8997 Book(s) Related to the many daughters of afong moy a novel

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.

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

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

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.

To pay for her daughter’s leukemia treatment, Nora takes every job she can find. But the wedding she’s hired to plan belongs to the one man she never expected to see again.
Five years ago, Xie Yanchen was her first love. Now he’s a powerful CEO… and about to marry another woman. Worse, she must plan their wedding herself.
What he doesn’t know is that she secretly gave birth to his child.
What she doesn’t know is that this reunion will change both their lives forever.
As the truth slowly comes to light, he realizes the woman he once lost has spent five desperate years raising his daughter alone.

The apocalypse arrives, rain stops worldwide, outdoor temperatures soar to 60 degrees Celsius, and everyone fights and loses their humanity over a single drop of water.
But I gave away dozens of cases of bottled water that I had stockpiled at home to my neighbors downstairs for free.
People laughed at my overflowing compassion; my wicked ex even hoarded two tons of water, waiting to see me thirsty and begging her on my knees like a dog.
But what they didn't know was that I didn't need water at all.
Because I'm not human.

When I woke up, I was locked at a round table, surrounded by four strangers.

A masked clown said: "Tonight there are only four gifts. The extra person... who could it be?"

The clown invited us to play a game.

The rules were simple—Liar's Poker.

Liars die. Those successfully challenged also die.

In the first round, the tattooed brute beside me lost and was dragged into the "Meat Grinder Ferris Wheel."

I heard the sound of his bones being crushed by gears.

The clown wiped blood from his hands, laughing: "Children who lie must be punished, you know~"

"Did you enjoy the game Penny prepared for you all?"

The moment he uttered "Penny's" name, everyone's faces broke out in cold sweat, because she had been dead for three years.

And everyone present... including me...

Remembered clearly.

36 weeks pregnant, I was thrown into the dungeon by my own husband.

When my water broke, I desperately reached out through the mate bond, calling for him—only to discover that he had severed it with his own hands.

They lashed my swollen belly with leather whips. They injected wolfsbane into my veins. And when my baby's head began to crown, they shoved her back inside me.

All because his sister-in-law Genevieve was also in labor today—and her child had to be born as the pack's heir.

I crawled out of that dungeon, drenched in my own blood, only to find him blocking the doorway.

I knelt at his feet, clutching at his trousers, begging. "The baby is innocent. Please... just let me deliver her..."

He kicked me away in disgust. "Wait until Genevieve is done."

Later, fireworks lit up the sky. The entire pack celebrated the birth of Genevieve's heir.

I was dumped in a water cell, watching my blood slowly turn the ice-cold water crimson, feeling my daughter grow still inside me.

Only after he'd gazed adoringly at the newborn in Genevieve's arms did he finally remember me. He sent someone to fetch me from the dungeon.

But his servant returned white-faced, voice trembling:

"Alpha! The Luna... she and the baby... they're both dead!"

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

My Big Bad Wolf Series: Elysia & Alex-Book 1 (Nocturnal Collections)

She broke into his mansion. Now she’s trapped in his world.

A cunning thief with nothing to lose.
A powerful Alpha with everything to protect.
When Elysia Crinshaw is caught stealing from Alex Landry, she doesn’t go to jail, she’s claimed. Drawn into his world, she learns that freedom can be more dangerous than chains…and love more brutal than any cage.

They say the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. They never said anything about his soul.

I was a culinary prodigy on the verge of global fame until my fiancé and my best friend murdered me with my own carving knife to steal my recipes. My last thought wasn’t of love, but of a burning vow: If I get a second chance, I will serve them their just deserts.

I got my wish.

I woke up not in a morgue, but in the body of an omega slave, Number 74, in the brutal, wolf-ruled kingdom of the Lunar Fang Pack. I was weak, worthless, and slated to die in the kitchens. But they didn’t know who they were dealing with. The soul of a master chef still burned within me.

When I poured my rage and my grief into a simple broth for a dying slave, I discovered a truth that would shatter this world: my emotions are ingredients. My cooking is magic. A stew made with spite can poison. A cake baked with defiance can empower.

Now, my unique gift has drawn the attention of the three most dangerous Alphas in the kingdom.

Emperor Kael, the cursed and ruthless Alpha King
ho woman, not just the weapon.

Commander Cassian, his stoic, lethal protector,

Prince Raze, the visiting rival Alpha

They think I’m a pawn in their game of thrones. A tool to be used and discarded.

They have no idea.

I was betrayed for my recipes once. I’ll be damned if I let a trio of Alphas do it again. My menu is set, and this time, the main course is revenge.

The only question is: which of these powerful wolves will be the first to take a bite?

The night before move-in, Vivian Owens’ housing collapses and her best friends betray her.

Her only lifeline? Crashing with her brother and his roommate —
Elias “Carter” Carter, the tattooed star point guard every girl wants.

One accidental aphrodisiac cookie night turns her into his willing little sub as he commands her

“Don’t stop, My Little Bubbles.”

But Carter’s gang past , a situationship with her own reconciled ex-best friend Kelly , draft pressure, and his own demons rip them apart again and again. Two pregnancies. Two brutal runaways. A jealous rival doctor who becomes a monster. Readers will scream at Carter, cry for him, and beg for more.

Some love don’t just break hearts — they start wars on and off the court.

My husband Michael's father and my own father shared the same name—Robert. His was Robert Carter; mine, Robert Smith. I once thought it a sweet coincidence, until that 3 AM phone call turned this quirk of fate into a living nightmare.
The nursing home called to say Robert Carter had died, but when Michael returned from his business trip, he assumed it was my father who had passed. "Old Robert's finally gone," he smirked. "Should've moved him to the cheaper nursing home ages ago." Can you believe it? His own father—the man who'd left him an inheritance—and there he was, helping his medical intern mistress cover up malpractice, dismissing the death as "just some useless old man."
He has no idea he's protecting his father's killer. No clue I've seen through his cold-bloodedness all along.
I wonder, when the truth finally hits him, how will this absurd tragedy end?

In my past life, the night before the National Cheerleading Championship finals, my "best friend" Lily, the scholarship student I'd been sponsoring, handed me a brownie she claimed she'd "baked herself."

She knew I had a deadly peanut allergy. Yet she'd loaded it with concentrated peanut butter.

When I collapsed on the locker room floor, hives erupting across my skin, my throat swelling shut until I couldn't make a sound, Lily just covered her mouth and nestled into my boyfriend Liam's arms, whimpering: "I'm so sorry, Chloe. I'm such an idiot. I mixed up the peanut butter with chocolate... you won't blame me, right?"

Of course I blamed you.

The quarterback I'd loved for three years didn't call 911. Instead, he frowned down at me convulsing on the ground.

"Chloe, stop faking, okay?" Liam's voice dripped with annoyance. "Lily already apologized. Why do you have to put on this dramatic show to scare her? You're always so controlling."

Controlling?

My airway was closing. My lungs were on fire. I was dying, and I couldn't force out a single word to tell him.

They didn’t call an ambulance until I stopped moving, but by the time it got there, it was too late. I was already dead.

When the police questioned him, Liam gave false testimony to protect Lily. He claimed I was afraid of losing the competition, so I tried to use an allergic reaction to avoid competing, but accidentally ingested too much of the allergen and died.

The man who said he loved me let me die with the reputation of a coward.

When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on that day.

A cheating husband. A burning curse. One forbidden night with a stranger who isn’t a stranger at all.
When Rose DeLuca’s world falls apart, the man who saves her turns out to be the Alpha she was destined for....and the billionaire who’s ready to claim everything, including her.

18+ WARNING: This novel contains mature themes, including explicit sexual content, betrayal, and dark romance.

Pregnant?” A gleam crossed my eyes, and before I could control myself, tears began running down my eyes. My vision was blurry from the tears, but I still scanned the files, my heart beating loudly. A smile finally made its way to my face.

I looked at the nurse who was standing behind me, looking happy, but certainly not as happy as I was. Eight years. Eight years of barrenness, Eight years of crying and praying to the moon goddess, Eight years of tolerance to everything I passed through in the hands of my Alpha’s mother.

Reborn one year before the zombie outbreak, I awakened a supernatural storage space. I stocked massive daily supplies and transformed a secret mountain cave into an impenetrable fortress. I protect my grandma, take revenge on greedy relatives, fight mutated beasts and intelligent zombie monsters, and wait for the rebirth of human civilization in the end times.

I chose to retire at my peak for Alexander.
But twenty minutes before our wedding started, he decided to help his childhood sweetheart move, leaving me alone at the venue.
He said, "Sophia, you're strong enough; you don't need anyone to protect you."
So I tossed my veil aside and called off the wedding.
Alexander thought I'd come crawling back, even threatened to blacklist me.
But he didn't know that as I was leaving the wedding, my former coach suddenly called out to me, asking if I wanted to chase that championship again.

Everyone said I was just a shadow of Ethan, that I was nothing without him.
So during the tryouts, to comfort his "scared" sweetheart, he let go mid-jump, almost costing me my life.
He was betting I couldn't leave him, that I'd forgive him like I did the last eighteen times.
But he lost.
This time, I didn't cry or throw a fit.
I simply tossed the apartment key that symbolized our seven years together into the trash, then turned and walked toward my own world championship.

Here is an adaptation crafted in the style of a bestselling contemporary Western psychological thriller or domestic drama hook, using fast-paced, high-tension American English:

For three years, I was the envy of Manhattan’s elite—the untouchable heiress with the flawless life.

My husband? The media constantly fawned over him, dubbing him "God’s gift to women" and the absolute epitome of a perfect gentleman.

Then came the video. The damn video that shattered it all.

Kneeling on the floor, wearing a thick leather collar like a pathetic stray, was the man I had loved deeply for years.

At the other end of the leash stood another woman, the stiletto of her red-soled Louboutin pressing ruthlessly into his cheek.

"Tell me, what are you?" she demanded.

"I'm Mistress Elena's dog," he whimpered. "I just want to get away from Sienna... I'm so sick of that suffocating bitch."

Every vow, every promise we ever made, instantly dissolved into a sick, twisted joke.

But instead of breaking down, I just smiled. And I hit save.

If he wanted to act like a dog so badly, I’d be more than happy to oblige. I was going to make sure he choked on that damn leash.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

I made 17 calls for help. My sister answered every one—and hung up.

For 48 hours, I lay dying in Pine Ridge Forest, texting desperate pleas to my family. They thought I ran away. The truth? My sister deleted every message while I begged for my life.

Three months dead. Zero funeral. My family didn't even notice I was gone.

Now the police have recovered my phone. Every deleted text. Every ignored call. Every lie my sister told to cover up what she did.

"Please. I can't feel my legs. I'm sorry I exist. Just don't let me die here."

They wanted me invisible. I gave them what they wanted.

Now they'll spend the rest of their lives wishing they'd answered when I called.

My first love was adopted by our family, and he promised he would always be there for me.
But after my dad passed away in a car accident, I found him with another woman in our bedroom.
He told everyone Caroline was his true love—that he only saw me as a sister—and claimed I was the one who was pestering him.
I was shamed by everyone. The stress gave my mother a stroke, and Caroline even had someone run me over, costing me an eye.
Seven years later, holding flowers, I ran into them outside a convenience store.
Arthur's son looked at me pityingly. "Dad, this lady lost an eye… Is she selling flowers? Should we buy some?"

What if your husband lived a double life and you are the fake wife?

I woke up to my husband celebrating our baby's death. He had poisoned me with abortion pills so he could marry Catherine Morrison-the rich woman he thinks is better than me and pregnant with what he thinks is his child.

I overheard him laughing; 'if she shows up somewhere demanding answers, I'll just say I've never seen her before in my life, Who are people going to believe? Me or some random girl from nowhere?'

David thought I had no evidence. He thought he had covered his tracks perfectly. He thought he was untouchable.

But when I'm done, he'll wish he never met me.

"Starting price for my wife—one dollar!" James announced, pointing at the dog cage where I lay curled up like a dying animal.

The crowd at the wedding erupted in laughter. "Five dollars!" "Ten!" They threw bids like trash, mocking the woman who used to be Mrs. Windsor. Lillian, wearing my stolen necklace, poked me through the bars with a metal rod. "Look at you, Aurora. You're nothing but filth." I closed my eyes, accepting my fate. My husband had sold me. My dignity was gone.

Suddenly, a cold, authoritative voice cut through the noise.

"Two hundred million."

Silence fell over the hall. Every head turned. Walking through the doors was a man radiating power—Louis Smith, the newly found heir to the Smith empire. The man I had pushed away ten years ago. James turned pale. "Mr. Smith... this is a joke..."

Louis didn't even look at him. He walked straight to the cage, his eyes burning with a terrifying mix of rage and tenderness. He ripped the lock off with his bare hands and pulled me into his arms. James tried to block him. "She's my wife! You can't just take her!"

Louis smirked, his voice dripping with ice. "Your wife? I just bought her. She's mine now."

When the apocalypse came, my materialistic ex-girlfriend not only complained that I only knew how to play games, but also conspired with relatives to poison me, cruelly steal my superpower crystal core, and degrade me into a hopeless cripple!
She thought that by taking away my power she could curry favor with the powerful and live a carefree life, but little did she know that not only did I not die, but the "League of Legends max level system" in my mind had actually completed its ultimate upgrade!
Sylas uses his ultimate to regain his power, Pyke's X-shaped slash breaks his enemy's limbs; a horde of 100,000 zombies presses in, and the whole city is in despair, when I descend from the sky with my treasure girl who is my life partner!
Pantheon's slam, Miss Fortune's barrage, Ziggs's nuke... Five LOL ultimate moves in a row wiped out the entire field, evaporating 100,000 zombies in one minute and directly ascending to the throne of the wasteland god!
Looking at my stunningly beautiful and god-level support character whom I had spoiled rotten, my ex-girlfriend, who had fallen into the mire, was filled with remorse. She knelt in the sewage, kowtowing and crying, begging to be a foot-washing maid.
I looked down at them and sneered, "Sorry, my five-player squad is already full."

On my son's seventh birthday, he hid behind my husband's first love and shouted at me, "You're a bad woman! She's my real mom!"
My husband was even crueler. He threw me out of the house without a second thought.
"To me, you were nothing but a surrogate."
Heartbroken, I walked away—and later adopted an abandoned little boy.
Years passed, when my husband finally learned the truth about the woman he had always protected, he came to me with our biological son, both of them kneeling before me in tears, begging for forgiveness.
Holding my adopted son's hand, I smiled calmly.
"Sorry. I only have one son."

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

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

My younger sister, Freya, was preparing for her advanced training in New York the following week, so she dragged me to the dance studio to help her correct her movements. I put on my dance shoes as usual and stood in the center of the floor, ready to demonstrate a turn.

The moment my foot slipped, I didn't even have time to react.

My body hit the ground hard, and the sharp pain from the back of my head nearly made me lose consciousness. I lay on the cold floor, my throat tight, unable to even cry out for help.

When Mother rushed in, she didn't spare me a glance.

She immediately helped Freya up and took her to the hospital. I missed the critical window for treatment and died on the way to the hospital.

Do all men lose interest in their wives after marriage?

We’ve been married for five years, and he never touched me.

At first he said he wasn’t well, so I was understanding. Later he recovered, but still kept me far away.

On our fifth wedding anniversary, my sister came in for a check-up, clearly pregnant with his child.

The truth hit me hard: he wasn’t incapable. He was just incapable with me.

I drew up the divorce papers, ready to end this empty marriage.

On the reason for divorce, I wrote with my own hand:

“Male sexual dysfunction; no marital relations in five years.”

He only smiled coldly when he saw it.

A week later, in the urology clinic.

I put on my medical gloves, looked at him, and said calmly:

“Sir, will you undress yourself, or shall I help you?”

His disapproval didn’t take away my confidence.

I still embraced better things in my career and love life!

But his life started to be filled with one accident after another.

Three years ago, on their way to attend my graduation art exhibition, the cruise ship carrying my fiancé and my family caught fire.

Over the past three years, I downed sleeping pills countless times, desperately wanting to follow them into the afterlife. Every single time, my adopted sister, Serena, saved me, crying hysterically as she shoved her fingers down my throat to make me throw up.

"They are already gone! Harper, you can't keep living in the past. You have to live on for their sake!"

After fainting from yet another high fever and being rushed to the hospital, I was diagnosed with terminal leukemia.

The doctor said I had a month left, at most.

I refused their advice to find a bone marrow match. Clutching my family's belongings, I decided to go back to our old estate in the suburbs for one last look.

While I was walking in a daze, a little boy running wildly crashed hard into my legs.

A male voice that had haunted my dreams for years rang out from behind me. "Alistair, if you keep running off, what will you do if Mommy and Daddy don't want you anymore?"

In an instant, it felt like I had been plunged into freezing water. I froze in place.

When he found out I’d injured my leg and couldn't scrub in to deliver the billionaire's baby tomorrow, my boyfriend’s first reaction wasn't concern. He gritted his teeth and snapped, "Hannah, you did this on purpose, didn't you? Why today of all days? Are you really throwing away your entire career just to spite me?!"
I didn't argue. I just stared at the medical chart labeled Eleanor Whitlock, my fingers trembling.
In my past life, I took this assignment. I was drugged and locked in a supply closet. A few hours later, the mother and baby were dead—and the security footage showed a nurse with my face poisoning them. I died in a damp prison cell, branded a murderer.
Reborn into this life, I just wanted to escape this fatal trap.
But somehow, the security cameras had once again captured "me" walking into that delivery room.

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."

As the most cold-blooded and ruthless Mafia don, Twain Hall had doted on me like the apple of his eye for ten years.
But on the very day we were discussing our wedding, the ring his subordinate delivered had another woman's name engraved on it—not mine.
I pretended not to notice and turned to Twain.
"Did they bring the wrong ring? Who's Dorothy? I've never heard of her."
Twain's expression didn't change. He pulled me into his arms with that familiar, indulgent look.
"My people weren't careful. Made a fool of themselves."
"I'll have them exchange it right away. Can't keep my queen waiting."
I smiled. But the moment I turned away, my face went cold. I dialed a number.
"Didn't you say you'd pay any price to marry me? Twain Hall betrayed me. I want his head!"

"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.

To annul the engagement, the aloof heiress of a wealthy family spent three years planning thirteen accidents to try and kill me.
Car accident, falling object, poisoning... I survived covered in blood, only to be met with her disgusted question: "How come you're still alive?"
She let her scheming childhood sweetheart crush my father's ashes, and even personally drained my last remaining blood to save me, all for her sweetheart's self-inflicted injury.
She thought I would be like a dog, clinging to her side forever without any boundaries.
Until that day, I calmly handed over the annulment agreement, clutching the diagnosis of late-stage brain cancer, and completely disappeared from her world.
Later, when she finally found out the truth, she searched the world frantically, only to find my emaciated, cold corpse.
That arrogant and haughty young lady has completely collapsed.
She personally sent her childhood sweetheart to hell, knelt before my body wearing a veil, and desperately raised a gun:
“Ivan, walk slowly on your way to the underworld... I’m giving my life for you.”