8961 Book(s) Related to the tyrant wants to live honestly 6

MURDER IN THE MANOR (A LACEY DOYLE COZY MYSTERY—BOOK 1) is the debut novel in a charming new cozy mystery series by Fiona Grace. Lacey Doyle, 39 years old and freshly divorced, needs a drastic change. She needs to quit her job, leave her horrendous boss and New York City, and walk away from the fast life. Making good on her childhood promise to herself, she decides to walk away from it all, and to relive a beloved childhood vacation in the quaint English seaside town of Wilfordshire.Wilfordshire is exactly as Lacey remembers it, with its ageless architecture, cobblestone streets, and with nature at its doorstep. Lacey doesn’t want to go back home—and spontaneously, she decides to stay, and to give her childhood dream a try: she will open her own antique shop.Lacey finally feels that her life is taking a step in the right direction—until her new star customer turns up dead.As the newcomer in town, all eyes are on Lacey, and it’s up to her to clear her own name.With a business to run, a next-door neighbor turned nemesis, a flirty baker across the street, and a crime to solve – is this new life all that Lacey thought it would be?Book #2 in the series—DEATH AND A DOG—is also available for preorder!

Her hands slid up to his chest, palms flat, feeling the solid strength beneath his shirt. The fear didn’t vanish completely. But it quieted. Receded into the background. Logan’s thumb brushed her cheek, slow and grounding, as his other hand settled at her waist.

The kiss grew warmer. Slower. Logan felt it too, sharp and electric. His wolf stirred restlessly, recognizing something it shouldn’t, something it wanted to claim even as his mind warned him to stop. He broke the kiss first, breathing hard, forehead resting against hers.

“Emily,” he murmured, strained. “We should—” She didn’t let him finish. Her lips brushed his jaw, tentative, almost questioning. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Don’t send me away.”


After being betrayed forty-eight times by her mate, Oscar, Emily is drugged and offered to powerful wolves for his gain. Desperate and fleeing danger, she collapses into the arms of Lucas Walker, one of seven feared Alpha Brothers who rule the strongest pack. Drawn to her by an unstoppable pull, the brothers vow to protect her. But Emily’s past hides a darker secret, one that fate has bound to all of them.

They told me my daughter drowned. Too much to drink, a slick deck, a terrible accident.

Then they put a number on her, slid the check across the table, and asked me to sign away the right to ever ask how she died.

I signed.

They didn't ask what I'd do after.

I changed my name. I spent three years earning a desk in their building, close enough to hear the man who buried her joke about the father who "made some noise, took the money, and went away."

He doesn't know my face. None of them do.

They thought the money bought my silence.

They have no idea what it bought.

Missing for five years, I dragged my slightly crippled left leg back to the slums.

Only to see my once-gentle wife wearing a cheap, fraying apron, being mercilessly humiliated in front of a greasy sink.
My five-year-old son was cowering beside a pile of garbage, clutching a broken toy, trembling in fear.

A high-and-mighty tycoon slapped a three-million-dollar IOU across my face. A thug kicked a plate of rancid, rotting meat scraps to my feet, sneering, "Lick it clean, and I'll waive ten thousand in interest."

Desperate to protect me, my wife pushed me away, only to be brutally kicked into the muddy water by a bodyguard, revealing a back covered in a suffocating, horrific lattice of burn marks and whip scars.

Everyone thought I was just a crippled piece of trash—a useless man who couldn't even protect his own wife and child.
That was, until I reached into my coat and pulled out a black satellite phone that had gathered dust for five years.

"Disable Ghost Silence Protocol. Initiate full takeover."

That night, eight heavy attack helicopters tore through the clouds, blotting out the sky.
Hundreds of fully armed, elite special operatives descended from above. Dropping to one knee in the freezing mud, they roared in unison: "Welcome back, Young Master!"

The entire city’s municipal assets, the police force, the underworld—both the light and the dark—could be reduced to ashes with a single thought from me.

I took off my tattered jacket and draped it gently over my wife's trembling shoulders. Then, I crushed the tycoon's mechanical prosthetic limb with my bare hands. My voice was calm, yet it sent a chilling shockwave through everyone present:

"Three million? I just did the math on the scars you owe my wife..."
"Now, you owe me thirty billion."

An epic cold snap struck, causing temperatures to plummet to minus eighty degrees Celsius.
My fiancée and best friend occupied my hillside villa, laughing hysterically as they watched a video of me nearly freezing to death.
In their eyes, once I turned into a solid block of ice, they could rightfully inherit my vast fortune and live in this warm, doomsday Noah's Ark.
But what they didn't know was that the video was n't real at all .
I stood in the temperature-controlled bunker twenty meters below them and cut off their main power.
The hunt was about to begin.

"Aveline, a world without you means nothing to me."
The dragon's scalding blood splattered across my tombstone, melting the thick blanket of snow.
Five minutes ago, he had severed the crimson fox's head—vengeance for me.
I died at the hands of my most cherished companion, died in a carefully orchestrated betrayal. I'd wielded the full power of the Court to elevate that pitiful low-born wretch to godhood, only for him to join forces with my dear sister and plunge a blade into my heart from behind.
And the dragon war god I had scorned—the one I'd humiliated and treated as nothing more than a beast slave—defied imperial decree, razed an entire city, and severed his own life force. All for me.
I watched his dragonfire extinguish completely in the bitter cold. My soul reached out to embrace him, but passed through nothing but endless snow.
Until a blinding light pierced through my vision.
When I opened my eyes again, I found myself staring up at the familiar domed ceiling of the Celestial Hall.
I had returned to three years ago, to the Binding Ceremony that sealed my fate.
Reborn into a second chance, those vermin who climbed to power on dragon bones will finally get the hell they deserve.

A mouth after my best friend Laura jumped to her death following a rape, I was dragged onto a makeshift stage in St. John's High auditorium by a mob of vengeful students.
They accused me of protecting the real rapist—of being complicit in driving Laura to suicide.
My boyfriend Zayne Spencer, also Laura's childhood friend, was coldly pressing the sensors of a "memory extractor" against my temples.
The agony from my terminal illness made me shake violently, but he didn't even flinch.
He stared down at me, his eyes ice-cold. "Helen, last chance. Either you give up that bastard yourself, or I let this machine rip it out of you."
Thousands of students were screaming for my blood.
And Zayne was about to crack open my skull in this livestreamed witch hunt to drag out the so-called culprit.
But he had no idea that when that face finally flashed across the giant screen, the first person to shatter completely would be him.

Five years after breaking the mate bond, Vincent became one of the youngest Alphas of the North, worth hundreds of billions, with a fiancée who was a perfect match for him — the daughter of Silver Claw Pack’s Alpha.
But I had already disappeared from his world, my name now only whispered in rumors about me being a bar hostess at Midnight Howl Bar, catering to Alphas and nobility.
When someone mentioned my name to him, he simply held his fiancée’s hand with a cold look in his eyes.
"I don't know her."
At his bonding ceremony, everyone congratulated the "perfect match."
But I, floating in the air, watched as Vincent stood beside his dazzling Luna.
What he didn't know...
He was the only Alpha I ever loved.
What he didn’t know...
I had been dead for a year.
Before I died, I was desperately earning money just to get our daughter the treatment she needed.
Then one day...
He found me at the Midnight Howl Bar where I worked in life, catching a faint but familiar scent of me. That moment...
His wolf spirit completely lost control.

By day, I was the ruthless Director of Finance working under mafia heir Silvan. By night, I was the secret lover he kept locked away in a guest room.
He gave me luxury cars, a mansion, and endless money, but never a title. I thought he was protecting me—until he packaged both the title of his official wife and my position as CFO, handing them over to Aurea Moretti, a prominent mafia heiress.
And that arrogant man? He casually tossed me a diamond ring like a handout to pacify me. "Titles are just an illusion. Even if I marry someone else, you’ll always be the woman I care about most."
He even had the audacity to offer me a seaside villa, thinking he could keep me forever as his underground mistress in another city.
Looking at his cold, entitled eyes, I finally smiled.
On the day of his engagement to the mafia heiress, I took off the ring and vanished from this city completely.

"Your husband is cheating on you."
That one message shattered Mia's perfect life.
Her loving husband? A liar.
His sweet words and late nights? Cover-ups for a double betrayal.
The worst part? One of them is engaged—to another man.
Determined to uncover the truth, Mia teams up with Colin—the heartbroken fiancé of her husband's mistress. What starts as a cold alliance soon turns into something more, as they unravel betrayal, lies, and twisted desires.
Now, with cameras rolling, secrets exposed, and hearts breaking, Mia must choose: walk away with dignity… or fight fire with fire.
When love is lost and revenge tastes sweet—
What do you do when you catch them cheating?

Book 8.5: Mercerian Tales: Honour Thy Ancestors Driven from their ancestral home by the Humans, the Orcs are forced to eke out an existence until one hunter dares to defy tradition. They had one sacred rule. Never, under any circumstances, go into the mud hut  Unlike other young Orcs, Urgon sees it as a challenge, and he's prepared to risk everything to unlock its secrets. Shrouded in mystery, what's inside reveals a hidden past of his people, leading him to question all that he thought he knew.  Urgon's father sacrificed himself for the future of the tribe—will he now do the same?  Mercerian Tales: Honour Thy Ancestors delves into the rich history of the Orcs of the Black Arrow by following the rise to power of their greatest chieftain, Urgon. Although best read between books eight and nine of the Heir to the Crown series, this book can also be read as a stand-alone tale.   Reach into the past to discover the future as you begin Honour Thy Ancestors today!

Corinne Baxter's father was an accountant. Quiet, careful, the kind of man who alphabetized the spice rack. Then someone puts a bullet in him and calls it a robbery. The only thing he leaves her is a claim ticket for a safety deposit box registered under a name she's never heard: Sorrentino.
To open that box, she needs Griffin Sorrentino, heir to the family half the city is afraid of, and the man everyone says ordered the hit. Griffin agrees to help her. He also refuses to explain why. Every answer he gives creates two more questions, and every night she spends inside his house convinces her a little more that the danger isn't coming from him.
It's coming from the one person she trusted enough to call for help.

When that dealer tortured me, my dad, a narcotics cop, and my mom, the city’s chief medical examiner, were busy celebrating my sister’s win in the volleyball semifinals. To get back at my dad for destroying his drug network three years earlier, that man cut my throat. Right before I died, I called my dad. Before I hung up, he said, “Cut it out. Serena’s game is what mattered most right now.”

"She's dying, can't you be more generous?" That's what my husband said.
So I was generous.
I gave her my husband's time when our daughter was in the ER for an allergic reaction she caused.
I gave her my once-in-a-lifetime concert ticket because "she deserved it more."
I even endured our daughter wishing I would die in her place.
But when he accused me of orchestrating a kidnapping to win his sympathy, I knew my generosity had run out. I threw the divorce papers in his face. He laughed, thinking I couldn't survive without him.
He's about to find out how wrong he is.

My pack's golden girl—my adopted sister—vanished. On my eighteenth birthday—the day my wolf should have awakened—my parents dragged me to a witch.
"Show us what you did to her."
Fine. Let them look.
Let them see who drugged me the day I came home. Who stole credit while I bled. Who smiled while planning my destruction.
They chose their precious Rosalie over me for three years.
They wanted the truth?
They were about to choke on it.

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.

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.

Born between two kingdoms at war, Astrid Stone’s life has been marked by pain and misfortune, condemned to live as a slave within her own palace.
She is the princess no one wants, the shadow of a lineage that despises her.
When the new wolf king, Lysander Rowan, forces her to marry him to avenge his father, both are trapped in a union forged by hatred… and consumed by a desire neither can deny.
As their love grows and her true nature awakens, Astrid must choose between loyalty to her past or a forbidden love that threatens to destroy them both.
In a world where blood dictates destiny, can love defy the moon?

In our third year of surviving the wasteland, my companions and I finally realized it was all a reality show.

The elites and billionaires on the outside had built a massive dome, tossing us into this irradiated hellhole to be tortured. They broadcasted it globally, watching us drink toxic wastewater and eat mutated meat, treating us like monkeys in a zoo.

The mole in our team knelt in the mud, sobbing, begging me to understand that it was all a script—that as long as I played along, I could live.

Without a second thought, I swung my blade. Right in front of ten million VIP viewers, I chopped off his leg.

"Crappy script," I sneered, kicking aside the severed limbs and blood on the floor. Gripping my machete, I walked toward the real world beyond the heavy gates.

To those who used our lives for entertainment: I'm coming for yours.

My ex and I used to live inside a romance movie.

She was the heroine’s best friend. I was the hero’s loyal sidekick. When the leads got their happy ending, we—the two “extras”—ended up together like an afterthought.

Then the credits rolled, and real life didn’t. The heroine died in a car crash, the hero fell apart, and my girlfriend chose that moment to leave me.

She said she was done being a supporting role. She wanted the spotlight—she wanted the heroine’s place.

I didn’t beg. I left the city alone and started over from nothing.

Five years later, I returned with my own company group—and ran into her again at a charity gala.

She still looked flawless, moving through the room of power and money, keeping up the image of success. She assumed I was still the same guy trailing behind someone else, and she spoke to me with that familiar, pitying superiority—offering to “help” me back into the circle.

Until the lights dimmed, and the host read my name with respectful clarity, inviting me to the stage.

That was when she realized the gala’s biggest sponsor was me—and the “sidekick” she thought she’d left behind was now someone she could never reach again.

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.

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.

Ophelia was born the weakest wolf in the pack, mocked, beaten, and treated like nothing. All she ever dreamed of was the day the Moon Goddess would give her a mate who would love her despite her flaws.

But when her fated mate was revealed, he didn’t claim her. He crushed her.

“I, Alpha Dominic, reject you as my mate. You will never be my Luna.”

The words tore her apart, and the pack’s laughter sealed her fate. Cast out, abandoned, and left to die, she thought her story had ended.

But the broken girl they discarded rose. The weak omega become stronger than them all. And the Alpha who rejected her bow at her feet.

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."

Daphne Anderson has always longed for genuine love, whatever the form. She searched for it in her father and his horrid second wife even after her mother’s demise. Temporarily, she had found a sort of true love with her fiancé, until everything shattered when she caught him cheating.
Barely a week after the shocking discovery, she is presented with news of her father’s failing business – debts that ran into millions, failed investments and an impending bank foreclosure. The proposed solution was getting married to some Mysterious billionaire.
It was such a ridiculous offer - one that she would’ve tossed in the bin, if she were in her right senses. But being fresh out of a nasty breakup and her father’s sudden poor heart conditions, she flings caution to the wind and serves herself up as the ‘sacrificial bride’, especially if it’d stop everyone from breathing down her neck.
Daphne finds herself trapped in a web of family secrets, shocking revelations - and newfound desires… She has to make choices that will determine the pathway of her life. Will she find the strength to break free from the suffocating expectations and forge her own path? only hoping the sun doesn’t set on her fate yet? as time can be her greatest ally or foe.

Ava Duval gave up everything for love. She left a promising fashion career and poured five years of her life into building a multimillion-dollar empire from the bottom with her husband by her side.

She was a bubbly woman until she lost her children during delivery, and out of her husband's love, or so she thought, he adopted twins for her, and she raised them as her own.

She was blessed to have a supportive husband and did not hesitate to give him her kidney when she heard that he was terribly ill. She gave him pieces of herself until the truth surfaced.

Her pregnancy had been purposely sabotaged; the children were never adopted but are her husband's blood, borne by his mistress, and the kidney she had donated never went to her husband.

She realizes too late that she sacrificed everything for a man whose heart was with another woman. Now, she has to rebuild herself with the scars she has gotten from marriage.

Will she forgive him, claim her revenge for every cruel thing that has been done to her, or pick up the pieces and move on? Or will she do all three until her heart is finally satisfied?

BLURB

My breath hitched, my chest heaving as Salvatore's finger thrust into my pussy. I clenched my teeth, my fingers squeezing the bedsheets as I shamelessly parted my legs even wider.

“Do you want me to stop?” His voice was a low growl.

“No,” I breathed. “Faster…please,” I moaned loudly.

I knew Salvatore's and my attraction to each other was forbidden; he was the heir to a wealthy family, and I was just a maid in his house. But I have had an attraction to him since I met him and couldn't control it.

We both couldn't.


Lyra Whitman is from a poor home and has faced constant bullying in school. She and her mother finally moved away to a new city, where they her mother works as a maid for the Sinclair's, one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the county.

Lyra cannot help but fall for their son, and she is surprised to see that he feels the same. Knowing the dangers of being together due to their different backgrounds, they are forced to navigate their relationship in secret.

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

A short contemporary domestic-drama romance. Clean to sweet. Happily ever after.

My husband's family slid the folder across the table — sign here, family helps family, it's just a signature.

What they didn't know: I had almost three million dollars in an account none of them could find. I silenced the alert before the number could glow.

They think we're the broke ones. For four years they've bled the kindest man I know dry, dressing every demand up as love and cashing it. So I let them keep believing it — and I built a wall they will never see.

They're about to find out what happens when you spend a lifetime underestimating the quiet one.

And this time, I'm not the one who pays.

The day he proposed, Atticus knelt before me, holding the Hale family's heirloom necklace.
I thought I had finally survived the ordeal.
After eight years of unrequited love, being humiliated by his sister, nitpicked by his mother, and mocked by the city's socialites for being unworthy of the Hales... Until this very moment, when he personally fastened the heirloom around my neck. Everyone saw it. I, Clara, was finally accepted by the Hale family.
Tears in my eyes, I said yes, thinking it was the happiest moment of my life.
But just days after putting on that necklace, bizarre red rashes crawled up my neck. My pale skin rotted away piece by piece, and my internal organs went into irreversible failure.
The most absurd part? The exact same day I started rotting, his dying mother miraculously cured her terminal illness, and his sister's half-destroyed face was restored to flawless perfection.
Disfigured and barely looking human, I threw myself off the Harbour Bridge—
I opened my eyes, and I was back on the day of the proposal.

The day college decisions came out, my parents bought my twin sister a Porsche.
It was my eighteenth birthday too. Nobody brought it up. I stood in the doorway in my diner uniform while the whole room sang her name.
That night the four of them went out to dinner to celebrate her. The car only sat four, so my father handed me a hundred dollars and told me to order myself something at home.
Four days later, six thousand four hundred dollars vanished from my account. Two years of washing dishes, gone to her sorority dues. My mother's name was on the account, so it wasn't even illegal.
I didn't scream and I didn't beg. I went upstairs and clicked Accept on the full ride to MIT that had been sitting in my inbox for three days.
Nobody in that house ever wanted me. So I booked a one-way ticket, cut myself out of the family photo, and left my key on the shoe rack.
I wasn't coming back. Not for graduation. Not for any of them.

Five years into living with my stepbrother Gideon, the scholarship girl he sponsored moved into our house.
To repay his "generosity," she made a habit of slipping into his bed at night. By day, she took it upon herself to "fix" my antisocial, withdrawn personality.
Three days before St. George Prep's graduation ceremony, she brought me a glass of juice wearing that nauseating sugar-sweet smile.
"You know, Charlotte, your peanut allergy is probably psychosomatic. You just need some exposure therapy. Let me help you get over it."
That night, my throat closed completely. She'd deliberately laced my drink with concentrated peanut extract.
I convulsed on the cold hardwood floor, vision tunneling as oxygen fled my lungs.
In the last second before darkness swallowed me whole, I clawed desperately toward the half-open door.
Standing in the hallway were my boyfriend Dylan and my stepbrother Gideon.
They simply watched me suffocate. Then Gideon calmly reached out and shut the door.
I died from anaphylactic shock.
Three months later, as a ghost tethered to this world, I watched her stride onto Stanford's campus. Wearing my clothes. Carrying my acceptance letter. Burning through my trust fund.
Through the crowd, I saw Gideon—my ice-cold, unreachable stepbrother—gently cradle her face and press his lips to hers.
Then I gasped awake.
I was back. Three days before graduation.

Six months ago, my parents started fostering a girl named Lila Mercer.
Six months ago, Mom repainted the guest room and strung fairy lights over the bed. My room still has the same furniture I've had since I was twelve.
Six months ago, Dad started coming home for Sunday dinner. Not for me. I'd been eating alone at the counter for years by then.
Six months ago, Mom posted a photo of the two of them at the farmers market. Caption: our family is growing. I saw it during third period and locked my phone hard enough to crack the case.
So when I picked up the family iPad tonight and a notification popped up from an app I didn't recognize, I wasn't shocked. Just tired of being right.
The app was called Beacon.

“Dad… please… help me…” I pleaded, my shattered ribs piercing my lungs, blood soaking the stretcher.
But Richard, the hospital's top surgeon and my biological father, didn't even glance at me. Instead, he rushed to the next bed.
“Don't be afraid, Chloe. I'm here,” he cooed to his stepdaughter, who merely had a tiny scratch on her arm. “Get the best equipment over here now!” he roared.
As the heart monitor flatlined and my soul left my broken body, I realized the chilling truth: in the choice between life and death, my father gladly let me die.

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…

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 used to be the most envied female on the continent. Three mates: werewolf Alpha Kael, vampire lord Dorian, elven ranger Seth. All of them mine.
Then a half-elf drifter named Ayla showed up, and everything I had started belonging to her instead, one piece at a time.
Kael once pulled a fang from his own mouth to make me a necklace. The day it broke, he was too busy licking another female's cut finger to notice.
Dorian spent two weeks brewing me blood wine. Then he handed the cup straight to her, because apparently I "looked healthy enough to go without."
Seth carved me a charm from sacred elven wood. I watched her face take shape under his knife instead of mine.
They kept telling me I needed to grow up. So when a beast's poison was spreading through my body, and I blew the whistle they swore would bring them running no matter what—
No one came.
Three years later, I walked back into their world on a Siren prince's arm.
This time, they're the ones begging for my forgiveness.

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.

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 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."