209 Book(s) Related to c.j. primer

We'd agreed to spend summer break in the Hamptons. Right before break started, my boyfriend suggested we hit the water park out in the suburbs first, just to blow off some steam.

I thought it was a date. Just the two of us. But when I get to the gate, my best friend Sienna is standing there in a string bikini.

I tell her that's not safe to swim in. Her face goes cold and she tells me to mind my own business.

Colton frowns too and dumps his phone, a towel, and Sienna's makeup bag into my arms. "Vivienne, do you have to kill the mood? Sienna's scared to go alone. What's the big deal if I keep her company?"

In the wave pool, he holds her against his chest and the two of them roll around in the spray, laughing.

When they come out, Sienna takes the ice water I haven't even opened and takes a big swig, then hands it to Colton, and he drinks half the bottle right from where her lips were.

I stand there feeling like the hired help.

Two years of killing myself to be the understanding, easygoing girlfriend, and all it got me was a boyfriend who walks all over me without thinking twice.

If he's that close with my best friend, he can't blame me for calling up his best friend since they were kids.

"Julian, can you come get me?"

The day I came home carrying the Royal Pack's highest honor, the one that names its strongest warrior, I pictured Irene's proud smile waiting for me, and Chase's arms wrapping around me.

Then I cross into Crescent Moon Pack territory and the smell hits me. Blood, thick enough to make me gag.

I claw through the scorched wreckage like something possessed, not even noticing my nails tearing, blood running down my fingers.

And then I find her. Irene, the one person who'd ever shown me real kindness, lying in the ash. Not breathing. Gone.

Three scents linger in the air, all of them familiar: Garrett. Ivy. And Chase.

I follow the scent to the lakeside lodge, and that's when I hear Chase, his voice dripping with that same gentle warmth I used to love. "Who cares about Irene, as long as you're happy."

Something in my head just snaps.

"Traitors don't get to live."

Tonight, they're all going to join Irene in death.

Preston Ashford and I made a promise to get into UCLA together.

I held onto that promise through all of senior year, surviving on four hours of sleep a night. Then results day came, and I found out someone had logged into my application and changed it.

I only ever gave Preston my password.

I storm over to confront him and catch Vanessa Ashby, the daughter of an old family friend, the one everyone tiptoed around because of her depression, laughing. "Preston, what do you think Elise looked like when she found out?"

Preston lets out a lazy laugh. "She'll freak out, obviously. Girl's wound so tight, might as well get some use out of her."

Vanessa has depression, and I'm the one who's supposed to make her laugh.

I'm the one who ate dirt at track meets. I'm the one who got laughed at for singing off-key. I'm the one everyone pointed and laughed at. And every time she doubled over laughing, Preston told me I was a good girl.

I turned myself into a joke, just to get a little scrap of kindness thrown my way.

But not this time. I'm done playing the clown.

The moment I gave up wasn't when I found out my husband was cheating. It was when I heard my ten-year-old daughter laugh into the phone and say, "Mom's so clueless. She has no idea about Dad and Summer."

Ten years ago, I was a top biomedical researcher, making six figures. I gave it all up for his promotion and our newborn daughter. Ten years later, the perfect marriage I traded my career and youth for turned out to be nothing but an elaborate lie.

He called me his safe haven, then got in our bed with his mistress and discussed how to keep me in the dark.

This time, I'm not going to cry or make a scene. I'm going to quietly gather my evidence and call the lab director I've turned down seven times.

It's fall break, and Mom and my sister Della Sinclair are visiting me at St. Julian's Academy.

The South Campus Arctic Biome is a landmark the Sinclair family funded years ago. It's filled with the rare arctic flowers Mom and Della have always loved. Every single time they visit, they have to go in.

That's when Kiley Croft, the girl Fletcher Waverly grew up with, pulls what she calls "a little prank." While no one's paying attention, she locks the door from the outside panel and pushes the temperature controls to maximum.

The people inside are trapped. They burn to death.

Kiley runs to Fletcher in tears, and instead of calling 911, he pulls her close and tells her:

"Hey. It's okay. It was an accident. This isn't on you."

He doesn't call me until the fire trucks show up.

"Blythe, the biome caught fire. Your mom and your sister are trapped inside."

I spin around.

Della is right next to me, sniffling and complaining about her cold. Mom is passing her tissues.

They're both completely fine.

Then who the hell is in there?

In my past life, I went into labor and they wheeled me into surgery. When I woke up, my stomach was flat. My baby was gone.

My husband held my hand, his eyes rimmed red, and told me I'd never been pregnant at all. He said the thing growing in me was a ten-pound tumor.

My own mother held me and cried, saying I'd wanted a baby so badly that I'd started imagining things.

The doctor pulled out my entire medical file. Even the head nurse, the one who'd felt my belly the night before and told me how healthy my pup was, looked at me with pity and swore she'd never seen me before in her life.

But I felt him kick. I heard his heartbeat. I'm sure of it.

I ran through that hospital barefoot, screaming, tearing through every room, grabbing every person who walked past me, until the enforcers dragged me off like I was some lunatic.

They chained me up and threw me in the deepest cell in the Abyss.

I rotted down there alone, half out of my mind, until I died.

When I open my eyes again, I'm back in the car, contractions ripping through me, on my way to Silverleaf Medical Center.

The baby is still kicking.

A hormonal condition pushed my weight to two hundred pounds, and for three years, this boarding school made sure I never forgot it.

The ringleader was the guy every girl worshipped.

And beside him stood his girlfriend, the one who always stepped in at my worst moments with a soft voice and a sympathetic look, like she was doing me a favor.

Everyone called her an angel. Only I knew the truth: every time she "helped," things got worse.

One day, she handed me a candy in front of everyone. "Here. Something sweet always helps."

I didn't feel like I had a choice.

That night, a demon showed up at the foot of my bed.

"Congratulations. You ate the pact candy. I'll grant you three wishes — money, beauty, lifespan. You name it, I'll make it happen."

My whole body shook. Three years of humiliation, and finally there was a way out. Wealth, beauty, revenge. All I had to do was ask.

Then the demon's expression shifted, eyes full of cruel amusement.

"There's a catch, though. The real pact-holder is someone else. Whatever you wish for, the one who gave you that candy gets double."

The words I was about to say died in my throat.

Then, slowly, I smiled.

Double?

That's way more interesting than three wishes.

Just because I got a B+ in physics, my father slapped me across the face and kicked me while I was down.

"If you worked even half as hard at school as we do at our jobs, you'd have straight A's!"

"Your mom and I kill ourselves every single day, and this is how you repay us?"

To make sure I couldn't argue anymore, they spent a fortune getting their hands on some kind of devil's contract.

Dad sneered: "Once this thing is signed, every hour we work, you have to study. Now that's what I call fair."

Mom nodded along: "No more complaining that we don't understand what you go through."

Looking at their smug, satisfied faces, I didn't argue. I just bit my finger and signed.

Because I knew better than anyone what their "killing ourselves" actually amounted to.

By the time the contract came due, they were on their knees begging me to cancel it.

The fake heiress and I died twice fighting over the same thing—which of us would get adopted by that wealthy couple.

The first time, I got the necklace. I became their daughter. I thought I'd finally have everything I'd ever wanted. Three months later, they drowned me in the bathtub.

William's voice still echoes in my head. "This is your fault! If we'd taken Chloe instead, she'd still be alive!"

The second time, I gave Chloe the necklace. Let her have the good life. I thought that would keep me safe.

Five years later, Chloe turned up dead in their mansion. The Harringtons called the cops on me. They said I broke in and killed her out of jealousy. I died in prison, broken and tortured. The last thing I heard was Catherine's voice through the visiting room glass, cold as ice. "You belong in the gutter."

The third time, I open my eyes again.

I watch the couple smile at us, all warmth and kindness, and one question burns in my mind. Which daughter do they actually want?

Marlowe Crane is my best friend, and she's also a succubus.

She was born with this power that makes men lose their minds, but she always told me she only wanted to use her "gift" to protect me.

So every time I dated someone, she'd volunteer to "test" him.

Without fail, every single man fell at her feet.

She'd send me photos of them in bed together. "See, Rosie? They're all trash. Lucky I caught them for you."

After breaking up more times than I can count, I had a breakdown and moved from Boston to Los Angeles.

That's where I met Holden Kingsley. I thought the nightmare was finally over.

On my wedding day, Marlowe showed up in my dressing room with a glass of drugged water.

In my past life, I drank it and passed out. She stripped off my wedding dress, put it on herself, and climbed into Holden's bed.

Someone threw cold water on my face to wake me up. When I walked in with the bridesmaids, I caught them tangled up together.

I lost it. Screamed and cried and called the police right there.

And what happened?

Holden didn't feel guilty at all. He acted like I was the bad guy, like I'd ruined Marlowe's life.

Under Marlowe's succubus influence, he believed she was innocent, that I forced her into it.

After that, my marriage became a living hell.

Now I'm back, standing in front of the mirror, staring at that drugged glass of water in my hand.

This time, they're the ones going to hell.

Everyone knew Ethan Blackwood and I were Professor Richard Hartwell's two proudest students. From childhood easels to Columbia studios, inseparable for over a decade.

Everyone assumed we'd get married, stand together on the Pritzker stage someday. Until he fell in love with Sophia Crane, daughter of our mentor's academic rival.

I let him go. Love isn't something I can design.

But I never thought he'd destroy our mentor's entire life for her.

Five years later, he's back in New York riding high on his success, excited to "make amends" with Professor Hartwell.

I laugh.

Go ahead, Ethan Blackwood. You'll spend the rest of your life searching.

At a late-night party, when the bottle spins to my boyfriend Tyler, he picks dare.

"Kiss anyone here except your girlfriend," the host announces with a smirk.

Tyler barely hesitates. He walks straight to my best friend Sienna and kisses her for a full seven seconds in front of everyone.

When he comes back, he leans close to my ear. "Don't sweat it, we'll have fun when we get home."

When it's my turn, I choose truth. "Tell us a secret nobody knows."

I look around at all these drunk college kids, then say calmly, "I killed someone."

I'm a figure skating prodigy from one of the wealthiest families in the country. I'm also an idiot.

I believed that if I was kind enough, people would be kind in return. So I sponsored Haley Dunning, a scholarship skater on our team, and treated her like my own little sister.

The day before the NCAA qualifier, she came up to me with a sports drink, said she wanted to help keep my energy up.

I drank it. Went down on the ice with a broken leg. Drug test came back positive for banned stimulants.

Overnight, I went from the queen of the rink to the face of a scandal no one could stop talking about.

Expelled from school. Torn apart on social media. Calloway Corporation's stock in freefall.

Haley stood in front of the cameras, tears in her eyes: "Piper just wanted to win so badly. I never thought she'd go this far..."

I fell into a depression. Couldn't sleep without medication.

Then one day, she showed up at my hospital room with my boyfriend, bearing "comfort": a cup of water and a few pills: "Piper, take your meds, okay? This is all my fault for being so stupid..."

Three minutes later, I'm coughing up blood, convulsing on the floor.

Right before I died, I caught the look on her face. That sweet, innocent face. A slow, vicious smile spreading across it.

She knocked over the pill bottle and started screaming: "I grabbed the wrong ones! I mixed up her antidepressants with some old person's heart meds! I'm so stupid!"

My boyfriend pulled her into his arms. Didn't even glance at me dying on the floor: "She meant well. Piper just had bad luck."

I was poisoned to death in that hospital room.

Then I opened my eyes, and it was the day before the qualifier.

Three years ago, I was in a car crash that killed both my parents and shattered my legs beyond repair. The doctors said I'd never walk again.

When I had nothing left, he appeared like some kind of savior. He paid for everything, brought me to his private research facility, took care of me.

He told me he loved me, broken body and all. We got married. He was perfect to me.

There was just one catch. His sister. Not even blood related, just some girl he grew up with. She had some rare blood disease, and turns out I had the exact blood type she needed. So I gave blood. Bone marrow too. Over and over.

I thought I owed him my life. For three years, I let them stick needles in me, drain whatever they needed. I thought that was love.

Until today, when I found a video on his phone from three years ago.

In the footage, one of his men reports back: "The crash was clean. Her parents are dead. Her legs are destroyed, just like you wanted."

His voice, cold as ice: "Good. As long as her blood keeps Cora alive, that's all that matters. She's got no one and nowhere to go. She'll have to stay."

The accident that killed my parents and destroyed my legs wasn't an accident at all. He planned it.

So I planned my own death. And when he saw my body, the man who dragged me into hell finally lost his mind.

That admissions season, Lily — a poor student who couldn't even clear the state university cutoff — insisted on dragging my two childhood friends off to the worst community college in the state, just so she wouldn't have to go alone.

Ethan held an offer from Yale. Ryan had been accepted to Stanford. Yet the two of them, as if under a spell, were ready to throw away those schools just to follow her.

I wore myself out trying to talk them down. All I got back was: You look down on Lily. You're just jealous.

Behind their backs, I contacted counselors, admissions offices, and their parents, and clawed their spots back one by one just before the deadline.

Lily went to that community college alone. Six months later, she jumped from the roof of her dorm.

Ethan and Ryan handled her funeral, then came back and tied me to the roof of a thirty-six-story building.

"If you hadn't stopped us from going with Lily, she never would have been bullied there."

"You're so capable, aren't you? Then go down and keep her company."

They pushed me over the edge without a flicker of hesitation.

When I opened my eyes, I was back at the start of college application season.

This time, I won't save them.

Move constantly. Never stay in one place for more than a day.
Keep your head down, don’t mix with other survivors.
Stay hidden. Don’t let them spot you.
Stay away from cities.
Don’t take unnecessary risks.

The world ended mid April, civilisation as we knew it was never the same again, some say that the gates of hell opened and swallowed everything in its path; and I can’t say that they are entirely wrong. Electricity was the first thing to go, the first step in their plan to make humanity their slaves, and they had help; covens of fae joined them, buying into the promise of ruling over the mundane. No one knows how they did it, but all at once, all over the world everything just … stopped. Cars wouldn’t start, lights wouldn’t turn on, fighter plains couldn’t defend countries from the onslaught that would follow. Even people’s tired generators that they used in their small cabins in the woods wouldn’t turn over. It was as though technologically had abandoned the human race.

"W-what do you want from me?” I stammer, scared and alone.
They smirked, though it was more creepy than humorous. “You’ll find out soon enough, but I wouldn’t try anything girl, you won’t like the consequences of disobeying us.”
”Why have you chosen to keep me alive?“
“We do normally kill every single one we meet, but for you we made an exception.” One of them chuckled, playing with the sharp tip of my ears, "You wanna know why? Because you're ours."

Talia had to escape her life, but she runs into the arms of the most powerful alpha this side of the world, and she has no idea how to be the mate that he wants. She has no idea how the world works outside of her father pack. But she is a fast learner, and she is never going back. She has to protect her sister, even if that means being mated to a man she barely knows

“You can remain mute and angry if you wish, but let me warn you, little wolf, I have an abundance of time, I will keep you here until you obey me.” He ran a hand through his hair......


Rhea is promised to the vampire King, yet she has spent her whole life dreaming of the mate bond and what it could give her. She wants an epic love. Something beyond all the limits of mortality. Can she find that with the undead king?

When I died alone in the hospital in my past life, Nathaniel was in Paris getting engaged to Sophia.

Reborn on the day of Mom's funeral, I watched him announce his first love's return at the gala. Watched him smile at her the way he never smiled at me in three years.

So I threw wine in his face.

"The transaction is over, Nathaniel."

In front of all Boston high society, I dropped his million-dollar ring into the champagne tower.

Then I drove 12 hours to Port Haven. A shabby seaside cottage, teaching piano, falling for Liam, the gentle town doctor. I thought I was finally free.

Until three months later, Nathaniel showed up with lawyers.

"Clause 17, Emma. Early divorce means you owe $8 million."

I collapsed in the snow, hands shaking—this hidden trap is why I never ran in my past life.

But this time, will I let him win again?

When I woke up, there was a stranger beside me. He said his name was Kieran, took care of me gently, answered every question with patience. My wolf was dormant, but my heart raced every time I saw him.

"Are you my mate?" I asked.

He was silent for a long time. Finally: "Just rest for now."

The days that followed felt like a dream. He made breakfast, walked with me, kissed me under moonlight. We marked each other. I thought I'd found where I belonged.

Until I saw a black wolf emblem.

Memory struck like lightning—

Kieran Valens. My mortal enemy. Son of the man who killed my parents twenty years ago.

And I'd just spent three weeks in his bed.

Worse—when I pretended the amnesia continued and secretly fed intel to my pack...I found I couldn't betray him.

When he took a silver bullet on the battlefield, I ran to him faster than logic could stop me.

"Why save me?" he asked, eyes full of pain.

Because I love you. Because you're my fated wolf.

Because even though you're the one person I should hate most, my body moves toward you on instinct.

But this love was built on lies...

The Vane family has carried the vampire's curse for generations. Of every pair of twin sisters born into our bloodline, one will not live to see twenty-five.

Everyone assumed it was my sister — the one always coughing up blood.

Nobody knew that for twenty years, every full moon, the one gritting her teeth through the pain, never making a sound, was me.

The Divine took pity on me and gave me three chances. Win the genuine love of my parents, my brother, or my husband — any one of them — and the curse would lift.

Three chances. Three failures.

The only hope I had left was the baby inside me, seven months along. Bring him into this world, and I'd live.

Then my husband kicked open my hospital room door. My own brother pulled on a surgical gown and picked up a knife. My parents signed the forms outside.

They were going to cut me open, take the last thing keeping me alive, and use it to save my "cursed" sister.

After my life slipped away entirely, the truth came out.

So why is it that the people who sent me to my death are the ones who lost their minds?

I died once.

Spent seventy years as a housewife the first time around. Biggest regret? Never felt my heart race.

Met her in this life, and that's when I learned what being alive actually meant. In this world where assassins pay in gold coins and seek sanctuary at Continental hotels, we became a duo called "Swans," hunting down the man who destroyed her family. Every single day, dancing on a razor's edge.

Two years ago, the explosion killed Raven Hayes right in front of me.

To survive, I married a naive tech heir, slipped into silk dresses and started doing the charity gala circuit, tried to convince myself this was the peace I wanted.

Until that enemy became a High Table member and announced a hundred-million-dollar bounty on me to the world.

I used to be scared. Used to run. Used to ask why it had to be me.

But sitting at my vanity, staring at this stranger's face in the mirror, all done up like some socialite, I suddenly realized none of it mattered anymore.

I'm going to die eventually anyway. Might as well die looking like myself.

The best deal I ever made in my life was selling my blood to a vampire.

I was a broke, permanently starving werewolf who needed ten times the food a normal person did just to feel full.

Evan was a vampire heir with a blood allergy, the kind where the smell alone made him sick and dizzy. Somehow his life was worse than mine.

Except my blood didn't trigger it. He never reacted to me.

So he pulled out his card. "I'll keep you fed. You let me feed off you."

This wasn't a vampire. This was a walking meal ticket.

For the next three years, he was the perfect meal buddy. Five meals a day, and he never once complained. Once I finished and let out a satisfied burp, it was his turn, just a small sip, nothing more.

Then, the year we graduated, he got a call from his family. He had to fly back to Europe that same night.

Before he left, I figured I'd thank him for three years of generosity. I pulled my collar aside.

"Go ahead, take more this time. Consider it a going-away present."

He hesitated, then leaned in.

But this time, once his teeth were in, he couldn't stop.

By the time he pulled back, horrified at himself, I already had a hand pressed to my neck, and everything went dark.

I died in the tenth year of our marriage. Not from illness, but from thirty-six hundred days of silent cruelty and penance.

Ten years ago, during that avalanche, he grabbed my hand at the last second. The girl he loved got buried under all that snow.

After that, even breathing felt like a crime.

He drank himself into oblivion, stayed out all night, and on the anniversary of her death, he'd wrap his hands around my throat and ask, "Why wasn't it you?"

I loved him for fifteen years, from childhood sweethearts to bitter strangers. I gave everything for even a hint of warmth from him. What I got instead was him shoving me down the stairs for her little sister.

When I open my eyes again, wind cuts through me and snow fills the air. I'm ten years in the past, back to that afternoon in the Alps.

This time, I'll give you what you want.

Everyone knows Adrian loves me more than life itself. When that car crashed, he threw himself over me and took the hit. First thing he said when he woke up in the hospital: "Where is she? Is she okay?"

Everyone says I married the best man in the city.

What they don't know is this man has married me ten times. And divorced me ten times. All for the woman he's never gotten over.

The first time, I got on my knees and begged him not to leave. He just looked at me with those cold eyes and said, "Don't embarrass yourself."

The fourth time, we were fighting in the car. Then we crashed, and I lost our baby.

By the seventh time, I stopped crying. Just signed the papers, packed my things, waited for him to come back like he always did.

My tears, my compromises, all those times I bent until I nearly broke. What did I get? Him coming back like clockwork, just to do it all over again.

This time, when he slides that tenth divorce agreement across the desk, I finally get it. Some people's hearts never had room for you in the first place.

So this time, I'm throwing him out. Him and this whole Mrs. Hayes charade. Straight into the trash where they belong.

I burn through eighty years of my life raising three dogs that turn around and tear into me.

My vampire husband, Damian, used to be an outcast covered in festering sores, cursed to fear the sun. I cut my wrist and gave up thirty years of my life so he could become the most powerful man among the bloodlines, in control of half the world's wealth. Cold and ruthless to everyone else, he only ever bares his fangs for me.

Knox, the werewolf boy I grew up with, was born with a genetic flaw that kept him from ever shifting. I gave up another twenty years so he could have the strongest bloodline of all. Wild and reckless, he used to swear he'd carry me on his back for the rest of his life.

Julian, my human brother, got burned beyond recognition saving me from a fire. I spent my last thirty years giving him back a face people would pay a fortune for. He used to send crates of his paintings to my room, the kind of work people would kill to own.

Then a woman named Daphne shows up, and all three of them lose their minds over her.

And somehow I become the jealous, vicious wife everyone wants gone.

She cries that I pushed her, so they drive blades of blood straight through my bones.

She says I'm cruel to the staff, so they break my legs in front of a crowd.

And when I'm dying, they drain my blood to keep her alive.

If you're all going to treat the life I gave you like trash, then I'm taking it back. The strength, the face, the life. All of it.

[God, I take it back. I want everything I gave them returned to me.]

This is a world where humans and fantasy races exist side by side. Werewolves move through city streets between glass towers, and every now and then, a pair of massive wings cuts through the clouds overhead. Twenty years ago, to secure the family's standing, the main house signed a contract with the Dragon Clan.

As the least favored daughter of a branch family, I was chosen to be the Dragon King's mate. The terms were spelled out plainly: if I couldn't get married within five years of coming of age, I'd have to go to Dragon territory and go through with the marriage.

For five years, every wedding I've planned has been blown up by my younger sister, Hannah.

This is year five. I'm finally in a wedding dress, about to marry Derek, the boy I grew up with.

What I didn't expect was that one hour before the ceremony, Hannah collapsed in the dressing room coughing up blood. She grabbed Derek's hand, crying, saying she wouldn't make it through the month.

And my parents are on either side of me, hands pressed down hard on my shoulders.

"Just let Hannah have the wedding. She's dying!"

What they don't know is that if I don't get married today, the Dragon envoys will come for me on the spot.

And I won't be coming back.

The day my sister and I came back to life, we made one call: swap fiancés.

Last time, Dad burned every favor he had to lock down two marriage deals for the family. One with a mafia family that runs the West Coast. The other with a corporate CEO.

My sister married the mafia leader. She was too gentle, too kind for a world that ran on blood and backstabbing. The man had a childhood friend who played soft and helpless but was vicious as hell underneath. That woman tormented my sister for decades before finally arranging an "accident" that killed her.

And me? I got the polished CEO.

Sounds good, right? Except we tortured each other from day one. He was all rules and manners, always talking like he was giving a speech. Me? I blow up fast and if I can throw a punch, I will. Every day was the same standoff. He'd pull back, I'd push forward, and nobody gave an inch.

We spent our whole lives being polite and miserable.

Then one day, my sister and I woke up on the afternoon they announced the engagements.

A bored demon out for a good time came after me and my worst enemy, and locked us in a room with no door.

The rules are simple. We each have to confess three secrets the other one has no idea about, for his amusement, and only then do we get out.

Weston raises an eyebrow, that lazy, punchable smirk on his face.

"After ten years of being at each other's throats, what could you possibly still be hiding from me?"

He doesn't know I never actually hated him.

He doesn't know that three months ago, at that masquerade, the woman he slept with was me.

And he definitely doesn't know the baby I'm carrying is his.

My husband is an angel on an earthly trial. Every time he feels something for me, he endures divine punishment — like his chest is being ripped open from the inside.

But he told me he'd take that pain gladly, as long as it was for me.

He left a mark on my collarbone. Activate it when you're in danger, he said, and I'll rip through anything to get to you.

I believed him.

Then came a mission where I got grabbed by an armed fugitive gang and held in an abandoned warehouse for three straight days of torture and abuse.

No water. No sleep. The tendons in my hands and feet cut one by one.

Half-dead, I used the last of my strength to activate the mark.

And I heard him talking to his angel companion.

"Beckett, why did you give those people Demi's location? You know what they'll do to her."

He didn't even flinch. "She'll be fine. She's the Chosen One — she can't die. They were going after Macie. I didn't have a choice. Once this mission's over, I can petition to stay on earth. I'll make it up to Demi. She gets it."

So that's the price of being understanding. Dying inside a trap he built for me.

My heart just shatters. And I stop fighting.

Blake's keeping me locked up in a villa outside the city, with a dozen bodyguards watching me around the clock. They won't let me step foot outside my room.

He once promised Vanessa, the woman he never got over, that he'd give her company shares and his estate. Now she's back after her divorce, pregnant, crying to Blake that I threatened her, told her to give up what he promised, and that I wanted to hurt her and her baby.

Blake believed her.

He's convinced I'm evil and gold-digging. He locked me up here while he stays at the hospital, never leaving Vanessa's side.

I'm going into sudden labor, crying and begging him to let me go to a hospital. I swear I never wanted those things, never hurt her.

Blake just sneers. "You're such a liar. I don't believe a single word from someone as vicious as you. After Vanessa delivers, I'll get you a doctor. Stop trying to fool me."

But when he finally sees my body, he completely falls apart.

My serpent mate has locked me in the castle, nine months pregnant. A dozen serpent guards watch me day and night. I can't even leave the room.

A month ago, his brother died in a hunting accident. He became the serpent clan leader. Then he brought back his brother's widow, the woman he grew up with. His first love.

He said he needed to take care of his brother's widow. He told me we'd all live together in the castle, nice and peaceful.

I said no.

I'm his mate. I'm a beastman. My pride won't let me accept that. And they grew up together, childhood sweethearts. How could I not think about it?

She came to him in tears, heavily pregnant. She said I poisoned her medicine, that I wanted to kill her and the baby.

He believed her.

He decided I was just some rogue beastman with no background, jealous and vicious, only after his title and money. So he locked me in this freezing castle while he camped outside her delivery room.

When labor hit, I screamed for a healer. I swore I never hurt her. I just couldn't live with her under the same roof. I only ever loved him.

He just laughed. "You're good at acting. I don't believe a word out of you. Once she delivers safely, I'll deal with you. Don't think you can trick me into coming back."

But when a trembling guard reported "Your mate and the child... they didn't make it," he lost it completely.

The day the Gryphon army marched home in victory, my sister's husband came back safe. My husband, Tobias, died on the ice.

Everyone pitied me, and I believed them. I mourned him for years, handed over every resource the Elven Realm had to offer to Crown Prince Nathaniel, and helped him lock down his claim to the throne.

It took me years to find out the man who came back wasn't Nathaniel at all. It was my "dead" husband, Tobias.

He killed his own brother, stole his face with forbidden magic, all so he could marry my sister Sabrina and make her his queen, official and out in the open.

"Sabrina and I are the real thing. Pretending to be my brother, that was for the good of the kingdom."

They framed me for treason and threw me into the Pit of Judgment. As I burned, I watched the two of them hold each other while the kingdom cheered.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the army came home.

My sister begged me to stop grieving, tears in her eyes. "Nathaniel" swore he'd give me a life of luxury. The old king stood in front of everyone and promised to grant me anything I wanted.

This time, I didn't cry. I chose to remarry without a second thought.

Tobias thought wearing his brother's face was all it took to sit on that throne. What he didn't know was that without me, he never stood a chance of getting there at all.

I've got a reputation on campus as a doormat with zero dignity. I bring Wyatt Langley food, do his homework, act as his emotional dumping ground. Been at it for a year.

His rich friends mock my cheap clothes and say I'm reaching way out of my league. He never stops them. Sometimes he even laughs along.

Finally, he announces in front of everyone that he's breaking up with me. His first love is coming back from Europe, so I need to get lost.

Everyone's waiting to see me cry.

I glance at the five million dollars that hit my account half an hour ago and say, with complete sincerity, "Okay. Congrats."

What nobody knows is that I put up with him, tolerated his rotten temper, for one simple reason. His mom pays way too well.

Now the money's here. Time to end this arrangement.

So why, the second I walk away, does he start tearing the city apart trying to find me?

Ten years ago, my parents worked for the Bellamys. He was their driver. She ran the house.

Then came the crash. I watched them shove Nash Bellamy out of the wreck, and it killed them both.

That's where the claustrophobia came from.

He knew. He knew all of it.

Then at homecoming, I showed up in a dress that matched Camilla's. She was the girl he'd always wanted. So he shoved me into the abandoned supply closet backstage.

The lock turned. On the other side of the door, he and Camilla were laughing like it was nothing.

"I'm pretty sure she's claustrophobic."

"Two hours in there. She'll learn."

I clawed at my own hands until they bled, couldn't get any air, and ended up wetting myself in a closet a dog wouldn't sleep in.

When the door finally opened, he pinched his nose and laughed and said I was disgusting.

I pushed myself up the wall, inch by inch, and looked at the face I'd been looking at for ten years. And I didn't want to cry anymore. Not even a little.

"Nash. I'm done chasing you."

I died. At my sister's eighteenth birthday party, the moment the champagne tower came crashing down.

While she stood under the crystal chandelier in her gown, soaking up congratulations from three hundred guests, I was tied up in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town. The wound in my stomach was still bleeding.

I called my family. Only my brother picked up, sounding pissed off and disgusted. "What's your problem now? This is her big day. You better not ruin it."

I tried to explain. He hung up.

That was the ninety-ninth time they'd hung up on me.

Also the last.

They thought I was throwing a tantrum, deliberately skipping my sister's special moment. Called me ungrateful, said they regretted bringing me back from that backwater town two years ago.

Well, now they're off the hook.

Problem solved.

My husband Spencer quit his job to manage a rising model's career. In six months, she dropped the weight, blew up online, and turned into a supermodel — magazine covers, major runways, deal after deal.

Meanwhile, I watch myself expand by the day. Bloated. Double chin forming. Skin getting worse.

The whole world calls me greedy, lazy, out of control. Even my parents call to tell me to watch what I eat. And there's nothing I can say to make anyone understand.

Then one night, I catch them on the balcony, voices low, thinking no one can hear: "Forget about that fat cow. Once she drops dead, the house and the insurance are all ours."

That's when it finally makes sense.

Camille has a system tied to her. And it's tied to me.

Every pound I gain, she loses one.

I'm the fuel. The stepping stone. The inheritance they're waiting to collect.

She gets thin while I get fat?

So as long as I keep eating, she keeps losing weight?

Good.

I go ahead and spend a hundred grand booking a reclusive private chef for a full month. No limits on ingredients, price doesn't matter. The more extravagant, the better.

I'm going to eat whatever I want and actually enjoy my life.

Let's see how long she stays thin while I'm out here actually living my life.

As the only mute player in this horror game, I thought I was screwed.

Turns out the boss knows sign language.

Thank God! Perfect!

Then he gets everything completely wrong.

I sign "help me," he reads it as "you're hot."

I sign "danger," he thinks I'm saying "I like you."

I sign "get lost," and he goes, "You want me to come closer? Okay."

The worst part? I curse him out in sign language, calling him a psycho pervert.

He just smiles and says, "Baby, you're so good at flirting. I can't even bring myself to kill you now."

Me: ...

My teammate whispers to me, "Please stop signing. Every time you do, he stares at you even more like a psycho."

My parents raised me for twenty-four years. Then they found out I wasn't their biological daughter.

Their real daughter came home. She'd only been back two years. That's all it took to erase twenty-four.

When kidnappers grabbed us, I used my body as a shield. They beat me until something inside me ruptured. I was dying from internal bleeding, but no one could tell.

My parents wouldn't even look at me. "This is your fault! None of this would've happened if it weren't for you!"

"Get downstairs and apologize to your sister. If you can't, pack your things and get out."

They threw her a party at a downtown hotel while I died alone in my room.

I thought they'd be relieved. Maybe even glad. I thought they'd just move on like I never existed.

But when they finally learned the truth, they fell apart.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone thinks that after ten years engaged to Alpha Grayson, I'll end up as Frostpeak's Luna. Then one night at a gala, in front of the whole pack, he hands me over to the lowest rogue he can find.

Someone speaks up for me.

"Alpha Grayson, if you're done with her, just let her go. Why humiliate her like this? She dragged you through three days and nights in a blizzard ten years ago. She froze her body half to death saving you. She can't even shift anymore."

"That rogue can barely feed himself. She'll go with him and suffer for it."

Grayson just pulls the crying Omega closer, disgust all over his face.

"She saved me because she wanted the Luna title, that's all. I'm sick of her acting like I owe her something."

"Watch. Give it a few days and she'll come crawling back, begging me on her knees to change my mind."

I don't cry. I don't beg. I unclasp the engagement necklace, drop it at his feet, and walk out with the rogue.

Three days later, Grayson will show up at the Fringe with a hundred guards to drag me back, screaming that I'm heartless.

Everyone says I married an iceberg.

Three years of contract marriage. He's never touched me once.

On our wedding night, I tried to move into his bedroom. He refused. I stood in front of him wearing lingerie. He just said, calm as ever, "You should get some rest."

I'm a healthy woman with a normal sex drive. Every day I'm burning up with my own desire.

I thought he didn't love me. So for both our sakes, I signed the divorce papers. Today, I'm telling him.

Then that afternoon, I suddenly heard his thoughts.

When I walked up to him in just a towel, he looked calm, staring at his laptop. But his mind was screaming: Holy shit. She's not wearing anything under that. Look at that skin. Her tits are huge. I can't take this anymore... no, I'll scare her. Fuck. I'm hard again.

Turns out under the ice, there's a volcano that's been buried for just as long.

I slip the divorce papers back into hiding and pour him a coffee.

New plan: make that volcano blow.

I don't realize how badly I've been wronged until they're strapping me to the gurney.

My name is Camille Brooks. I'm one of the best cardiothoracic surgeons in the city, and I have never lost a patient on my table.

My fiancé, Adrian Vance, is the golden boy of the entire hospital. We're supposed to get married next month.

It's a stormy night when he calls, telling me to get to the hospital right now. There's a patient bleeding out, and only I can save them.

I race through the rain, but I get stuck in traffic halfway there. By the time I push through the OR doors, the patient has no pulse.

The family points at me. They say I botched the procedure and killed him. And Adrian Vance, my own fiancé, takes the stand and shows up with "ironclad evidence" against me.

I have nothing to fight back with. I go to prison. My parents can't handle it. It destroys them both. They take their own lives.

It's only after I die that I learn who really held the scalpel that night: Daisy Whitman, the woman Adrian never got over.

I was just the fall guy.

Then I open my eyes.

I'm back. One hour before everything falls apart, riding through the rain toward the hospital.

This time, I'm going to survive.

And I'm going to watch both of you burn.

My husband's foster sister, Delilah, gets poisoned and ends up paralyzed. My husband, Grayson, the Don of this whole crime family, doesn't even bother checking the security cameras. He just throws me, two months pregnant, into the cistern where they punish traitors.

"Tessa, hand over the antidote, or die."

I kneel in the freezing swamp water and beg him. I didn't poison her.

He answers with a kick to the stomach.

For three straight days, I suffer down there. Leeches tear into my skin. My baby turns into a pool of black blood and dissolves into the filthy water. By the end, my vocal cords tear to shreds, my body goes cold, and I stop breathing.

His men get on their knees and beg him to spare me. He just sneers.

"That woman's always been good at playing the victim. No food, no medicine. Let her keep soaking."

Three days later, he finally walks into the cistern, and it's only to give me an ultimatum.

"Crawl out and apologize to Delilah on your knees. Otherwise I'll strip you of your title and sell you off to a trafficking ring. You'll wish you were dead."

No one answers him.

He has no idea. I already am.

The second the avalanche came down, I called my mate. Karl. Captain of the Pack Guard's First Squad.

He dug me out, carried me onto the helicopter, and told the pilot to take off before the second rescue team even got there.

He didn't know Delilah was buried in the same slide. The girl he'd never gotten over.

By the time they reached her, she'd been under the snow for three hours in twenty below.

Karl stood in the morgue all night.

He came back the next day and just gave me a small smile. "It wasn't your fault. You were carrying our pup. Of course you came first."

For a month after that, he was gentler than he'd ever been. He cleared his schedule to take me to every checkup. Cooked for me himself. Put the crib together, the dresser too. Every single thing in the nursery lined up exactly right.

I thought that avalanche had finally buried Delilah. That it had given him back to me.

Until the day I went into labor.

He sent every doctor and nurse out of the delivery room. There was a silver scalpel in his hand.

The moment he cut me open, I saw the red in his eyes.

Our pup was still crying, small and weak, and he never even looked. He threw us both into the incinerator.

"If it weren't for you, Delilah would still be alive. Your life for hers."

Then I opened my eyes, and I was back at the moment the avalanche hit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've run a pet rescue shop for five years. I've lost count of the animals I've saved. Around the neighborhood, people call me the good Samaritan of Main Street. My husband, Adam Carter, and I have been married five years, and he's always been gentle and attentive.

It's a rainy night in late fall, and I come across an injured starling in the alley on my way home, its wing broken.

The second I scoop it into my arms, a man's voice cuts through the dark.

"Tomorrow night, eight o'clock. Whatever you do, don't go home. Your husband's going to sneak out with your best friend, and on the road, they're going to hit someone and kill them. Then they're going to run, and they're going to pin it on you."

I look down into the starling's eyes, and the color drains out of my face.

Five years of what I thought was love, and it was just a trap waiting to close in.

A talking bird. Nobody's going to believe that if I go to the cops.

I don't even think twice. I just take the bird and head downtown.

The day I closed another major deal, my fiancé, the CEO, smiles and tells me the credit and the bonus are going to the new intern.

I watch him lean in close to her, laughing, and something in me just stops caring enough to fight for it.

I sign the transfer request and ship myself off to the most useless department in the company.

What I don't expect is that a few days later, the same man who never looked twice at anyone beneath him is going to be on his knees begging me to come back.

I gave Arthur a thousand years. A thousand years to secure his throne as God-King.

And on the day of our engagement ceremony, he announced he was marrying someone else.

In my past life, I bled myself dry for him.

He told me Lilith needed Seraphim blood to live. I believed him. He bound me to the Divine Punishment Pillar and carved open my chest, one cut at a time.

He massacred my entire clan, calling it "treason."

I only learned the truth as I was dying. That pitiful "saint" was a demon from the Abyss all along.

Now that I'm reborn, watching him sit on that throne makes my skin crawl.

I destroy our engagement in front of everyone and take the entire Seraphim clan with me.

This time, I'm only here to watch him destroy himself.

I loved Damien for ten years. Ten years, right up until the moment he took the heart that was supposed to save our daughter and gave it to someone else's child.

Lily was only seven. She was terrified of the dark, terrified of pain. She never got that heart. She just faded, right there in that hospital bed.

And Damien was down the hall, celebrating someone else's miracle.

He had no idea what I was holding when he finally came home. He had no idea my stomach cancer had already hit the final stage.

There was nothing left in this world worth staying for.

So this time, I didn't yell. I didn't cry.

I just slid the divorce papers across the table.

He thought I was bluffing.

But this time, I had nothing left to lose.