7653 Book(s) Related to the last.thing he told.me.book

Six days after Alexander lost all contact, I navigated my way alone to the Nightfall Gala to find him.

The guard's expression twisted into something peculiar when he heard my purpose.

"You're saying you are looking for your mate, Prince Alexander? And what is your name?"

"I am Cecilia."

The guard let out a harsh, mocking snort. "Stop causing a scene! A blind beggar trying to pull a scam? Don't think you can just impersonate her just because you know the name of the Prince's mate."

"Everyone knows the Prince just gifted Cecilia the millennia-old Abyssal Night Crystal to celebrate her pregnancy! What the hell are you?"

Just then, the giant LED screen cut to the Gala's live broadcast.

"Allow me to formally introduce my partner, Cecilia. Furthermore, she is expecting. Our family is about to welcome a new heir." It was Alexander's voice.

"Thank you all. This is the greatest gift Alexander and I could ever receive."

The moment that sweet, timid voice echoed through the hall, a string violently snapped in my brain. A sharp ringing pierced my eardrums.

—It was the voice of my twin sister, Elena.

On a full moon, every wolf has to be inside a registered shelter before moonrise. That's pack law.
So when my husband's leave finally lined up with a moon, I spent six months and eighty thousand dollars booking his whole family into a top-tier sanctuary on Silverspine Ridge. Then his first love decided she wanted to come.
Instead of telling her no, he gave her my registered bed — and sent me a queue number for the state shelter, a thirty-six-hour line for a bunk in an open ward full of rogues. I looked at his parents, his sister, waiting for one of them to object. Every single one of them took his side.
So fine. I drove the other way, and spent the next three full moons enjoying myself — alone. That's when the whole family started to panic...

What if everything you sacrificed for your family made you worthless in their eyes?

For years, I buried my brilliance as a polyglot and musician, becoming the invisible wife and mother. My husband cherished his childhood sweetheart, and my daughter called another woman “mom.” My love was met with contempt.

The day I nearly died from a broken heart—and a bleeding ulcer—while they dined happily without me, was the day I finally woke up. I walked away from the marriage, the mansion, and the child who rejected me.

Now, under the spotlight of the international stage, I am reborn. My skills command respect, and a powerful, enigmatic man sees my true worth. Let my former family watch from the sidelines as I shine. Their regret is my fuel, but my heart has moved on—there will be no second chances.

The day Raina gave birth should have been the happiest of her life. Instead, it became her worst nightmare. Moments after delivering their twins, Alexander shattered her heart—divorcing her and forcing her to sign away custody of their son, Liam. With nothing but betrayal and heartbreak to her name, Raina disappeared, raising their daughter, Ava, on her own.Years later, fate comes knocking when Liam falls gravely ill. Desperate to save his son, Alexander is forced to seek out the one person he once cast aside. Alexander finds himself face to face with the woman he underestimated, pleading for a second chance—not just for himself, but for their son. But Raina is no longer the same broken woman who once loved him.No longer the woman he left behind. She has carved out a new life—one built on strength, wealth, and a long-buried legacy she expected to uncover.Raina has spent years learning to live without him.The question is… Will she risk reopening old wounds to save the son she never got to love? or has Alexander lost her forever?

" Logan we shouldn't do this" she said softly and he smiled kissing her cheeks
" Do what" he asked
Emily's world is turned when she meets Logan and the new world he opens her eyes to.
A world filled with supernatural beings and the evils that come with it in the form of a maniac wolf hunter called Finn, a world where love cannot be smooth sailing.
Despite their initial clashes, they have to navigate the ups and downs of love,loss and grief even as it threatens to tear them apart.
But it seems that they are not meant to be as their meeting sets off a chain of events neither could have predicted.
Can they weather the storm together, or is love just an empty game of words and promises.
And what will be the price to pay when one lover disappears.
Join them as Emily and Logan confront their fears and doubts to discover if their connection is truly worth fighting for.

Emily Willows longs for love, but only with the man of her dreams: the brilliant, warm and dashing Edward Jones.

If only her handsome, foolish neighbor can stop with all his gentlemanly-ness and just pin her into the nearest solid obstacle available. And then, perhaps encircle her whimpering body into the solid rippling confines of his warmth to show her the greatest pleasure of being alive and breathing, and moaning beneath his-

But no, he would not. He could not. He would not even want to. As they’ve been best friends for, well, ever.

But it becomes extremely challenging for her when he asks her for something in earnest, the biggest favor he could ever ask, even at the cost of their bond.

The one favour she was sure no friend would ever ask their own.

The one she was sure to lose herself to.

The one she knew she shouldn’t say yes to.

But it would indeed be the one to make her crazy all the way.

Oh, damnit, all to hell.

Iris Young never expected her wedding day to turn into a nightmare.
But when she walked in on her fiance cheating, her world shattered, and something inside her changed forever.

On the night my grandmother died, my husband Kael came home trailing blood.
His leather motorcycle jacket was soaked dark red, yet he flashed a savage grin: "I wiped the floor with those bastards tonight!"
For three years, he had treated our home as nothing more than a pit stop between reckless street races.
I’d finally had enough. "After the funeral, we're getting a divorce."
Before the words fully left my mouth, my phone rang. It was his riding partner, Lunn, his voice choking with sobs: "Sera... Kael drove off the cliff tonight. They only recovered bloody pieces of his helmet!"
But the "dead man" was standing right in front of me...

For two years I was Easton's secret girlfriend. I paid his tuition. I took a beating from the guys who came for him. I gave up my MIT interview so he could chase what he wanted.
Then I heard him behind a half-open door, kissing my best friend.
"Last life she clung to me like a lunatic. This life I'm not making that mistake again."
Last life. They'd both been reborn—come back with every memory of a life I don't even remember living—and somewhere in it, they'd decided I was the desperate girl who ruined everything.
Fine.
I went back to my desk, pulled the MIT acceptance I'd been about to turn down, and signed it.
Easton, I'll let you have her.
He spent two lifetimes sure he was the smart one. He's about to find out which of us was holding back.

I feel his penis so firm, even though it's still covered by his pants.

I feel like a woman on fire, eager for this man to claim me. I know he wants it as much as I do.

I massage him slowly, squeezing his penis which seems like it's about to burst through his pants, so hard.

Vittorio slides his hand into my panties, his index finger slipping into my wetness, making me tremble immediately.

"Your body is driving me crazy... you're perfect," he whispers, brushing his lips against mine.

"I want more... so much more!" I affirm.

He slowly slides my dress off my shoulders, exposing my breasts.

He brings his mouth to my stiff nipples, sucking and nibbling lightly.

My desire was ignited, and my body wanted to be fucked immediately.

"Giullia Santori, a shy and dedicated young music student with a passionate love for the piano, dreams of becoming a renowned musician. However, her peaceful life is turned upside down on a fateful night when she finds herself saving a stranger who is being brutally beaten in the dark streets of her city. What she doesn't realize is that the man she rescued is none other than Vittorio Cassini, one of the bosses of the Italian mafia.

Vittorio's gratitude for Giullia grows rapidly, leading him to take on a protector's role in her life. As she is drawn into this mysterious world of crime, a deep bond forms between them. As the danger escalates, Giullia finds herself increasingly involved in a game of shadows and secrets that threaten not only her safety but also her heart."

Cleo Farris has one rule: never want what you cannot have. She breaks it the moment her stepbrother's best friend walks back into her life, older, sharper, and looking at her like she is no longer the girl he used to ignore.
Dash Calloway is eighteen. Too confident. Too perceptive. And living in the same house for the summer while their parents honeymoon across Europe. Cleo is seventeen, invisible by choice, and completely unprepared for a boy who argues with everything she says and somehow still makes her feel more seen than anyone ever has.
But when a secret gets out, Cleo loses the carefully constructed life she built to stay safe. Now she has to decide: keep surviving in the background, or finally take up the space she was always meant to fill, even if it costs her everything.

In front of me, Daniel kissed his childhood sweetheart.

He said he married me only for the benefits, without any feelings for me.

He even threatened me to give his sweetheart a heart transplant.

I agreed.

But after the transplant, he regretted it. I, however, smiled.

1

My daughter begged me, tears in her eyes, to take her to gymnastics camp—just the two of us.

I thought it was her way of proving she loved me.

I was wrong.

In that hotel room in Toronto, I overheard my husband's voice—with another woman.

“Don't worry, Sophia will find a way to stay a few more days. I promised her that blue limited-edition leotard.”

“Her body now… after giving birth, it's ruined.”

In that moment, my world collapsed.

I thought I'd only been betrayed by my husband.
But the daughter I raised with everything I had—she was his accomplice.

The child I nurtured with my own hands kept clearing the path: so that woman could sleep in my bed, wear the lingerie I could no longer fit into, sneer in front of the mirror at every single mark my body earned from bringing life into this world.

I once believed that giving up my career would be enough to hold my family together.

But they joined hands to tell me: my sacrifice was never honored. It was a joke.

When a woman who has given everything to her family finally wakes up—

Her revenge will make every single one of them remember exactly what they did.

Lucia Romano vanished thirteen years ago. Kidnapped as a child, she disappeared before the marriage contract binding her to Alessandro De Luca could ever become real.

Alessandro De Luca swore he would never obey a marriage contract but fate had already chosen for him.

Now the ruthless heir of a powerful mafia empire, Alessandro has lived by one rule....he will marry only for love, or not at all. The missing girl from his past is nothing more than unfinished business he still intends to close. Then one night he rescues a broken woman from a trafficking ring. She calls herself Lia.

Haunted by trauma and stripped of her past, Lia remembers almost nothing about the life she once had. Alessandro, only meant to protect her… until protecting her becomes something far more dangerous.

Because the powerful mafia boss who refused an arranged marriage is now falling for a woman he believes is a stranger. But fate has its own cruel design. The girl Alessandro has spent thirteen years searching for…is the very woman he’s beginning to love.

After being stood up for the ninety-ninth time while attempting to register for marriage, I sent my fiancé a breakup message. He had allowed me to be let down ninety-nine times, dismissing my asthma as mere pretentiousness and perceiving my sacrifices as acts of greed, all the while lavishing his patience upon another woman. It was only when he had his mistress select a cheap necklace for me and sketched explicit nudes of her that I realized these seven years were not a narrative of profound love, but rather an absurd farce playing out solely in my life. The moment I dispatched the breakup message, I never envisioned that this man, who viewed me as dispensable, would later pursue me with a frenzied obsession.

Four years ago, I left my boyfriend when he had nothing.

Now, he's a billionaire. And he's forcing me to marry him—just for revenge.

Every day it's a different girl. Now there's a pregnant influencer he flaunts in my face, destroying what's left of my dignity.

"Kneel and beg her, and I'll give you money." He holds another woman and smirks at me.

I don't cry. I don't scream. I just swallow the blood rising in my throat.

He doesn't know my brain tumor is terminal. I have thirty days left.

I've already signed the organ donation papers. I just want to die in peace.

I stopped loving him a long time ago.

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.

My husband's first love was in trouble.
When the news came, I was lying on the operating table.
Dr. Miller put down his scalpel and said to Dr. Johnson, "I'll leave my wife's surgery to you."

"If I don’t go now, I might regret it for the rest of my life."

With that, he turned and walked away.
Watching my husband's retreating figure, I couldn't hold back—tears fell.
The next second, the cold blade of a scalpel touched my skin.

Dr. Johnson spoke calmly, "Why the tears? With me here, you'll be fine."

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.

At our engagement party, my fiancé's first love confessed her feelings for him in front of everyone.
Without a second thought, he shoved me aside and ran after her, leaving me to be hit by a car.
While I was in the hospital, he brought her into our home and forced me to eat food I was allergic to.
Most absurd of all, he personally sent me to the operating table so I could give her my kidney.
She tortured my cat to death, and all he said was, "It was just a cat."
The day I decided to leave the country, he thought I had died in a plane crash. Then he got into a car accident and lost his memory, remembering only the version of us at eighteen—when we were in love.
Too bad some scars never fade.

The night my childhood fiancé humiliated me in front of our entire senior class, I didn't cry.
I just went home and made two decisions.

Lose the 60 pounds.
Secretly reject my Princeton acceptance.
I erased his number, packed my bags, and vanished from his toxic orbit. Nathan thinks he won. He thinks he finally shook off the "burden" his parents forced on him.
But what happens when the girl you spent your whole life running away from... becomes the only woman you can't live without?

My fiancé has tried to kill me seventeen times.

Everyone says I'm cursed by the Moon Goddess. Five years, seventeen mating ceremonies—all ending in blood.

An eagle's talons through my spine. Poisoned wine that stopped my heart. Ritual flames that charred my skin. Each time, I survived. Each time, Kael Silverblade held my hand and swore it was fate's cruelty, not his.

I believed him.

Until the seventeenth time.

Blood moon. Three assassins. Nine bone blades cutting precise lines across my body—missing every vital organ, maximizing the pain. I writhed on the sacred stones, screaming until my voice broke.

Three days later, still wrapped in bandages, I heard him talking to his lieutenant outside the healing den.

"Lord Silverblade, she almost died this time. Maybe we should—"

"No." Kael's voice was ice. "Her brother saved my life. My grandfather swore a blood debt—a mating bond to repay it. But goddammit, I love Vira. I've always loved Vira. Not her."

Silence.

"Keep the accidents coming," he said. "As long as she won't let go, we keep going. She'll break eventually. She has to."

I pressed against the wall, tears streaming down my face.

Seventeen times. Not curses. Not fate.

Him.

The male I'd loved since I was sixteen.

But here's what Kael doesn't know—this time, he finally wins.

I won't survive the next full moon.

I was murdered. My body was dumped on the riverbank.
The detective leading the case is Brennan Carter — my husband. He has sworn to find the killer of this "unidentified female." He doesn't know the victim is me.
I've been missing for seven days. My colleagues and supervisors keep calling Brennan to ask where I am. Dismissing it as a tantrum, he's spent the week doing one thing: celebrating his mistress Tessa's birthday.
It wasn't until my phone turned up at the crime scene that it finally hit him — the wife he'd wished would disappear might actually be gone.

I’m Molly Johnson. At my own engagement party, I witnessed my fiancé’s betrayal with my stepsister right before my eyes. Devastated, I turned around and married Edward Howard—a wealthy heir rumored to be terminally ill, with not much time left to live.
Everyone laughed, saying I was in a hurry to become a widow. But little did they know, I leaned close to his ear, my breath warm and teasing: “Since you don’t have much time left, why not play a little game with me?”
I flirted with him, tempted him, watched as his indifference slowly melted into a blush at the tips of his ears.
Until one day, he cornered me against the wall, his eyes burning with longing. “Molly… tease me again. Please.”

1

Thirteen years. That's how long I loved Reid Holloway.
When he said he was being bullied, I believed him. When he kissed me on that rooftop, I thought he felt the same. When he asked me to transfer schools with him, I said yes without hesitation.
Then I heard him bragging to his friends: "She'd save her first time for me. Hell, she'd still be thinking of me on her wedding night."
The bullying was staged. The kiss meant nothing. He just wanted me gone—so his new girl could feel more comfortable.
He thought I'd beg. He thought I'd cry. He thought I'd never actually leave.
I left the country.
And ran straight into his stepbrother.

I died on that operating table.

Arthur cut my five-year-old son Leo open and took his kidneys to save his bastard kid. Leo died. I died. They threw us out like garbage in the snow.

But I came back.

Back to that same rainy night. This time when Arthur tried stealing Leo's life-saving medicine for that bitch Lily, I slapped her face to pieces.

Outside the OR, Arthur shoved donation papers at me. I laughed and dialed a number I'd buried five years ago.

"Viktor? Your sister needs a favor. Bring your guns."

Explosions echoed through the hospital as my brother walked through the smoke.

"Nobody touches my nephew." His gun pressed against Arthur's forehead.

Arthur was scared shitless: "Jesus Christ... you're a Rockwell?!"

Too bad he figured it out too late.

“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.

Everyone used to say Ryan Scott loved me more than his own life.
I used to believe that too.
Then I found out I was pregnant with Ryan’s child—
and that’s when my adopted sister told me she was pregnant with his child as well.
So I chose revenge.
I emptied his accounts, staged the perfect accident, and planned my own “death.”
On the day I “died,” Ryan completely broke down, clutching my urn like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
While he sobbed his heart out in front of my photo, I was already holding another man’s hand—the man who never let go of me when I was at my lowest—
and walking toward the brand‑new life that truly belonged to me.

Golden Nixon has always been the fat, quiet girl with a loving heart no one deserved.
In a prestigious university where beauty talks louder than brains, she's mocked, ignored, and bullied. Even by the one boy she has a crush on.

Allan Renshaw is the school's most wanted play boy. Tattooed, dreadlocked, dangerously charming, and admired. He's everything Golden isn't.

Yet shame is a cruel master. He hides her. He mocks her to fit in. And when Golden overhears him body shaming her in front of his friends, her already fragile heart shatters.

Will Allan fight for her? Or has Golden finally learned that loving someone harder won't make them love you back?

My mother rips my long-hidden Orion star chart to pieces and hurls the scraps straight into my face like garbage.
For seventeen years, I’ve been the praised straight-A good girl, my shirt collars always buttoned all the way up. I’ve lived solely for one goal: an acceptance letter from Yale, my ticket out of this suffocating cage.
But the second she locks my bedroom door from the outside, it hits me cold: blind obedience only traps you tighter.
Just as despair crashes over me, a silver lighter clatters against my windowsill. Zane—the biker delinquent everyone at school steers clear of—pries open my window and holds out his hand to me.
To hell with the Ivy League. Tonight, Aria’s jumping out of this window that’s kept me prisoner.

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.

I'm two months pregnant with Tristan's baby when Brielle, the woman he'd do anything for, shoves me down the stairs.

She calls it an accident. I lose the baby.

I beg my husband to do something about it. Instead, he shields her and turns it around on me.

"Brielle saved my life in that fire. The whole Merrick family owes her. So drop it."

That debt. Always that debt.

Three years. No matter how many times Brielle humiliates me, degrades me, Tristan only ever has one answer: "I owe her my life."

But the truth about that fire? I'm the only one in the world who knows it.

I tried to tell him once. He laughed in my face. "Adeline, you're so desperate for attention you'd make up something like that?"

So I shut my mouth. Buried the truth. Buried whatever was left of my heart along with it.

The man I trusted with my life just handed my child to the woman who killed them, and called it loyalty.

I'm done.

I pull up the number I blocked three years ago and hit call.

"Dad. I'll take over the company. I'll go through with the engagement to Everett. But I have one condition. I want Tristan and Brielle ruined beyond recovery. Nothing and no one left."

The night before her wedding, Leah Carter caught her fiancé Elias in bed with another woman.

Elias humiliated her, manipulated her, and even plotted to pass her off to another man like an object to be discarded. In her most desperate moment, Matto Moretti came crashing through the door — reeking of blood and violence, the kind of man the entire underworld feared without question. He put a bullet through Elias's shoulder without blinking, then caught Leah's chin between his fingers, his voice low and absolute:

"Your man slept with my woman. That makes you responsible for the debt. Sign the paper and marry me."

Leah's Perspective

I told myself I was nothing more than a canary in his gilded cage — a substitute, a stand-in for someone else's sin.

We had known each other for exactly one month, and none of it made any sense. He detonated into my life like a bomb: money, tenderness, protection — all of it arriving at once, all of it suffocating in its intensity. He behaved like a man completely undone by me, and yet we had barely known each other thirty days.

Was this love at first sight? I didn't think so. There had to be another reason. I didn't know what I was to him, or why he looked at me the way he did — like a man who had loved me for years. And I knew nothing about him. Nothing at all.

Matto's Perspective

She will never know that she has been mine since long before any of this began.

I am not proud of how I came to have her. But that doesn't matter. What matters is this: you have no idea how long I have loved you. It started before all of this — before the gun, before the contract, before she ever knew my name. She will never know the truth of it, and that is fine. She only needs to know that I love her in ways that would frighten her if she ever truly understood.

As long as she stays, I would give her everything. My empire. My fortune. My life, without a moment's hesitation.

The man the world knew as cold-blooded and untouchable had been loving Leah Carter in the dark for years.

He would make Elias pay for what he had done. He would unearth the truth of her buried identity — a secret twenty years in the making. And in every shadow she could not see, he would clear the thorns from her path before she ever felt them, becoming the sharpest blade she never knew she carried.

Matto gave Leah his wealth and his kingdom. More than that, he gave her his heart — fierce, honest, and entirely hers.

"You have been mine since that day, long before you knew it."

"The whole world may fear me. But you — you are only ever allowed to love me."

He did not marry her on impulse.

He married her because he had been planning it for a very long time, and he had never once intended to let her go.

Leah × Matto — You are the captive in my hands, and the only salvation I have ever known.

On the day of our mate bond, Alpha Samuel decided we were going to be a childfree couple himself.
He held my hand and said affectionately, “No kids. I only want you.”
However, he came home with a pup in his arms later.
He claimed a friend had died, leaving the child alone, and asked us to take him in “just for a while.”
I didn’t make a scene. I didn’t demand answers. I didn’t even ask twice.
I kept cooking and cleaning, swallowed the unease and told myself to trust him.
Until that night, when I asked him where my dog had gone.
He didn’t answer. He set a bowl of dog meat soup in front of me instead.
He said my spirit dog could hurt the pup. But the spirit dog could sense bloodline, its growl wasn’t for that pup. It was for the lie he’d been hiding for three years.
At that moment, I finally understood: the pup he called “alone in the world” carried the exact same blood as him.
So our agreement was a lie and the so called childfree was an excuse.
And he’d already arranged what my ending was like when the day I agreed to bond with him.

I spent seven years being Preston Maddox's personal errand girl.

Did his homework, took his father's belt for him, cut off every friend I had because he said he didn't like me talking to other guys.

I told myself that if I was good enough, patient enough, he'd eventually see me.

Then came the school's centennial gala. In front of everyone, he locked me, a girl with severe aquaphobia, inside a water tank filled to the brim with ice-cold water, so Vanessa Sinclair could have a pretty backdrop for her ballet number.

The audience roared. He watched Vanessa take her bow with this soft, adoring smile on his face. The only time he glanced at me was when he noticed I'd made a mess, and all he did was wrinkle his nose.

The water rose over my head, and something in me finally understood.

To Preston Maddox, I wasn't even worth as much as a dog.

If a dog was drowning, its owner would at least care.

Me? I just disgusted him.

My daughter has passed away, and my ex-husband abandoned us.

In my darkest hour, my first love, Lysander, reappeared; he covered the medical expenses, married me, and provided me with a home.

For five years, I believed I was the luckiest woman in the world.

Until that fateful day, four months into my pregnancy, when I overheard his conversation with a friend—

“To save Celeste, I thought... who knew it would lead to the death of Seraphina’s daughter?”

“As for Seraphina, she is a good wife, but alas... I do not love her.”

It turned out that my daughter’s death was no accident.

It was revealed that these five years of marriage were merely his quest for atonement.

The one he had always truly loved was Celeste—my ex-husband’s current wife.

As I lay on the operating table, I made a decision—

Since he had taken my daughter’s kidney, I would seize everything from him.

Including what he believed he would never lose: me.

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the duct tape binding my wrists, and the second was that I had been kidnapped by a billionaire mafia boss who grabbed the wrong girl.

I would like to say my first reaction was brave, but it was mostly just panic. I was shoved into a massive stone mansion—the kind with gold columns and chandeliers the size of cars. If I was going to be kidnapped, I honestly expected something a little less... expensive.

I was dragged into a room full of terrifying men in suits. That’s when he walked in. Adrian DeLuca. Tall, broad-shouldered, with intense green eyes and a calmly dangerous physique that made everyone else in the room freeze. He was the CEO of Kidnapping, and annoyingly attractive. He stared at me, his sharp jawline tight, and said calmly, "This isn’t the Viper’s daughter. Who is this?"

I exhaled. "Well, you kidnapped me by mistake. Can I go home now? I have tuition to pay."

But Adrian didn't laugh. He stepped closer, his presence suffocatingly powerful. He had run a background check. "Your mother's maiden name is Volkov," he whispered, his eyes dark with a lethal promise. "The woman we intended to kidnap is the Viper’s daughter... and so are you."

My brain stalled. My absentee father was a ruthless crime lord?

"You are useful to me now," Adrian commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument. "You will remain in this house. You will go where I tell you, and you will do what I tell you."

I glared at him. "You don't own me!"

He leaned in, his breath brushing my ear. "I do now."

Chloe wasted ten years loving arrogant Zane. To win a Porsche bet, he publicly humiliated her, taking her devotion for granted. Finally awake, she cut him off and rebuilt herself as a brilliant top-university elite.
After losing her, Zane drowned in regret, begging desperately for her forgiveness. But it was too late. Chloe met the wealthy, gentle genius Liam, who healed all her wounds. Zane gambled with her heart—and lost her forever.

At the Eternal Night Realm admission ceremony, Carly suddenly grabs my hand.

My heart pounds. I think he is going to announce our relationship to the entire continent.

Instead, he says, "Eve, thanks for everything these past five years. But Lym didn't make the cut. She's hurting right now, and I need to go back and be there for her."

He crushes the realm token right in front of thousands of people.

For five years, I hid my pureblood lord identity. I drained my magic until I literally coughed up blood, quietly paving every step of his way.

I thought we loved each other. I thought after this ceremony we would rise to the top together.

But his casual thanks for everything crushes five years of my devotion into dust.

What is even more laughable is that the moment the online backlash hits Lym, he calls me on the comms.

"Eve! You need to put out a statement to clear this up right now! As my friend, you owe me this!"

Friend?

My hand holding the crystal shakes.

I tried twenty times to finalize my betrothal with Caius for our overseas fellowship, but accidents kept hurting me. I thought it was fate’s test—until I heard him admit he planned it all. He wanted another girl, using my pain to make me quit, all to keep his reputation clean. Now awake, I ended this lie for good.

At the Met Gala, I heard my husband tell his friends in French that I'm "boring." That his 22-year-old girlfriend is "so much more exciting in bed."

He laughed when they asked if I knew. "Elle ne comprend même pas 'bonjour'." (She doesn't even understand 'bonjour'.)

What Marcus doesn't know: I spent two years at the Sorbonne.

Je comprends tout, Marcus. I understand everything.

The diamond necklace he gave me after my miscarriage suddenly feels too tight. I smile at him across the champagne and candlelight.

He has no idea what's coming.