1794 Book(s) Related to joy of life season 2

He proposed to me the day he woke up from coma.

I was so happy, and thought I would finally have my happily ever after.

I was wrong.

Three years later, I was slapped with divorce papers, and lost my baby.

My husand had chose my sister, and abandoned me.

And that was his worst mistake.

I thought that after twenty years with the Sterlings—even as an adopted child—I'd at least count as family. But the day they found their biological daughter Victoria, they announced they were throwing me out and planned to humiliate me at the family gathering. Based on what right?

Even more disgusting was how my almost-fiancé Blake immediately started fooling around with Victoria, eager to watch me get kicked to the curb!

When everyone was lining up to step on me, it was Alexander—the one I'm supposed to call "stepbrother"—who protected me. In his apartment, when he stood behind me gripping my hand as I chopped vegetables, his breath grazing my ear before he finally bent down to kiss me... my heartbeat went completely erratic.

On the day I got engaged to the heir of an elite old-money family, my own birth mother spread vicious lies about me in front of the entire crowd. She claimed I’d lived a wildly promiscuous life while studying abroad, and had even secretly given birth to a stillborn child with no known father.
Afterwards, she took my hand and sobbed out an apology, saying she’d only wanted to test whether my fiancé truly loved me enough to stand by me. I was foolish enough to believe her, and drank the calming tea she’d personally handed me.
When I opened my eyes the next morning, everything was destroyed. I lay in my bedroom, disheveled and half-dressed, and the man beside me was none other than my younger sister’s boyfriend.
In the end, my fiancé married my sister. And I was mercilessly disowned and cast out by my own family.
But twenty years later, every single one of them would come to regret what they’d done.

I remember that frost-covered train door like it was the last thing I ever saw. Because it was.
The escape spot I’d spent three years scraping together? My fiancée was sitting in it, wearing my parka. Her brother had my hiking boots on his feet. Her mother clutched the medical kit I’d carried six miles through ash-covered roads. And Caleb Frost—the ex she’d sworn was just “someone from the past”—stood in the seat that should have been mine, lifting my silver emergency flask in a toast.
While I froze out in the subzero ash storm, my lungs burning like they were filled with shards of broken glass, they turned their backs to me under the warm yellow light inside.
Then I woke up.
The calendar read May 3, 2041. Exactly one year before the Yellowstone chain eruption would turn the northern hemisphere into a frozen grave.
On the TV, experts were still downplaying the volcanic tremors, insisting there was no immediate risk to the public. My fiancée walked into the bedroom wearing one of my white shirts, carrying coffee in the blue mug she’d bought with my card. She reached for my forehead, asking if I’d had a bad dream.
None of them know I’ve already died once.
They’re still plotting how to make me pay for her brother’s failed investments, how to sneak texts to her old boyfriend, how to use me as their most obedient, most useful doormat until the world ends. I’ve sold the downtown office towers, mortgaged the lakefront house, bought the abandoned geothermal station no one wanted in the dead mountains, and signed a stack of engineering contracts they’ll never bother to read.
They still smile and thank me, tell me I’m the best fiancé in the world.
They have no idea who will be holding the key to the door, when the sky goes dark forever and the snow never stops falling.

“Smile, Natalie,” Callum whispered before he walked onstage.

So I smiled while he thanked another woman for the crisis plan I had written. I smiled when he pinned my grandmother’s sapphire brooch to her dress. I even smiled when his message came in, canceling our nineteenth appointment at the county clerk’s office.

Then I walked out with our unsigned marriage license papers in my purse and called the one CEO he hated most.

By the time Callum realized I wasn’t waiting anymore, I had already taken my name, my work, and my future back.

It had only been seventeen minutes since my wife passed away. My daughter was sobbing on the phone.

"Dad, they're trying to drive me out."

I stared at the medical report in the doctor's hand.

The first natural antibody carrier.Toxin levels in the blood: zero.

The same poison that killed my wife, that killed my six-year-old son…had left me completely unharmed.

The doctor lowered his voice."Mr. Miller, you have to stay. They're sending people to pick you up."

I let out a cold laugh.

"My daughter is trapped in the basement storage room right now. Is anyone here going to help her?"

Silence fell over everyone.

I grabbed the glass water cup from the bedside table.

"Five years ago, they handed me a disciplinary penalty and fired me from the rescue team. Everyone said I was good for nothing."

The cup smashed against the floor.

I picked up the longest shard of broken glass.

"Today, I'll show you all how a useless man saves lives."

My family's company went bankrupt, and my father was critically ill.

I dropped out of school and worked multiple jobs every day.

Debt collectors beat me and broke my ribs, but I couldn't afford painkillers.

Every penny I earned went to expensive medicine, all to save my father.

Until I saw my father, who should have been bedridden on oxygen, holding a champagne glass at a hotel banquet hall.

His words pierced through, "Five years, the punishment she earned."

The bankruptcy was fiction. The illness, theater.

All orchestrated because his stepdaughter suffered from depression, and I was her entertainment.

When the doctor finally spoke to me, "Days. You have only days."

I laughed.

The dying one had never been my father.

It had always been me.

I once believed that love could transcend life and death.

Until the terminal stage of Moon Eclipse Disease, when my husband personally gave the life-saving opportunity to my younger sister—that orphan girl I had rescued.

He said the pack needed a gentle Luna like her.

My son clung to her, calling her 'Mom.' My parents crowned her with what should have been mine.

Fine, so you all want me dead?

Then I'll stake everything on one final gamble.

After I die, I want every single one of you to be tortured by the truth.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A witch prophesied at my birth—I carried special blood, I could bear the strongest children.

Two Alphas I'd loved for ten years—the Wolf King's sons—swore they'd protect me forever.

Then she showed up. Maggie. My cousin. All wide-eyed innocence, claiming she had the same gift.

Suddenly, I was the jealous one. Every trap was mine, meant to hurt her. Every wound on me was fake. She cradled the silver fox I'd killed, tears falling right on cue.

They handed me the moonflower wine. Bryan said, "Don't ruin the mood."

When they accused me of treason, Ronald said, "Exile."

They dragged me past the borders themselves. Poison fire in my veins, bones breaking under moonlight.

I hit the ground. The last thing I saw was Maggie's smirk...

I'm the rightful fucking heir to the Sterling family fortune. My old man made me lay low, keep my head down, live like some regular broke college kid.
But there's this cunt in my dance crew. Walking around flashing her fake designer shit like she's hot shit, acting like she owns the fucking place.
And now she's got her eyes on my boyfriend.
To get close to him? She's telling everyone she's the Sterling family heiress.
Oh really? You're the Sterling heir?
Then who the fuck am I?

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

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."

My mom runs a laundromat, and that afternoon she had to step out for something urgent.
Before leaving, she made sure to remind me: don't forget to finish the load in machine number seven.
I found the old clunker tucked away in the back room and bent down to reach inside the drum, trying to straighten out the tangled clothes.
That's when my upper body suddenly wedged itself in tight—I couldn't pull back out no matter how hard I tried.
I was stuck there, ass in the air, frozen in the most humiliating position imaginable.
And that's when Matthew Bennett walked in—the college professor who always comes by to pick up his dry cleaning.
To my shock, he mistook me for a sex doll. His hot, thick dick pressed against my thighs...

My sister walked onstage wearing the medal for my stolen research.
Ethan stood beside her and mouthed, Don’t ruin this.
Last time, I listened. I lost my scholarship, my housing, my lab, and the only archive my mother left behind.

This time, I held up the U drive with the original files.
“If Sophie built it,” I said, “let her run the raw data.”

My Sister Wore My Medal

I saw a post on Reddit, "Urgent! How do I convince my wife to donate bone marrow to my mistress?"

I scoffed and typed back, "What a piece of shit."

Right after I hit send, my husband came home. He grasped my hand, his voice shaky: "You have leukemia... but it's okay, we found a donor."

His right eye twitched—he always did that when he lied.

Then I remembered the worst comment on that post, "Trick your wife into thinking she's the patient."

Life imitating the internet, apparently.

He wanted to harvest my bone marrow for someone else.

When I finally saw his mistress's face, my world fell apart.

I never thought his mistress would be her......

“End the ceremony,” Prince Kael ordered, his cloak wrapped around another woman’s shoulders.

Our six-year-old son stood beneath the moon glass, wings trembling, the royal binding already burning under his skin. If the ritual stopped now, Rowan could be scarred for life.

Kael did not even look at him.

So I picked up the sacred blade and pressed it to the bond mark in my palm.

“You wanted freedom,” I said. “Take it.”

"Miss Smith, I think I can smell your scent... it's so womanly..."

I looked down at the boy hiding under the lectern, watching helplessly as he had his way with me right there in the classroom, while I had to pretend everything was normal...

My name is Catherine, the university math teacher. With my husband always away on business trips, at thirty years old, I was like a nun guarding that double bed, never satisfied. Slowly, I developed some strange habits... and became bolder...

The bell for the end of class had just rung, and teachers and students were flocking to the bathrooms in groups, chattering noisily outside.

In one of the bathroom stalls, I was panting, squatting... my black lace panties down around my ankles, my face flushed with ecstasy as I indulged...

“Mr. Hale, step away from the chest.”

The officer’s hand stayed on the latch beneath my brother’s portrait.

My mother clutched the donation envelopes to her chest. “Lena is doing this for attention.”

Dad gave the room his lawyer smile. “My daughter hides when she wants sympathy.”

The volunteer pointed at the broken white ribbon. “Then why is there blood on it?”

The room went quiet.

I stood beside them, dead and barefoot, watching Dad’s face change.

Because for once, someone was about to open the place where they had left me.

"On the bed!" He commanded gruffly, leaving no room for questions. Everything was quiet and I heard my heart pounding. It was difficult to even breathe.
He suddenly moved, reaching for me. I felt his fingers brush over my shoulder, the silky robe slowly slipping off of me. My heart filled with dread as I thought about how I looked in his eyes right now. My body trembled, my eyes shut and it felt like my face was on fire.
"Please..." I begged in a broken and shaky voice. “I don’t want to be your breeder.”


Talon the Black is as his name suggests. Dominant. Heartless. Ruthless. King of the Lycans, Talon is madly in love with his mate, Willow, but things start to fall apart when she cannot bear him a child. Driven to desperation, Willow begs him to breed a filthy human and while Talon is reluctant to, he does as his beloved wants.
Abused and maltreated by her parents, Avalyn has been sold by her father to the Lycans. Her life is even made worse when she realizes that she is to be the Lycan King’s breeder. She is to sleep with him and carry his child even though he is already married.
It is a cold business exchange, her curvy body in exchange for an heir, nothing more. But what happens once this ruthless King starts to fall in love with her? Can they hide their forbidden love from Willow or would there be hell to pay once she finds out?

"I'm about to cum in your smart little mouth and you're going to swallow all of it. Do you understand?"
He didn't let me answer, holding my head in place as his cum filled my mouth. He waited until I had swallowed every drop before he released me and I fell to the bed, sobbing.
Zipping himself up, he stalked to the door, then paused and turned to smirk at me. "Don't even bother to tell anyone about this. Or you and your mother will suffer. And get ready, because this is just the beginning."


Jasmine Scott is an omega, a nobody. Born in the slums and living with her struggling, single mom, she is an outcast at her school. Until her mom gets married to the alpha. Relieved that her status has been elevated, Jasmine is glad to be part of the alpha’s family except that Hardin Scott, the alpha’s gorgeous son is out to torment her.
Hardin hates Jasmine. She might be his step-sister but she is no blood of his. He knows she is a gold-digger out to get his father’s money and for that she must be punished.
But what happens when he starts lusting after his step-sister? Hardin craves for a taste of his step-sister's body and he won’t stop until his sensual mark is branded on her skin.

Ever since her parents died, nerdy Amelia Forbes has always been bullied by the school's bad boy and jock, Jason. Ruthless and drop dead gorgeous, Jason makes her school years a living hell. Meaner than the devil himself, he is always sure to ruin Mel's day.

One day, they are paired up for a school project and in the process of working on the project at home, Jason forces himself on her. Ashamed, Mel feels disgusted with her inability to stand up for herself and soon, she finds out she is pregnant with her bully's baby.

Scared out of her wits, poor Mel is helpless. No one is willing to come to her aid except Adrian, Jason's best friend. And as Jason sees Mel with Adrian, he begins to get jealous and soon, he finds himself falling for Mel.

But will Mel ever forgive him? Will she ever forget the wrongs he had done to her?

"I bet you still feel me," I whispered, tracing a lazy finger down her spine, just to make her shudder. "Still stretched from how deep I was inside you."

She sucked in a sharp breath, but I caught the way her thighs pressed together, the way she burned with the memory she was so desperately trying to bury.

"Shut up," she bit out, her voice shaking.

I chuckled, dark and low, brushing my knuckles against her jaw. "Why? Does it drive you insane knowing you let the villain ruin you first?"

Camilla
He used to make my life hell. Stefano Madden, the golden boy with ice in his veins and a filthy mouth that cut deeper than knives. I was the fat, invisible girl he loved to humiliate. Now, I’m curvy, successful… and unfortunately, his personal assistant. I swore I’d never fall for him again. But the way he looks at me now? Like he wants to ruin me all over again, only slower, dirtier, deeper. And I would let him.

Stefano
I broke her once. I should’ve walked away. But Camilla Whitlock grew into every man’s fantasy and I hate that she makes me feel. So I push her. Tease her. Own her. Until the line between cruelty and desire snaps. I take her, claim her, and when I put a baby in her, my obsession turns lethal. But when she’s stolen from me, all bets are off. I’ll burn the world to bring her back… even if she never forgives me.

Eilidh always knew Callum didn’t love her, but she still held on, hoping he would change. For three years, she endured a marriage filled with cold glances and distant affection, only to have her hopes shattered when the woman Callum truly loved returned. Without hesitation, he handed her divorce papers and demanded she abort their unborn child. Broken but not defeated, Eilidh signed the papers and walked away, vowing to return stronger.
Years later, Eilidh re-emerges, no longer the naïve woman who once begged for love. She’s independent, successful, and the mother of a child Callum never wanted. When their paths cross again,Callum realizes too late what he has lost. The ruthless billionaire who discarded her is now the man desperate to win her back. But Eilidh has changed—she’s no longer willing to settle for less than she deserves.
Callum is determined to make amends, proving his love through grand gestures and relentless pursuit. But can love ever bloom from betrayal? Eilidh heart is no longer so easily swayed, and forgiveness is not a prize to be won. Will Caleb’s regret be enough, or has Eilidh moved on for good?

“Who do you think I am? Just because you saved me and I kissed you doesn’t mean I’ll open my legs for you.”

Claire, a fiery American reeling from her father’s lifelong lie, flees to Denmark to find the mother she thought was dead.

Prince Lucas of Denmark returns home from the States only to be thrust back into the cage of royal obligations. During a grand parade, disguised as a palace guard, he saves Claire, who was in the way of the horses. He develops an instant attraction for Claire and even a slight possessiveness as he wants to keep her at all costs.

He’s living a double life; she’s searching for her own. When their worlds collide in a whirlwind of passion and hidden identities, can a love built on secrets survive the glare of the throne? Or will the weight of crowns and past betrayals tear them apart?

I hated Kane Ravenwood before I ever spoke to him.

The ruthless captain of the Ravens Hockey Team ruined my brother’s career and turned our family into campus gossip. Everyone worships him like a king, but I know the monster beneath the crown.

Arrogant. Violent. Untouchable.

So when he suddenly asks me to fake date him to save his reputation after a scandal, I should’ve said no.

Instead, I made a deal with the devil.

Now he’s everywhere.
Touching me. Watching me. Controlling who talks to me.
Calling me like he already owns me.

The worst part?

The fake relationship doesn’t feel fake anymore.

Because behind his cruel smirk and bloodstained knuckles is a broken boy hiding dangerous secrets… secrets that somehow pull me closer instead of pushing me away.

But Kane has enemies.
And when his obsession with me turns violent, I realize something terrifying:

I’m no longer pretending to be the hockey captain’s girlfriend.

I’ve become his weakness.

And he’ll destroy anyone who tries to take me away.

“We are your darkest nightmares, Nadia,” a gravelly voice said, dark chuckles meeting my ears. Chilling. “Remember when we told you that you can't breathe without us. Cannot do a fucking thing unless we deem it so? We were being fucking serious Nadia. And for breaking that rule, you will be punished. Severely. No one messes with us and gets away with it."


Innocent and naive, Nadia Burke has always kept her head down, enduring relentless bullying from Alex and Sandro Davalo, the powerful and popular werewolf twins at her elite high school. For years, they’ve mocked her for her poverty and inability to shift. But when they all end up at the same college, Nadia’s hopes for a fresh start crumble as the twins resume their torment. This time in a darker and brutal way.
Everything changes when Nadia finally shifts, revealing magical powers that could heal even the gravest wounds. Suddenly, Alex and Sandro can’t ignore her, discovering she’s their true mate. As rival packs target Nadia for her rare abilities, she and the twins must confront their painful past and find the strength to protect each other. Together, they face deadly enemies, uncover shocking betrayals, and discover that love—and forgiveness—may be their greatest strength.
Book Two of Bullied By My Alpha Stepbrother

Killian and Cillian and their mate, Rosalind. Killian and Cillian are twin brothers born in the ruling house of the Southern Gate Pack. The boys lost their mother during birth and the heartbroken Alpha assigned them to different people to see to their training and prepare them for their future responsibility which was to rule the pack together.

Killian went to his mother's sister, Lilly, while Cillian went to his father's sister, Celia. They are trained with different views of life. When the time comes for them to return to the castle, the two boys do not seem to see eye to eye. Killian has a strong personality and believes in ruling with an iron fist. He is tough and ruthless, considers his brother to be a softy and an excuse of an alpha. Cillian on the other hand, rules with a more open arm. He is very lenient and makes sure the people under him are fairly treated.

Deep down, Killian feels cheated for having been sent to his mother's sister who lived outside their pack, hence his reason for hating his brother and being extremely hard on the people around him.

The Alpha who saved Seraphina from rogues never meant to keep her, until she turned twenty one and the Moon Goddess marked her as his.

Dimitri Volkov ruled his pack with brutal efficiency and kept his ward at arm's length, but one ceremonial night changed everything. Now, Seraphina’s virgin body burns for the only man forbidden to touch her. The dominant Alpha whose presence alone made her drip with shameful need.

Pack law says that a guardian cannot claim his ward. Her first heat says otherwise.

When she begs for his knot, his control shatters at the scent of her arousal. When every unmated male can smell that she’s ready to be bred, Dimitri faces an impossible choice. Let them both go mad from denial, or pin her beneath him and show her why the most forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest.

She was raised to obey her Alpha. Tonight, she will learn what submission really means.

Sasha’s spent four years disappearing. No name, no past, no one asking questions — just enough to keep her mother alive and herself invisible.

Then billionaire Lex Cross walks into the one place she thought she was safe, and buys out her contract for ten million dollars.

The rule is simple. He can look. He can want. He can never touch.

It should be easy money. It isn’t. Because the more Lex fights to keep his hands off her, the more Sasha realizes he isn’t the danger in this arrangement — the man she ran from four years ago is, and every camera flash at every gala on Lex’s arm is a chance for him to find her again.

Lex bought her silence.
He never asked what it was protecting her from.

Some contracts you walk away from clean.
This one might cost them both everything.

Eight years ago, Beatrice Hawthorne stole the only man Isla had ever loved.

This time, Isla refuses to be the good sister.
When billionaire Rhys Ashford walks into the exclusive club where she dances, Isla recognizes him immediately.

Her sister’s fiancé.

Seducing him is supposed to be revenge.
Nothing more.

But Rhys doesn’t know who she really is.

He doesn’t know she chose him on purpose.

And he certainly doesn’t know the woman he’s falling for is the sister of the woman he left months ago.

As lies unravel, old betrayals resurface, and a family built on appearances begins to collapse, Isla must decide whether revenge is worth losing the first man who has ever truly seen her.

Because some hearts survive betrayal.

Others don’t survive the truth.

I gave up five years of my marriage for nothing.

My son is dead. He died on his fifth birthday, waiting for his father to come home. But instead of his dad, a car accident took him. And his father? He was a thousand miles away, with another woman.

For five years, I put up with my husband's coldness and his family's constant humiliation. I thought having a child would melt his icy heart. I was wrong—so terribly, laughably wrong.

He couldn't even focus at our son's funeral—his eyes were only for his old flame, his "true love." It wasn't until I was on my deathbed that he finally shed those fake tears of regret. But it was too late. My child was gone. My love had died. And soon, I would be gone too.

This marriage, this whole life—it's all been one big joke. I just want to find my son as soon as I can. To tell him that his mother never gave up on him. To promise him that in another world, we'll never be apart again.

Mara Vale was the intern everyone forgot.

She carried coffee into rooms where decisions were made, fixed printers no one thanked her for, and watched her ideas appear under another woman's name. At Vane & Co., she was told to be grateful for the badge that barely opened any doors.

Then, one stormy night in the sealed archive, Mara found a file the board had hidden for twenty years.

It said the company was still searching for its missing heiress.

It said someone had buried the real girl inside the lowest rung of the business.

And beside the photograph of a vanished child with Mara's eyes, someone had written one instruction in red ink:

Do not let her rise.

Caroline Mercer once believed kindness could be proven by sacrifice. She took in two orphaned children, gave them schools, doctors, tutors, rooms beside her daughter's nursery, and a path into the Mercer name.

Years later, those children returned as witnesses against her. Sloane Vale smiled for the cameras while calling Caroline a monster. Nolan Vale handed federal investigators a beautiful stack of forged evidence. Caroline's husband was broken, her company was seized, and her only daughter, Evelyn, died after being traded into a marriage meant to protect everyone else's reputation.

Then Caroline opened her eyes on the morning the Vale children first arrived at her door.

This time, she would feed them. She would house them. She would educate them. She would keep every receipt, every doctor's report, every legal notice.

But she would never again give strangers the keys to her child's future.

He calls me Sage, a blank canvas he reshapes to fit his whims. My Alpha, Kieran—the King of the North—blindfolds me each night, his whispers soft against my ear as he breathes my name.

Yet his intense stare cuts right through me, fixated on the distant moonlight he craves but can never touch. The irony stings—he looks at another through my eyes, just as I scour him for echoes of my fiancé, lost to me ten years ago. We serve as flawless stand-ins for each other, offering warmth in this prison of hate and longing, even as we tear at one another's wounds.

When the harsh truth strips away our last veil of illusion, how will this deceitful game we've played finally unravel? "You are not my Alpha," I whisper, "you are just my moon." But when that moonlight dims, can our shattered spirits still navigate the infinite shadows to find home?

They told me my daughter drowned. Too much to drink, a slick deck, a terrible accident.

Then they put a number on her, slid the check across the table, and asked me to sign away the right to ever ask how she died.

I signed.

They didn't ask what I'd do after.

I changed my name. I spent three years earning a desk in their building, close enough to hear the man who buried her joke about the father who "made some noise, took the money, and went away."

He doesn't know my face. None of them do.

They thought the money bought my silence.

They have no idea what it bought.

The folder slid across the table toward Hannah's husband. Sign here. Family helps family.

What the Whitfields never once thought to wonder was that the quiet daughter-in-law they'd spent four years bleeding had almost three million dollars they couldn't see.

She'd hidden it for one reason: to keep the only good man in that family from being turned into their wallet.

Now they wanted his signature. His house. His name on their debt.

They had spent a lifetime underestimating the quiet one.

They were about to learn what that costs.

They paid me a fortune to authenticate a masterpiece. It took eight seconds to know it was a forgery — and eight more to understand I was the forgery they'd hired.

The brushwork was my great-grandmother's. The woman they let die in a county ward, calling herself a liar for daring to say the paintings were hers.

The Ashford name sits on three centuries of art, scholarship, and law. None of it is theirs. He stole her words. His wife stole her paintings. They built a dynasty on a woman they erased — and never learned her blood runs in me too.

I'm the lawyer they brought in to seal one more theft. I said no.

By the time they remember her name, they won't have one left to sign.

They put the calm ones on graveyard. I'm calmer than calm - I can't read a face to save my life, but give me a voice and I'll tell you what you ate for dinner and what you're lying about.

3:07 a.m. A woman calls. A struggle. The line dies.

By sunrise there's no body, no report, and the call I logged has wiped itself clean - like it never rang. The whole city is asleep on it.

But I've never trusted the system. I keep my own copy of every call.

He erased her. I kept the tape. Now he just has to find out the night guy nobody looks at has been listening the whole time.

I’m the only person on Earth with a clinically proven antibody capable of neutralizing this rare deadly virus.
I caught the virus when I was six. Its mortality rate was staggeringly high, and everyone thought I’d never pull through. Against all odds, I recovered entirely on my own. By some strange twist of biology, my body made the world’s sole antibody that could fight this virus off.
Once I turned eighteen, I signed up to donate my serum as a volunteer.
For twenty years straight, rain or shine, I showed up to donate free of charge—107 separate donations in total. Each time, I pulled a gravely ill patient back from death’s brink.
I’m no saint living to save the whole world. Every last donation was done for my mother.
Back when I was six, my father’s infidelity drove my mother to take her own life. What happened was cruel beyond measure, completely unforgivable.
A fortune-teller once told me my mom’s lingering resentment ran far too deep. To free her trapped, wandering soul for good, a blood relative of hers had to finish exactly 108 acts of good deeds.
Twenty years in, only one deed remained. Just one more, and my mother’s spirit could finally rest in peace.
But when the hospital sent out an urgent emergency SOS this time around, I did something I’d never done in two decades.
I turned their request down flat.

They built a hundred-year name on a scholarship they stole from a dead girl.

This morning that name landed on my desk. Brooke Hale, applicant. One signature away from the federal clerkship her family has won, somehow, in every generation since 1962.

I'm the one who signs.

I wrote three words instead. Recommend denial. Then I sat with my hands flat on the file so they'd stop shaking.

The Hales think it's a cold case. A girl named Iris, ruled ineligible sixty years ago, gone quiet, gone poor, gone.

They don't know Iris was my great-grandmother.

They don't know I kept the letter.

My locker door swings open and the hate mail tumbles out like confetti from hell. Murderer's daughter. Your dad killed kids. Die like them.
Three weeks since the news broke, and they just keep coming.
I'm on my hands and knees, frantically shoving the notes into my backpack while the hallway erupts in laughter. Sarah steps over me like I'm roadkill.
The first time I drowned, I thought it was an accident. The second time, I thought I was losing my mind. But by the third time—watching Blake's lifeless body sink next to mine in that chlorine-burning water—I finally got it. Time isn't moving forward. It's stuck, like a broken record, spinning back to the day Blake could still dive like an Olympic champion, before the accident stole everything from him.
This time, I won't let him jump in after me.
I have to save Blake from me. But I'm drowning in more than just pool water, and I don't know how to surface. I don't know how to stop this endless loop of death and guilt and love that's killing us both, over and over again.
How do you break a curse when you're the one who cast it?

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

I was "Ghost," the undefeated legend of the underground racing circuit. To uncover the truth behind the tragic fall that left my sister, Sylvia, in a coma, I disguised myself as a timid, pathetic scholarship student and infiltrated Spencer Academy—an elite world ruthlessly ruled by old-money families and the hockey dynasty.

I thought my petty revenge was flawless when I slashed a bully's tire with a razor blade hidden in my sleeve. But I was caught red-handed by the academy's most feared predator: Rowan King, the "Tyrant of the Ice."

He was Sylvia's rumored boyfriend. More importantly, he was the last person to see her that night.

With a single glance, he shattered my "good girl" facade. He knew my true identity as the street racer "Ghost," and he knew exactly why I had sneaked into his school.

I should have treated him as my prime suspect. But between his fiercely dominant advances and his reckless, deadly protection, he was making my heart race entirely out of control...

When I scrolled across that photo of Tyler with his arms wrapped around Rachel at 2 AM, I nearly shattered my phone against the wall. That bastard—maintaining our "just scratching an itch" arrangement while wooing her with soulmate bullshit?

With anger burning through my veins and my skin flushing hot, I stormed off to the jazz bar determined to expose him.

But who could have guessed that in the middle of this dramatic showdown, I'd discover the truth about Seth—the one secretly marking up my sheet music, the one who decked Tyler for me?

Maybe this gut-wrenching betrayal was actually the universe's twisted way of pointing me toward something real.

I woke up, and my world collapsed.

Lying next to me was Sebastian—the golden boy, the heir to the Rhodes empire, and the nemesis who has tormented me for twenty years.

I fled. I swore to take that night to my grave. If I kept my mouth shut, no one would know.

But Fate has a twisted sense of humor. Five weeks later, two red lines on a pregnancy test slapped me in the face. I’m pregnant. And the father isn’t just my childhood nightmare. He’s the man who just bought my company. My new boss.

I tried to hide. He hunted me down. He scares off my dates. He tramples my pride. He invades my life like a tyrant. He mocks me in public, yet destroys anyone who touches me in private.

"Nancy, did you really think you could escape?" He pins me against the wall, his eyes dark, that familiar scent of cedar suffocating me. "Admit it. You hate me, but you need me."

On my eighteenth birthday, I didn't get a cake. I got a slap from my mother and my MIT acceptance letter crushed under her heel.

In their eyes, I wasn't a daughter—I was a walking blood bank, a spare part for my cousin Jennifer.

They took my blood, made me take the blame, even sent me to prison in her place.

In that car accident, my mother saved my cousin without hesitation and left me to bleed out in the wreckage.

"Save Jennifer first! That wretch is too stubborn to die!"

That's when I gave up on them.

But what truly broke me wasn't being sent to a mental hospital—it was the diary I found hidden in my mother's safe.

Five years ago, I pulled a dying man from the depths of the ocean.
His name was Silas. When he woke up, he looked me in the eye and swore he'd marry me, that he'd protect me for the rest of his life.
I believed him.
I hid it from my clan, shed my tail, and followed him to land. I bore him a daughter—Winnie. I kept myself locked away in a villa, out of sight from the world. No wedding. No ring. Even the mermaid scales on Winnie's legs had to be covered up with layers and layers of concealer.
Until that night at the banquet. Zoe and her goons pinned us both to the tile by the pool, scraping the scales off Winnie's legs with a knife, sneering that this "filth" was such an eyesore.
I stroked her mangled calf, desperate for Silas to come save us. But Zoe said Silas was her fiancé.
Silas? Her fiancé?
Then what the hell am I?

I had to claim Caleb tonight.

I had paid a six-figure premium to contract a high-level werewolf mate from the nation’s top "Fated Mates" agency. I had chosen him for his elite stats, the "absolute submission" guaranteed in his file, and most importantly, a face that could put any Hollywood A-lister to shame.

But over the last few months, things had completely derailed from my expectations.

He refused to let me touch him!

I have to figure out what's going on.