185 Book(s) Related to f-lisy

It was my second year back in this house.
My name was Evelyn, the biological daughter who got lost in Central Park at seven.
During the ten years I stayed missing, I fed pigs on a remote farm in Eastern Europe. In weather that dropped to dozens below zero, I got beaten for working too slowly.
I did not get brought back until I was seventeen, covered in scars, returned to this so-called “home,” luxurious to the point of being blinding.
To be honest, every time I watched them sit on silk sofas and sip afternoon tea, then thought about the decade I spent crawling through hell, hatred made my teeth ache.
That hatred stood between us and made the house feel like an icebox. We lived under the same roof, yet we were not even as close as strangers.

"Valerie, you've been working yourself to death. I booked you a flight to Switzerland—take Leo, go relax for a while." My husband Cedric set an Hermès scarf down on the table. "Early gift for our tenth anniversary."
I was thrilled, twirling in front of the mirror with the scarf, admiring how it looked.
That's when my son came around the corner, iPad in hand. "Mommy, a message just popped up. Daddy said he wants to give Seraphina a real family."
My mind just... blanked out.
I opened the message myself, and there it was—a whole year of secrets I never even knew existed.
So he wants to make things right with his old flame? Fine.
Then I get to take back everything I ever gave him.

Half human, half wolf—my blood can heal anything. To keep the peace, the elders offer me to the pack's War God.
"I'd rather sleep with a rock than a half-blood," Zane spits.
The wind rips away the herbs masking my scent. He freezes mid-sentence.
"Mine," he growls, claiming me on the spot.
He warns me to stay away from the Alpha—he hates half-bloods, and he'll kill me.
But when Zane leaves for war, it's Lucius who collapses at my door, drenched in blood.
"Medicine won't save me. You already know what will."

During a police operation to pursue a serial killer, my father-in-law was taken hostage by the criminals while protecting me, and was dragged behind a vehicle for several kilometers.
I urgently called my husband for help: “Cedric, Dad has been taken hostage by the criminals. Send more people right away!”
My husband was the police department’s top marksman—only his sharpshooting skills could target the enemy and save his father!
But to my surprise, my husband just sneered, “Dahlia, I’ve only been out with Nalisa for an hour. To win my attention, you’ll make up any lie, won’t you?”
Hearing the call end, I was frozen in shock.
Then, I received a message from Nalisa with 99 bed photos of her and my husband.
“Cedric says, if your dad dies, so be it. He has no time for you now—he’d rather die in my arms.”
Anger and sorrow enveloped me. Watching my husband’s father crushed to death by the vehicle, I finally understood:
He must have thought it was my father who was taken hostage.

Seamus O'Sullivan, Don of the Irish Mafia, forged a custom gold crest ring to find the woman he’d met at that ball.

He decreed that whoever could wear it would become his bride.

We had all died trying to claim it.

I had already watched my stepsister starve herself to the bone to wear it, only to take a bullet to the head on her wedding night.

I'd seen my stepmother hack off her own finger to force it on, earning herself cement shoes at the bottom of the Atlantic.

By my third life, they pushed me out, and I slipped the ring on easily. I really thought I was his bride. But on our wedding night, when the Don kissed my inner thigh, he snapped—and smothered me with a pillow.

He forced it over my face. I thrashed and clawed, but he pinned me down.

"Why isn't it her?!" he roared through the feathers. "Where is she?!"

Now, I was awake again. The fourth lifetime.

I was just on the phone with my husband. He was stuck in traffic, apologizing for being late to our anniversary dinner. Forty minutes later, detectives are at my door, claiming he died in a crash three days ago. If Silas is dead, who just sent me a text?

My perfect husband built a thick soundproof wall in our new house, strictly forbidding me from touching it. When he left, I took a hammer to the drywall. Hidden inside the dark void was a bloodstained engagement ring belonging to a missing woman. Am I sleeping next to a killer?

I am just a simple florist making an honest living. Yet, somehow, the city's untouchable elites keep suffering horrific, freak accidents right after someone buys my flowers. The police know I'm involved, but they can't prove a thing. After all, how much damage can a few blooming petals really do?

"Let Aria have the Stanford recommendation. Quinn owes her."
I stared at the family group chat—the one I wasn't in—and let out a cold laugh.
In my past life, I went completely hysterical over this, only to earn my family's disgust and a miserable death.
Now, reborn and given a second chance, I looked at the room full of guests celebrating My success, and walked straight to the microphone.
"Everyone, the party is over. I'm turning down the Stanford spot."
Under my family's stunned gazes, I dumped my champagne into the trash bin.
This rotten family? I'm done with them.

I am a tragic woman. For five years, my husband and I have hidden our marriage—no one knows we are husband and wife. He doesn't love me; I'm merely an outlet for his desires.

To him, I'm probably just a prostitute he doesn't have to pay.

My husband is deeply in love with another woman. He lavishes all his affection on her, while I, his lawful wife, am met with nothing but indifference and cruelty...

My life is a prison, holding me captive.

This ridiculous marriage was doomed from the start.

Today, I summoned the courage to shatter my chains:

'Let's divorce!'

Three years ago, I thought I had married my true love, but now I've discovered that my husband has been secretly entangled with my own younger sister behind my back.
"Your husband is in my bed!"
When I received this message, I was utterly shocked.
My husband was cheating!
With my sister!
The double betrayal by my husband and sister cut through my heart like a knife, leaving me in unbearable pain.
How could this shattered marriage be saved?
Was there any point in maintaining this twisted sisterly relationship?
Clutching the divorce papers in my hand, I made my choice...

"White wolf! Kill that monster!"
That roar stole my eighteenth birthday and shattered my world. My first shift should have been glory—blood turned blessing into shame. By dawn they'd branded me "cursed": cast out by my pack, abandoned by family, stripped of my nature. My father didn't defend me—he sent me to a forsaken island where wolfless outcasts were forged into weapons, forced to kill each other until only one could leave.
On that island I learned the darkest edges of humanity and how to bury terror in bone. Countless times I wanted to surrender—dive into the waves and never surface—but the accusing faces that haunted my dreams pushed me back toward something colder than survival: revenge. I escaped, and for three years I hid among humans, collecting secrets, learning to move like a shadow, sharpening patience into precision—becoming a blade.
Then, under a full moon, I touched a bleeding stranger—and my wolf returned with a violence that made me whole. Who was he? Why could he wake what I'd thought dead?
One thing I know: now is the time.
I have waited three years for this. I will make everyone who destroyed me pay—and take back everything that was stolen from me.

After seven years of marriage, she had given up her crown as the world’s foremost violinist to become a devoted housewife—for him. In return, on their anniversary, he spent the evening with another woman, and her own son looked at her as if she were the enemy. When the cold dial tone of a deadened phone line reached her ear, her heart turned to ash. She signed the divorce papers and walked away with nothing.

Everyone assumed she would come crawling back, begging for mercy once she tasted life outside the gilded cage. Her ex-husband merely smirked, waiting for her to relent. But what he got instead was a blocked number—and a global headline: “The Violin Queen, Missing for Seven Years, Returns—Her First Solo Concert Sells Out in One Second!” Under the spotlight, the woman he had dismissed as worthless now blazed with a brilliance far beyond his reach.

Backstage, an assistant stopped the frantic ex-husband as he tried to storm in. “She’s currently meeting with royalty. She has no time for you.”
His eyes bloodshot, he roared, “Tell her to come out! I’m her husband!”
The assistant gave a cold smile. “Sorry—you were her husband.”

I was reborn on the eve of the arranged marriage, and the first thing Liana and I did was swap our marriage contracts.
In my past life, gentle Liana had married Kael, the cold and ruthless Alpha of the Wolf Clan.
But Kael always put the scheming daughter of his savior first, condemning my cousin to a lifetime of endless grievance and suffocating misery.
As for me, with my fiery temper, I’d been wed to a mediocre, weak Beta.
He spent every day complaining that I “wasn’t a woman at all”. Endless quarrels and the crushing burden of the family eventually led me to a tragic end—dying exhausted on the battlefield.
Now I opened my eyes again, staring at the fateful marriage contract on the nightstand. I clenched my fists and looked at my teary-eyed cousin.
“Tomorrow, you’ll marry that Beta. And as for that cold-blooded Alpha? I’ll take care of him.”

When I woke up again, the air was torn apart by the staccato crack of gunfire.
I had been reborn. I was four months pregnant—exactly when Luca’s "first love" had conspired with a rival syndicate to ambush our estate.

In my previous life, the moment the shooting started, I hadn't hesitated. I immediately dialed my husband, the Don of the family.

To protect the heir growing inside me, he had decisively dragged me out of the line of fire first.

But the price was steep. His beloved Isabella took a bullet straight to the heart in the chaos, dying instantly.

Afterward, with bloodshot eyes, he told me he didn't blame me. He even stepped away from the mafia empire, remaining at the estate to play the perfect husband, solely to ensure I had a safe delivery.

I believed him. Until the day I gave birth.

During the sacred baptism in the family chapel, he tore off his mask and personally sent both me and our infant son to hell.

In my final moments, I would never forget the look in his eyes—a hatred that burned down to the bone.

"If it weren't for you, she never would have died," he had said, his voice ice-cold as I lay in a pool of my own blood. "She bled out that day. You and this bastard will bleed twice as much today."

"How much longer are you going to drag this out?! "My husband, Julian, kicked the bathroom door open, violently snapping my lipstick in half. "I don't have time to waste on a psycho. Find your own way to the gala!"
He snatched the unlabeled bottle from the vanity, dry-swallowed two capsules, and slammed it back down before driving off.
When I arrived at the gala alone, his mother asked where he was.
"He'll be here later," I said with a perfect smile.
But I knew he would never make it.

At Holy Oak High, being the Top Flyer isn't just a crown.
It’s a ticket to the upper class.
Girls would pay any price to stand at the top of that pyramid.
But I didn't understand that the spotlight hid a man-eating abyss until I had to put on that blood-stained uniform.
Listen. Do you hear that scratching sound coming from inside the locker?

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

My name is Aria Vance, born with mismatched eyes.To the Silver Moon Pack, that made me a curse from the day I drew breath. Therefore, my parents threw me into the Mistwood the moment I was born.
That place exists for one reason—to hold everything the packs don't want.
Mutated wolves. Half-bloods. The maimed. Anything that didn't fit the mold got dumped there.
I was taken in by a black witch named Morwenna.
She taught me to heal, but I was fascinated by how to make a wolf's bloodline rot from the bone out, slow and quiet.
The day left, she clasped a blessed moonstone bracelet around it.
"Aria, your wolf was born bloodthirsty." She held my gaze. "Out there, don't ever let anyone see your real eyes."
For years after that, I went by "the Fir Healer," drifting from territory to territory. Heal, take payment, never linger.
I thought I'd spend the rest of my life like that.
Then the Vance family brought me back. It wasn't until the carriage that I understood—they wanted a scapegoat.
To marry me off in place of their fake heiress, Selena, to the crippled, half-mad Shadow Alpha—Cyrus.

We’ve been married for almost a month, yet my Alpha keeps hiding in the study to avoid me.
He would rather give me a cheap vial of synthetic bonding pheromones than bare his fangs at me.
I thought I was just the unwanted substitute for my runaway sister, that he felt absolutely nothing for me.
I slammed the door and left, heading to the Moon Well to confide. But the moment my blood dripped in, the Alpha's voice echoed:
"I finally married her... but I was born with a curse. How do I mark her without hurting her the moment I bite down..."

Carter and I have been together for five years. We never had actual sex.
During our most intimate moments, he would only ever slip a dark Violet Pearl deep inside of me. I honestly thought it was his way of cherishing me.
Until tonight.
I woke up totally naked to find a phone set up on the bed, its lens glaring right between my thighs, with a red "LIVE" icon blinking on the screen.
[The pearl matures Oct 31. Five years of cultivation!] the chat kept scrolling.
I checked the screen on my phone.
It’s October 30.

Since when is eating a snack before dinner a capital crime? All because of a bag of gummies, my parents beat the hell out of me, and a judge coldly sentenced me to death. I was absolutely convinced the candy was laced! It wasn't until moments before my execution that I accidentally found out the truth: my family... were never actually my family to begin with.

"Time's up, sir. That's enough."
I've said it so many times I've gone numb to it. In this brothel, I'm nothing but a body with a price tag.
Then an old man froze in the doorway, his eyes reddening. "My God... Miss Isabella, what happened to you?"
Isabella. Somewhere in my shattered memory, that name still carries a weight I can't explain.
"I'm Antonio," he wept. "Alessandro sent me to find you."
A name both familiar and foreign. Salvation—or just the door to a darker room?

At my bedside, for what felt like the hundredth time,my family asked me nervously,“Are you still planning to look for Elias?”
I blinked in confusion, asking, “Who is Elias? Why would I look for him?”
And at that moment, the doctors declared me “recovered.”
I was finally allowed to leave the psychiatric clinic that had tormented me for more than a year.
They told me—that Elias never existed, that I had fallen into delusion, loving a man created by my imagination.
I understand that only by obeying them can I regain my freedom.

I just bought my daughter a ruby choker. But the moment I fastened it around her neck, my world came crashing down.
The shopkeeper called me a sick freak. My loving husband demanded an instant divorce. My best friend called me a monster.
Why? It’s just a piece of jewelry... right?

On a stormy night, an intruder broke into the estate and slashed my husband's throat.
I didn't call the police. Instead, I grabbed the bleach and scrubbed away every trace the killer left behind.
The next morning, my mother-in-law dug her nails into my arm. "Tell them! Who murdered my son?!"
"Lady Cordelia, if you saw anything, now is the time to speak." The police captain stepped closer, his voice hard.
I met his gaze without blinking. "The thunder was loud last night. I took my sleeping pills and heard absolutely nothing."

After my divorce, I fled to the unfamiliar streets of Seattle with my daughter. As a Black single mother, the crushing weight of surviving in a strange city nearly broke me.
That is, until David came along. A detective with the Major Crimes Unit, he became our safe haven, wrapping my daughter and me in his fierce, unwavering protection.
I thought I had finally made it through the darkness. I thought I was about to embrace a brand-new life.
Until our six-month anniversary. I showed up for our date full of joyful anticipation, only to accidentally witness him tenderly kissing a pregnant white woman.
With his two young children clustered right by his side...

When the Manhattan morgue finally managed to reach my husband, Victor Hawthorne, he was in the penthouse suite, fucking another woman.
"Mr. Hawthorne, this is the city morgue. We need you to come down and identify your wife's remains."
"Identify what?" he snapped, his thrusts not missing a beat.
"Burn her," he ordered. "Don't bother me with her pathetic ploys."
He tossed the phone onto the nightstand, his focus entirely on the woman beneath him.
Then my body was pushed into the incinerator.
When I was nothing but ashes, the funeral home called him again.
Selena pouted, trailing a nail down his chest.
"Is Cecilia acting up again?"
"I'll go end this farce," Victor sneered, getting out of bed.

One month before the SATs, I saw my predicted score floating right above my head.
But every time I finished a practice test, the score automatically dropped by 20 points.
And if I skipped class to party for a day, it went up by 20 points.
In my past life, I partied for a whole month, and the score above my head reached a perfect 1600.
But when the results finally came out, I only scored a 400.
And my sister Seraphina got a 1600!
My father, Richard Vanderbilt, was absolutely furious.
My mother, Eleanor Vanderbilt, fueled the fire beside him.
She convinced my father to send me to a troubled teen boarding school.
They cut off my funds and threw me out of the mansion.
That very night, I was cornered by a group of street thugs in a dark alley and beaten to death.
As I lay dying, I heard Seraphina's voice.
"You always played the untouchable genius, Rhea. But you still got fooled by the score above your head."
That was when I finally realized the truth.
My SAT score had been completely controlled and siphoned by my sister.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back to exactly one month before the exam.

It was my fourth time putting on a wedding dress.

To protect myself against my own parents, I hired a ten-man security detail.

I specifically chose the most isolated chapel in the suburbs.

Because at my first three weddings, they acted like absolute maniacs—destroying my rings and making me a complete laughingstock in front of everyone.

I just couldn't understand what kind of parents would do such a thing.

This time, I actually thought I could finally marry Liam in peace.

Until the bridal suite door was kicked open.

And my dad, once again, snatched my diamond ring away.

"Come see our wedding invitations!" I excitedly held up the document folder I'd grabbed from ,my fiancé, Lorenzo's study, showing it off to his men in his private safe house on the Upper East Side.

Lorenzo and I had been running ourselves ragged this month preparing for the wedding.

Lorenzo's guys raised their glasses, waiting to see our custom-designed invitations. I eagerly turned the folder upside down—

Marriage certificates, wedding photos, and a property transfer document came tumbling out onto the floor.

Dead silence.

"Oh, these aren't our invitations..." I was still grinning foolishly. "Must be the wrong folder."

"Let me see which lucky lady is about to become a happy bride."

I looked down at the wedding photo. A beautiful brunette woman in an elaborate white gown smiled from the center of the picture, looking so blissful, so content.

When my eyes shifted to the groom beside her, my world collapsed.

It was Lorenzo. He wore a perfect black tuxedo, but he was tenderly embracing a woman I'd never seen before.

On our seventh wedding anniversary, my Alpha husband missed the candlelit dinner for the seventh time.
He rushed off to rescue an Omega surrounded by vampires, leaving me alone in the villa.
That same night, a jarring photo spread through the pack.
Damien, covered in blood, held Rose tightly in his arms, his lips pressed against her forehead.
Everyone was waiting for me to be jealous, to rage.
But I didn’t scream or argue like I used to.
Instead, I poured out his favorite champagne, closed my eyes calmly, and prayed to the Moon Goddess.
“You once said I have a destined mate.”
“If he will make me strong and free me from this wretched marriage, let him come for me in seven days.”

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.

On the second floor of this old Victorian house is a long hallway with a dark red rug. Six doors are evenly spaced along its walls.
We lived here peacefully for ten years.
Until last month, when my seven-year-old sister, Maeve, suddenly refused to set foot in it.
The adults dismissed it as a childish phobia.
Until late one night, hiding under the covers, she pressed her face to my ear and whispered:
"Don't count the doors."

My husband, Victor Falcone, was a mafia godfather whose very name makes the entire underworld tremble.
A year ago, he barely survived an assassination attempt. The trauma gave him severe amnesia, completely wiping out the three months we spent keeping each other alive in the slums.
When he woke up, he was a different man—cold and ruthless. He treated my stepsister like his untouchable first love, spoiling her rotten.
And me, his legal wife? In his eyes, I was just a greedy, desperate woman who wouldn't take a hint.
"Drop the cheap pity act," he’d sneer. "You’re not worth a single hair on Lilia’s head."
Even so, I chose to stay by his side, desperate to spark his memory.
Until today. A rival cartel tied me and his precious "angel" to iron pillars on an abandoned pier.
Beneath our feet is a raging, pitch-black ocean. A thug has the ice-cold barrel of a gun pressed hard against my temple.
Which one of us will he choose?

On National College Decision Day, my two childhood best friends announced they were ditching the Ivy League to follow a scheming charity case to a garbage community college.
In my last life, I informed their parents.
It worked. Their futures were saved, but they killed me for it.
"Let go of me!"
Hayes had my wrist in a death grip, dragging me toward the edge. Ezra stood behind him, hands in his pockets.
"If you hadn't interfered, Willow would still be alive."
"Now it's your turn."
Then I was falling from the stadium bleachers.
I opened my eyes. Decision Day again.

I was a billionaire's canary. Never asked for it — but every time I slept with him, he paid another chunk of my mom's medical bills. Later he made me his secretary, and stupidly, I thought we'd built something real. Turns out I was wrong. He drained my entire savings to buy his mistress a $500K necklace. "What do you mean, your money?" he sneered. "Every penny came from me." I begged. He laughed. Then the hospital called: Mom didn't make it. That's when I stopped being anyone's canary — and started billing him back, in full.

Once, I was the Golden Dragon Princess, loved by my family and cherished by the man I would have died for. Then one accusation shattered everything. My dragon core was sealed, and I was cast into the frozen abyss to repent for a crime I never committed. Three years later, I died alone beneath the endless snow. My body was brought back on the day he was supposed to marry another woman. He stared at my lifeless face, trembling. “Seraphina… please wake up.”

"Camille! Get over here!" my husband Arthur screamed, clutching his mistress tightly in his arms.
In my past life, he charged into the flames to save her—while I burned alive trying to save him.
The moment I died, he wasted no time using my life insurance money to throw her the wedding of the century, right at my family's winery.
This life?
"I'm going to get help," I said, and walked away.
Behind me, something massive came crashing down. His scream tore through the smoke.
I didn't look back.

The smell of antiseptic, the sharp sting of restraints biting into my flesh, and the pitying look on Silas's face as he stood by my hospital bed.
"Maeve, you're so sick. The baby is just a hallucination."
In my last life, consumed by despair and self-doubt, I threw myself off the roof of the psychiatric hospital.
But now, my eyes snapped open, my hands instinctively flying to protect my stomach.
My baby is still here!
I'm back—exactly one week before my child disappeared.

"Happy anniversary, darling. Look what I brought you." My husband's snow-white python once felt like proof of his love—until I remembered dying with it wrapped around my throat. In my past life, I doted on that "gift" for an entire year, never once suspecting its true nature, while my husband and daughter quietly counted down the days until I stopped breathing. Reborn on the very night he presents that same box again, I swear this time will be different.

The stepbrother I grew up with was a golden boy, a star varsity quarterback everyone had high hopes for.
But for a street-level delinquent, he abandoned his Ivy League future.
Desperate to pull his life back on track, I tried to expose his toxic girlfriend.
Yet, he hated me to the bone for it.
For her, he ruthlessly dragged our family into the crossfire of a deadly gang dispute, causing us all to meet a violent, tragic end.
I never expected fate to rewind the clock.
To give me a second chance.

I am the most obedient lover by the side of Liam, the Alpha of the Blackwood Tribe.
I am also the only nameless stray in the entire tribe.
For five years, whenever Liam spent the night with other she-wolves, the next morning I would receive a large check or a deed to a house.
People in the tribe say I am a greedy leech.
That for money, I have thrown away the pride of a werewolf.
Even if Liam kissed another woman right in front of me, I would smile, straighten his collar, and then take the money he gave me.
Yes, I love money very much.
If they knew that this money was enough to buy the territories of three small packs, they would probably be green with envy.
As long as the money is good, betrayal doesn’t hurt that much.
Until today, when Liam brought back a pure-blooded white she-wolf.
He handed me a blank check, saying this would be the last payment he gave me.
My wolf spirit roared inside me.
It’s time for me to take the money, disappear, and return to being the queen I truly am.

My sister ran away the night before her wedding, so I had to take her place and marry Damian Kovac, the city's most feared don.
I figured he'd throw me in the harbor out of pure rage. Instead, the man wouldn't even touch me.
A month in, still sleeping in the guest room.
I wasn't my sister's level of charming, but I wasn't hard to look at either. And this man couldn't spare me a single glance?
The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I grabbed the divorce papers I'd already drawn up and stormed toward his study.
Right as I raised my hand to knock, I caught his childhood friend's voice through the door.
"You moved heaven and earth to get the woman you've been hung up on, and now you're icing her out? Didn't think I'd live to see the day."
My hand froze.
The woman he'd been hung up on?

"Stay in the apartment," he said, straightening his tie as I fixed his collar. "I'll be back tonight." Then he walked out the door — straight to his wedding. What he didn't know was that my flight was already booked.
For three years I was his canary: locked in a penthouse, the only woman he let close when he bled, forgotten the moment another woman entered the room. I watched him let her wipe the blood from his face. I lost our child alone on a cold floor. I apologized to the woman who destroyed my mother's watch.
I was done waiting.
When the bells of Saint Patrick's rang out across Manhattan, he was welcoming his bride — and I finally flew out of my cage.

After the crash, my husband, Darius, lost his ability to speak. The trauma to his cervical spine left him unable to even lift a finger.
The doctors said his only remaining way to communicate was to nod, or to shake his head.
Sitting by his hospital bed, I finally asked the question that had been eating away at me for three months.
"When the crash happened... were you on your way to see your mistress?"
Darius stared dead at me. Then, slowly, he nodded.

This was Killian’s tenth time bringing a stray werewolf into our bedroom.
I didn’t growl like before, nor did I threaten her.
I picked up the old cloak from the floor and handed it to the girl trembling in the corner.
“Leave through the back door. The patrol just passed.”
The girl glanced at me fearfully, grabbed the cloak, and ran out.
Killian leaned against the headboard.
Bare-chested, a cigar in hand, his expression was full of arrogance.
“She’s just a newly matured stray werewolf. Don’t scare her.”
“Elira, you come from noble blood. You wouldn’t make a fuss about this.”
“Tonight is her first transformation. I need to be with her. I won’t be back.”
I lowered my head, hiding my golden eyes.
What Killian didn’t know was—
that stray girl was carrying the highly contagious and fatal Rotting Sickness.

When the pain started, my mother-in-law called me a monster, then drove off like a madwoman. My doctor slit his own throat in front of me. My husband locked me away "for my safety."
I thought they didn't want my baby. That they were horrified by the child I carried.
But I was wrong.
The thing growing inside me was never my child at all.

My stepsister killed someone while driving high and made me take the fall.
She knelt in front of me, crying, "I'm so scared."
My mom snatched the only piece of evidence and told the police it was me.
My fiancé, Darian, took my hand and said, "Trust me. I'll marry you in three years."
Three years. Not one person came to see me.
The day I was released, it poured rain.
I clutched that engagement ring and walked back to that house.
The door was unlocked. The moment I pushed it open, I found him kissing my stepsister.
She spun around, ducking into Darian's arms.
"Sis... you're... you're out already?!"

I was diagnosed with hemophilia when I was ten years old.
At first, my parents were terrified. They watched me closely, rushed me to the hospital over every bruise, every nosebleed. I was the fragile one—the child who needed saving.

Then years passed.
They got used to it.
They got tired.

By the time my twin sister was graduating and my family was finally breathing again, I was about to turn eighteen.
And that night, while everyone believed I’d be fine like always, I bled to death.