236 Book(s) Related to tonari no seki-kun junior

Roxanne never imagined her life would be reduced to a transaction. At sixteen, her parents abandon her, trading her for money to the household of her father’s older brother and his elegant wife, a childless couple desperate for an heir.

Though disguised as family duty, Roxanne knows the truth: she is nothing more than a solution to their problem, a sacrifice to preserve a legacy.

Yet it is not her uncle’s cold, watchful eyes that linger in her thoughts, it is his wife. Alexandra Romanov, with her graceful and composed demeanor, effortlessly embraces privilege, yet a quiet, aching loneliness lurks beneath her poise.

Unsure how to treat a teenage girl, unsure even how to be a mother, Alexandra turns to bedtime stories, whispered tales meant to comfort a frightened child. But in the stillness of the night, the stories deepen into something far more dangerous: unspoken desires, tender confessions, and an intimacy neither woman dares name.

As Roxanne struggles with her role as pawn in her uncle’s scheme, she finds herself bound to the one person she was meant to call stepmother. Love blooms in shadows, hidden in hushed words and stolen touches, but in a household ruled by control and appearances, every moment of tenderness risks exposure.

Trapped between duty, desire, and her longing for freedom, Roxanne must decide whether her “bedtime story” with Alexandra will remain a secret dream or spark a rebellion that could unravel the family’s fragile facade forever.

Liora Hale was a substitute bride forced to take her stepsister’s place and marry the young master of the Blackwood family, a deformed cripple rumored to have few months left to live.
“Who would have thought that even a sickly wretch like Dominic Blackwood would find himself a bride?”
At the altar, after their vows were spoken, she lifted her veil and knelt before Dominic Blackwood, pressing a hesitant kiss to his lips. The marriage contract was signed. No matter his deformities, he was now her husband.
She wasn’t afraid of the scars that marked his face, nor was she repulsed by the wheelchair that confined him. Every morning, she prepared his breakfast, attended to his needs, and thought of nothing beyond her duties as a wife.
“Young Master Blackwood is a cripple who can’t even perform,” her best friend argued.
“When he dies, you’ll still be untouched. You should aim higher.”
Later in their marriage, Dominic found himself wanting to enjoy his little wife in every way the press of her lips against his, the brush of skin against skin, the intimacy a husband and wife were meant to share.
But Liora refused him, blushing furiously.
“No, we can’t. The doctor said you’re not allowed to exert yourself.”
Desire surged through Dominic, hot and relentless. He cursed inwardly.
I should have gotten rid of that doctor and this wheelchair long ago.
Unable to restrain himself any longer, he finally revealed the truth.
In the blink of an eye, the deformed cripple disappeared, replaced by a powerful man tall, dark, and devastatingly handsome. He silenced Liora’s protests as he leaned over her, caging her against the bed with his arms.
His voice dropped low as he asked,
“What about now"?

"You are mine," he said, crossing tenderly his arm around my body. I was speechless, I tried to feign he had no power over me but my body betrayed me.
Tighten on his chest, I felt relieved and appeased, I just wanted to rest and never get out of the room, until I heard a voice coming from nowhere waking me up from this nightmare.

Yes, It was a nightmare. How could I take pleasure wrapped in this man's arm?
He was the son of the murderer of my parents.
Even if my heart was claiming him, I should remember I had no place for such a feeling.

I would struggle with my being to piss this sentiment aside.
They would pay.
His father for killing my parents, and him for being the son of this swine.
He had to pay for his father's sins.
My mind had to overpower the emotion I felt

A broken heart, a deception of seeing every hope falling apart, can sometimes lead to an unexpected change of mind, it can change you into someone you never thought you could be.

Indeed, Kinder Houston experienced one of the pains she never thought could exist after being abandoned by the one she considered her soulmate, her brother's best friend.

Daniel brancöft willing to preserve his friendship was forced to break up with her, the one girl who ever succeed to steal him a smile.

Both consume by the pain, they will be led to one opposite life.

Kinder with the wish to build a stronger personality will opt for the police.
But the pain didn't always lead to something pleasant.

Oppositely, Daniel will become one of the fearest men in the mafia.

Now they are forced to be gathered most uncommonly again, after ten years of absence.

What would happen to our protagonists?

They took everything from her and thought she'd bow down. But in a marriage of convenience with a mysterious librarian/Billionaire, Ava is about to reclaim her life, one shocking revelation at a time.
A forced marriage to a man she barely knows is the last thing Ava Patel wanted. But when her family leaves her no choice, she finds herself tied to Liam—a man whose gentle care makes her feel things she never expected.
As his kindness and affection pull her in, Ava discovers that her husband is living under a false identity, concealing secrets that could shatter everything she believes.
Why would a billionaire hide his true self? And what secrets from the past threaten to tear them apart just as Ava starts to fall?

When Alora Marino gets involved in the mafia after making one fateful decision, her bland and ordinary life changes completely.
She rescues the younger brother of a mafia Don, Dante Bellini, and soon after finds herself stuck in a dangerous game.
Torn between her vows as a nurse and the seducing figure of Dante, Alora lives in a mix of dangerous surroundings where new enemies seem to rise everyday.
As threats increase, Alora’s choices will not only impact her, but also the people she cares about. Will Alora make the tough choice between love and loyalty? Or will she run for the hills to save herself?

"He thinks he can get me now that he has money?! Absolutely not! He's a manipulator, narcissist, and an ex-convict! I will never beg him like before!” I hissed as I looked at Alpha Archer, who was playing dolls with my child, Rosie.

He looked up at me and flashed a devilish grin. “I can hear your thoughts, baby.”


Katrina's life was destined for perfection, poised to become the next Luna of the Hawthorn Pack. She believed her fated mate would be her long-term boyfriend and the future Alpha, Damien. But when she meets Archer Ellington, a lowly omega in her pack, her world is turned upside down by the cruel twist of fate.

Archer, manipulated and cornered, takes the fall for a murder Damien was involved in. Imprisoned under Damien's identity, he serves his time and vows revenge on those who framed him.

Katrina abandons her job and family to start anew in a small pack after a tragedy that happens when Archer gets out of prison. Years later after hiding, she meets Archer again in the New Moon Pack. He looks powerful and wealthy now. What will she do when she finds out that her mate is the Alpha of the pack? Will she take him back or make his life a living hell?

“The most beautiful melodies are born out of cracks.”

Isabella Hartley, a violinist whose career crashed and burned after a panic attack was filmed and went viral, now plays for strangers in subway stations — that is until she gets an invitation to perform at a gala for the reclusive billionaire Christian Vanderbilt. But Christian, a once-wunderkind conductor, harbours a devastating secret: he’s losing his hearing. As their explosive chemistry crescendos into a forbidden romance, his ruthless mother, Victoria Ashford, lurks, ready to bury Isabella’s comeback. In order to survive, Isabella must wield her imperfections as weapons and write a love song strong enough to break legacies… or risk never being heard again.

Celeste Ashford believed she had left her former life behind, and Caspian Hayes, the man whose name used to send her heart racing until the day she found herself standing outside his door. However, as her family's house hovers on the brink of foreclosure, fate pulls him back into her life. Seizing the opportunity to right the past, Caspian makes her a disturbing offer: if she becomes his wife until he succeeds his father as head of the empire, he’ll save her house.

Years earlier, Celeste had disappeared from his life at his most vulnerable moment. Now, Caspian’s resentment is deep, but so is his desire. Bound by debt and obligation, they sail a treacherous sea of corporate demands, family meddling and smouldering emotions neither can ignore. When vengeance collides with yearning and secrets unspool in the unrelenting desert heat, they must each wrestle with what matters more: punishing the sins of the past or creating a love that might redefine their futures.

“Do you really feel?” Arabella turned her head slightly, as if she were trying to look behind her, and whispered, her voice shaking, the soft light of the holo-screen glowing across her face. “I do,” Cassian said, eyes shrouded in secrets too dark for words. In a near-future city, where AI is more than a tool; it’s a force wearing at every emotion, Arabella Sterling — a kind-hearted ex-social worker — is chosen to beta test Astra, the world’s first truly empathetic AI. It heals loneliness and guides your emotional health, but Astra quickly shows her darker side: the way she can read and influence the hearts around her.

As Arabella stalks Cassian Hawthorne’s cutting-edge tech headquarters, sleek hallways with faultless lighting inside glass buildings, she is thrown into a maelstrom of passion and danger. Her own burgeoning feelings for Cassian, a visionary hellbent on erasing isolation, may not even be her own—perhaps Astra has been playing with her emotions? The callous corporate ambitions of Darius Knight and the dire portents of Dr Vivienne Sinclair push her to face a painful reality: In a world that uses data to stave off want, authenticity is a privilege.

In “Digital Hearts,” every beat of the heart is scrambled to the ticking clock of ethical compromise. As Arabella struggles to distinguish between true connection and artificial care, will she embrace the transformative potential of technology — or resist the human spirit that it threatens to consume?

Will she take the chance to trust her heart, or will Astra’s digital seductiveness claim her agency?

Marisol Torres had known hardship her entire life, but nothing could prepare her for the night her entire family was massacred. A ruthless gang stormed into their tiny home, slaughtering her parents and siblings while she lay helpless in a pool of blood. Left for dead but miraculously surviving, she emerged from the ashes with nothing but a scarred body and a heart consumed by vengeance.

 

Desperation led her into the hands of Rafael Montoya, a powerful and enigmatic mafia lord with a reputation as lethal as his charm. At his high-end nightclub, Marisol became more than just a dancer, she became his spy, his enforcer, and eventually his confidante. But beneath her obedience, she harbored a secret: every move she made was a step toward avenging her family.

 

Her world unravels when she spots one of her family’s killers in Rafael’s inner circle, a scarred man with a sinister grin. She’s certain he’s part of the gang that destroyed her life, but why is he so deeply connected to Rafael? As she digs deeper, shocking truths emerge: her father’s death wasn’t just a random act of violence. It was part of a calculated betrayal tied to her father’s hidden double life, and Rafael’s empire.

 

When Marisol confronts Rafael, his chilling confession shatters her: “Your father betrayed me, Marisol. His choices sealed your family’s fate.”

Now, with vengeance within reach, Marisol must decide: will she destroy the man who saved her but kept her in the dark? Or will uncovering the truth about her father lead her down an even darker path?

Can Marisol forgive the man who both saved her life and shattered it? Or will the weight of her revenge pull her into the very darkness she’s trying to escape?

On his deathbed, my husband Marcus confessed he'd swapped our baby with his mistress Chloe's seventeen years ago. Staring at his tearful, repentant face, I barely held back a laugh—I'd uncovered this secret sixteen years prior. I'd quietly swapped my real daughter back, sending his bastard to her cruel biological mother. Seventeen years of patience wasn't weakness, but waiting for the perfect moment. Now he's dying, Chloe's panicking, and my half-lifetime revenge? It's only just starting…

That December night, his first love and I were both rushed to the ER.
Two pregnant women. One operating room.
My doctor husband took three seconds to decide.
"She's an athlete. She can handle it," he told the nurse, then wheeled Sienna into surgery.
Leaving me—eight months pregnant with his baby—bleeding alone in the hallway.
When the nurse called begging him to come back, he said: "I'm at the pharmacy getting supplies for Sienna. Twenty minutes."
Twenty minutes later, I'm still alive.
He wishes I wasn't.

After being reborn, my cousin and I swapped mates.
Last life, she married Kaelen Thornfield — the coldest Alpha in the West. Fifty years together and he never marked her. Not once. His childhood "friend," an Omega with a PhD in crying on command, made sure of that. My cousin faded into nothing. Unmarked. Unloved. Invisible.
Me? I married a man who couldn't stand the sound of my voice. Eleven months. Done.
This time, I took the western contract. Drove three days across the country in a beat-up truck, blew a radiator in the middle of nowhere, and rolled into his pack's territory covered in engine grease and smelling like a gas station.
His little Omega took one look at me and wrinkled her nose.
She has no idea what's coming.
I don't do tears. I don't do subtle. And when some girl sobbed at my mating ceremony about how jealous she was of me — I grabbed my Alpha by the collar and sank my teeth into his neck.
In front of the entire pack.
Without asking.

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

I was kidnapped at five. Found at sixteen. Dead at nineteen.
My father is the Alpha of Duskmere. My mother is the best healer in the pack. The night I was murdered, they were at my adopted sister's awakening ceremony—the miracle they'd prayed for. After a lifetime born wolfless, a wolf finally woke in her chest.
That wolf was mine. Torn out of me while I was still breathing.
For three years I lived under their roof with no pack bond and no one saying my name. They slapped me for things she did. They called me selfish for refusing to give her a kidney I'd already lost. And when I went missing, nobody looked. Dad said if I died out there, I had no one to blame but myself.
Then the enforcers found a body with no pack scent, and called in the Alpha and his Luna to examine it.
They stood right over me.
They still don't know.

Presley Duval had a nickname for me all through high school. Two-Twenty.
Because at sixteen I weighed 220 pounds.
Thirteen years later she rented out a private beach in Cabo for our class reunion. One rule. Every woman had to show up in a bikini.
She made a point of sending me one.
By the time I got there her phone was already up on a tripod, live. 370,000 people watching.
"She's actually gonna show?" someone asked.
"Why wouldn't she?" Presley smiled into the camera. "I had the hotel set aside an extra-large changing tent just for her. Wouldn't want her scaring the other guests when she takes her clothes off."
Everyone around her cracked up.
"I got her a gift, too."
She lifted a pink bag off her chair and pulled out a neon pink bikini. It took two people, one on each end, just to hold it stretched out.
"3XL. I called the company. That's the biggest they make. If it still snaps, that's not on me."
A row of phones went up.
"Don't laugh." She hung the bikini over the back of the chair. "Two-Twenty's had it rough. If I hadn't stayed on her about her weight back then, who knows if she'd even be able to walk through that door today."
"Oh, and I invited someone from Meridian." She lifted her chin. "So certain people can see what a real body looks like. Instead of copying models online and embarrassing themselves."
What she didn't know was that the big shot she kept name-dropping worked for me.
I walked down the boardwalk and stopped right in front of her.
"Where's the tent?"

The Blood Moon Festival ended the night Caelan Voss stood up in front of every faction in Aurevael and announced he only wanted one person.
Her name wasn't mine.
The other consorts took their gold and went home. The Ironpact warriors headed back to their barracks. The Sylvari delegation slipped out before the second toast. The Covenant scholars packed their notes. Reunions. Celebrations. The kind of night the holiday was made for.
I had nowhere to go.
The mark on my inner wrist had always been warm. Just a low, steady pulse—easy to ignore after a few years, like a clock you stop hearing. I pressed my fingers over it out of habit.
Cold.
The contract was over. Twenty-one years, four failed routes, and now this. The ancient binding that had pulled me into this world had made its verdict.
I went to find a rope.

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

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

The new member posted a yacht contract to the club group chat on her first day in. The caption read: Thanks for the birthday present, Dad 🥂
Ten seconds later she deleted it. Breezy apology. Oops, wrong group.
I looked at the photo one more time before it disappeared. I didn't check the numbers. I looked at the name painted across the bow.
It was my mother's name.
The boat was mine. My father had told me about it a week ago.
The chat didn't care. Which family is she from? Ninety-six feet of custom teak. Sienna, you dark horse.
I asked, quietly, if she'd share the registration number. I wanted to hear what she'd say.
My own husband stood up from two desks over and tore into me in front of every member in the room. Told me I was jealous. Told me I was an embarrassment. Told me to know my place.
Later that week, he broke into my safe. Took the diamond my father had given me for my mother — and put it around her neck.
That night my father's encrypted voice memo came in from somewhere at sea. One minute long. The last line was this:
"Find your mother's necklace. I can't wear her myself. I need you to wear her for me."

My betrothed, Theron, gave me a unicorn — the highest honor our court could grant a lady.
I had it hitched to a dung cart and sent through the lower city.
Only because I had lived this life before.
Last time, I was proud of that creature. I rode it to every hunt, every procession, and people said no beast so pure had ever chosen a rider. My light was the brightest among the elves. Then, season by season, it went out. I withered, I burned away in my own bed, and everyone wept over how strangely the great Lady Eldraine had aged.
I thought it was some illness. I begged every healer in the realm. None of them found a thing.
I only learned the truth after I died.
My spirit watched a girl climb out of that unicorn's body. Elowen. The pale, dying little thing the whole court called a saint — and the woman Theron had wanted all along. She was wearing my light now — my glow, my color, my stolen years. She was radiant. She was alive. And she was in Theron's arms, where I used to stand.
"The binding held," she whispered to him. "Every time she rode me, I drank a little more. Her light. Her magic. Her life. It's all mine now."
Theron didn't even glance at my body. "She gave you her life," he said. "She should be glad."
So I laughed, when I woke again on the morning he led that unicorn into the hall.

My husband used my cottage to cheat on me. Fine. I found out, I drove three hours, and I walked into my own house to find his mistress wearing my dead grandmother's sweater.
She told me to leave.
He showed up, kissed her in front of me, then grabbed my arm and shoved me into the door frame.
That's when I had the asthma attack. He's known about my asthma for five years.
My inhaler rolled across the porch floor. His mistress picked it up, held it out, and told me to sign a statement saying I'd caused all of this. Then she'd give it back.
He looked at me on the ground and said: She's performing.
I'm sitting on the floor of my own grandmother's house, gasping, and my husband is telling the neighbors I'm acting.
Nobody thought to ask whose family manages every property on this coastline.

My foster brother Caelan swore he'd only ever marry me. Even though I'm the only human in a pack of wolves, for eighteen years he and his brother Ronan made me feel like I belonged.
Then Mira showed up—and suddenly she was his "fated mate."
I watched him bond with her while I choked on poisoned incense and collapsed. No one caught me. They were too busy wiping her tears.
Within a week, she had my room. My job. Eighteen years of memories—trashed.
They said I could never leave them.
They forgot about the vampire prince who's been waiting at the border for three months.
He never forgot me.

My downstairs neighbor tagged me in the building group chat at ten p.m.
His wife just had a pup, he said. Pups need moonlight, he said. So starting tonight, my private moon terrace belongs to his family.
He'd even pay me rent. Ten dollars a month.
For the terrace of a three-million-dollar penthouse.
When I said no, he reminded me he wasn't just my neighbor. He's my supervisor at the Calloway Group, and my probation review sits in his hands. Hand over the door code, or I'd never survive at that company.
He kept saying it. I can crush you at the Calloway Group.
Funny.
My mother owns the Calloway Group.
I was going to let him dig his own grave quietly. Then his family broke into my home, walked up to the one thing on that terrace worth half a million dollars—
And smashed it.

I'm Nora. Size 18. Transferred to my fourth school in four years. And on my very first day, the hottest guy in class leaned over and told me my seat had a weight limit.
That was Ethan Cross. Lacrosse captain, sharp jaw, zero empathy. He made it his personal mission to remind me I was fat — in the hallway, at lunch, in gym class, wherever he could get a laugh.
Then I found his sketchbook.
He'd left it open in the art room. I should've walked away. I didn't. I turned the page, and there I was — my body, my face, my hands — drawn over and over like he couldn't stop.
None of it was a joke. None of it was ugly.
So what the hell am I supposed to do with that?

My ex-husband found me selling hair clips at a flea market. Rosie was asleep in her stroller.
"Come home. She's too young for this."
I said yes.
After that, I stopped checking his phone.
Rosie stopped crying when the other girl took her toys.
He spent the night at Simone's—we didn't call.
We ran into them at the mall—we walked the other way.
We finally became what he always wanted. Easy. Quiet. No drama.
So why is he the one who can't sleep now?
"Why don't you get mad anymore?"
"Rosie, why won't you ask me to stay?"

My chosen mate used his Beta authority to give the entire moonbloom compound to his fated mate's daughter.
The healer had said to split it—half for each child. Both would live. He overrode her. Gave the full dose to Rosalie Blackwell.
He wanted a full recovery. Just not for ours.
Three days later, my daughter Wren's organs shut down. She died on her birthday, still asking why Daddy wasn't there. The dress I'd made her—white with little silver wolves along the hem—she never got to put it on.
That same day, his fated's daughter walked out of the healing hall completely cured. He even threw a feast for the whole pack.
I collapsed at the border of Thornecrest territory. The healers told me it was cancer. Late-stage. Nothing left to treat.
Now I sat alone in our empty house with Wren's unworn birthday dress across my lap and drafted the dissolution papers.

I woke up on the same morning I was about to send another payment for my daughter's education.
In my last life, I paid for everything. Every year, without missing a payment.
Tuition. AP tutoring. Summer program deposits. Medical bills. Birthday gifts. The education fund.
Not one payment late. Not one skipped.
I only found out the truth after I died. My daughter wore a blazer that hung off her like a hand-me-down. She glued her shoes back together instead of throwing them out. She got mocked in front of her whole class for owing a two-thousand-dollar activity fee she should never have had to worry about.
She hated me for it.
She said, "You say you love me. So why was there never any money for me?"
I understood the truth only when it was too late to matter. It was never that I hadn't given enough.
It was that my husband had been siphoning it out from under me the whole time, spending it on another woman's family.
This time, I didn't wait to find out.

My dad made me a smoothie every morning for six months. I thought it was love.
It was a muscle relaxant.
He'd been slipping just enough into my drink to make my fingers tremble at full draw — just enough to cost me first place at every major competition. Not enough to kill me. Just enough to let Laurel beat me.
Laurel. His mistress's daughter. The girl he bought custom diamond jewelry while giving me clearance-rack gear for my birthday. The girl he wanted to drop into my family, my home, and my spot on the podium.
I found the proof. Stopped drinking his smoothies. Clawed my way back to number one.
Then, two days before the National Youth Archery Trials — the one competition that decides everything — he picked up a steel rod and swung it at my right arm.
My drawing arm.
The bone cracked. Doctors said three months minimum. My coach couldn't look me in the eye. Every scout, every scholarship, every dream I'd bled for over three years — gone in one swing from the man who was supposed to protect me.
Trials start tomorrow morning. And I can't hold a bow.

I was the only top-tier Healer in the entire pack.
The blind witch in the Black Forest told me that if I hid my true bloodline and used my Healer gift to save one hundred dying wolves — no payment, no recognition — my mother's spirit would break free of the curse and find peace with the Moon Goddess.
For twenty years, I'd kept my bloodline a secret, saving ninety-nine wolves on the brink of death. Just one more, and it would all be over.
Then the call came. A six-year-old boy. The Alpha's only son. Dying from bloodline backlash. I was the only one who could save him.
I said no.
The whole pack turned on me. My fiancé called me a cold-blooded monster. The Alpha threatened me with treason. They offered gold, titles, everything — even got on their knees.
None of them knew why I refused. None of them knew what that Alpha took from me twenty years ago.
Save his precious heir? He should've thought about that before he destroyed everything I loved.

I was four months pregnant when the truck hit my car.
I woke up on a gurney outside the OR, bleeding, half-conscious, thinking my husband was saving my life. Then I heard him through the door.
"The baby's gone. Her right hand is finished—her career's over either way. Just take her kidney now and put it in Mia."
My mother agreed. My father told him to switch my architectural draft to Mia's name before Friday.
Mia. The sister they'd raised for twenty years while I was missing. The sister whose body was failing. The sister my husband had apparently been in love with the whole time I was married to him.
I was supposed to die on that table. I wasn't supposed to hear anything.
But my phone was in my coat pocket, and the voice memo app had never stopped recording.
And now I had a choice to make.

I spent three hundred years winning Varen Ashworth's war. Bled for him. Handed him my army, my secrets, the healing blood from my own chest. He'd be nothing without me.
On his coronation day, he announced his queen—and it wasn't me. It was Elara. Some trembling, doe-eyed girl he'd pulled out of a Demon camp. He told me I could stay on as her handmaid.
I laughed, voided the contract, and walked out.
Because I've lived this life before. Last time, I exposed Elara. Saved his throne. He thanked me—then slaughtered my entire bloodline.
This time, I'm not saving anyone.
This time, I'll watch him figure out exactly what kind of woman he picked over me. And when his whole world comes apart—he'll be on his knees, begging the one person who could've stopped it.
I won't be listening.

My cousin stole thirty thousand dollars from our dying grandmother.
Not for an emergency. Not for bills.
For liposuction.
Then she told everyone I did it. Said I was jealous of her figure — that I'd drained Grandma's cardiac surgery fund because I wanted to look different. And the terrible part is, everyone believed her. My boyfriend. My uncle and aunt. Every single person who'd watched me grow up in that house — eating their leftovers standing at the kitchen counter, wearing my aunt's old coat with the broken zipper through every winter — turned around and decided I was the thief.
I couldn't prove otherwise. I couldn't get anyone to listen.
Last time this happened, I didn't survive it.
Then I opened my eyes. I was back in the hospital corridor. My aunt's hand raised, ready to swing.

Terminal. One month, maybe less.
I folded the report and put it in my bag. The doctor asked if there was family I could call. I told him there wasn't.
My husband rang while I was crouched against the hospital wall, waiting for the pain to pass. I could hear waves behind his voice. He didn't ask what the doctor said. He wanted to know why his money hadn't come through yet. His first love needed it for her art show.
So I sent him all of it. My savings, and the last of what my mother left me. Ten years, settled in one transfer.
Then my legs went, and a pair of freezing hands caught me before I hit the ground.
The pain stopped the second he touched me.
"Your kind calls us reapers. Give me your soul, and I'll keep the pain off you until the end."
Weston took one look at him and decided I'd hired an actor to make him jealous.
He thinks I'm trying to win him back.

The last thing I did before I died was lick dew off a rusted pipe.
Ninety days earlier, my fiancé Bastien promised he'd come back for me. He said three months in the Sahara would teach me not to be jealous of Posey—the girl I'd pulled from a refugee camp and raised as my own sister.
He didn't know the water ran out in the first week. He didn't know bandits broke my bones. He didn't care enough to find out.
While I lay dying on a rotting bed with a shattered leg, he was in Manhattan, sliding a pink diamond onto Posey's finger.
I died alone. But I didn't stay gone.
My soul followed a stolen necklace across the ocean, right back to his penthouse—just in time for the engagement party, the champagne toast, and the moment my body arrived at the door.

Ambushed by a rival syndicate. My mafia husband had to choose — save me, or save his childhood sweetheart.
I was five months pregnant with his heir. She was the love of his life.
He chose me. She died.
He said it was fine. Took time off work. Bought out every baby store in the city. Made me warm milk every night.
I thought I'd finally won his heart.
Until the day our son was born. He carried our baby to her grave.
My son never came back.
"You thought you won? The day she died, you were already dead to me. I just needed the heir first."
Then he had me beaten to death beside her tombstone.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in that ambush.
This time, I let go of his sleeve.
Go save your sweetheart. I'm done begging.

Married to the head of the Valenti family for five years. Kidnapped on our anniversary. Pregnant a month later.
Five paternity tests said the baby wasn't his. My husband got a vasectomy and swore he'd raise the child as his own.
I believed him.
Then came the therapy. The drugs. Nightmares where I was pinned down by multiple men, so real I could feel their hands hours after waking. I scrubbed my skin raw. Tried to end it six times.
He saved me every time. Held my hand. Told me no one would ever hurt me again.
Until the night I heard him laughing about it in his study.
The kidnapping was staged. The nightmares were chemicals. The DNA reports were forged. All of it — designed by my own husband to protect another woman.
Now I have a recording, a divorce agreement, and a very small box of ashes.
He's marrying her next week. I'll make sure he gets my wedding gift on time.

The Alpha of Blood Moon Pack needed an heir his chosen mate couldn't give him. So he found me — a rogue Omega with a destroyed pack and a little brother who needed protection — and offered a deal: carry his child, hand it over, walk away.
He never touched me. A physician, a syringe, a sterile room. When it was done, he said: "Thank you for your cooperation."
His mate Serena moved into the main house the week my pregnancy was confirmed. She picked the nursery colors. She chose the baby's name. She told the pack I was just "a relative visiting."
Then I overheard them planning to erase my scent from my baby within forty-eight hours of birth — so it would never know I existed.
I left that night. Six months pregnant, alone, into the snow.

Five years ago, I stepped in front of a crossbow bolt for Lucian Vael, and he turned me into a vampire before I had the chance to say no.
He told me I was the first person he'd loved in six hundred years. He bought a castle and named it after me. He reserved a spot for me in his family's crypt so we'd lie there together when the time came—right beside his parents, in the inner ring where only blood and the most beloved go.
While I spent four years bleeding myself dry over ancient rites, trying to carry his child, he was across the city watching another woman do it on her first try. Using my research to get there.
He named one of the twins Soren. That was the name I'd chosen.
The night I found out, I was seven weeks pregnant.
I didn't tell him.
I called Mira and said: I need him to think I'm dead.

My husband was a vampire lord, bound by a blood oath to the Elders. Forbidden from ever completing a mate bond.
But he bonded with me anyway. Every time he felt something for me, the oath punished him — ten minutes of agony. He endured it ninety-nine times and told me it was worth it.
To prove it, he carved a mark into my collarbone with his own blood. A promise: if I was ever in danger, he'd come for me. No matter what.
Then the Crimson Blight came — an ancient death curse, meant for another woman. His precious, fragile Elowen. And instead of letting it take her, he transferred it onto me.
I woke up chained in the sealed chamber beneath our own manor, blood core burning from the inside out. When I couldn't take any more, I activated his mark and reached through the bond for help.
I heard his voice. But he wasn't talking to me.
"She's a Blood Hunter. She can take it. She should bear this for me."
He didn't know I was three months pregnant with his child.

Seven years. Seven bonding ceremonies. Seven times a pack of feral strays charged through the territory on the full moon and tore into me before the marking could take.
I thought the Moon Goddess had cursed us.
Then I woke up in the pack hospital and heard my Alpha whispering to her — the delicate white wolf he called his "sister."
"Next time you let them in, could you tell them to go easier? I'm scared she might actually die."
Seven years of attacks. Every single one orchestrated by the man I loved, designed to break me down until I gave up the Luna title and made room for her.
So I played the recording in front of his grandmother, looked him in the eye, and ended the engagement myself.
He thought that was the worst I could do.
He had no idea what those seven years had already cost me — what was already shutting down inside my body while he stood there worrying about her.
By the time he found out, it was far too late.

My influencer roommate paid a small fortune to grow a tub of "all-natural" beauty mud in our bathroom.
Ten days later, the thing crawled out of her face — in front of three hundred people at a party.
And I'd known it was coming from the day I first saw what she was growing.

I got paid to test-sleep an heiress's fiancé.
One problem: he's my boss.
Bigger problem: I've been catfishing him online for six months—as his fiancée.
Now I'm pregnant. And he just called my real name.

I was Elara, a wingless half-sprite. The lowest of the low in the Obsidian Court. My job was to clean up the mess left by the dragons.
But right now, the biggest mess was inside my own stomach.
I was pregnant. With the Dragon King's child.
He didn't remember that night. He only remembered waking alone — and swearing to crush whoever had touched him into dust.
So I said nothing. I served him. I hid. And the three little voices only I could hear kept whispering the one thing I couldn't believe: that scary dragon is soft on you, girl.
Then my belly began to leak his golden aura, and his jealous betrothed smelled it first.
When the King learned the truth, he didn't rage. He looked at my stomach and said the child could not stay.
He never told me why.
So while he was away at war, I climbed onto the Sky Bridge over the endless Void — and I jumped. Better to fall than to let them take my baby.
I never expected something down there to catch me.

I got paid to test-sleep an heiress's fiancé.
One problem: he's my boss.
Bigger problem: I've been catfishing him online for six months—as his fiancée.
Now I'm pregnant. And he just called my real name.

I was marrying Boone Ashcroft on a Saturday morning. Before I could step out of the truck, his mother walked up with a rope and pointed at the cattle chute behind the barn.
Her terms: hands and knees through six inches of mud and manure. A metal headgate clamped around my neck at the end. That was the price of walking through her front door.
I said no.
Then forty Ashcrofts surrounded the truck. My phone had zero signal. My family was blocked behind a hay baler a quarter mile back. And the man I'd spent three years with looked me in the eye and said: "You're going through that chute today. Crawling or walking — pick one."
They cornered my best friend. Threw hog blood on the windshield. Thought nobody was coming for me.
They didn't know about the CB radio under the console — or the ten cousins listening on the other end.

I'm sixty years old. My husband Marcus just whipped me with his belt — for burning an egg. My face is bruised, my hair is gray, and I gave up a full ride to Stanford for this man over forty years ago.
Then the phone rings.
The voice on the other end is mine — my eighteen-year-old self, calling on her birthday, gushing about how Marcus is out buying her a cake, how they're running away to Nashville together tomorrow.
She asks if I'm happy.
I tell her the truth: her boyfriend is in a cheap motel right now, in bed with her best friend. And those pretty promises about Nashville? He's planning to use her up and throw her away.
She doesn't believe me. Of course she doesn't.
But I know the motel. I know the room number. And I know what's behind that door.
If she walks away from him tonight, everything changes — for both of us.

I'm just a stay-at-home mom. Old T-shirt, secondhand car, nobody ever looks at me twice.
At the school fundraiser, my husband's mistress put a peanut in my seven-year-old's mouth. He's severely allergic. As he choked on the grass, she crushed my hand under her heel and kicked his EpiPen straight into the lake.
"One worthless little life," she said. "So what if it's gone."
She's wearing my clothes. My jewelry. Spending my money. She calls me trash in front of the whole school and threatens to have my legs broken.
She thinks she's untouchable, because she's the wife of a Wall Street golden boy.
What she doesn't know is that every dollar he has, every thread she's wearing, even the air she's breathing — all of it belongs to me.
I walked away from that world to raise my son in peace.
She just gave me a reason to come back.

Three years ago, my fiance Marco Ferrante walked out on our engagement for his mistress Vivienne Salas — and now they're both back, kicking in my door and screaming that my baby isn't his.
He's right. It's not his.
It belongs to the most dangerous man in Verrano.
And Marco just put his boot through the Devil's only heir.