8593 Book(s) Related to the first to die at the end book

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.

In the sixth year of my life as a Scale-Stripper, I finally gathered the hundredth vial of Dragon Breath Essence.

I knelt before the altar, cradling the crystal bottle in both hands. The golden light swirling within it cast a warm glow across my scarred knuckles. Six years — six years of wandering the most dangerous battlefields of the Five Clans and the plague-ridden wastelands, using dragon breath to heal the wounded. For every person I saved, I had peeled away a living scale from my own flesh, baring the raw, bleeding meat beneath.

Seven scales left on my back.

Only seven.

But as long as it saved my brother Lucien, it was worth it.

Six years ago, during the Dragon Slaughter War, our parents had been assassinated by humans. An ancient curse had struck Lucien; his scales were crumbling away, day by day. He told me that only a hundred vials of Dragon Breath Essence could break the curse.

I held the crystal bottle out to him, my voice trembling with barely contained emotion. "Lucien, a hundred vials. We finally have enough."

Lucien took the bottle and glanced at it.

Then he tossed it off the altar without a second thought.

I went rigid.

Lucien stood at the top of the altar.

"I was never cursed," he said.

My hands were still cupped in the shape of holding the bottle, all ten fingers suspended in midair.

"Our parents never died, either."

"The Dragon Slaughter War six years ago, I planned it. The only one left crippled, with broken wings, was you."

Every night when my daughter comes home, she looks different.
On the first night, a little of her hair was gone.
On the second night, she was missing one hand.
On the third night, half of her body had vanished.
I jolted awake in a sudden start, thankful it had only been a nightmare.
Right then, my daughter came back home.
A patch of her hair was missing.

I am originally of royal vampire bloodline.
But because of one sentence from my adoptive father, I hid in the human world for decades.
The Church called me a "filthy heretic" because vampire blood flowed in my veins.
Yet they burned a blind girl to death, her crime being that she "couldn't see."
They burned an old blacksmith to death, his crime being that he wanted to learn medicine.
They burned a young mother to death, her crime being that she refused to be violated by the captain of the holy knights.
Bathed in holy light, I realized for the first time—
The demons... are in the light.

Four months pregnant, I walked into the OB-GYN clinic filled with joy—this was the child Archer and I had waited three years for.
But the moment the ultrasound report was handed to him, his gentle gray eyes twisted violently.
"Abort it. We absolutely cannot keep this child."
My stepfather watched coldly. The stepbrother who doted on me most slapped me hard across the face. My own mother wielded the scalpel and removed my uterus.
Half a month later, they picked me up from the hospital with roses, only to turn around and lock me away, feeding me psychiatric drugs until I died.
Reborn, I thought that as long as I hid the report, I could save my baby.
But they forced me onto the operating table once again.
It wasn't until I saw the report with my own eyes—
That I finally understood why my child had to die.

I've been married to billionaire Joseph Miller for three years. Pregnant three times. Aborted three times.

Every time, my husband stood outside the operating room, watching them wheel me in.

The first baby, my mother-in-law Victoria said had spinal deformities. The second, my father-in-law Richard showed a "report" claiming heart defects.

I believed them. I thought it was my fault, something wrong with my body.

Until the third pregnancy.

This time I secretly went to another hospital—DNA showed 99.9% match with Joseph, every prenatal indicator perfect.

I rushed home clutching the report, thinking I could finally save my child.

Victoria glanced at it and tossed it on the coffee table. "You are carrying a healthy baby. But the Miller family doesn't need it."

My in-laws forcibly dragged me to the clinic. I screamed to Joseph for help: "That's your child!"

His eyes were red, but he still let them kill my baby.

Desperate, I demanded a divorce. He coldly refused, tearing at my clothes: "Stop being dramatic. Time for the fourth."

I finally understood—I wasn't his wife. I was their breeding machine.

But why? Why force me to keep getting pregnant, only to kill every healthy baby?

Until that night, I pushed open the attic door that had been locked for three years—

And finally understood everything.

I spent five years letting men degrade me at a club, all to save $300,000 for my blind brother Joren's eye surgery.
The day I finally raised the money, I excitedly told him he would be able to see again—only to discover he was never blind to begin with.
My husband’s "bankrupt" company had been thriving all along. My parents, who supposedly died in a plane crash, had been living luxuriously abroad.
My husband even took my "stillborn" daughter and gave her to my adopted sister.
My entire family conned me for five years to "teach me a lesson"—all because my adopted sister claimed I bullied her.
Now, they are forcing me to donate my liver to the woman who stole my life, threatening that I'll never see my biological daughter again if I refuse.
But what they don't know is that I have terminal liver cancer, and I only have two days left to live...

I was driving my dad's luxury car to pick up a friend when his secretary stopped me on the spot.
She mistook me for the lover who had sex with my dad in his office.
So she used car theft as an excuse to drag me into the basement, beat me up, and took nude photos of me.
When my dad found out, he asked me to apologize to her.
That's when I realized that in his eyes, his reputation mattered more than his own daughter.
If that's the case, he doesn't need to be the figurehead CEO anymore.

We’ve been married for five years. Then, she got pregnant with someone else's child.
In front of everyone, she said: "Ethan doesn't want this baby. You've always wanted one, right? Fine, take it and raise it."
In that moment, I finally understood: she wasn’t incapable of loving someone—she simply never saw me as a human being.
I took off my wedding ring, left it on the tray, and bought a one-way ticket to the North. My family said I wouldn't survive in the frozen North; she said that without her, I was nothing.
Three years later, she tracked me down using the GPS hidden inside that ring. She pushed open the door to my attic room, finding only a note I’d left: "Don't look for me. We're square."

With one week left until the wedding, Henry Jones asked me to reschedule the date—for one simple reason:
“On our wedding day, I’m taking Ann to the hospital for her prenatal checkup.”
Ann is the widow of his brother Ethan. She’s also my half-sister. In that private room, they laughed at me for being “almost thirty and desperate to get married.”
Ann put on an innocent face. “If Rory is really in such a rush… I can reschedule my appointment.”
I wanted to break up, and Henry frowned as he lectured me:
“As her future sister-in-law, why do you have to fight her over this one day?”
I asked him, “Do you even remember what Friday is?”
He coaxed me softly: “One day earlier or later—what’s the difference?” I nodded and said “Fine,” thinking I could still swallow it.
Until I pressed my fingerprint to enter his office and overheard Ann questioning him about inheritance, and Henry answered under his breath, “It won’t come to that—I won’t let Rory get pregnant with my child.”
That was the moment I u

They gave him 24 hours to hand over the girl.
He gave them 30 seconds to regret .

Jack Cole was supposed to be nobody—just another quiet college student.
No records. No past. No trace he ever existed.

But when a powerful family tries to take his cousin as part of a dirty deal…
and a billionaire heiress becomes the target of a professional kill team…

Something buried comes back.

The campus?
Just his cover.

The truth?
He’s a weapon trained for war—
the kind governments deny, and enemies never see coming.

Now the richest family in the city wants him dead.
A private army is moving in.
And a global biotech empire is pulling strings from the shadows.

They think they’re hunting him.

They’re wrong.

Jack isn’t running.
He’s choosing who dies first.

I was dying — and he was loving someone else.
I left.
Now he wants me back… but will I let him?

Three days after I died, the morgue called my husband Sebastian to collect my ashes.
He was kissing another woman when he hit speaker, his voice cold and dismissive: "She's dead? Cremate her. Don't call me again."
And just like that, my body was wheeled into the cremation chamber.
When he finally showed up to collect my remains, he smashed the urn on the floor and ground every fragment of my ashes into the tile with his shoe.
"Playing dead? What a pathetic stunt," he sneered. "Tell her the anniversary of my mother's death is coming up. She'd better show up at the cemetery on her knees, or even if she really is dead, I'll scatter her ashes in the sewer myself."
But he didn't know—I truly was dead.
My soul was bound to him, forced to drift at his side as he planned a lavish wedding with his adopted sister Claire—his mother's true killer.
By the time he discovered the truth and exposed Claire at the altar, I had already vanished.
He lost his mind, racing to the ocean to search for my ashes.
Never knowing that the remains he'd crushed like garbage under his shoe—the "fake ashes" he'd dismissed as part of my act—
Were all that was left of me.

I was taking six-year-old Arabella to fit her dress for the theater's grand opening.
As we crossed the intersection, a truck suddenly lost control and T-boned our car.
When I opened my eyes again, an agonizing pain ripped through me. I opened my mouth to call out Everett's name, only to hear his hushed voice seeping through the crack in the door—
"Staging an unavoidable accident was the only way to use the emergency room as a cover for the drug trial."
"Now that Ophelia's treatment is a success, there's naturally no need for that little bastard to live."
My Arabella. She was secretly wheeled into the operating room by him, used as a human guinea pig for his mistress Delilah's daughter, who had bone cancer. Her sweet, bell-like vocal cords were cruelly carved out and transplanted into another child's throat.
In that defining moment, I realized he had never loved my daughter.
But what he didn't know—the child he just murdered with his own hands was his one and only flesh and blood.

Three years of marriage. Three pregnancies.

Every time I confirmed I was pregnant, my sister-in-law Ophelia would walk into the chapel behind the manor.

Then my in-laws would drag me to the hospital and force me to abort the healthy baby.

The night after my third miscarriage, I dragged my weakened body to follow her into the chapel.

The moment I pushed open that door, my blood ran cold.

In that instant, I finally understood why my three children had to die.

I was dragged to the stand of the MRI Memory Court by my own flesh and blood.

Their demand? To forcibly extract my kidney to keep their uremic adopted daughter alive.

A guilty verdict meant losing not just my bodily autonomy, but my freedom for the rest of my life.

Bathed in the global spotlight, my parents performed as tragic heroes, while their adopted saint cried a river of deceit.

They thought they had cornered the perfect victim, waiting for the world to send me to the slaughter.

But the moment the memory holograms ignited and reality bled through, the hunters instantly became the hunted.

I'm the forgotten eldest son of the Cross family.
My parents see me as a walking blood bag for my brother Colin, while my wife views me as a sinner destined to spend my life atoning for my mistakes.
When Audrey pressured me to donate a kidney, I agreed.
Not only did I agree, but I also liquidated all my assets and transferred them to my lab.
They thought I was foolish, that I was still begging for their love.
In reality, I was just tying up loose ends.
The night before the surgery, I coughed up a pool of blood.
Audrey laughed coldly over the phone: "Stop the act, Evan. You just want to dodge responsibility. You'll go to any lengths for attention."
The surgery was a "success."
Colin got the kidney he'd always dreamed of.
And I died in the recovery room.
My soul floated in the air as I watched Audrey push open the hospital door, wearing a smile that dripped with pity, ready to put on a show of "redemption."
"Evan, I know you've been wronged. Let's start over..."
The only response to her was the white sheet covering my lifeless body.

My adopted sister, Adriana, hit and injured Hadley Brooks—the prized mistress of Hartwell’s mafia boss, Dario Salvatore—and fled the scene.
Don Salvatore gave us exactly three days. And so, my husband and my parents all turned their eyes to me: Go take the fall for her. You always know how to fix things.
I agreed.
What they didn't know was that on that very same day, my doctor had given me my own deadline: I had, at most, three days left to live.

In their eyes, my wife Emma—an Ivy League tenured professor in biological sciences—is ruthless, rational, and obsessively clean.
For seven years, even when she washed her hands, she would only ever touch the right-side sink—hers.
Until that night at 3 a.m., when I pulled a strand of sandy-golden short curl—hair that belonged to neither of us—out of my men’s shower loofah.
And around the neck of a pre-med student named Lucas, I saw the antique silver cross my dying father left in my hands.
When I confronted her, my always-icy wife protected the little homewrecker, slapped me across the face, and called me a jealous, controlling chauvinist.
She thought I’d swallow it like a coward.
But she forgot: as a top cardiothoracic chief, the thing I do best is cutting out tumors.

On a stormy night, a horrific crash unfolded on the overpass. The victim was brought to the city forensic center.
My husband, Ethan, slipped on his gloves and expertly examined my shattered body, his voice detached. "Record this: Female, approximately twenty-five years old, suffered severe trauma before death."
His assistant sighed. "That's rough. Not a single family member showed up."
Just then, the assistant slid a misshapen silver band off my mud-streaked finger.
"Sir, this ring... isn't it identical to the one you keep in your desk drawer?"
With a sharp clatter, the scalpel slipped from Ethan's hand and hit the floor.

The Percy Family Heir's Scandal Leaks Again!

Cecilia Davis sat curled up in the master bedroom, scrolling through photos of Edward Percy and Jessica Brown.

The photos were taken secretly, but from a sharp angle.

Through a car window — the two of them, going at it hard.

Cecilia let out a cold laugh, tossed the photos into the trash, and felt a wave of deep exhaustion wash over her eyes.

"Do I really have to cut it?"

"Ma'am, this is Mr. Percy's request. Only if you cut your hair as short as Ms. Brown's can we clear up last night's rumors. Of course, you don't have to go — that is, if you never want to see your brother again."

Edward's assistant Leo spoke with a dismissive air, not a trace of respect in his eyes.

As if she, the so-called Mrs. Percy, was nothing more than a joke that nobody needed.

And honestly, that's exactly what she was.

I stayed in this city for Dorian, pushed my way into his company, and saved every penny for three years just so we could build a home together.
But an anonymous flash drive shoved a video of him cheating in our bed right into my face. The next day, a promotion announcement handed the position I’d bled for to the very woman who seduced him.
With my dignity crushed to dust, I had only one person left to rely on—my gentle, almost obsessively devoted stepbrother, Ambrose.
He promised to make those scumbags tear each other apart. He promised Dorian would crawl back to my feet like a dog.
He offered me a "secret recipe" with immediate results.
I expected a deeply satisfying revenge. I never imagined what that so-called recipe actually was...

On my due date, my husband Russell locked me in an underground freezer at minus ten degrees.

The Pembroke family's unbreakable rule: the first-born male inherits the entire mafia empire. My sister-in-law Natasha and I were both pregnant, our due dates only one day apart. To ensure his brother's child was born first, Russell made this insane decision.

"My brother and Natasha's baby has to come first—this is what you owe them!" He ignored my desperate pleas and violent contractions, coldly shoving me into the freezer.

But that wasn't enough. They forcibly injected me with labor-delaying drugs. I curled up in agony on the freezing concrete floor, feeling my baby slowly slipping away, tears of despair streaming down my face.

My baby, Mommy is so sorry...

My billionaire lover brought out a bespoke mermaid gown, declaring he would marry whoever could fit into it.
But in my past four lives, every woman who tried it on—whether an ambitious imposter or me, his true love—was brutally tortured and murdered by him.
In my fifth rebirth, the butler knocked on our door with a polite smile, "Mr. Voss says his true love is among you."
Since we four women would die no matter who wore it...
We exchanged a look in the dead silence, turned our heads in perfect unison, and locked our eyes onto the only man in the room.

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 flight plunged from over thirty thousand feet in the air.

Trigger/Content Warning:
This story contains mature themes and explicit content intended for adult audiences(18+). Reader discretion is advised.
It includes elements such as BDSM dynamics, explicit sexual content, toxic family relationships, occasional violence and strong language.
This is not a fluffy romance. It is intense, raw and messy, and explores the darker side of desire.


“Take off your dress, Meadow.”

“Why?”

“Because your ex is watching,” he said, leaning back into his seat. “And I want him to see what he lost.”

••••••••••••*
Meadow Russell was supposed to get married to the love of her life in Vegas. Instead, she walked in on her twin sister riding her fiance.

One drink at the bar turned to ten. One drunken mistake turned into reality. And one stranger’s offer turned into a contract that she signed with shaking hands and a diamond ring.

Alaric Ashford is the devil in a tailored Tom Ford suit. Billionaire CEO, brutal, possessive. A man born into an empire of blood and steel.
He also suffers from a neurological condition—he can’t feel. Not objects, not pain, not even human touch.

Until Meadow touches him, and he feels everything. And now he owns her. On paper and in his bed.
She wants him to ruin her. Take what no one else could have. He wants control, obedience… revenge.
But what starts as a transaction slowly turns into something Meadow never saw coming.

Obsession, secrets that were never meant to surface, and a pain from the past that threatens to break everything.

Alaric doesn’t share what’s his.
Not his company.
Not his wife.
And definitely not his vengeance.

The day I get diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, I can finally stop selling plasma.

For five years, I thought I was paying for the fire that killed my parents and son, left my brother disabled. Selling plasma, joining drug trials, doing the worst jobs imaginable, all to pay back a debt that wasn't even real.

The doctor says I have a few weeks left. I clutch the diagnosis report and head home to tell them.

The moment I push open the door, I see my parents in the kitchen, the ones who supposedly died in the fire. My brother, who was supposed to be in a wheelchair, stands there raising a glass, laughing with my husband.

My brother shrugs like it's nothing. "The broken leg was fake the whole time. You were the only one hurt in the fire. We just wanted to teach you a lesson, make you appreciate things."

"We were going to tell you eventually." My husband pats my shoulder. "Go apologize to Vanessa. Stop giving her a hard time."

"All the money you gave us went to Vanessa," Dad says. "That's what you get for throwing your bio-daughter status in her face."

I touch the diagnosis in my pocket. Everything was a lie. The only truth is that I'm dying.

After three years of agonizing IVF, I was forced into three abortions. The reason? My mafia in-laws’ pet bird stared at my belly and shrieked, "End it."
Even when I was carrying healthy twins, my own parents held me down and forced abortion pills down my throat. My husband—the man I once took a bullet for—watched coldly. "Listen to the bird. Abort."
Lying in a pool of blood, I finally discovered the horrific truth. There was no "sacred bird." My marriage, my ruined womb, and all the IVF tortures were actually part of a terrifying conspiracy.
On my fourth pregnancy, the bird finally decreed, "Keep it!"
As the whole family treated me like a queen and rejoiced to welcome their precious heir, I quietly walked into the operating room.
Armed with lethal evidence, I crashed their grand succession ceremony.
You want an heir? I’ll send you all to hell instead.

My five-year-old son, Emrys, was poisoned by the deadly "Silver Eclipse." The only cure, Moonbloom Serum, had been seized entirely by my husband, Corvin, to save it for his nine-month-pregnant mistress, Melisande.
He froze all my bank accounts, forcing me to pawn the ring that symbolized my status as Luna and brave the dangerous black market just to secure the antidote.
But by the time I rushed back to the hospital, covered in blood, my child’s organs had already failed. He was gone.
When I threw the death certificate and divorce papers in Corvin’s face in despair, he just looked at me with mockery, accusing me of using our own flesh and blood to put on an act for his attention.
At that moment, all my love for him died completely. I took my son’s ashes, left the Ashmere pack, and decisively severed a mate bond that had tied us together for years...

I died on the second Sunday of May.
Mother’s Day.
My biological mother, the top neurologist in the United States, was standing in front of my corpse.
She looked at the bedsores all over my body, at the ribs that had been stomped broken, and explained coldly to hundreds of cameras:
“Trash from the bottom of society, covered in needle marks like this, doesn’t deserve to dirty my dissection table.”
She didn’t know that the “social garbage” she called a pill-seeking self-harmer was the son she had abandoned ten years ago.
When the cold scalpel cut open my chest, an old photograph stained with black blood slipped out.
The moment she saw it, the woman who had stood above everyone else—
went completely insane…

For six years, I wore Pack silver. I sold my blood. I scrubbed silver out of Pack den floors. I slept on a basement floor — all to pay off my mate's Pack debt and buy my brother's wolfsbane antidote.
Today, with the receipt finally signed, my brother looked at me and said:
"Seren, I was never poisoned. Our parents aren't dead either. The Rogue raid six years ago — I arranged it. The only wolf hurt that night was you."
My mate stepped up behind him: "I never lost my Pack rank either. I've been at the estate the whole time."
Then my parents — the ones I'd buried seven years ago — walked through the door.
The Pack physician had given me forty-eight hours left to live.
They were going to remember every single one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The day my all-powerful wife personally handed me over to the mob's basement, she was shielding my identical twin brother, furiously accusing me of destroying his ability to carry on the family line.
To compensate for my brother's "trauma," my parents stood by and did nothing. Using her influence, my wife pressured me to take his place at a black-market clinic, testing a lethal drug.
They thought I was just going to suffer some physical hardship, that after enduring these two weeks, everything would be happily resolved.
But they didn't know I had already been poisoned by my brother. I was dying.
I died in agony on the cold operating table. As my body was being gnawed and rotted by rats, they were happily vacationing by the sea.
Only when the lies were exposed did my wife kick down the hidden door. Holding my maggot-infested, decaying flesh, she wept until she vomited blood, then went mad and swallowed a bullet. My parents watched their family shattered and wept on their knees.

My brother Soren is a figure skating prodigy. Every dollar in our house, every hour, every scrap of attention — all his.
Me? I'm the kid who doesn't need to be seen.
The night before Nationals, I told my mom my stomach hurt so bad I could barely stand. She said I was making trouble. Dad told me to take a painkiller and tough it out. Then they loaded up the car and drove two hundred miles to watch Soren skate.
They didn't come home until Sunday night. By then, I'd been dead for over a day.
I called her. Again and again. She had her phone on airplane mode.
Now I'm a ghost, drifting behind their car on the highway home. They're laughing, complaining I didn't even text Soren a congratulations.
I wonder what their faces will look like when they walk through that door.

At four, they shattered both my legs. At six, they ruptured my left eardrum. At seven, they took my right eye—said I'd earn more sympathy begging blind.
After twelve years in hell, my billionaire parents finally found me.
The girl who stole my life grabbed my wrist, nails digging into my skin. "Dare take what's mine, and I'll break whatever's left of your legs."
I smiled, unclipping both prosthetics to show empty pant legs. "I don't have legs left."
She was terrified.

Three years since I married into the Hawthorne family, I had already lost two children.
And the one who decided whether my babies lived or died wasn't a doctor—it was a potted plant in the manor's living room: the Crimson Orchid.
In this family, if the petals withered and reeked after drinking the pregnancy blood, it was an unbreakable rule: the child had to go.
The first two times, all I could do was lose my children in despair under the anesthetic mask at some underground clinic.
To save my third pregnancy, I secretly went to a top medical center out of state for an amniocentesis.
The diagnosis, there in black and white, proved it: my baby was perfectly healthy and carried the purest family bloodline.
I thought I was safe this time. But when my finger blood dripped into the black soil again, the orchid once more oozed foul-smelling black water.
My in-laws crushed my medical report underfoot without mercy and had their people drag me toward the operating table.
I couldn't understand it: the scientific evidence clearly confirmed my child was healthy and pure-blooded.
Why did they insist on trusting a mutated, stinking flower and killing their own grandchildren over and over again?

My brother Miles blames me for our parents' deaths.
So he chose to adopt the deaf Vivian instead of keeping me.
Later, I met Sullivan.
He gave me a grand confession. He chose me, resolutely.
He also said I hired someone to assault Vivian—that I didn't deserve sympathy.
Five years after being cast out of my family, a dismembered female body was found inside a carnival mascot costume.
Miles, now a police officer, led the investigation. Sullivan, now a forensic pathologist, performed the autopsy.
They saw the bloodstained hearing aid and immediately called Vivian.
"I'm fine. I just saw the news—some big case. Should we tell Sis to be careful too? What if something happens to her?"
They refused, almost in unison.
"The moment she killed our parents, she stopped being my sister."
"She was jealous of you. She did too many terrible things. If she's dead, she had it coming."
My soul hovered in the air, watching them. I laughed until I cried.
But when they found out the victim was me—
Why did they both go mad?

I thought losing my husband was the worst thing fate could do to me.

For over a year, I lived in a pack that never accepted me, holding on because Soren—the Alpha who chose me despite his family's objections—was always by my side.

Then he died.

Our mate bond was shattered.

I thought I had lost the only man I'd ever love.

I was wrong.

Because Soren's best friend had been watching me from the shadows.

Fenric Silvermane.

The most powerful Alpha in the kingdom. The last man I should ever want.

One month after Soren's death, I finally stood beside Fenric at our mating ceremony, ready to choose a future.

Then Soren burst in.

Alive.

My dead husband had just walked into my mating ceremony.

I couldn't breathe.

I thought fate was asking me to choose between the husband I lost and the man I learned to love.

I was wrong.

It wanted all three of us.

One was my husband.

One was the man my wolf chose.

And I had no idea how to survive loving them both.

I died—not in the way you'd expect, but slowly, painfully, while he was entangled with her.

He called her his savior, the woman who sold everything to rescue his failing empire. Little did he know, it was my money, my life's work, that he squandered.

The betrayal burned hotter than any flame, and I vowed he'd pay.

Now, he's gone—a leap from the heights he once ruled, his fall as swift as his rise.

My husband, Callum, never loved me. On our wedding night, he panted another woman’s name.
For five years, I endured a cold, loveless marriage. The only reason I held on was my daughter, Tessa.
But on the eve of her fourth birthday, Callum went behind my back and personally delivered her to his mistress Seraphina's underground lab.
The moment my daughter was drained of her blood and her heart stopped beating on that operating table, he was drinking champagne with Seraphina to celebrate their success.
From the moment I walked out of the crematorium holding Tessa’s freezing urn, the submissive wife I used to be died.

"No one touches what belongs to Alessandro De Luca. Not his business. Not his empire. And certainly not his woman."
"I'm not your possession."
"Wrong," he murmured. "You're my wife. That makes you both."
She became his wife to repay a debt.
He vowed to destroy her for a past drenched in blood.
At fifteen, Rose's fate was quietly sold by the man she trusted most—her father.
At twenty-two, she's forced into marriage with Alessandro De Luca, the ruthless Italian mafia boss feared across continents. To the world, their union is a cold arrangement. To Alessandro, it's a weapon—his slow-burning punishment for the enemy's daughter.
But what Rose doesn't know is that her father once committed an unforgivable crime—and her mother died keeping the truth buried.
Alessandro vowed to shatter whoever destroyed his family. He never planned to fall for the enemy's daughter.
Trapped between a husband who burns with revenge and a father who thrives on lies, Rose must fight to survive the war ignited in her name.
Because in the mafia… love is just another weapon.
And the most dangerous man she's ever met is her husband.

As the tyrant ruling the underworld, Victor was ruthless and bloodthirsty, showing no mercy to anyone.

Women who tried to climb into his bed usually didn’t even get a whole corpse, yet I was the only one he kept by his side.

I’d taken a poisoned bullet for him, and nearly bled to death on the rotting floor of a safe house giving birth to his son.

He once kissed the bullet scar on my shoulder and promised me that when he sat on the godfather’s throne, I would be his only family matriarch.

But the moment he slipped on that black onyx ring symbolizing power, he carried another woman into the master bedroom of the manor.

I burst for the door, and he ordered his bodyguards to pin me outside, forcing me to listen to their sounds of passion all night long.

I banged on the door like a madwoman, so he slammed my paintbrush-wielding right hand in the heavy oak doorframe and crushed it mercilessly.

I finally caved when he threatened to cut off my mother’s hospital treatment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm back.

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

A gang boss ground my treasured staff into dust with one boot. “A gutter-bred bastard from the slums, and you’re hiding something this delicate? Cripple him. Let him learn who runs this turf.”
I stared at the silver-white powder on the floor. It was the last relic my brothers left me.
I once swore these hands would be used only to save people, never to kill again.
But today, even the heavens refused to allow it.
I lifted my head slowly. The elven ears I’d kept lowered in submission rose one by one in the dark, sharp as a wolf’s.
“You’re asking me who runs this turf?”
My fist snapped out and caved in the boss’s nose.
I twisted backhanded. Three elite enforcers had their bones shattered in an instant, collapsing like sacks of rotten meat.
I grabbed the boss by the throat with one hand and hoisted his two-hundred-pound body into the air, eyes cold as if I were staring at a corpse.
“Three years ago, when I laid down the rules in this district, you didn’t even know where you were playing in the mud.”
“My things are not for you to touch.”

BLURB

“I don’t love Selena anymore. All I see is a broken shell…a barren woman.”

Those words, spoken by my husband behind the closed door of his study, were the jagged shards of glass that finally shattered my world.

For years, I endured the physical agony of ten miscarriages and five failed IVFs, believing Franklin was the anchor holding me together. I didn’t know I was actually the anchor dragging him down.

He wants a divorce.

He wants a woman who can give him the family I couldn't.

He wants to be free of the burden of a wife who is falling apart.

But Franklin doesn't know my biggest secret. It isn't just my womb that is failing; it’s my entire body.

I am dying.

Stage four cancer is aggressive, and my time is measured in hours, not years.

I could tell him the truth.

I could watch him stay out of pity, trapped by guilt for the rest of my numbered days, but I love him too much to let him become my martyr.

So, I’ve made him a deal.

I will sign the divorce papers and walk out of his life forever but first, I want twenty-one hours.

One hour for every year we’ve known each other.

One last day to pretend we are still the awkward intern and the protective man who fell in love.

He thinks he’s spending these hours saying goodbye to a woman he no longer wants.

He has no idea he’s actually saying goodbye to a woman who will be dead before the ink on our divorce papers is even dry.

Twenty-one hours of lies.

Twenty-one hours of love.

And then, I’ll let him go.

Forever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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