly? I hate what he did to my brother.
Eight years ago, Beckett Hayes destroyed my family. I haven't spoken to him since.
So naturally, on the first morning of my dream job with Chicago's hottest professional hockey team, I find him leaning against my office door.
Older. Bigger. Hotter. And wearing the same infuriating smile I remember.
My new job should have nothing to do with Beck. Until another one of the captain's scandals lands him in trouble and management decides I'm exactly the person he needs.
Now I'm traveling with him. Managing him. Arguing with him. Trying very hard not to notice what years of professional hockey have done to his body.
Then a photograph of us nearly kissing goes viral.
Suddenly everyone wants Beckett Hayes and Sloane Mercer together. The team. The sponsors. The fans. Everyone except me.
Because I know exactly who Beck is. At least, I thought I did.
But the closer I get to him, the more the story I've believed for eight years starts falling apart.
Beck didn't destroy my brother. He protected him.
And the man I've spent almost a decade hating? He's spent every one of those years wanting me.

BLURB
"You're the only one who can wake me. Now you'll carry my curse, and my crown."
When Aria Silverthorn's fiancé and stepsister publicly accused her of being Omega-born fraud, stripping her rank and dignity, she lost everything. Cast into the Forsaken Lands to die, she survived three months of hell—and desperation drove her to the forbidden Moonfall Crypt, where Alpha King Kael Nightfang has been entombed for five years.
The Council claims he died heroically. The truth? They poisoned him with wolfsbane silver, trapping him in death-sleep when he discovered their corruption.
When Aria touches his tomb seeking shelter, the impossible happens. He wakes—but only she can anchor him to life. Only her touch keeps him from slipping back into the void. Their bond is immediate, undeniable, and dangerous.
Kael should be dead. The Council made sure of it. For five years, his consciousness has been trapped between life and death, aware of every agonizing moment.
Until Aria.
She's his anchor. His prison. His salvation. And he's not letting her go, not when she's the key to his revenge and reclaiming his throne.
But their bond goes deeper than magic. They're true mates,a connection so rare it hasn't occurred in centuries. A bond the Council will kill to prevent, because true mates can challenge their entire corrupt system.

My name is Arthur, Atlantic City’s number one pauper and absolute peerless coward.
On the outside, I roar with sheer arrogance: "The debt collector has returned from Hell!"
On the inside, I’m sobbing hysterically: "Mommy, save me! I really don‘t want to act tough!"
My name is Arthur, a complete coward whose hands shake even when trying to kill a chicken.
That was, until I was bound to a completely unhinged [Absolute Bully System].
[Ding! Novice Bully Quest: Crash the Mafia banquet and splash red wine on the face of the corporate heiress!]
[Ding! Advanced Quest: Steal the Underground Godfather's wife!]
[Ding! Ultimate Quest: Walk right up to the Underground Godfather and slap him mercilessly across the face!]
"Screw you! I don't even have the guts to kill a chicken, and you want me to beat up the Emperor of the Underworld? No way! I'd rather starve to death than dig my own grave!"
[Ding! Host's refusal detected. Punishment impending: Serial sphincter rupture resulting in explosive public diarrhea, accompanied by penile retraction into the abdomen, and the reverse fracturing of all 206 bones. It will take seven days and seven nights for you to finally die! Countdown: 3 seconds.]
"... System Daddy, I was wrong."
To avoid dying of explosive diarrhea, I had no choice but to let the System control my body, kick the doors open, heft a Gatling gun, and laugh maniacally: "So you're supposed to be the Underground Emperor?!"
But deep down in my heart, I was wailing uncontrollably: "Mommy, save me! I really don't want to act tough anymore!"

The luxury cruise ship in the high seas had become a floating steel coffin for the beautiful CEO and me.
Just a door away, the corridor was teeming with slithering, tentacled Mimics. The wet, crunching sounds of them chewing on raw flesh were enough to make anyone’s scalp go numb.
Inside the pitch-black storage cabin—measuring barely three square meters—the usually aloof and untouchable Ice Queen of the corporate world was so terrified she had her flawless body pressed desperately against my chest.
In this extreme claustrophobia, her scalding body heat generated a fierce friction against me in the face of absolute despair.
"Keep me alive. Everything I have... is yours."

"I absolutely love your huge, thick cock, James. Just let me ride it tonight, and I'll pay you to be my secret whore," my wife's sister-in-law purred, climbing into my bed completely naked, her wet, dripping pussy grinding against my thigh.

I threw her naked body onto the floor like trash. For three years, I played the pathetic, submissive househusband to my arrogant wife, Emily. I endured their endless humiliation, hiding the fact that I was the billionaire heir and lethal ex-special forces agent keeping their pathetic family alive.

But today, the three-year contract hit zero.

When a rival mafia boss kicked down our door, threatening to massacre everyone, my wife's sister Rhea desperately ripped her dress open, exposing her heavy, bare breasts, begging the boss to fuck her raw right there on the floor if he spared her life.

I’d had enough.

I stepped forward, snapping the necks and shattering the bones of a dozen armed guards, leaving them choking on their own blood. As my fleet of twenty armored Rolls-Royces surrounded the villa, my true identity was finally revealed.

Seeing my unimaginable power, Rhea crawled to my feet, shoving her massive tits against my leg, begging to suck my cock and share my bed with my wife.

I slapped her across her slutty face, tore up the marriage contract, and walked out.

Behind me, Emily collapsed, sobbing hysterically. "If I had just spread my legs for him... if I had just let him breed me and fill my womb with his heir, I would be the queen of the world..."

She's begging for my seed now, but should I lock her in my basement and make her pay for the last three years?

On my first day as an intern at the zoo, the old director assigned us animals to care for.
In my previous life, my classmate Jack chose the easy-to-care-for African elephant, while I was forced to take on the brutal Siberian tiger.
A month later, the apocalypse struck, and the Siberian tiger successfully evolved, leading me to escape the encirclement.
Jack's elephant, however, couldn't outrun the mutated species and was torn to pieces. Driven
by jealousy, the surviving Jack incited a mob to brutally beat me and the giant tiger to death, dismembering and cannibalizing us.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the animals were assigned.
Jack had already taken the Siberian tiger, pushing the elephant to me, and I knew he had also been reborn.
But what he didn't know was that the Siberian tiger he had devoured was also reborn with me.

Just before my wedding, my fate mate, my Alpha fiancé, Micheal, stripped me of my wedding dress—our wedding dress—and handed it to his mistress, Becky Porter.
Not only that, but he locked me in the dressing room like some rabid wolf he needed to contain.
"Becky has a terminal illness.She just wants to experience being a bride before she dies."
I lunged forward, my wolf howling inside me. Alpha's strength pressed against mine, his dominance forcing my muscles to lock. My claws twitched, itching to break free.
"You bastard!" I snarled, my breath ragged.
Micheal barely blinked. Instead, he let out an exasperated sigh, shaking his head .
"She’s dying, and you can’t even show a little compassion?" His tone dripped with disappointment, as if I were the villain here. "You’re only losing a wedding, but Becky… Becky is losing her dreams and her life."

Silver poisoning struck, and my mother's life hung by a thread.
I knelt and begged my partner Selene to use the 100,000 gold coins from our war spoils to purchase Moonlight Holy Water, but she coldly refused with a sneer: "An ordinary silver poison patient isn't worth wasting resources on." She then turned and spent 80,000 coins on a necklace for her male lover.
My mother died in my arms as I ground my teeth and swallowed my tears of blood.
But when the patrol came to collect the body, she finally discovered—the one sent to be buried deep in the mass grave wasn't my mother at all, but her own biological mother.
She had personally buried her own mom!

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 thought love was enough.
I thought saving the Ember Claw Pack with everything I had—my heart, my loyalty, even my body—meant something. It led to a Moon Ceremony… and a marriage to Alpha William, the man I gave my soul to.
But love doesn’t protect you from betrayal.
Especially not when the one he truly wanted was never me.
I was glowing with the joy of carrying our pup when I walked in on him—holding her.
Quinn.
The fated mate everyone believed to be dead. Alive. Back. In his arms.
And me? Just the mistake he settled for.
"I only married you out of gratitude," he said, barely meeting my eyes.
Then, turning to Quinn with a softness I never got, he added, "If she hadn’t sold her ancestral land to save the pack, I would’ve never completed the Moon Ceremony with her."
And the final blow?
"So what if she found out? I’ll just say I thought she was you that night we slept together."
That night—The one I thought meant everything.
But it didn’t end with him.
His mother pointed her finger at m

On the third day of the outbreak, I sat in my company’s executive conference room, gripping the red toy car I bought for my six-year-old son.

Outside the door were zombies filling the building. Beside me were six executives still breathing only because I was.

They wanted meetings. They wanted to wait for rescue. They wanted to chain me with morality.

But I wanted one thing—my son was still in daycare. Three days. No one went for him.

At dawn, I opened the door they’d barricaded shut.

I can shoot. I can clear a path. I will carve my way through to bring him back.

Anyone who stands in my way dies.

For the three years since I returned to the Hart family, I had always been the wildly out-of-place “burden.”

Vivienne, the family’s beloved fake heiress, broke a contract on her own and provoked a local gang. She was taken hostage and tortured in an abandoned auto repair shop.

To save his precious sister, my brother, Ryan, did not hesitate to trade me to the gang in exchange for Vivienne.
“She’s a movie star, and you’re just a useless nobody. It’s only natural for you to take her place and suffer a little.”
He looked coldly at the gang members who were eyeing me like hungry wolves, and violently shoved me toward them.
“Tonight, she belongs to you.”

Right before they dragged me away, I managed to call my husband, Alex, begging for help. But he rejected me ruthlessly, acting as if my plea was some cheap scam:
“Stop playing the victim. Why would they ever hurt you? Hurry up and clean up this mess. Don't let a girl like Vivienne face those thugs all by herself.”

Bang.
The heavy iron doors of the gang’s hideout slammed shut.
There were no negotiations. What greeted me was a merciless rain of fists, my clothes brutally torn to shreds, and the blinding flashes of cameras.
Amidst the ultimate degradation, they took photos of me, pinched my jaw, and violated my dignity over and over again.

At 4:00 AM, I was tossed out onto the street in front of my own house like a piece of discarded trash.
Upon dragging myself inside, Vivienne immediately began dropping hints to the family, implying that I was the one who tricked her into signing the illegal gang contract.
My family cursed me, telling me to drop dead.
My heart plummeted into a bottomless abyss of darkness. Numbly swallowing the bloody foam pooling in my mouth, I let out a hoarse, broken laugh.

“Since my return was a mistake from the very beginning…”
“Then why didn’t they just let me die?”

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."

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...

I’m a convenience store owner.

When the acid rain apocalypse hit, it ate through metal, wrecked power, and turned clean food and water into currency.

Last time, I made one mistake: I opened my door to my ex, Claire Voss, and her lover, Derek Hale. They didn’t come for shelter—they came for my stash. The blade in my abdomen taught me what mercy buys in a broken world. I killed them, but as my vision faded, the radio crackled with one final update: the disaster was ending.

Day thirty. I didn’t live to see morning.

Then I woke up—one week before it began.

This time I do only one thing: lock myself in my underground storage room with exactly thirty days of food and water, and wait for the rain to stop.

But Claire is hoarding again, louder than ever—embezzling money, emptying my shelves, trying to starve me in the first week so I’ll crawl back begging.

That’s when it hits me:

She thinks the apocalypse lasts forever.

She has no idea it only lasts thirty days.

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.

I took the blame for my wife and went to jail, thinking I was protecting our family.

Five years later, when I was released from prison, my mansion was confiscated, my company fell into the hands of my younger brother, and the woman I loved with all my heart was nestled in my brother's arms, mocking my misfortune.

They had been having an affair for a long time, and even my imprisonment was a conspiracy meticulously planned by this despicable couple! What makes me even more furious is that my precious daughter was abandoned on the street like a stray dog, and subjected to beatings and bullying by their illegitimate son .

They thought that by draining my blood, they could forever condemn me to oblivion.

But they forgot that I was once an unparalleled genius in the business world.

"Daddy... so cold... and it hurts..." When my precious daughter Mia whispered these words in her weak voice, my heart felt like it was being torn apart.
The life-saving medicine was just ten meters away, but that damned anti-magic barrier had become an insurmountable chasm between life and death.
What made me even more furious was that the vampire guarding the gate not only extorted my life savings, but also demanded I kneel like a dog and lick his boots before he would open the door.
He didn't know that if the door stayed closed, it wouldn't just be my daughter who died—his son and mother would perish too!

In my last life, a friend I’d trusted for ten years drove a knife into my heart over a single biscuit. When I opened my eyes again, we had both been reborn—right before the extreme freeze arrived.

He was convinced the apocalypse had come. He borrowed from loan sharks, rented a massive warehouse to hoard supplies, and even crowned himself king during the icebound period, killing without mercy.

But he didn’t know the truth:

This disaster would end completely after only thirty days.

While he taunted me like a madman, I didn’t expose him. I calmly requested thirty days of paid leave from my company.

This time, I’ll sit in a warm, climate-controlled room and watch—when the state machine restarts on day thirty—how he drops to his knees and sobs in despair.

"You were meant to be my death. Instead, you've become my damnation."
Aria Thornwell has spent three years as a healer in her town, attempting to forget the night her former fiancé publically humiliated her by selecting her affluent stepsister instead—taking Aria's family fortune with him. Now, she lives quietly, utilizing her skill to aid the underprivileged while her stepfamily flaunts their stolen fortune.

But on the winter solstice, everything changes. She's chosen as the ceremonial bride for the vampires' holy Winter Feast—a "honor" that guarantees death at daybreak following the Christmas Eve rite. Dragged to the Crimson Vale with five other human tributes, Aria is prepared to meet her fate with dignity.

Until she meets him.

Lord Sebastian Thorne, the ancient vampire who has presided over the Winter Feast for eight centuries, is meant to drain her at dawn following the binding ritual. It's tradition. It's law. It's survival—the ceremonial blood maintains the vampire realm for another year.

But as Sebastian's lips brush her throat in the ceremonial hall, something unbelievable happens. Her blood doesn't simply sustain him—it wakes something in him that's been dead for generations. And in a move that shocks the whole vampire court, he refuses to complete the rite.
"This one is mine," he proclaims, his old strength sweeping the hall. "Anyone who touches her answers to me."

Trapped in the Obsidian Palace as Sebastian's "protected bride," Aria discovers three frightening truths: Sebastian isn't protecting her out of mercy—he's dying from an ancient curse, and her blood is the only thing keeping him alive past Christmas; the vampire court will do anything to kill her and reinstate the ritual; and her "ordinary" healer's gift is actually a rare and dangerous power that vampire nobility has been hunting for generations.

At the Morello family’s Christmas dinner, I stood beside Vincent, waiting for him to announce our engagement.
Instead, in the very next second, he walked in holding a little boy and claimed him as his son.
And the woman he said he was going to marry? Scarlett Morello. The one he had always introduced as his “sister.”
The whole room erupted in applause. I stood there frozen, like a nail hammered into the floor.
Later, in his study, he took my hand and said, “Scarlett is dying. Late-stage breast cancer. She only has six months left. After she’s gone, I’ll marry you.”
But there was no guilt in his eyes. No love, either.
Then he told me to go to his villa that afternoon, to take care of the woman who was supposedly “dying.”
I opened the photo he sent me. Scarlett was lying in a hospital bed, pale-faced, an IV in the back of her hand.
A professional tennis player who had been playing in an exhibition match three weeks ago, and who had dropped three grand at Louis Vuitton on Fifth Avenue just five days ago.
But sure. She was “dying.”
At three in the morning, I was curled up by the front door of my apartment, crying so long I lost track of time.
Then my phone lit up. A text from an unknown number:
[Elena, I’m downstairs. When we were kids, you told me that once I controlled the docks on the East Coast, you’d marry me. The docks are mine now. Does that promise still stand?]
I pulled back the curtain and there he was. Ethan Vitale, my first love, leaning against the door of a black Cadillac, lifting a hand in a lazy wave.
Three years ago, when he left New York, he was only a Capo.
Now, he was the Don of the Vitale family.
He didn’t rush me. Didn’t pressure me to come downstairs.
He came for one reason only, to let me know he was back.
I wiped away my tears and texted back:
[It still stands.]
Because I wanted to see for myself just how long that woman could keep up her act.